Basicaly it's ok to lie to congress until you get caught, and at that point all you have to do is simply change your statement.

Is it just me or are these hearings amounting to nothing more than an object lesson in impotence?

Senator Leahy: I want to thank you and the other committee chairmen for the investigations that are finally being lodged against a very secretive and corrupt executive branch. However, isn't it now time to press charges based on the prevarications and equivocations so many have felt immune enough to commit? Schlozman and Gonzales and a legion of others have lied to Congress. Isn't that a felony?

This is NOT a clarification, it is an attempt to packpedal on PERJURY!

Schulzman should be indicted immediately, no requests for additional hearings, no more requests for information or "lost" e-mails. Just swift issuance of an indictment for perjury and contempt of congress.

Let's get the ball rolling. Much more to come...assuming the Dems can somehow find a backbone.

PEACE

code word: goat, as in Judas

I think you're underselling the extent of the 'clarification.' Schlozman doesn't claim to have received a green light; in fact, he doesn't exactly say what ECB told his deputy in the consultation.

We get a hint later in the letter when he writes that he was told Justice guidelines "did not require a delay" in the filing of charges. That's a long way from a green light.

It sure sounds like he went to Donsanto and argued that the manual forbade *investigations* because interviewing voters might intimidate them, but that there was nothing in the manual to forbid the investigation of those registering voters, or their indictment. In other words, he felt he'd found a loophole - he was investigating registration, not voting, and the manual only dealt with the latter. Reluctantly, Donsanto confirmed that - but apparently made 'suggestions,' perhaps to mitigate the impact. The problem is that this reading, while technically correct, clearly flouts the spirit of the regulation. ECB couldn't stop him at the time, because they'd never put it in writing, but wasn't prepared to be blamed for it afterward. Hence, the clarification

HE LIED!

Why is it so difficult to say that? L-I-E-D, LIED!

It's so much simpler than "appears to have misled" or "was less than forthcoming" or "fail to come clean."

We need the truth. And we're not going to get it from the GOP. So let's have it from Dems investigating the GOP: They LIED!

re: contempt charges: doesn't that eventually have to go through the prosecutor for the DC district (or whichever district has jurisdiction), i.e. a Republican appointee who wasn't fired, who's still reporting to Abu G, and therefore to el Preznit?

Or am I mixing up cases here?

so how long before criminals convicted by loyal bushies start appealing their sentences?

so how long before criminals convicted by loyal bushies start appealing their sentences?

George Bush is the USA's King John. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_of_England)

Unfortunately, our "barons" lack the audacity to force his hand.

ooops, I meant to ditch the link in the sig -- it's from an older post.

The Boston Globe, 5/6/07:
"The department said Schlozman's office got permission from headquarters for the election-eve indictments. It added that the department interprets the policy as having an unwritten exception for voter registration fraud, because investigators need not interview voters for such cases."

In other words, everything Schlozman offered in today's clarification was already a matter of public record back in the beginning of May. The question had been asked of a DoJ spokesman, and answered. It's not as if he was ambushed here. His testimony before Congress *contradicated* the information that had been provided by DoJ a month before. He must have known that, but assumed that no one would call him on it, either because of his senior position within the department or because ECB is among the most taciturn units, scrupulously holding itself above the media fray to maintain its impartiality.
Sleazeball.

Mrs. Panstreppon,

The story on the press release is here:
http://buzzblog.kcstar.com/?q=node/528

What an interesting name: Schlozman.

Just change the "z" to a "k" and we are dead on!

That is the trouble with this weak Dem congress. It isn't "deeply troubling" Pat, it is a damned lie, under oath, to your committee. So, what the hell are you going to do about it?

The last thing Senator Whitehouse said at the closing of Schlozman's testimony was that the record would be kept open for one week. So I assume that means Schlozman had one week to revise his testimony before being charged with perjury. Someone else may know more about the legal meaning of Sen. Whitehouse's comment.

Leahy: "Mr. Schlozman appears to have misled the Committee..."

OK. So...what is he going to do about that? Anything??

Everytime I express my frustration over the lack of ANY kind of charges against these Loyal Bushies [tm] I'm told..."wait, they are laying the groundwork." Groundwork for what? Maybe if criminal charges were leveled at these underlings we might start getting the real story from them. This is just insane!

And,yes, get all of these people at a hearing together! Why are they being questioned individually, so they can simply lie without contradiction?

Subpeonas, special prosecutors, criminal charges...isn't it time? Why are the Dems dragging their feet?

Well, that really makes me feel better. The Judiciary committee will let him lie under oath and then give Karl Rove a week to twist the story before closing the record. This is beyond belief. Dude, where is my country?

My opinion of the way Leahy's and the dems handling of the events is still mixed. I'm waiting for Sen. Whitehouse's next interview.

So, why aren't they calling him back to testify exactly what the process was and what information or guidance he (or his assistant - I see Schlozman can play the scapegoat card too) received from the Election Crimes Branch.

For that matter, why isn't Donsanto being called to testify?

I have a question. How is it that an alleged voter registration fraud doesn't involve interviewing the newly registered voters? Doesn't voter registration fraud necessarily involve the registration of people who shouldn't be voting where they've been registered, or shouldn't be voting at all? So how is it that an indictment of ACORN wouldn't involve interviewing voters, or even if it didn't, wouldn't intimidate voters who knew they'd been registered by ACORN and might have decided to stay away from the polls as a result?

Am I just stating the obvious here, or is there something I am not understanding? What exactly was ACORN alleged to have done that was improper that didn't involve registering people who shouldn't have been voting?

Not that I'm a fan of lying snivelling whimps covering their arses, but in his original testimony there was at least one exchange where he clairified that the decision was his. It seemed more like incompetent use of language rather than disembling at the time. One of the senators asked him about it directly and he said it was his descision based on their consent.

Least anyone out there believes there will be no consequences for lying to congress, there will be a multitude of consequences... problem is, they will all be borne by the honest citizens of this nation who are quickly losing their democracy.

Two separate sets of laws... one for what used to be referred to as public servants (sorry, we lost those the moment we took away their accountability)... and the other one for the rest of us... is not new. It has occurred in many nations throughout history. As with many definitions which have recently changed meaning (torture, civil war, etc.), we are still calling our country a representative form of government, but even this meaning has been altered. It does bring fond memories, though, when our current boss stands up and says things like "freedom brings peace" and "we're helping them build a democracy" and "trust me".

Too bad... hopefully, we will at least end up with a benevolent dictator somewhere down the line.

Least anyone out there believes there will be no consequences for lying to congress, there will be a multitude of consequences... problem is, they will all be borne by the honest citizens of this nation who are quickly losing their democracy.

Two separate sets of laws... one for what used to be referred to as public servants (sorry, we lost those the moment we took away their accountability)... and the other one for the rest of us... is not new. It has occurred in many nations throughout history. As with many definitions which have recently changed meaning (torture, civil war, etc.), we are still calling our country a representative form of government, but even this meaning has been altered. It does bring fond memories, though, when our current boss stands up and says things like "freedom brings peace" and "we're helping them build a democracy" and "trust me".

Too bad... hopefully, we will at least end up with a benevolent dictator somewhere down the line.

Cut off DOJ funding.

Man, that is some loophole, if indeed it is one.

Loyal Bushie goes before Comgress, for the sole purpose of producing a sound byte. This is a clip that anyone running the story will use, and it is simply a brazen 180 flip on the truth; a LIE. This lie will run as a sound byte, repeatedly, and becomes the only reality, related to the story.

Then, at the eleventh hour of "keeping the record open", the operative sends a letter under cover of the night, "clarifying" his statement... basically by revoking it. There are no lights, no camera, no audio, no sound byte. In a sound byte culture, the comparative few who know anything about the issue at all only know the "she said" portion of it... which was always intended as a complete fabrication. With a get out of jail free card at the end.

Pure Rove.

I don't know who said it, but: Even if Bush started shooting five-year-old children on the South Lawn of the White House, in full view of the press corps and a bevy of cameras... by the end of the day it would be spun as something positive, and Scarborough would be shouting at a guest, "So you think it's better for the President to be a softie? Not do things that are tough so we're a better country? Huh? Huh? That what you're saying? No, don't weasel around; I wanna know that's what you're saying!"

People like Big Brad have gotten away with all manner of breaches of law during the past six years: Torture, theft, wiretapping and eavesdropping; assault, coercion, perjury... even murder, in this clown college that calls itself a government.

And what penalties have they really paid?

“It is deeply troubling that after weeks of preparation Mr. Schlozman appears to have misled the Committee and the public about his decision to file an election eve lawsuit in direct conflict with longstanding Justice Department policy."

Sen. Leahy makes a political point, "appears to have misled", tho perhaps not in the way the Senator would like. What's wrong with saying Schlozman (as sleazy a character as we've seen in awhile) is a LIAR?

The Senator may have faith in the political system, but most of us no longer are willing to believe in it or even say it.

If the Bush administration has done any good, it's to show Americans just how corrupt their political system (including the Supreme Court) is.

You don't have to be a blind conservative not to see it, just an ignorant one to deny it.

QUOTE 12:37 PM "The last thing Senator Whitehouse said at the closing of Schlozman's testimony was that the record would be kept open for one week."

Well that's interesting, for sure.

Still if we stick to the substance of the ACORN indictments, and not the form of Sclozman's testimony, we are left twisting in the wind.

Schlozman is sticking by his guns that he *specifically* requested guideance from Public Integrity on the timing of the investigation and indictments. And he did, indeed, get the green-light to proceed. That's really the story here. On the ACORN issue, did Schlozman do anything illegal or against DOJ policy? Not really. He asked/argued that the policy was not implicated, and he was told it wasn't.

He the proceeded to act at his discretion. That would be prosecutorial discretion -- pretty standard, hate to say it.

I know I'll be slammed on this, but no individual voters' right to cast a ballot are implicated by the indictment, then doesn't the public have the right to know about the case before the election?

Let's suppose a USA had a massive voter registration fraud case against a conservative group (really, a massive one) but they "held back" in disclosing this until after the election. People would scream bloody murder that the public has a right to know if conservative groups are trying to illegally influence the election and they have a right to know before they vote.

Sticking to the substance of the ACORN issue, I can see both sides of it. It's not a slam dunk.

My God, the Dems need a backbone. Are they still afraid that if they subpoena people and try pushing court cases, that the White House will not cooperate?

ACORN's recent press release:

As U.S. Attorney, Schlozman took the unusual step of issuing indictments and making statements to the press about the case shortly before Election Day, contrary to written Justice Department policy. It remains unclear how or why Schlozman took jurisdiction over the case. When the indictments were handed down Mr. Schlozman issued a statement that read, in part: “Those who commit fraud in the electoral process dilute the votes of their fellow citizens and undermine the integrity of our democratic system. The Department of Justice will not allow such fraud to go unpunished.”

The statement neglected to mention that ACORN itself brought forward the evidence against these four workers who had defrauded the organization; that civic organizations are required by Missouri law to turn in all signed voter registration applications; or that the organization had assisted in the investigation.

Schlozman’s assertion that these crimes "dilute the votes of their fellow citizens" was inaccurate-- because no votes or voters were involved in the case.

The statement came at the heels of an intense campaign by partisan officials and activists to disparage ACORN’s voter registration drive, which was focused on low income and minority communities.

http://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=8540&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=19125&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=8359&cHash=cba7ac48aa

Goodies for everyone:
Schlozman gets contempt charges for lying to congress.
Goodling loses her immunity for the same reason.
Gonzales gets waterboarded. Maybe he'll "remember" something.

WHERE THE HELL IS ASHCROFT? Why doesn't the judiciary committee haul his lame ass in, and make him swear to ..um.. forget stuff?

I look at this 'clarification' and see the third point in a predefined communications plan: 1) delay appearance before the committee, hoping the story loses traction and the public loses interest in the meantime; 2) lie if needed during actual testimony before the committee, so that the electronic record that sticks in public awareness optimally misleads; 3) soften the electronically recorded lie(s) under oath by issuing a letter of clarification that at most becomes an item on one or more of the talkinghead shows.

The committee could call him in again, right? How many times would a weasel do the dance?

The time is nigh to start administering some good old fashioned vigilante justice, French Revolution style.

Hmm. I just went digging around on the DoJ site for various press releases and documents related to vote fraud investigations, etc. in AL and it looks like most or all of them have been removed from the site. IIRC, there were some interesting appointments, announcements, and investigations from the weeks just before the last couple AL elections. I was suprised the documents hadn't shown up here. Prompted by Scott Horton's piece in Harper's showing the connections between AL politics and Rove/Abramoff, I tried to track them down again and post them but, alas, they all seem to have been purged from the DoJ server. Perhaps they will show up cached in google... Anyway, interesting that they left the AL stuff until the Siegelman-Rove story surfaced. I think someone else mentioned missing materials on the DoJ website in Mukraker recently.

If you watch or listen to enough hearings, you would see that it is pretty standard practice to keep the record open for some agreed-upon period of time. This isn’t solely for the purpose of someone – like Schlozman - avoiding a perjury charge, but is also for allowing additional written remarks, statements or answers to written questions to be made part of the record; it can be a matter of there not being enough time to get it all on the record through open and oral testimony. With Schlozman, it takes on a nefarious overtone because we all suspect that he did, in fact, lie to the committee.

It is s..l..o..w. Snail’s-pace slow. The inability to get cloture on the no-confidence vote was disappointing, even if not unexpected, but at least it was not strictly along party lines, which takes away the argument that this was only about Dems wanting to open a can of whoop-ass on Gonzales.

I have to believe there is a lot going on behind the scenes with the committee counsel and staff. At this point, I’m thinking there are whiteboards, post-its, push-pins and string involved in diagramming the connections between and among the DOJ, the WH and others. I think it is much more of a tangled web than we realize, and I would rather they be careful about untangling it than to go so fast they miss something that could be very important to the whole thing.

I don’t see them giving up. McNulty is appearing next week to counter some of what Goodling testified to, and the more the committee can get them to fight among themselves, on the record, the closer they get to the point where there is going to be an obvious need to have a special prosecutor appointed and a grand jury empaneled.

That it isn’t going to happen on OUR timetable doesn’t mean it isn’t ever going to happen. That nothing is happening in front of a committee doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot going on behind the scenes, and none of it means the Dems aren’t committed to seeing it through.

We need the same rules for everybody. When you hire the down and out or the highly partisan to do your signature collecting for you, the collectors have an incentive to pad the signature collection. This happened in a few cases to Acorn -- this is of little value to Acorn they need actual voters not ones subject to challenge for fraud. Highly visisble prosecution before the election. In PA Santorum and company padded signatures to get a Green senatorial candidate on the ballot which they anticipated would give them a substantial enough benefit to win that election but the voters had wised up. No prosecution by Mary Beth Buchanan who should be called to testify on why not.

DOJ needs to be even handed or under indictment itself (honest career officials always excepted and kudos to those who have stayed in office to fight the bad guys.)

At the hearing, Sen. Schumer asked Schlozman, "He [Donsanto] will state, if we ask him, explicitly, with no reservation, he ordered you to do it or said it was OK to go ahead and do it?"

Schlozman answered, "That is correct." [YouTube on TPMmuckraker June 5, 2007, 07:20pm]

That seems clear enough to need no clarification.

Isn't registering to vote part of the voting process? So his clarification says:
1) He didn't follow orders from ECB(Dosante), but made his decision based on their advise.
2) He calls the redbook "informal" again, after the Senators argued it was not informal.
3) He says fraud in registering to vote is not voting fraud. He points out that the investigation happened during the voting registration period. Although the indictments were brought out only a couple of days before voting. I would argue the investigation continued until the indictments were served.

Well, I don't see much difference in his testimony than in his clarification except he says he takes full responsibility. That's the same tactic Gonzales used,..."He wasn't involved but he take responsibility"

Well, we know he's a loyal bushie. Can we do anything about it?

How come no one has commented, anywhere, that the guys sounds like he inhaled a tank of helium before he testifed? Could he sound more like a total weasel? Everytime he spoke two things were clear: 1) He is a total liar and 2) If he were ever anywhere near me, I would go over and punch him in the mouth because his voice would be like nails on a chalkboard. Who are all of these people? What rock does the current administration have to look under to get these dregs of humanity to work for them? Why doesn't anyone state what is so clearly obvious about all of this mess? Our country is run by LIARS. Everytime any one of them opens their mouths THEY ARE LYING. Can someone, besides Olbermann, just say that once? Thank God I live in NYC and never have to deal with shmucks like him.

@June 12, 2007 01:58 PM

Thanks again, Mr. O. To sum up, Schlozman's PIO, Don Ledford, sent the ACORN indictments with a memo to the press on the afternoon of Nov 1, 2006.

The Wall Street Journal did not report any news about the ACORN indictments but on Nov 3, 2006, the WSJ published a scathing editorial about ACORN, "The ACORN Indictments".

The WSJ anti-ACORN editorial was replete with a quote from American Center for Voting Rights director and general counsel, Mark "Thor" Hearne:

"Acorn and its affiliates have pulled some real stunts in recent years. In Ohio in 2004, a worker for one affiliate was given crack cocaine in exchange for fraudulent registrations that included underage voters, dead voters and pillars of the community named Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy and Jive Turkey. During a Congressional hearing in Ohio in the aftermath of the 2004 election, officials from several counties in the state explained Acorn's practice of dumping thousands of registration forms in their lap on the submission deadline, even though the forms had been collected months earlier.

"You have to wonder what's the point of that, if not to overwhelm the system and get phony registrations on the voter rolls," says Thor Hearne of the American Center for Voting Rights, who also testified at the hearing. "These were Democratic officials saying that they felt their election system in Ohio was under assault by these kinds of efforts to game the system."

Bradley Schlozman told the SJC that he had no idea that the ACORN indictments would be a politically charged issue yet Bradley Schlozman worked in the DOJ Civil Rights section when the American Center for Voting rights submitted complaints about ACORN to the DOJ.

Did Schlozman read the ACVR March 2005 and the August 2005 reports about voter fraud that were submitted to Chairman Bob Ney's Government Administration Committee?

Forget the WH. What was the nature of Schlozman's correspondence with Mark "Thor" Hearne before the ACORN indictments were issued?

it seems mcnulty will be
next, over at the house judiciary
committee -- but let's not lose
sight of the fact, here that
gonzales is th goal -- not schlozman.

now, as a former prosecutor, leahy
know that hinting broadly at lying
before congress charges as to schlozman
brings new pressure to bear on gonzo. . .

look for letters, or perhaps a subpoena,
directly, to gonzo -- asking for the truth
about caging, and the vote supression, and
the ACORN matter. then, look for an end-game
asserting gonzo lied to congress -- sweating
schlozman to give the details of said lies.

much more at the link under my name, below.

Slightly off topic...
but...
reminder that Wednesday, June 13, 10:00 a.m. Eastern, Committee on Rules and Administration
HEARINGS will hold Nominations to the Federal Election Commission hearings, carried live via Real Player on their website
http://rules.senate.gov/hearings/2007/061307hrg.htm

wherein we may follow nomination of the Von
Sponsky ( sp???) rat and see if the comm. members have gotten all of our e-mails .

yeah yeah yeah...I know...
but I am an optimist....
perhaps worth watching if only to see if he has an annoying voice, big head, and no nouns in his sentences.

Congress has earned the contempt all of these witnesses have for it.