Comments (34)

bordersmuggler wrote on April 10, 2007 1:45 PM:

Sounds like it's time for Limbaugh to incite the Brownshirts to storm the Congress and break up the party, as they successfully did in 2000 during the Florida recount.

Arkansan wrote on April 10, 2007 1:47 PM:

How is the subpoena enforced? It is a certainty that the administration will stonewall this also, so what is the next step?

Sword of Truth wrote on April 10, 2007 1:47 PM:

America Fights Back!!

All Hail Conyers!!

MsInformed wrote on April 10, 2007 1:48 PM:

What'll they yell? "Rule of Law" OR "Over-rule Law"?

foggylady wrote on April 10, 2007 1:49 PM:

"Unfortunately, the department has not indicated any meaningful willingness to find a way to meet our legitimate needs.,"

Legitimate ....nice emphasis...

but a question here...what is the next step if a subpoena ignored????

Mark Richards wrote on April 10, 2007 1:49 PM:

It's here in all its glory:

http://judiciary.house.gov/Media/PDFS/AGSubpoena070410.pdf

If our criminal AG has any preparing to do now, it ought to be in the form of a 90 degree bend at the waist.

Angered Taxpayer wrote on April 10, 2007 1:50 PM:

Next Step?

Either the Truth or Impeachment.

Arkansan wrote on April 10, 2007 1:55 PM:

"Either the Truth or Impeachment."

Since truth isn't going to happen, the next questions are:

Is contempt of congress a high crime or misdemeanor worthy of impeachment?

More importantly, isn’t this where the Democrats lose their nerve?

Who would they impeach if Gonzo resigns?

philnyc wrote on April 10, 2007 1:56 PM:

If the dept. ignores the subpoena, congress charges Gonzales with contempt of congress and has him brought in irons before them.

JEP wrote on April 10, 2007 1:57 PM:

TEETH!!!

John Snyder wrote on April 10, 2007 1:57 PM:

Next step? My guess is that DOJ will start producing documents in a piecemeal fashion, as slowly as possible but just fast enough give the appearance of cooperation.

Angered Taxpayer wrote on April 10, 2007 1:57 PM:

Something bad is bound to happen...

If you look on page 11, the last 1/4 of definition #1 specifically says
“handheld devices (such as Palm, Trio or Blackberry)”

I guarantee you that Carl Rowe WILL NOT be giving up his messages

Anonymous wrote on April 10, 2007 1:58 PM:

This is the question I want asked of Gonzales: "Yes or no, were any of the firings politically motivated? Yes or no?"
Code word: shame
As in "Shame on these bootlicking toads in the Justice Department and their Republican enablers!"

Thrackazog wrote on April 10, 2007 1:59 PM:

John Snyder: The letter and subpoena at Mark Richards's link specify a cutoff date of April 16. Less than a week to cough up the goods.

Anonymous wrote on April 10, 2007 2:00 PM:

Also, if Gonzales admits the firings were politically motivated the Dems should be prepared to quote all the instances the Justice Department has denied that was what happened.
Code word: dress
"Dress appropriately Alberto. IT'S GETTIN' HOT IN HERRE!"

mo2 wrote on April 10, 2007 2:01 PM:

TPM asked "maybe there's still more to this story hidden in the Patriot Act renewal from 2005."

See TPM March 14, 2007 at 11:44 PM about William Moschella and Daniel Collins.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2006
WWW.USDOJ.GOVODAG
"Justice Department Announces William E. Moschella as New Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General WASHINGTON — The Justice Department today announced that William E. Moschella will serve as Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General effective immediately. Mr. Moschella succeeds William Mercer, who was nominated in early September to serve as Associate Attorney General.

Mr. Moschella currently serves as Assistant Attorney General for the Department’s Office of Legislative Affairs. In this capacity, he acts as the legislative liaison between the Department and the U.S. Congress – representing the interests and opinions of the Department before members of the House and Senate."

mo2 wrote on April 10, 2007 2:02 PM:

TPM asked "maybe there's still more to this story hidden in the Patriot Act renewal from 2005."

See TPM March 14, 2007 at 11:44 PM about William Moschella and Daniel Collins.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2006
WWW.USDOJ.GOVODAG
"Justice Department Announces William E. Moschella as New Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General WASHINGTON — The Justice Department today announced that William E. Moschella will serve as Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General effective immediately. Mr. Moschella succeeds William Mercer, who was nominated in early September to serve as Associate Attorney General.

Mr. Moschella currently serves as Assistant Attorney General for the Department’s Office of Legislative Affairs. In this capacity, he acts as the legislative liaison between the Department and the U.S. Congress – representing the interests and opinions of the Department before members of the House and Senate."

mbbsdphil wrote on April 10, 2007 2:06 PM:

"Fire destroys Reichstag, er, Justice Department file room. Film at eleven."

Every voter who's held more than one job knows when the boss is playing straight or playing games. Most of them know that Mr. Bush is stalling Congress because that's less damaging than actually disclosing his efforts to politicize the DOJ. Those disclosures are also likely to reveal similar politicization in every other department of the US Govt.

The Dems will increase their popularity if they keep their story straight, stick to the facts, and let them speak for themselves. (And keep their own damned hands out of the taxpayer-funded cookie jar.)

Anonymous wrote on April 10, 2007 2:08 PM:

>Next step? My guess is that DOJ will start >producing documents in a piecemeal fashion, as >slowly as possible but just fast enough give the >appearance of cooperation.

You appear to have missed the reason why there is a subpeona...there was a failure of appearance to cooperate. Obstruction includes intentionally dragging one's feet to further a conspiracy.

Anonymous wrote on April 10, 2007 2:19 PM:

To The Honorable Alberto R. Gonzales my ass. That man has dishonored his office big time. No more pussyfooting around Conyers. Let's get to it!

Richard L. Adlof wrote on April 10, 2007 2:26 PM:

While I dream of the FBI taking a break from storming Quaker peace meetings and medical marijuana facilities AND walking over to the DoJ and White House to enforce a little . . . um . . . What is the word I'm looking for . . . Oh, yeah . . . JUSTICE . . . AND, please, let CSPAN broadcast live the Human hybrid and Chimp-in-Charge screaming a lung out orderring them off 'his dirt'; I think that this will be long and nasty with all sorts of 'Loyal Bushies' being forced to do their jobs at gun-point or falling all over themselves to resign. I am guessing that Bush is going to be out of office and living in Dubai rather than you and me seeing him do the prep walk or him ending his tenure with a bunker moment. Congress NEEDS to spend every day for the next two years bottling the Administration up with scut work while dragging Bush 43's dirty laundry into the sunlight.

At the end of this all, all Americans need to join the chorus of "Never Again". Let freedom reign . . .

Dr. Wu wrote on April 10, 2007 2:42 PM:

Thank you, TPM, for covering this story. CNN and Fox have been entirely silent on the matter, since virtually all of their news cycle this afternoon has been devoted to the upcoming discovery of Anna Nicole's Baby Daddy.

tbhull wrote on April 10, 2007 2:42 PM:

Absent is a subpoena to Goodling for her testimony. Is it possible god has instructed Goodling to spill the beans for use immunity.

Richard L. Adlof wrote on April 10, 2007 2:55 PM:

It is my fervent hope and desire that we all kill off the “. . . for political reasons” phraseology and substitute the far more accurate and truthful:

“. . . to impede and subvert justice.”

“. . . for political reasons” is the fascist plutocratic framework of those in the White House. It steals that thunder and terror of the truth of the situation. It hides the destruction of the ‘American Way’ in obscuring language. It condemns our children to living in fear of jack-booted doppelgangers masquerading as angels of justice and democracy.

We stand at the precipice between the valley of ‘continuing to live in an Orwellian universe’ AND the land our founding fore fathers craved from the dirt with their bare hands and fed with their and their children’s blood.

Please join me in squelching en-DARK-enment from our land. Type “. . . to impede and subvert justice.”

bordersmuggler wrote on April 10, 2007 3:14 PM:

CNN did pick up the story, although it's overshadowed by the more important Imus controversy.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/04/10/fired.prosecutors.ap/index.html

Midwest Product wrote on April 10, 2007 3:26 PM:

So, assuming that DOJ actually deigns to turn over these unredacted documents, would they be publicly released a la the earlier doc dumps, or would they be for committee members' eyes only?

rrose wrote on April 10, 2007 3:43 PM:

So what happens if/when the DOJ just ignores this subpoena? What recourse does the congress have to deal with that?

ahem wrote on April 10, 2007 5:29 PM:

Interesting that Conyers emphasises the requirement to see documents in electronic format with full metadata -- details of document editing and revisions in Word, full email headers, etc. -- in the letter. I'd hoped the subpoena might have emphasised that it includes non-.gov emails as well, but that's implied in the request.

Michael Stevens wrote on April 10, 2007 5:44 PM:

Angered Taxpayer, good find on the mention of Blackberry and Treo messaging devices.

Continuing that thought, did anyone find it curious that none of the e-mails we've seen so far have been Gonzales e-mails? The reason became clear a few weeks ago when it was reported that: "Gonzales doesn't use e-mail, instead he uses a Blackberry".

My jaw dropped when I first read that. For those not familiar with the technology, Blackberry devices *are* portable e-mail machines. One would think that a heavy Blackberry like Gonzales would know that Blackberry = e-mail. He should also know that Blackberry e-mails create an electronic trial, just like any other e-mails. Aside from how asinine Gonzo's e-mail claim is, the sheer technological ignorance behind it is stunning.

Gonzo would seem to have very little justification for holding back his official e-mails. I don't think he can suggest executive privilege, it's well known that the President doesn't use e-mail. If Gonzo has a government issued Blackberry, then all those Blackberry e-mails are quite likely sitting on a very secure server with many redundant, incremental, off-site backups.

The facts are that we've not yet seen a single Gonzo email and that the DOJ is fighting ferociously to protect them. This could easily lead one to conclude that the release of Gonzo's e-mails would sink him to the bottom, perhaps taking a big hunk of the ship with him.

One wonders if it's Gonzales himself refusing this subpoena or if it's the solicitor general, Paul Clement. If it's Clement, he should be immediately subpoenaed to explain why it is appropriate to release staffer e-mails, but not a single e-mail from the boss. If Gonzo himself is refusing the subpoena, it will just be more fuel for the April 17th grilling.

Al in Austex wrote on April 10, 2007 9:40 PM:

So what happens if some patriotic American who works at DOJ say in IT archives some how already got most of these documents out to the Oversight Committees? Isn't its alot easier to be an electronic anonymous Deep Throat then it ever would be to meet a newsies in garage in downtown DC ? I keep wondering how much the Dems have already got on BushCo already. There has been so few leaks from the Hill Investigations it really makes me pause and be hopeful that we already have got the goods on these bastardrightwingers aka the Republicans.

Kimberly wrote on April 10, 2007 10:58 PM:

Continuing with Michael Stevens post about the paper trail for Gonzo's blackberry emails, failing getting them via subpoena to the DOJ, they could subpoena them from Verizon, Sprint, or AT&T, whichever company provides cell phone service to the DOJ.

I'm not sure if a subpoena from Congress carries the same weight as whatever quasi-legal device the NSA used to obtain all the illegal surveillance of our phone calls and email, but it may be an alternate path to get what they need. It would also be interesting to compare what they get from both sources.

Michael Stevens wrote on April 11, 2007 12:52 AM:

Kimberly, That's a good point. Although the US Government does run its own Blackberry servers, these devices still must connect to a cell phone network of one of the companies you've listed. As I understand it, these cell phone companies merely pass Blackberry e-mail data straight through to the Blackberry servers in Canada. An exception is US Government Blackberries, in which case the cell phone companies pass the e-mail directly to US Government Blackberry servers. (Keep in mind that this process may have changed since I last researched it.)

The operative question is, do the cell phone companies keep a copy of the Blackberry e-mails that simply pass through their networks? I don't know, but my guess would be that since they are just providing a connection to the Blackberry servers, they probably do not keep a record of the data exchanged.

Another important question is whether Gozno's Blackberry was privately owned or was issued by the US Government. If Gonzo used a government issued Blackberry, I think it's safe to assume those messages have been backed up multiple times, with redundant copies of those backups residing at multiple off-site locations. In other words, if it's a government Blackberry Gonzo is screwed.

If however he was using a GOP or personally owned device, Congress may have to subpoena Blackberry manufacturer Research in Motion in order to get copies of those e-mails. ISP e-mail retention policies are all over the place. Some companies keep 6 months, some just 30 days.

The faster Congress subpoenas these private companies, the more data they will receive.

pre-amerikkkan wrote on April 11, 2007 5:22 PM:

code word: nation

as an inside outsider, the changes of the last 250 years have followed a consistent pattern. trespass, invade, lie, cheat, murder, steal, have a revolution, lie, cheat, pollute everything, re-make gov't in some god's image, pillage the populace with an unfair tax system, kill the populace with neglect in new orleans and a forever war in places we'd never even heard of before oil became important, lie, cheat, steal some more. i think we're at the revolution stage, what say?

epenisa wrote on January 11, 2008 1:22 AM:

Hi
Nice work from your side... have a nice time with yoru blog :)
Bye