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Banned
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
Assuming they did violate the law, it would be nice if they told everyone how they did it. On the other hand, if I violated the law, I know the first thing I would not do is turn over my written plans. In fact if I had written plans I would destroy them. So, I guess those who want proof that the Bush administration violated the Constitution or the law, will have to do some old fashion investigative work.
<b>But first I guess the have to find-out what crime they are investigating. What crime are they investigating?</b>
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ace....I'll try to answer your question:
ace....I posted this article back on March 23:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...5&postcount=35 ...and here it is again:
Quote:
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/16962753.htm
Posted on Fri, Mar. 23, 2007
New U.S. attorneys seem to have partisan records
By Greg Gordon, Margaret Talev and Marisa Taylor
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Under President Bush, the Justice Department has backed laws that narrow minority voting rights and pressed U.S. attorneys to investigate voter fraud - policies that critics say have been intended to suppress Democratic votes.
Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/wa...qH9hLUzASLt7jw
In 5-Year Effort, Scant Evidence of Voter Fraud
By ERIC LIPTON and IAN URBINA
Published: April 12, 2007
Correction Appended
WASHINGTON, April 11 — Five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, <b>the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence</b> of any organized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and interviews.
Although Republican activists have repeatedly said fraud is so widespread that it has corrupted the political process and, possibly, cost the party election victories, about 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted as of last year.
Most of those charged have been Democrats, voting records show. Many of those charged by the Justice Department appear to have mistakenly filled out registration forms or misunderstood eligibility rules, a review of court records and interviews with prosecutors and defense lawyers show.....
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Bush, his deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, and other Republican political advisers have highlighted voting rights issues and what Rove has called the "growing problem" of election fraud by Democrats since Bush took power in the tumultuous election of 2000, a race ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Since 2005, McClatchy Newspapers has found, Bush has appointed at least three U.S. attorneys who had worked in the Justice Department's civil rights division when it was rolling back longstanding voting-rights policies aimed at protecting predominantly poor, minority voters.
Another newly installed U.S. attorney, Tim Griffin in Little Rock, Ark., was accused of participating in efforts to suppress Democratic votes in Florida during the 2004 presidential election while he was a research director for the Republican National Committee. He's denied any wrongdoing.
Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the four U.S. attorneys weren't chosen only because of their backgrounds in election issues, but "we would expect any U.S. attorney to prosecute voting fraud."
Taken together, critics say, the replacement of the U.S. attorneys, the voter-fraud campaign and the changes in Justice Department voting rights policies suggest that the Bush administration may have been using its law enforcement powers for partisan political purposes.
The Bush administration's emphasis on voter fraud is drawing scrutiny from the Democratic Congress, which has begun investigating the firings of eight U.S. attorneys - two of whom say that their ousters may have been prompted by the Bush administration's dissatisfaction with their investigations of alleged Democratic voter fraud.
Bush has said he's heard complaints from Republicans about some U.S. attorneys' "lack of vigorous prosecution of election fraud cases," and administration e-mails have shown that Rove and other White House officials were involved in the dismissals and in selecting a Rove aide to replace one of the U.S. attorneys. Nonetheless, Bush has refused to permit congressional investigators to question Rove and others under oath.
Last April, while the Justice Department and the White House were planning the firings, Rove gave a speech in Washington to the Republican National Lawyers Association. He ticked off 11 states that he said could be pivotal in the 2008 elections. Bush has appointed new U.S. attorneys in nine of them since 2005: Florida, Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Arkansas, Michigan, Nevada and New Mexico. U.S. attorneys in the latter four were among those fired.
Rove thanked the audience for "all that you are doing in those hot spots around the country to ensure that the integrity of the ballot is protected." He added, "A lot in American politics is up for grabs."
The department's civil rights division, for example, supported a Georgia voter identification law that a court later said discriminated against poor, minority voters. It also declined to oppose an unusual Texas redistricting plan that helped expand the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. That plan was partially reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Frank DiMarino, a former federal prosecutor who served six U.S. attorneys in Florida and Georgia during an 18-year Justice Department career, said that too much emphasis on voter fraud investigations "smacks of trying to use prosecutorial power to investigate and potentially indict political enemies."
Several former voting rights lawyers, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of antagonizing the administration, said the division's political appointees reversed the recommendations of career lawyers in key cases and transferred or drove out most of the unit's veteran attorneys.
Bradley Schlozman, who was the civil rights division's deputy chief, agreed in 2005 to reverse the career staff's recommendations to challenge a Georgia law that would have required voters to pay $20 for photo IDs and in some cases travel as far as 30 miles to obtain the ID card.
A federal judge threw out the Georgia law, calling it an unconstitutional, Jim Crow-era poll tax.
In an interview, Schlozman, who was named interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City in November 2005, said he merely affirmed a subordinate's decision to overturn the career staff's recommendations.
He said it was "absolutely not true" that he drove out career lawyers. "What I tried to do was to depoliticize the hiring process," Schlozman said. "We hired people across the political spectrum."
Former voting rights section chief Joseph Rich, however, said longtime career lawyers whose views differed from those of political appointees were routinely "reassigned or stripped of major responsibilities."
In testimony to a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing this week, Rich said that 20 of the 35 attorneys in the voting rights section have been transferred to other jobs or have left their jobs since April 2005 and a staff of 26 civil rights analysts who reviewed state laws for discrimination has been slashed to 10.
He said he has yet to see evidence of voter fraud on a scale that warrants voter ID laws, which he said are "without exception ... supported and pushed by Republicans and objected to by Democrats. I believe it is clear that this kind of law tends to suppress the vote of lower-income and minority voters."
Other former voting-rights section lawyers said that during the tenure of Alex Acosta, who served as the division chief from the fall of 2003 until he was named interim U.S. attorney in Miami in the summer of 2005, the department didn't file a single suit alleging that local or state laws or election rules diluted the votes of African-Americans. In a similar time period, the Clinton administration filed six such cases.
Those kinds of cases, Rich said, are "the guts of the Voting Rights Act."
During this week's House judiciary subcommittee hearing, critics recounted lapses in the division's enforcement. A Citizens Commission on Civil Rights study found that "the enforcement record of the voting section during the Bush administration indicates this traditional priority has been downgraded significantly, if not effectively ignored."
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., who chaired the hearing, said, "The more stringent requirements you put on voting in order to get rid of alleged voter fraud, the more you're cutting down on legitimate people voting."
Acosta, the first Hispanic to head the civil rights division, said he emphasized helping non-English speaking voters cast ballots. In 2005, he told a House committee that he made an unprecedented effort to monitor balloting in 2004 to watch for discrimination against minorities.
Justice spokesman Roehrkasse said Acosta "has an impressive legal background, including extensive experience in government and the private sector" and as a federal appeals court clerk.
A third former civil rights division employee, Matt Dummermuth, 33, was nominated to be U.S. attorney in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, last December. Before his appointment, he was counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights. He was a special assistant to the civil rights chief from 2002 to 2004.
Details of his involvement in reviewing voter rights couldn't be determined, and Dummermuth, a Harvard Law School graduate, didn't return calls seeking comment.
Bush administration officials have said that no single reason led to the firings of the eight U.S. attorneys. But two of those who were forced to resign said they thought they might have been punished for failing to prosecute Democrats prior to the 2006 congressional elections or for not vigorously pursuing Republican allegations of voter irregularities in Washington state and New Mexico.
Former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias of New Mexico has said he thought that "the voter fraud issue was the foundation" for his firing and that complaints about his failure to pursue corruption matters involving Democrats were "the icing on the cake."
John McKay, the ousted U.S. attorney for western Washington state, looked into allegations of voter fraud against Democrats during the hotly contested governor's race in 2004. He said that later, when top Bush aides interviewed him for a federal judgeship, he was asked to respond to criticism of his inquiry in which no charges were brought. He didn't get the judgeship.
Rove talked about the Northwest region in his speech last spring to the Republican lawyers and voiced concern about the trend toward mail-in ballots and online voting. He also questioned the legitimacy of voter rolls in Philadelphia and Milwaukee.
One audience member asked Rove whether he'd "thought about using the bully pulpit of the White House to talk about election reform and an election integrity agenda that would put the Democrats back on the defensive."
"Yes, it's an interesting idea," Rove responded.
Despite the GOP concerns, Bud Cummins, the Republican-appointed U.S. attorney in Arkansas who was fired, said he had "serious doubts" that any U.S. attorney was failing to aggressively pursue voter fraud.
"What they're responding to is party chairmen and activists who from the beginning of time go around paranoid that the other party is stealing the election," Cummins said. "It sounds like to me that they were merely responding to a lot of general carping from the party, who had higher expectations once the Republican appointees filled these posts that there would be a lot of voting fraud investigations. Their expectations were unrealistic."
Griffin, the interim U.S. attorney in Arkansas who's replaced Cummins, was a Rove protege and a former Republican National Committee research director. He was accused of being part of an attempt to wipe likely Democratic voters off the rolls in Florida in 2004 if they were homeless or military personnel.
Griffin couldn't be reached for comment.
Ed Gillespie, then the RNC chairman, said the Republican Party was following election laws and trying to investigate voter fraud by sending out mailers to addresses of registered voters. If the notices came back, he said, the names were entered into a database and checked to see if the voters were listing actual residences.
"The Republican National Committee does not engage in voter suppression," he said. "The fact that someone was trying to prevent voter fraud should not disqualify someone from being U.S. attorney."
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ace....I posted about Ralston's reference to alternative "RNC email" back on March 31:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...&postcount=141
Quote:
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/29/...mail-archives/
Waxman Reveals New Evidence Showing White House Use Of Political E-mail Accounts
rovebb.gifU.S. News reported recently that several White House aides “said that they stopped using the White House system except for purely professional correspondence. … <a href="http://www.usnews.com/usnews/blogs/news_blog/070327/email_controversy_prompts_many.htm">‘We knew E-mails could be subpoenaed,’</a>” said one aide.
In a new letter to White House counsel Fred Fielding, House Government and Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman reveals new e-mail communications that provide further evidence that White House employees were trying to circumvent the archives system:
New Scott Jennings E-Mails. Scott Jennings, the deputy director of political affairs in the White House, and his assistant used “gwb43.com” e-mail accounts to communicate with the General Services Administration about a partisan briefing that Mr. Jennings gave to political appointees at GSA on January 26, 2007. When Mr. Jennings’s assistant emailed the PowerPoint presentation to GSA, she wrote: “It is a close hold and <a href="http://oversight.house.gov/Documents/20070329130758-87640.pdf">we’re not supposed to be emailing it around.”</a>
New Job Appointment E-Mails. Mr. Jennings also appears to have used his “gwb43.com” account to recruit applicants for official government positions through the “Kentucky Republican Voice,” an internet site that describes itself as “the best source for Kentucky Republican grassroots information.” One posting from May 2005 advertised 17 vacancies on assorted presidential boards and commissions. A second posting from May 2006 sought applicants for various boards within the Small Business Administration. In each case, these postings encouraged applicants to contact Mr. Jennings at his “gwb43.com” address.
New Abramoff E-Mails. Susan Ralston, who was Karl Rove’s executive assistant, invited two lobbyists working for Jack Abramoff to use her RNC e-mail account to avoid “security issues” with the White House e-mail system, writing: “I now have an RNC blackbeny which you can use to e-mail me at any time. No security issues like my WH email.” Ms. Ralston similarly wrote Mr. Abramoff: “I know [sic] have an RNC laptop at the office for political use. I can access my AOL email when necessary so if you need to send me something that I need to read, you can send to my AOL email and then call or page me to check it.”
Asked about White House policy and procedures regarding use of e-mail accounts, spokeswoman Dana Perino <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/03/20070327-4.html">did not cite</a> any specific policy or guidance issued to White House staff for the preservation of presidential records, and she acknowledged that certain officials in the White House have been given access to political e-mail accounts. In his <a href="http://oversight.house.gov/Documents/20070329130758-87640.pdf">letter</a> to Fielding, Waxman requests “all policies, guidance, and other communications provided to White House officials regarding appropriate use of nongovernmental e-mail accounts.”
The White House e-mail system has been crafted to <a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/03-15-2007/0004547135&EDATE=">comply</a> with the Presidential Records Act. Ordering White House employees to use the in-house e-mail system “is intended to <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/11/20011101-12.html">establish procedures</a> for former and incumbent Presidents to make privilege determinations.”
The irony — as Kevin Drum writes — is that by not using the White House system, staffers “using private accounts specifically to <a href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_03/011021.php">evade legitimate congressional oversight”</a> might lose their claim to executive privilege.
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...and ace....here's a summary that I hope, will help to answer your question:
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...601087_pf.html
The Politics of Distraction
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, March 16, 2007; 2:50 PM
As far as the White House public-relations machine is concerned, here is all you need to know about the firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year: The Justice Department made some mistakes in how it communicated that those prosecutors were let go for appropriate reasons. And, oh yes, there is no evidence that White House political guru Karl Rove ever advocated the firing of all 93 U.S. attorneys previously appointed by President Bush.
But from the very beginning of this scandal, the central question has been and remains: Was there a plot hatched in the White House to purge prosecutors who were seen as demonstrating insufficient partisanship in their criminal investigations?
Everything else is deception or distraction.
The latest development in the case is an e-mail chain showing that Rove and Alberto Gonzales (then White House counsel, soon to become attorney general) were both mulling the idea of replacing U.S. attorneys as early as the first month of Bush's second term.
According to the e-mails, Rove stopped by the White House counsel's office in early January 2005 to find out whether it was Gonzales's plan to keep or replace all or some of the U.S. attorneys that Bush had appointed in his first term.
And it just so happened that Kyle Sampson, soon to become the attorney general's chief of staff, had discussed that very issue with Gonzales a few weeks earlier. "As an operational matter," Sampson wrote in a e-mail, "we would like to replace 15-20 percent of the current U.S. Attorneys -- the underperforming ones. . . . The vast majority of U.S. Attorneys, 80-85 percent I would guess, are doing a great job, are loyal Bushies, etc., etc."
The response from White House spokesmen to this latest disclosure is that there is no conflict with their earlier story, which was that Rove opposed the firing of all 93 attorneys -- an idea they earlier credited to Harriet Miers, who succeeded Gonzales as White House counsel.
But as I first wrote in Tuesday's column, the proposed housecleaning of all 93 U.S. attorneys is a red herring. Not only would firing all of them have been a political and logistical nightmare, but it would have been foolish from Rove's point of view. After all, the vast majority were apparently behaving exactly as he wanted -- as "loyal Bushies."
The key question, that the White House continues to duck: Did Rove approve of -- or perhps even conceive of -- the idea of firing select attorneys? And if so, on what grounds? The latest e-mails certainly indicate that he was involved very early on.
Right now, Washington is engaged in feverish speculation about whether Gonzales is in his last days, or even moments, as attorney general. But as I wrote in my Wednesday column, Gonzales is a diversion.
The mainstream media was slow to get hot on the trail of this story. As Paul McLeary writes for CJR Daily, the liberal blog Talking Points Memo's dogged coverage is what kept the story alive.
But now, the mainstream media is in danger of getting distracted by the White House razzle dazzle -- and, quite possibly, by the spectacle of Bush throwing Gonzales, one of his oldest friends, overboard.
Keep your eye on Karl Rove, people.
Looking for Clues
There's been speculation that U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias of New Mexico was fired because he didn't file corruption charges against New Mexico Democrats in time to help Republican candidates in the 2006 election.
There's been speculation that U.S. Attorney David McKay of Washington State was fired because he didn't file voter-fraud charges in the wake of the 2004 elections, after Republicans narrowly lost the gubernatorial election.
There's been speculation that U.S. Attorney Carol Lam of San Diego was fired because of her aggressive pursuit of corruption charges against two Republican congressmen.
Now Richard A. Serrano writes in the Los Angeles Times: "Still uncertain exactly why he was fired, former U.S. Atty. H.E. 'Bud' Cummins III wonders whether it had something to do with the probe he opened into alleged corruption by Republican officials in Missouri amid a Senate race there that was promising to be a nail-biter.
"Cummins, a federal prosecutor in Arkansas, was removed from his job along with seven other U.S. attorneys last year.
"In January 2006, he had begun looking into allegations that Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt had rewarded GOP supporters with lucrative contracts to run the state's driver's license offices. Cummins handled the case because U.S. attorneys in Missouri had recused themselves over potential conflicts of interest.
"But in June, Cummins said, he was told by the Justice Department that he would be fired at year's end to make room for Timothy Griffin -- an operative tied to White House political guru Karl Rove."
The Coverage
David Johnston and Eric Lipton write in the New York Times: "Karl Rove, the senior presidential adviser, inquired about firing United States attorneys in January 2005, e-mail messages released Thursday show. The request prompted a Justice Department aide to respond that Alberto R. Gonzales, soon to be confirmed as attorney general, favored replacing a group of 'underperforming' prosecutors.
"The e-mail messages, part of a larger collection that the Justice Department is preparing to turn over to Congressional investigators, indicate that Mr. Rove and Mr. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, had considered replacing prosecutors earlier than either has previously acknowledged. . . .
"The White House had said earlier this week that Harriet E. Miers, who succeeded Mr. Gonzales as White House counsel, initiated the idea in early 2005 of replacing all the prosecutors.
"Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, said again Thursday that Ms. Miers had first proposed the dismissals, but Mr. Snow acknowledged in an interview that the e-mail shifted the time line earlier than the White House had previously said.
"'The e-mail does not directly contradict nor is it inconsistent with Karl's recollection that after the 2004 election, Harriet Miers raised a question of replacing all the U.S. attorneys and he believed it was not a good idea,' Mr. Snow said. 'That's his recollection.'"
Ron Hutcheson and Margaret Talev write for McClatchy Newspapers: "Democrats cited Rove's involvement as more evidence that the firings were intended to purge prosecutors who refused to let partisan politics influence criminal investigations."
Richard A. Serrano and Richard B. Schmitt write in the Los Angeles Times: "The e-mails also show that the Justice Department was willing to defer to Rove on the matter."
Sampson, in his e-mail, wrote that "'when push comes to shove,' home-state senators who supported their prosecutors likely would resist the firings. Nevertheless, Sampson said, 'if Karl thinks there would be political will to do it, so do I.'"
Mark Silva writes for the Chicago Tribune that the new e-mails now date the genesis of the firings back to "a time when the Bush White House, and Rove in particular, were talking about the president's reelection as marking a major conservative realignment in the country, presenting the administration with the opportunity to remake much of the government. The revelation that Rove may have known more about the plan is likely to further embolden Democrats who are demanding that he testify in congressional hearings."
Julie Hirschfeld Davis writes for the Associated Press: "E-mails released this week, including a set issued Thursday night by the Justice Department, appear to contradict the administration's assertion that Bush's staff had only limited involvement in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, which Democrats have suggested were a politically motivated purge.
"Each new piece in the rapidly unfolding saga of how the prosecutors came to be dismissed has made it more difficult for the White House to insulate itself from the controversy."
Talking Points Memo has a purge scandal timeline.
Rove Watch
Phillip Rawls writes for the Associated Press from Troy, Ala.: "White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove said Thursday the removal of seven U.S. attorneys was based entirely on policy and personnel matters at the Justice Department. . . .
"In an appearance Thursday morning at Troy University, Rove said the dismissals were no different than ones in the Clinton administration, and he questioned why the Bush administration's action is drawing 'super-heated rhetoric' while the dismissals during President Clinton's terms did not."
Here, on the Think Progress Web site, is video of Rove talking about the attorneys: "We're at the point where people want to play politics with it, and that's fine. I would simply ask that everyone who's playing politics with this be asked to comment about what they think of the removal of 123 U.S. attorneys during the previous administration and see if they have the same super-heated rhetoric then that they're having now."
But Frank James blogs for the Chicago Tribune that "Bush himself said [Wednesday] while still in Mexico that he himself was troubled by how his Justice Department dealt with the firings. . . .
"The president acknowledges that Republicans and Democrats alike are accusing Gonzales of misleading them and that he has a real problem on his hand. So what's happening, according to Bush, is a lot more than people playing politics.
"Now the president just needs to get that point across to his chief political strategist."
As for the "Clinton did it, too" position, Andrew Cohen writes for CBS News: "There is so much disinformation and misinformation floating around cyberspace these days about the firing of eight federal prosecutors that you would almost think people on one side of the debate and the other are writing about and analyzing two completely different stories. Over and over again, supporters of the White House, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, seem to want to compare the current controversy with, especially, the decision by President Bill Clinton in 1993 to dismiss all of the federal prosecutors who had served under his predecessor, George H. W. Bush.
"To compare these two episodes is to say that when a dog bites a man it is as newsworthy as when a man bites a dog."
And Joe Conason writes for Salon: "From the Drudge Report to the Fox News Channel to the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the usual suspects are shrieking in unison:
"Bill Clinton fired a lot of U.S. attorneys too! In fact Clinton was worse because he fired all of them at once! And the Democrats didn't complain when Clinton did the same thing!
"If those wails are loud enough, hapless mainstream journalists tend to repeat the same bogus accusations. Phony analogies and bad history gush out in a toxic stream of informational sewage. Then somebody (sigh) debunks those claims, just like someone hoses down the street after a parade of circus elephants."
Editorial Watch
USA Today: "The case of the fired federal prosecutors keeps getting curiouser and curiouser, not to mention more odoriferous, with each passing day. . . .
"The cries for Gonzales' head, however, are premature and miss the point. The emerging evidence is that the plan was hatched and approved inside the White House. The Gonzales hubbub just diverts attention from the still murky White House role in these firings.
"Among the key unanswered questions:
"* Why were these eight fired? . . .
"* Whose idea was it? . . .
"* Was the administration trying to stop investigations of powerful Republicans?"
Washington Post: Bush "should ensure that lawmakers get the full story. That means allowing White House staff members to be interviewed if the Senate deems necessary."
The Boston Globe: "It is customary for newly elected presidents to replace large numbers of US attorneys, especially if the new president is from a different party. It is not customary for presidents to sweep out many of their own appointees to these positions in the middle of their administration.
"Attorney General Alberto Gonzales caved in to pressure from the White House for such a housecleaning in recent months. Then department officials led Congress to believe that the eight US attorneys in question were forced out for performance problems, not for what now appears to be the real reason in at least some cases -- that the prosecutors were not sufficiently partisan in election and political corruption cases. Gonzales has lost any credibility he had with Congress and the public as the nation's chief law enforcer. He should resign."
And the Baltimore Sun has gotten deeply cynical: "When Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales says he intends to stay in his job, that's a sign he probably won't. When President Bush says, 'I do have confidence in Attorney General Al Gonzales,' you have to assume his days are numbered.
"Six years into the Bush administration, this is the way you have to think sometimes. Pronouncements are strong contra-indicators. (There are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It's up to Saddam Hussein to choose war or peace.)"
On Voter Fraud
When Bush himself mentioned complaints about U.S. attorneys to Gonzales in a conversation in October 2006, the specific complaints were from Senate Republicans who accused certain prosecutors of being lax on "voter fraud."
I've been promising a disquisition on voter fraud for three days now. But the New York Times editorial board did a lot of my heavy lifting for me this morning:
"In its fumbling attempts to explain the purge of United States attorneys, the Bush administration has argued that the fired prosecutors were not aggressive enough about addressing voter fraud. It is a phony argument; there is no evidence that any of them ignored real instances of voter fraud. But more than that, it is a window on what may be a major reason for some of the firings.
"In partisan Republican circles, the pursuit of voter fraud is code for suppressing the votes of minorities and poor people. By resisting pressure to crack down on 'fraud,' the fired United States attorneys actually appear to have been standing up for the integrity of the election system. . . .
"There is no evidence of rampant voter fraud in this country. Rather, Republicans under Mr. Bush have used such allegations as an excuse to suppress the votes of Democratic-leaning groups. . . .
"The claims of vote fraud used to promote these measures usually fall apart on close inspection. . . .
"[The charge that] United States attorneys were insufficiently aggressive about voter fraud, [is] a way of saying, without actually saying, that they would not use their offices to help Republicans win elections. It does not justify their firing; it makes their firing a graver offense."
David Bowermaster wrote in the Seattle Times on Tuesday about the suggestion that McKay, the former U.S. attorney in Washington State, might have been soft on voter fraud.
"'Had anyone at the Justice Department or the White House ordered me to pursue any matter criminally in the 2004 governor's election, I would have resigned,' McKay said. 'There was no evidence, and I am not going to drag innocent people in front of a grand jury.' . . .
"McKay insists that top prosecutors in his office and agents from the FBI conducted a 'very active' review of allegations of fraud during the election but filed no charges and did not convene a federal grand jury because 'we never found any evidence of criminal conduct.'
"McKay detailed the work of his office in a recent interview. He spoke out because he believed Republican supporters of Dino Rossi, still bitter over his narrow loss to Democrat Christine Gregoire, continue to falsely portray him and his office as indifferent to allegations of electoral fraud.
"McKay also wanted to make it clear that he pressed ahead with a preliminary investigation, despite the hesitation of Craig Donsanto, the longtime chief of the Election Crimes branch of the Department of Justice, who ultimately concurred with McKay that no federal crimes had been committed in the election."
And here's a bit of irony: Iglesias, the New Mexico prosecutor possibly fired for not filing charges in a Democratic corruption case in time for the 2006 election, actually came under fire in 2004 for investigating voter fraud too aggressively. As Jo Becker and Dan Eggen wrote in The Washington Post on September 20, 2004: "U.S. Attorney David Iglesias in New Mexico launched a statewide criminal task force to investigate allegations of voter fraud. . . .
"The probe is one of several criminal inquiries into alleged voter fraud launched in recent weeks in key presidential battlegrounds, including Ohio and West Virginia, as part of a broader initiative by U.S. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft targeting bogus registrations and other election crimes. The Justice Department has asked U.S. attorneys across the country to meet with local elections officials and launch publicity campaigns aimed at getting people to report irregularities.
"The focus on registration problems comes amid a fiercely contested presidential race and at a time when many Democrats are still angry over the 2000 election, in which ballot irregularities in Florida prompted the U.S. Supreme Court to declare the winner. And it puts the Justice Department in the middle of a charged and partisan debate over when aggressive fraud enforcement becomes intimidation."
Iglesias never filed any voter-fraud charges.
U.S. News has a timeline of the voter fraud allegations in New Mexico and Washington State.
Gonzales Watch
Ron Hutcheson writes for McClatchy Newspapers: "As attorney general and in his previous job as White House counsel, Gonzales has been at the center of virtually every controversy involving the administration's view of civil liberties in the war on terror, the use of torture on suspected terrorists and spying on Americans without warrants. That's left him vulnerable to attacks from both ends of the political spectrum.
"Struggling to save his job, Gonzales plans to talk privately with lawmakers on Friday to address some of their concerns."
But it appears to be an uphill battle.
From the Think Progress Web site, video of Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer telling reporters yesterday: "I know, from other sources, that there is an active and avid discussion in the White House whether [Gonzales] should stay or not."
U.S. News Political Bulletin reports: "The CBS Evening News led its broadcast last night saying, 'That ticking sound around Washington tonight may be the clock running out on . . . Gonzales.' The pressure on him 'is building,' and 'one Republican strategist close to the White House told CBS News Alberto Gonzales is 'finished.'"
After the latest e-mail release, Kelli Arena told Wolf Blitzer on CNN: "Now, Wolf, several Republicans that I spoke to earlier in the day said they feared if there was one more negative revelation, that Gonzales would be gone. We'll see."
GWB43.com
I wrote at some length in yesterday's column about the unusual and questionable use of Republican National Committee e-mail accounts by White House staffers conducting official business.
Are they trying to avoid rules about the archiving of presidential records? That and many other questions remain unanswered.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) yesterday sent a letter to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, asking for an investigation.
A White House Watch reader also pointed me toward this Paul Bedard item from his Washington Whispers column in U.S. News item in January 2004: "Our recent Whisper about 20 million Clinton White House E-mails being made public next year shook up a few in the Bush administration. 'I don't want my E-mail made public,' said one insider. As a result, many aides have shifted to Internet E-mail instead of the White House system. 'It's Yahoo!, baby,' says a Bushie.".....
.....Cover-Up Watch
The ACLU announces: "Following reports by the National Journal that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales advised President Bush to shut down an internal review of the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program due to the possibility that his own actions would be scrutinized, the American Civil Liberties Union today renewed its call for a special prosecutor to be appointed to investigate the program."
In a letter to Gonzales, four Democratic senators ask: "When did you learn that you were a target of the OPR investigation? Did you inform President Bush that you were a target of the OPR investigation? Did you recommend that President Bush deny security clearances to the OPR investigators?"
Glenn Greenwald blogs for Salon: <b>"The plainly illegal warrantless eavesdropping program is still, in my view, the area in which real investigations are most needed. And this obstructed OPR investigation is part of a clear, broader pattern whereby all such investigations into the NSA program have been blocked.".....</b>
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Last edited by host; 05-18-2007 at 08:46 AM..
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