Uh oh. Bloch had better avoid small planes and restaurant meals. In this administration, even hinting of touching Rove means a horse head on your pillow.

Security code: memory. As in Gonzales, Doan, Sampson, failed.

I have alwasy held to the hope that there were/are individuals of good character, regardless of party, who are/were/will be just as disgusted by the Animal Farm antics of this White House working in variouus oversight capacities. They get up every morning, go to work like the rest of us, and want a sound, relatively clean government. No one is perfect, people profit from their networks, and , to a point, that's fine. It's not, but that's how it works/ has worked for a long time regardless of who is in charge. But Bush & Co is causing, and it seems doing so willfully, fundamental damamge to just about EVERY instution it can. Their contempt for comptence and lust for uniformity of sub-medicority is staggering and it's getting really boring and predictible.

Bloch, impartial?

Special Counsel Accused Of Intimidation in Probe
Contact With Investigators Controlled, Employees Say
By Elizabeth Williamson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 16, 2007; Page A21

[snip]

The Office of Personnel Management's inspector general has been investigating allegations by current and former OSC employees that Special Counsel Scott J. Bloch retaliated against underlings who disagreed with his policies -- by, among other means, transferring them out of state -- and tossed out legitimate whistle-blower cases to reduce the office backlog. Bloch denies the accusations, saying that under his leadership the agency has grown more efficient and receptive to whistle-blowers.

The probe is the most serious of many problems at the agency since Bloch, a Kansas lawyer who served at the Justice Department's Task Force for Faith-based and Community Initiatives, was appointed by President Bush three years ago. Since he took the helm in 2004, staffers at the OSC, a small agency of about 100 lawyers and investigators, have accused him of a range of offenses, from having an anti-gay bias to criticizing employees for wearing short skirts and tight pants to work.

My Q is: Is this set up as a Rove whitewash? His Hatch Act articles mentioned in his bio sound like they could be recipes for getting around the constraints: The Judgment of History: Faction, Political Machines, and the Hatch Act,” published in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Labor & Employment Law (7 U. Pa. J. Lab. & Emp. L. 225 (2005), and “Don’t Bury the Hatch Act: Hidden Dangers for the Unwary and Politically Active Prosecutor’s Office Employee,” published in The Prosecutor in the September/October 2004 issue (Vol.38/Number 5, Sept/Oct 2004).

Also, he has 7 children, which always makes me think of religious extremism.

I don't buy it...the thought that any agency after 6 years of Bush/Rove are investigating...smoke and mirrors my friends. Keep the poor rabel pacified, we'll investigate ourselves...and I'm the Pope

Is there any way that THEY could use this "investigation" to block and/or circumvent Congressional investigations?

Ya know - "Sorry, I can't answer any questions because I'm under investigation and oh, by the way, you can't speak to anyone else because they're part of the investigation. Wish we could y'all but we can't. Move on."

Hmmmm.....It could be more cover-up - or it could be that the stench has attached itself to people who went along to get along and who now feel forced to prove they aren't Rove tools.
The Renzi/Doolittle FBI raids may signal a similar move. You can bet there are 93 USAs rethinking their loyalties as their records are being inspected.

security code: flag as in maybe some people are starting to remember who they work for.

Whitewash, pure and simple. "We looked into it, and there was nothing to see. Case closed"

Beware of Scott Bloch. He has done enormous damage to the OSC mission over the years, and got a lot of bad press for stacking his agency with dubiously qualified staff who just got out of one of those right-wing law schools.

Something weird is going on here.

Don't expect a fair investigation of the Bush Administration from Bloch. Bloch's a true-blue Bushie. He'll find a way to whitewash it or blame some underlings.
The May issue of Mother Jones (not online yet) has an article about whistleblowers and how Scott Bloch turned the OSC into another arm of the Bush/Rove political machine, pursuing ideological goals of Bush/Rove at the expense of other investigations. Whistleblowers exposing wrongs in the Bush administration find themselves demoted, marginalized and unemployed, while anything in the Bush agenda is prioritized: pornography, investigations of Democrats- all the things swirling around the DOJ scandals. Like Gonzo and his Regent U grads Monica Goodlig and 100+ others, Bloch hires young theocrats from the Catholic fundamentalist college Ave Maria.
Just another example of the Bush body snatchers' pod people.

This looks like a whitewash for the consumption of the Republican base. After everyone is declared innocent, they can wave this report for years to come as proof that "nothing improper" ever happened.

Its all for the cross-talk.

Congressional investigations are enshrined in the Constitution and therefore hold primacy . . .

Although freedom of the press is also enshrined in the Constitution and the Administration and Slime-Porner (Time-Warner) are colluding to wipe that with the postal rate hike in July.

Hey! Iforgot the Supreme Court is there to protect us . . . we are sa v e d. Crap - Canada looks better every day.

In the very unlikely event that Bloch surprisingly sees the US Constitution as more important than the neo-conservative agenda, the Bush/Gonzales/Cheney Troika will fire him.

i think the rove gang's undoing is not knowing where their disdain and hostility for the law ended and their ignorance of the law began. hubris can be a motherf@cker. but we shall see - only time will tell.

where has this putz been for 4 or 5 years knowing that the crimes were being committed? and it is a bushie, a loyal bushie investigating all these incidents for bushie

sounds like the end result is being written now by karl

think it is time to insulate government from politics?

and to be clear, i am not holding my breath for this OSC investigation to not be a whitewash - this smacks of 'we'll investigate ourselves and let you know how that turns out'.

I am from Kansas, and the name Scott Bloch should not give anyone confidence in this investigation, I'm sorry to say. Here is info a watchdog group collected about him, courtey of Alternet:

"They claim Bloch has denied help to gay workers who assert sexual-orientation discrimination; dismissed hundreds of whistleblower and discrimination complaints without any investigation; issued illegal gag orders and reassigned or fired employees he suspects of leaking information about him; and left critical staff vacancies open, while hiring numerous unqualified friends at high salaries for unnecessary administrative positions. Worse, they allege that he has politicized what should be a nonpartisan office by squashing investigation into whether Condoleezza Rice had broken campaign law, but speedily pursuing allegations against John Kerry; and vigorously pursuing petty complaints against Democrats and Green Party candidates, while burying complaints against Republicans."

If I had to guess, I'd say it's quite possible that he's looking to give Rove an official stamp of approval, not take a serious look at his behavior.

c'mon, ive got emails about this from wapo to truthout. this is clearly a whitewash. more muckraking indeed.

security: wrong!

It wont have any teeth in this case. Sure an employee can be terminated unless the "decider" decides not to. code word (horse)shit.

After reading the above posts, I believe that Rove has set up this "investigation" in order to obfuscate and delay any real investigation. On the outside, this looks genuine, but after reading about this Bloch character, this action has Rove's fingerprints all over it. There are two foxes in the henhouse now, and they've nailed the door shut.

Wow, great - only took them 6 years to get there investigation on? Please. No thank you. I'll take more Dem-controlled public hearings.

code: "warm."

Rove seems to be an equal opportunity "destroyer." Just think of all the good loyal republicans he has thrown under the bus to save his own lizard-skin. Libby being a prime example.

My guess is that he is hated as much as he is feared within the republican establishment, and that some/many of them would love to see him taken down.

With a disastrous '08 election season looming (particularly if Bush really digs in and refuses to pull back from Iraq, which is likely), I think that many Repub establishment types are looking for ways to put as much space as possible between themselves and the Gang in charge of the WH.

Particularly with Bush's polls stuck in the low 30s. It is to the Republican Party establishment's advantage to fined a way to paint Bush as an aberation. And there is no better way to do that than to take Rove down; he would make an unparalleled scapegoat.

Code word "sugar" -- as in there is no amount of sugar which can possibly sweeten this bitter pill Karl is being forced to swallow.

You really ought to take this post down. This is a recipe for a whitewash, pure and simple, and consistent with the WH practice (common especially at the Pentagon) of launching a blizzard of internal investigations in an effort to render the Congressional oversight (at least in their view) redundant.

In any event, the OSC today is a complete failure at its most important function, protecting whistleblowers.

As far as the Hatch Act, your picture of smilin' Karl pretty much sums up his view of the problem.

more smoke and mirrors from the emperor

Sorry, but I'm VERY skeptical of this Bloch. This sounds like a whitewash in the making.

I'm also a bit puzzled re the impression that Bloch will not obfuscate and obstruct to the benefit of Karl Rove. I would like to hear more. Others make similar and deeper allegations about Bloch working on behalf of Rove and the WH: eg

http://tinyurl.com/2zxpr4

Whistleblower safe harbor not safe anymore

Bloch has done a heckuva job at protecting whistleblowers in the federal government, the same way that Michael Brown did a heckuva job at FEMA last year, POGO says — and has collected mountains of documentation to support its case against Bloch.

I would like to hear more about whe

The Federal government is completely political at this time. Why should we ever expect an honest report to come from a committee headed by someone Bush has appointed. It is simply not possible.

There is no way anyone is going to seriously investigate Karl Rove. This is nothing more than pure theater--an attempt to make it appear that they are investigating Karl--when all thinking people know that the outcome was determined ahead of the "investigation".

How many think that this is Rove's idea to begin with? Follow the RNC emails...

Kakistocracy is still a fine description of this administration: Government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens.

On the other hand, if Bloch is really the gay-basher he's cracked up to be, he may actually be interested in Rove.

Security Code: "pull," as in "pull the other one".

Nice to see that the MSM has taken the bait, but very disappointed in you, Paul! - Get out the rake and do some digging...

OSC has been showing up on the back pages of the WaPo since Bloch was appointed. Every Fed I know lives in fear of having to rely on the Merit Systems Protection Board decisions and possibly being at the mercy of this wing-nut.

This is clearly a smoke screen. Look! The Government is investigating Karl Rove, see we aren't incompetent - the Dems are full of crap and hysterical nay-sayers. Nothing to see here, fellow Americans, just competent Government in action!

"So, to continue their own investigations, Congress will have to "interfere" in an "ongoing investigation" by the "Office of Special Counsel"? LMAO. This is a stalling tactic. Congress should now call for appointment of a real special counsel."

Last week the House Judiciary Committee postponed the vote on immunity for Goodling after Republicans requested the delay. The ostensible purpose of the request was to determine whether a grant of immunity would interfere with an “ongoing investigation.” Naturally, the Democrats gave the Republicans what they wanted.

Well, well, well. No surprises here, just sorrow.

Chuck Schumer is my nomination for 'Idiot of the Week'. This buffoon is wandering around muttering to himself how much he cannot understand why Abu is still with us. Say what? All that sound and fury and wind baggery and the Fueher still has confidence in Abu?

Imagine how ridiculous it would be for some hack representative of the Weimar in 33' to pronounce an investigation of Herman Goering or Heinrich Himmler an open and shut case and call for his immediate dismissal? Schumer still after all this time has no idea who he is playing with. Not a clue. Its almost time for the World's Most Skilled Fat Man to give him a jingle and playback some private Schumer tapes they have stored in the ole NSA library.

This may be terrible news--and not for the Bush team. An ineffective, bumbling investigation that ends up going nowhere may be just the perfect cover they need for stalling Congress. This guy is a Bush appointee, and not a hardnosed prosecutor along the lines of Fitzgerald. When investigators from House and Senate committees ask for documentation and witnesses, you can bet that the standard response will be that they cannot be produced because it would interfere with an ongoing criminal investigation.

This is a good and informative story. But I for one would appreciate it if you guys confined your "today's must read" citations on the home portal to something other than your own work. I'm already here to get what you have to say; point me toward something I otherwise might miss. Hubris is unattractive regardless of one's political persuasion.

I maintain we need to establish a Schultzie Awards program for all the Bush stonewallers. "I don't recall" mirrors Hogan Heroes star Sgt. Schultz saying "I know nothing!" and somehow, we have to honor all the Alzheimer victims that Bush likes to appoint.

Seriously, if someone can create a printed award, we could start mailing them directly to each winner, as they deserve direct reminders of their unflagging incapacities to recall anything pertinent to their jobs.

Yes! He's nothing but the effing help. Exec priv does not apply yo him especiall in the RNC domain.

toast this pork rind!

This is a distractionary tactic.

We need to hammer and keep up the pressure on 2 things:

1. missing/destroyed emails from WH, RNC emails in and out of WH, the role of these email messages in electoral fraud.

2. Illegal wiretaps of US Citizens.

These are the 2 things that Bush/Cheney/Rove need to keep hiddin/out of the news. Don't let them.

Not comforting news for the WH.

http://osi-speaks.blogspot.com/2007/04/on-national-scene-trouble-for-wh-as.html#links

Speaking as a career employee of the Merit Systems Protection Board (but not speaking on their behalf), I feel certain that if Scott Bloch decides to prosecute, the Board will judge the case fairly. By statute the Board is bipartisan, i.e., no more than two of the three members can be from the same party. More to the point, none of our political appointees are zealots.

Network Hosting Attorney Scandal E-Mails Also Hosted Ohio's 2004 Election Results

By Steven Rosenfeld and Bob Fitrakis, Free Press

Did the most powerful Republicans in America have the computer capacity, software skills and electronic infrastructure in place on Election Night 2004 to tamper with the Ohio results to ensure George W. Bush's re-election?

The answer appears to be yes. There is more than ample documentation to show that on Election Night 2004, Ohio's "official" Secretary of State website -- which gave the world the presidential election results -- was redirected from an Ohio government server to a group of servers that contain scores of Republican web sites, including the secret White House e-mail accounts that have emerged in the scandal surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's firing of eight federal prosecutors.

Recent revelations have documented that the Republican National Committee (RNC) ran a secret White House e-mail system for Karl Rove and dozens of White House staffers. This high-tech system used to count and report the 2004 presidential vote- from server-hosting contracts, to software-writing services, to remote-access capability, to the actual server usage logs themselves -- must be added to the growing congressional investigations.

Numerous tech-savvy bloggers, starting with the online investigative consortium epluribusmedia.org and their November 2006 article cross-posted by contributor luaptifer to Dailykos, and Joseph Cannon's blog at Cannonfire.blogspot.com, outed the RNC tech network. That web-hosting firm is SMARTech Corp. of Chattanooga, TN, operating out of the basement in the old Pioneer Bank building. The firm hosts scores of Republican websites, including georgewbush.com, gop.com and rnc.org.

The software created for the Ohio secretary of state's Election Night 2004 website was created by GovTech Solutions, a firm co-founded by longtime GOP computing guru Mike Connell. He also redesigned the Bush campaign's website in 2000 and told "Inside Business" magazine in 1999, "I wouldn't be where I am today without the Bush campaign and the Bush family because the Bushes truly are about family and I'm loyal to my network."

Ohio's Cedarville University, a Christian school with 3,100 students, issued a press release on January 13, 2005 describing how faculty member Dr. Alan Dillman's computing company Government Consulting Resources, Ltd, worked with these Republican-connected companies to tally the vote on Election Night 2004.

"Dillman personally led the effort from the GCR side, teaming with key members of Blackwell's staff," the release said. "GCR teamed with several other firms -- including key players such as GovTech Solutions, which performed the software development -- to deliver the end result. SMARTech provided the backup and additional system capacity, and Mercury Interactive performed the stress testing."

On Election Night 2004, the Republican Party not only controlled the vote-counting process in Ohio, the final presidential swing state, through a secretary of state who was a co-chair of the Bush campaign, but it also controlled the technology that allowed the tally of the vote in Ohio's 88 counties to be reported to the media and voters.

Privatizing elections and allowing known partisans to run a key presidential vote count is troubling enough. But the reason Congress must investigate these high-tech ties is there is abundant evidence that Republicans could have used this computing network to delay announcing the winner of Ohio's 2004 election while tinkering with the results.

Did Ohio Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell or other GOP operatives inflate the president's vote totals to secure George W. Bush's margin of victory? On Election Night 2004, many of the totals reported by the Secretary of State were based on local precinct results that were impossible. In Clyde, Ohio, a Republican haven, Bush won big after 131 percent voter turnout. In Republican Perry County, two precincts came in at 124 percent and 120 percent respectively. In Gahanna Ward 1, precinct B, Bush received 4,258 votes despite the fact that only 638 people voted for president. In Concord Southwest in Miami County, the certified election results proudly proclaimed at 679 out of 689 registered voters cast ballots, a 98.55 percent turnout. FreePress.org later found that only 547 voters had signed in.

These strange election results were routed by county election officials through Ohio's Secretary of State's office, through partisan IT providers and software, and the final results were hosted out of a computer based in Tennessee announcing the winner. The Cedarville University releases boasted the system "was running like a champ." It said, "The system kept running through the early morning hours as users from around the world looked to Ohio for their election results."

All the facts are not in, but enough is known to warrant a serious congressional inquiry. Beginning with a timeline on Election Night after a national media consortium exit poll predicted Democrat John Kerry would win Ohio, the first Ohio returns were from the state's Democratic urban strongholds, showing Kerry in the lead.

This was the case until shortly after midnight on Wednesday, Nov. 5, when for roughly 90 minutes the Ohio election results reported on the Secretary of State's website were frozen. Shortly before 2am EST election returns came in from a handful of the state's rural Republican enclaves, bumping Bush's numbers over the top.

It was known Bush would carry rural Ohio. But the vote totals from these last-to-report counties, where Karl Rove said there was an unprecedented late-hour evangelical vote giving the White House a moral mandate, were highly improbable and suggested vote count fraud to pad Bush's numbers. Just how flimsy the reported GOP totals were was not known on Election Night and has not been examined by the national media. But an investigation by the House Judiciary Committee Democratic staff begun after Election Day 2004 and completed before the Electoral College met on Jan. 6, 2005, was first to publicly point to vote count fraud in rural Ohio.

That report, "Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio," cited near-impossible vote totals, including 19,000 votes that were mysteriously added at the close of tallying the vote in Miami County. The report cited more than 3,000 apparently fraudulent voter registrations -- all dating back to the same day in 1977 in Perry County. The report noted a homeland security emergency was declared in Warren County, prompting its ballots to be taken to a police-guarded unauthorized warehouse and counted away from public scrutiny, despite local media protests.

In our book, "What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election" (The New Press, 2006), we go beyond the House Judiciary Democratic report to analyze precinct-by-precinct returns and we print copies of the documents upon which we base our findings. We found many vote-count irregularities based on examining the certified results, precinct-level records and the actual ballots.

The most eyebrow-raising example to emerge from parsing precinct results was finding 10,500 people in three Ohio's 'Bible Belt' counties who voted to re-elect Bush and voted in favor of gay marriage, if the official results are true. That was in Warren, Butler and Clermont Counties. The most plausible explanation for this anomaly, which defies logic and was not seen anywhere else in the country, was Kerry votes were flipped to Bush while the rest of the ballot was left alone. While we have some theories about how that might have been done by hand in a police-guarded warehouse, could full Republican control of the vote-counting software and servers also have played a role?

The early returns on the Secretary of State's website suggest Blackwell's vote-tallying and reporting system could manipulate large blocks of votes. Screenshots taken during the early returns in Hamilton County, where Cincinnati is located, gave Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb 39,541 votes, which was clearly incorrect. Similarly, early return screenshots in Lucas County, where Toledo is located, gave Cobb 4,685 votes, another clear error. (The screenshots are in our book). Were these innocent computer glitches or was a GOP vote-counting and reporting system moving and dumping Kerry votes?

There's more evidence the late returns from Ohio's Republican-majority countryside were not accurate. During the spring and summer of 2006, several teams of investigators associated with Freepress.org, notably one team led by Ron Baiman, a Ph.D. statistician and researcher at Chicago's Loyola University, examined the actual election records from precincts in Miami and Clermont Counties. These records -- from poll books where voters sign in, to examining the actual ballots themselves -- were not publicly accessible until last year, under orders from Ohio's former Republican Secretary of State. Baiman compared the number of voters who signed in with the total number of votes attributed to precincts. He found hundreds of "phantom" votes, where the number of voter signatures was less than the reported vote total. That discrepancy also suggests vote count fraud.

There was other evidence in the observable paper trail of padding the vote, including instances in Delaware County where in one precinct, 359 of the final punch-card ballots cast on Election Day contained no Kerry votes, which means the day's last voters all were Bush supporters, which also is improbable. In another Delaware County precinct, Bush allegedly received the last 210 votes of the day. Were partisan local election workers trying to mask what was happening electronically to tilt the vote count?

Ohio's 2004 ballots were to be destroyed last September. However that fate was blocked by a federal judge, who ruled in the early phase of trying a Voting Rights Act lawsuit that accused Ohio officials of suppressing the minority vote in Ohio's cities. The state's new Secretary of State and Attorney General, both Democrats, are now holding settlement talks for that suit, suggesting its claims have merit. However, unlike Florida after the 2000 election, there still has yet to be a full accounting of Ohio's presidential vote.

What's clear, however, is the highest ranks of the Republican Party's political wing, including White House counselor Karl Rove, a handful of the party's most tech-savvy computer gurus and the former Republican Ohio Secretary of State, created, owned and operated the vote-counting system that reported George W. Bush's re-election to the presidency. Moreover, it appears the votes that gave Bush his 118,775-vote margin of victory -- the boost from Ohio's countryside -- have yet to be confirmed as accurate. Instead, the reporting to date suggests that what happened on the ground and across Ohio's rural precincts is at odds with the vote tally released on Election Night.

As numerous congressional committees attempt to retrieve and examine the secret White House e-mails surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' firing of eight federal prosecutors, those panels must also probe the privatization and partisan manipulation of the 2004 presidential vote count in Ohio. The lessons from 2004 have yet to be fully understood or learned.

Similarly, the House Administration Committee, which is expected to soon mark up H.R. 811, a bill by Rep. Rush Holt, D-NJ, to regulate electronic voting technology, also must take heed. The vote count and outcome of American elections cannot be left in the hands of known partisans, who can control and manipulate how the votes are counted and what is reported to the media and American people.

Public vote counts on private, partisan servers and secret proprietary software have no place in a democracy.

If he has to be the subject of an investigation, I'm sure Mr. Rove is happy that it is not a criminal investigation.

How does the pendency of this investigation affect others that may be started later? What's the process for coordinating them, exposing witnesses, granting immunity, sharing nformation, etc.? Which takes precedence in the event of conflicts?

Mr. Bloch is NOT Patrick Fitzgerald. He runs the legal arm that investigates whistleblower claims - for the most anti-whistleblower administration ever. Critics claim he buries them.

Given that context, why would an otherwise loyal Bushie go sooo far out in front and take on Rove directly, in a non-criminal setting?

Is this meant to demonstrate that "something's being done" when, in fact, as little as possible is being done? Is this meant to derail or delay criminal investigations? To co-opt key witnesses or grant them blanket immunity instead of more limited protection?

Agree with the people pointing out that Bloch is one of the biggest wingnut hacks in the government. As at least one person pointed out, this smells like Rove have Bloch investigate Rove, and give him one of those "things were done wrong, but not crime was committed" slaps on the wrist.

Gum to death.

This was a fun lead to write:

Great news! The guy Bush has tapped to investigate Karl Rove is a crony-hiring, gay-hating adjunct Professor who’s gutted his department and hired Christianists just of out of law school to replace the professsionals!

Then there's the fact that the crony Bloch hired, Alan Hicks, left the Catholic school where he formerly worked after the usual sort of sex scandal...

This really is the story that has everything!

Please update this post with less credulous coverage.

We all wish Mr. Bloch's investigation would be genuine; that seems extraordinarily unlikely, given his background and track record.

The announcement of this "investigation" looks more like an attempt to fool the MSM and headline-only readers that this administration takes the rule of law seriously. Like saying its primary interest in Iraq is advancing democracy.

TPM, you are letting us down -- we would assume you would at least have as much info on the folks in charge of the supposed "investigation" as one could locate on google within 10 seconds. Linda Yang, the asst. U.S. Atty. investigating Jerry Lewis was hired by the law firm defending him for $1.5 million plus. When will TPM muckrakers be hired away??? Or have they been already???

I don't think Bloch is legit. I think this is the First Act of Operation Cover-Up. I bet Rove even has a clever title with corresponding mocking acronym for it.

Michael Iglesias, in addition to going public with his allegation that he believes he was fired for political reasons, also has a friend at OSC (anyone know who?), and has a case there. Anyone know more about the details of that complaint, and how that plays (pos or neg) within the larger picture?

mea culpa David Iglesias, the NM USa.

Whistleblowers (example: civil servant Bunnatine Greenhouse reported army contracts awarded questionably to Haliburton's KBR without competition) get the double whammy. First they get retaliated against by their agency (Bunnatine Greenhouse got demoted). Then if they have enough resources to actually sue the government for the retaliation, the DOJ US Special Attorneys Offices defend the government with the taxpayer's money!!!

The Office os Special Counsel (under Bloch) has been absent...

SPECIAL COUNSEL HIRED SON’S BOARDING SCHOOL HEADMASTER — Consultant Deal Worth $112,000 Produces Only a Four-Page Memo

Washington, DC — U.S. Special Counsel Scott Bloch, who is responsible for enforcing civil service rules, hired his son’s former Catholic boarding school headmaster as an expert consultant, in apparent violation of civil service rules, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). In addition, Bloch gave the ex-headmaster a one-year appointment under which he would be entitled to receive as much as $111,966.40 but the only work produced was a four-page memo.

On March 16, 2004, Bloch hired Alan Hicks, a former headmaster of St. Gregory’s Academy, a Catholic boarding school, who left in the wake of allegations concerning priests sexually preying on young students, to serve as a consultant for a one-year period. Hicks was paid at an hourly rate of $53.83 for work not to exceed 2080 hours but Bloch has refused to divulge the total amount Hicks received.

In documents obtained by PEER under the Freedom of Information Act –

Hicks’s sole work product consisted of a single four-page memo to Bloch dated September 16, 2004. Bloch’s office withheld the entire text of the memo on the grounds that its contents are “predecisional”[sic];
Although the total amount that Hicks was paid was not disclosed, Hicks was also reimbursed $598.75 for travel, food and lodging to attend two OSC staff retreats in April and May, 2004; and
The nature of Hick’s special expertise is not stated. A “Consultant Statement of Work” dated July 15, 2004 states that Hicks will “review and analyze …current policies and procedures for its program offices…to determine whether they effectively facilitate the accomplishment of work.” In addition, Hicks was supposed to “advise on curriculum of future Office of Special Counsel training program.”
“It is beyond ironic that Scott Bloch heads the office that is supposed to enforce the rules against nepotism and favoritism,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, whose organization has had to sue Bloch to extract records about Hicks and other no-bid consultant deals. “While Bloch blocked its release, for what it cost the taxpayers, it must be one heck of a memo.”

Under federal regulations, expert consultants, such as Hicks, may be hired on a non-competitive basis only if he is “a specialist with skills superior to those of others in the same profession, occupation or activity.” Moreover, Office of Personnel Management guidance warns, “Agencies may not use expert and consultant appointments to avoid employment procedures.” Apart from his past work as a school headmaster, Hicks briefly taught philosophy at the University of Kansas – neither of which would qualify him as an expert under terms of the federal rules.

Since becoming Special Counsel in January 2004, Bloch has not made a single hire through the competitive merit system, including the selection of recent graduates of the ultra-conservative Ave Maria law school to fill slots formerly occupied by civil servants. In addition, Bloch has conducted a controversial re-organization that forced the removal of several career staff. His conduct while in office is now under investigation by the Government Accountability Office, the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency and a Senate committee.

“Bloch has crippled the Office of the Special Counsel at precisely the time when an independent watchdog is most needed,” Ruch added, noting that OSC staff members have also complained about the fact that Hicks was given access to confidential whistleblower case files. “This case perfectly illustrates why Scott Bloch has no business remaining Special Counsel.”

Terrific comments by Caff.

TPM Guys - you need to seriously re-rewrite this article before someone in MSM takes it and runs with it. One strongly suspects that the whole point of the "investigation" was a plant with it then being gummed to death. Having the "Office of Special Counsel" will smack a lot of rubes out there than there's an "Independat Counsel" on the investigation, and things will get taken care of.

"Why would Congress need to do more? A Special Counsel is looking into this. They should just back off and let him do his job. Like that guy looking into Scooter."

Smoke screen. The Update at the end just isn't enough to make up for the serious coverage given to the rest of the piece.

CREW is already on this:

http://www.citizensforethics.org/node/27786

Please, TPM Guys - redo the story. The comments section here is a keeper as the readers have been all over Bloch. But the coverage at the top is subpar for the great work TPM and The Muck do.

douglasfactors says:

Don't despair just yet. The fact that Scott Bloch has been raked over the coals for his actions at OSC could mean that he now has to conduct a legitimate investigation in order to save his own skin.

To which I reply:

Not likely, pal.

We should wait and allow this guy to do whatever he's decided to do. Sure, it looks fishy and of course when the report comes out consider the source: Bush crony a-la-Gonzales. But MAYBE he'll do it right - and when he doesn't there is no question that there is sufficient conflict of interest to demand a "Fitzgerald" to do a proper investigation. In this case, a botched investigation is better than none.

Another thought, Bush will not be able to pardon anyone who is convicted of a crime after he leaves office. The groundwork should be laid, but prosecutions should coast until there is no possibility of Bush pardoning his own misdeeds.

Finally, it may be time for a woman in the white house - but Hillary Clinton is the wrong woman. Please remember who started the program of extraordinary rendition (swooping folks up without charge and sending them off to third-party torture chambers) - BILL CLINTON. Sure Bush turned it into an institution, but the Clinton philosophy includes the use of torture just like Bush's. Clinton's use of this "power" has allowed Bush to argue that he was following precedent and existing policy. Someone should at least ASK her about that!?!

With regard to Bloch's planned investigation of Karl Rove. Having read the below referenced article about his beliefs, proclivities and actions as Special Counsel, I would not hold my breath.

In fact I would be afraid that this "investigation" could be made into a handy shield for past and future requests by Congressional Committees for e-mails etc from or to Rove.

Dr_e
=====

I would like to reference this enlightening article, with or without html:

"Originalists, Federalism, and Scott J. Bloch"

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