they lied. they stole. they lied. they stole. they lied. they stole.

Impeachment is the only way the outcome will be fixed! end of story!

The American people MUST seek the impeachment of both Bush and Cheney. The amount of lying and manipulating that has gone on in this administration is horrific. Everything about this administration has been false from the start, including the fact that they suppressed votes in FL in order to steal the first election.

Thats a pretty stunning indictment of AGAG.

We all work for the Whitehouse , say it with me.

dhs...

They put their plague in every federal and state department that they could! There is not enough RAID to exterminate the cockroach's.

Allan in CT...

I think the prosecutor is the AMERICAN PEOPLE! There may not be a single person who could do this job! Impeachment is the only way to get rid of the damage!

Impeachment. Not until the scandals include a "sexy" angle that the MSM can run with to spike their ratings.

Think BushCo AG #1/Regis U. Johnny/Monica.

I suspect a clear cut case for Obstruction of Justice and Lying to Congress is almost ripe -- and if they believe the votes are there, Impeach Gonzales ought to be the tune of the day. It is two thirds of the counts against Nixon -- and not really all that complex. It would take Gonzales out of office, and he could still be prosecuted criminally in the future. Question is are there 17 votes on the Republican Side in the Senate for a very surgical removal? So forget the special prosecutor -- Conyers should call for study and then hearings on Gonzales's impeachment on just these counts.

Impeachment is not reviewable by the courts, and the House Committee has great powers in compelling production of evidence. I suspect they could even require that Karl Rove produce himself and his papers.

Sara...

Good information! In my view, this is the road the House may take after tomorrow!!

I can only hope!

I predict that no criminal charges will result. Only if Monica Goodling has chapter and verse, and only if she spills, will this go criminal. My guess is that she could put the jacket onto Rove, but that she won't do it. If the missing e-mails turned up, that might make it more interesting.

House Judiciary Committee schedule says 10:00 a.m. hearings and 2:30 p.m. closed door hearings tomorrow. The 10:00 a.m. hearing should be on one of the CSPANs.

code: wind

Is the wind shifting? Hope so. Get these creeps out now.

Thanks to all the "lawyer people" out there who have the expertise to add insight to this situation. Keep it coming! I really appreciate what you think could and should happen.

The question of the day is, has the threat of a jail term been presented to Monica in order to intimidate her into spilling the beans? That's what was done to John Dean, and his testimony not only kept him out of jail; it made him a media star to this very day. My guess is, as I expressed in a post a few days ago, that Monica is the John Dean of the Bushies.

"is there a copy of Gonzalez' speech out there, the one that raised McKay's eyebrows?"

Here is link to the speech, which has many amusing passages, now seen in the light of recent events..
but..
does not contain the comment that McKay quoted.
Maybe Gonzo made that comment off record...?
http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/speeches/2005/042105usattorneysconference.htm

From Gonzales' speech:
"Finally, I want to remind you that we are not here to play little ball, we are here to play big ball, to go for the big inning. President Bush often notes that we are "here to make a difference, not to mark time.to confront problems directly and forcefully, not pass them on to future generations."

"This is our charge. We cannot stand idly by and allow this opportunity to pass. We must use this second term and exercise bold leadership..."
...
"September 11th, 2001, the collective mission of the federal government was instantly transformed. At that moment, the top priority of the United States government became - and remains today - to protect our citizens against terrorism."

Question - What does Gonzales think the collective mission of the federal government was before Sept 11? And why does he think that the mission should change for ANY reason?

Mike Valentine

It's Wednesday night, how come you are not at church. Pray for Gonzo...judgement day is near!

Then, Woodward & Bernstein and Watergate

Now, TPM & USA scandal

Thanks TPM

Time to clean the mess up.

Here's what I don't understand about this whole mess. It's clear, from Gonzales' testimonies, that he's intent on misleading Congress. He's had several key portions of his own accounts refuted by other testimony and by documentary evidence. His Department of Justice has attempted to stonewall this investigation by withholding key documents. Why hasn't this man been cited for contempt of Congress? Congress has the inherent authority not simply to cite him, but to arrest him, bring him before Congress, and order him jailed for refusing to comply fully with a Congressional investigation. With the lack of support for Gonzales on the hill, I'd have to think Democrats would have the votes in both houses of Congress. In the past, even the threat of such an action has been enough to bring obstreperous administration officials of both parties to heel. It seems long past time that this option for dealing with uncooperative Bush administration officials was given serious thought.

Wanna bet Abu gets up in front of Congress and says,

"There is absolutely nothing wrong with the statement 'I work for the White House, you work for the White House. We all serve at the President's pleasure, he signs our pay checks."

And then Abu will look as if butter won't melt in his mouth, because he will have invented his own nouveau nillegal defense. He will then (unless impeached) have obliterated for eternity the independence of the Judiciary.

What of many scandals or crimes will finally bring down Bush? Corruption and incompetence permeate through his administration everywhere I turn -- from Iraq to the DOJ. No one and no department or agency are immune. It's everywhere.

I just hope McKay's and Iglesias' predictions of criminal prosecutions come true. I also hope the American public finally pays attention to the dark, subculture of the Bush administration, and wakes up to what it has has wreaked on us.

The U.S. attorneys scandal is just the tip of the iceberg. If the "fired" U.S. attorneys truly care about this country, they should speak up (something Colin Powell and George Tenent didn't do)and tell the American people what's really going on in the Bush administration.

We the People need their candor and integrity.

Please remember this: The prosecuters who were removed were let go because they wouldn't pervert justice enough, not because they wouldn't pervert it at all!
Don't make heroes out of them, they simply reached the limits of what they felt would be attainable, or could be mitigated if discovered.
The strict limits of ethics and legality they left behind long ago, else they could not have worked for Bush as long as they did, if at all.
Don't trust them. Assume they are at all times covering their own posterior first of all.

Mooser: "The strict limits of ethics and legality they left behind long ago, else they could not have worked for Bush as long as they did, if at all."

Not everybody who received an appointment from this administration is a right-wing stooge or tool -- most of them, perhaps, but not all. People like John McKay, Carol Lam and David Iglesia may be Republican, but they should be commended for having a strong ethical base. They don't deserve your groundless insinuation of corrpution on their part.

"They don't deserve your groundless insinuation of corrpution on their part."

Well, I followed the news pretty closely in San Diego and I think Mooser has a point. Carol Lam certainly seemed on board when pursuing newly elected Democratic City Council members only in "strippergate" a few years back.

Duke Cunningham didn't get busted because of Carol Lam. He got busted because a San Diego Union Tribune reporter discovered a recorded bribe and made it pretty much impossible to ignore. Without that, I doubt if Cunningham would have ever been convicted.

My guess of the moment is that Goodling and Sampson were set up to be the fall guys for this scandal.
While they were given the authority to decide on hires and fires, there's strong evedence that they made no significant decisions without close supervision (like Mier's 'inquiry' about getting rid of the USA in LA, or Iglesias' being added to the list after complaints were made to the president.)
Gonzales delegation of authority didn't necessarily cut him out of the decision making process; but, it did give him a cover story, exactly the cover story he gave to the Senate when he testified on April 19. That story was that he wasn't closely involved, that he'd delegated authority, that he'd misplaced trust. It might prove bad judgment; but, that's not an indictable offence. On these grounds, I'm guessing there're indictable offences behind this cover up.
Now Gonzales has shifted to directly blaming Sampson for the mess. This still stays with the script: Sampson is still the fall guy as he was probably meant to be all along.
As additional support for this theory, I'm relying on the reports of Sampson and Goodling's melt downs at the beginning of March. What I'm suggesting is that these were brought on by the realization that, for all the self-importance they'd gained when they accepted Gonzales' charge, they'd done so while setting themselves up for indictments and disbarring.
If Goodling's attorney was always angling for use immunity, this might offer an explanation for why Goodling would want to pursue it and would be willing to testify.
The loose screw here is what made the office's investigating Goodling within the DoJ willing to allow her testimony.

What is needed and wanted FIRST is not punishment and empisonment, not even a trial to expose the endless filth. What is necessary NOW is that Abu Gonzales be removed immediately. One route may be impeachment-- don't know whether his position is subject to such a thing-- but at the very least, after tomorrow's blatant nose-thumbing, he should be charged with Contempt of Congress, with the understanding that jail time will be demanded. And THEN the get him for Obstruction. All of which sets up Beloved Leader for demonstrable High Crimes charges for putting Gonzo and Wolfie ahead of their sworn duty to the sovereign People of the United States.

Alberto Gonzales and Karl Rove (and so many other neo-con Republicans) have never been able to park their partisanship at the door and do what's right for our country.

In the meeting that McKay mentions, Alberto Gonzales literally told the assembled U.S. Attorneys that their oath to the U.S. Constitution and the "rule of law" no longer mattered, they were now owned by Bush and by extension by Bush's former personal attorney, Alberto Gonzales.

In other words, Alberto Gonzales committed an act of treason and is nothing more than a traitor to our Constitution and the "rule of law." Alberto Gonzales committed "high crimes and misdemeanors" and should pay the price for his treachery. Just as all his co-conspirators who also committed treachery should pay the price.

And based on Gonzales' own religious beliefs, as well as his co-conspirators, one can only presume that Satan was behind their treachery, selling out our great nation and subverting our democracy for thirty pieces of blood-stained Republican, evangelical silver.

So, when the lawyers in the room looked at each other in stunned disbelief did they decide to do anything about Gonzales then? Or did they wait until they got fired?

Steve5117

I am not absolutely sure what media were there. The seminar was a paid CLE event (Continuing Legal Education)and there was a separate media event afterward. The only media I saw in the auditorium were photographers. There were trucks from KOMO7 and KIRO7 in the parking lot as I was leaving. They are local Seattle stations.

All this talk about impeachment...all the blather about 'timelines' and 'benchmarks' for ending the Iraq debacle'...all the brave new world promised by democrats last November...

It appears that the democrats simply do not have the balls to get anything meaningful done in any endeavor toward punishing the criminal Neo-Cons and getting the 'Ship of State' off the shoals Bush & cohorts have navigated us onto.

Pelosi, Hoyer, Reid...can't we find SOMEONE with a little more fire and brimstone for the likes of Rove, Gonzo, 'W', and the arch-villain, Cheney?

I still think that being methodical is far more important than cathartic. Impeachment is secondary to documentation.

This is about rooting out and destorying any potential of Fascist Plutocracy ever rearing its ugly head again. One would hope that the echoes of John Adams and the Aliens and Sedition Acts (1798) would of been enough.

This needs to end forever . . . Not just make us feel better that a group of assholes get smacked around.

They shouldn't have oughta tried to stuff those real prosecutors. Now it is like the Mayberry Fire team trying to fight against real, tough, prosecutors. Delicious irony that these are Bush's own picks :)

I say we appoint Iglesias as the special prosecutor LOL

security code: please, as in pretty please

Who is going to prosecute anyone who is indicted? Who is going to indict? It is important to remember that the DoJ has been perverted through and through. There is no one left but loyal Bushies. The USA for DC is a thorough-going scum bucket, and definitely one of THEM. Neither Iglesias nor McCay or any of the other fired USAs could be named as special prosecutor because they all are involved and have an obvious conflict of interest. I don't favor Fitzgerald because he definitely pulled his punches in the Libby matter. He, again, is one of THEM. We need a truly INDEPENDENT prosecutor, one that is not a part of the DoJ, which is corrupted, to proceed with this matter once Congress has overturned enough rocks and found enough evidence to indict. Please, is there just one Republican out there who is truly patriotic, who doesn't just worship the Great God Mammon, who will stand up and defend his/her COUNTRY and Constitution, rather than the Republican party? I wait for it day by day.

And to the poster who said that the House does not have the balls to bring impeachment charges: It's not that they don't have the balls, they don't have the VOTES. Once again, the Repugnicans put party and president ahead of country and constitution. What a bunch of traitors! They won't vote for a conviction in an impeachment trial until their own careers are threatened. Which, in my opinion, they are.