Speaking Truth to truthiness

This post gives me a bit of glee — I’m smirking. The most egregious in-yer-face smoke-machine of the Bush years has been the 24/7 harangue of FOX News — the choice of Cheney and Bush to schlep their Kool Aid, the NeoNut pool of talent from which to draw their Tony Snow mouthpiece. The day I clicked through to find Limbaugh and Coulter cutting up in a comedy routine [sic] I threw in the towel on these people — Don Imus, shock jock, is catching hell today for what FOX has been doing for years!

For seven long years we have pretended these people offered actual news and not propaganda — despite the argument that if you tuned in, you were likely to catch an UberRight Wing rant complete with lies, yelling and cutting off any moderate Left commentary. Bill O’Reilly is the poster child for the Righty-belligerents and last week he popped a vein in a shouting match with Geraldo Riviera. It grabbed the attention of the nation … you would have loved this performace if your pleasures run to the Worldwide Wrestling Federation, which kind of defines the FOX viewing audience. It does, however, make VERY CLEAR the kind of “news” you’ll find on FOX — and I recommend you open the link to watch. It’s downright amazing.

John Edwards [he’s my guy, so far] has refused to participate in their supposed “presidential debate” citing their pretense in being “fair and balanced” [an assertion they tried to copywrite.] Obama and [bringing up a weak third] Clinton have joined him. It’s about time we call bullshit on these people as “legitimate” in any way.

Here’s a collection — be sure to open the Pottersville links to review their screen shots; a picture’s worth 1000 words. Krugman has something to say about this kind of thing, toward the bottom.

Faux News — Stephen Colbert created a career on it.

Jude

Gutsy John Edwards Jettisons a Second Fox-Sponsored Debate
The Edwards campaign explains, “there’s just no reason for Democrats to give Fox a platform to advance the right-wing agenda while pretending they’re objective.”
Don Hazen, AlterNet
April 7, 2007

Showing striking leadership, presidential candidate John Edwards, encouraged by Black activists, Black bloggers and Jesse Jackson, dropped out of a scheduled debate for September to be sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) and Fox News.

Edwards deputy campaign manager Jonathan Prince explained to the AP, “there’s just no reason for Democrats to give Fox a platform to advance the right-wing agenda while pretending they’re objective.” The Edwards campaign went out of its way to point out that Edwards planned to participate in a CBC debate hosted by CNN. The Democratic National Committee has also come out in opposition to the Fox debates, excluding them from the six debates they plan to sanction.

Edwards previously ditched a Fox debate planned for Nevada that was sponsored by the Nevada Democratic party and others. With Edwards out and significant pressure from MoveOn and a gaggle of persistent bloggers, the Nevada Democratic party decided to abandon the Nevada event, causing all sorts of screaming from Fox mouthpieces.

It’s been a bit of a mystery as to why the CBC Institute, an offshoot of the Congressional Black Caucus, went ahead with the debates in the face of powerful evidence underscoring Fox’s negative attitudes about Black people.

An Afro American Newspapers Editorial, printed in Black papers around the nation, read: “What were they thinking? What possible justification could the Congressional Black Caucus Political Leadership Education Institute have for picking Fox News to partner with on an upcoming presidential debate? ‘Fox News is not a “fair and balanced” source of information or political debate, and it has repeatedly proven itself hostile to the interests of Black Americans.

There were other strong voices challenging the CBC Institute: “Why should we be legitimizing a network that calls Black churches a cult, implies that Senator Barack Obama is a terrorist, and uses the solemn occasion of Coretta Scott King’s funeral to call Black leaders ‘racist,’” said James Rucker, head of ColorOfChange.org “The CBC Institute’s decision to embrace FOX was shamefully out of step with most Black voters.”

ColorOfChange.org — an online citizens’ lobby of 75,000 members dedicated to advocating for the interests of Black Americans — launched a national letter writing campaign calling on the Congressional Black Caucus Institute to reject Fox as partner for their presidential debates.

Fox’s smears against the Black community are compiled in Outfoxed director Robert Greenwald’s new YouTube video called Fox Attacks: Black America — which is located at www.FoxAttacks.com and has been viewed by over 250,000 people in three weeks.

The public reasoning for the deal between the CBC and Fox, was expressed by Congressman Bennie Thompson (D-MS), chair of the CBC Institute “as a leading organization dedicated to educating the public on issues of national policy, the CBC Institute is committed to presenting the presidential candidates to the broadest audience possible.”

Thompson added, “Our goal with each debate is to provide a platform that will allow voters to hear the positions of candidates from both political parties. Collaborating with FOX News provides an opportunity to take this presidential election to millions of households.”

Perhaps the loyalty to Fox by the CBC, more than reaching those households, was connected to their role as a key funder of the CBC Institute. News Corp, Fox’s parent, owned by Rupert Murdoch, has been a heavy funder of the CBC Institute According to filed reports, Fox News gave $10,000 to $24,999 to the CBC in 2005, while News Corp. gave an additional $15,000 to $29,000. Between 2003 and 2005, FNC and News Corp. donated $47,500 to $98,998.

In an parallel development, the blog Jack and Jill Politics offers that Black America will in the end not being represented by the CBC Institute in presidential debates, but rather in this instance, but by Tavis Smiley. From Jack and Jill Politics:

“There’s a whole other layer of activity here to consider. The reason the DNC is able to backslap the CBC’s ill-considered partnership with racist “news” network Fox is because there is a rival Democratic debate being run through PBS with emerging black leader Tavis Smiley at the helm.” … PBS is a network accessible to all (as opposed to Fox on cable) The debates will take place at two historically black colleges bringing much appreciated attention and resources to these HBCU communities.

Tavis Smiley is leading the way to show there are plenty of other venues than Fox News for primary debates, and John Edwards is again showing some spine. Now it’s up to the rest of the Democratic Candidates to follow his lead.

Obama to Nix Fox Debate
ABC News
April 09, 2007

ABC News’ Jake Tapper Reports: Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, will be the second Democratic presidential candidate to boycott a proposed debate to be broadcast by Fox News Channel.

“CNN seems to be a more appropriate host,” an Obama campaign aide tells ABC News.

Obama and Fox News Channel have had frosty relations ever since January, when the channel hyped and repeated untrue allegations that Obama had attended an extremist Islamist madrassa as a child living in Indonesia.

Former Sen. John Edwards, D-NC, was the first to formally boycott the Fox News debate, which is sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus, of which Obama is a member.

The debate is to be held on September 23 in Detroit.

Edwards deputy campaign manager Jonathan Prince said last week that “there’s just no reason for Democrats to give Fox a platform to advance the right-wing agenda while pretending they’re objective.”

Edwards had previously pulled out of a Fox debate planned by the Nevada Democratic Party, which ultimately — under pressure from liberal groups such as MoveOn.org, and liberal “netroots” internet activists — dropped Fox News Channel as a sponsor.
During that controversy, Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes criticized Edwards, though not by name.

“Any candidate for high office from either party who believes he can blacklist any news organization is making a terrible mistake about journalists,” Ailes said at a Radio and Television News Directors Foundation dinner in Washington last month.

“Pressure groups are forcing candidates to conclude that the best strategy for journalists is divide and conquer, to only appear on those networks and venues that give them favorable coverage,” Ailes said, adding that any candidate “who cannot answer direct, simple, even tough questions from any journalist runs a real risk of losing the voters.”

But in that same address, Ailes joked about the similarity of Obama’s name with that of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, saying, “It’s true that Barack Obama is on the move. I don’t know if it’s true President Bush called [Pakistan President Pervez] Musharraf and said, ‘Why can’t we catch this guy?’ ”

Obama has agreed to do the six debates sponsored by the Democratic National Committee as well as one in January sponsored by the CBC to be broadcast on CNN.

Obama, Clinton join Edwards in skipping Fox-sponsored debate
JIM KUHNHENN, AP
April 9, 2007

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will not participate in a Democratic debate co-hosted by Fox News Channel this fall, campaign aides indicated Monday.

The decision by the two Democratic presidential candidates follows an announcement last week by John Edwards, another White House contender, that he would forgo the Fox event.

The Sept. 23 debate, set for Detroit, is co-sponsored by the cable news network and by the Congressional Black Caucus Political Education and Leadership Institute.

Without Obama, Clinton and Edwards, however, Fox and the CBC institute would be missing three of the marquee contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Obama and Clinton aides said they intended to participate in six debates sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee. The DNC’s list did not include the Fox News-CBC Institute debate, a concession to liberal and black activists who say Fox has slighted blacks and is biased in favor of conservatives.

A spokesman for Obama, who is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, made it clear that Obama intended to participate in a debate co-sponsored by the CBC Institute and CNN.

“CNN seemed like a more appropriate host,” Obama spokesman Bill Burton said.

The Clinton campaign announced its intentions Monday after Obama had let it be known he would not be attending the Fox debate.

“Were going to participate in the DNC-sanctioned debates only,” Clinton spokesman Phil Singer said. He added that Clinton already had commitments to participate in an upcoming debate in South Carolina and one hosted by Tavis Smiley, the PBS late-night talk show host.

Democrats have been under pressure from liberal activists to avoid Fox-hosted debates.

Last month, the Nevada Democratic Party canceled a debate that Fox was to co-sponsor in August.

The institute, a nonprofit group whose directors include members of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Fox News announced an agreement nearly two weeks ago to air Republican and Democratic presidential debates. But activists, including civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, immediately criticized the alliance and many called on Democrats to pull out.
But Candice Tolliver, a spokeswoman for the CBC Institute, said Monday: “The debates are still scheduled as announced.”

Calls by the Associated Press to Fox were not immediately returned.

O’Reilly meltdown a new low
Fox News talker comes unglued
Joanne Ostrow, Denver Post
04/07/2007

When Bill O’Reilly nearly came out of his chair and across the desk at Geraldo Rivera on his Fox News show this week, he marked a new low in what passes for modern political discourse. Even by the shallow standards of cable news–and “The O’Reilly Factor” in particular–it was a stunningly foul performance. The clip quickly became the talk of YouTube (click here to see the video).

When a girl was killed by a drunk driver in Virginia, a driver who happened to be an undocumented immigrant, O’Reilly seized the moment to turn the issue into a tirade against illegal aliens. O’Reilly spewed racist bile; Rivera objected forcefully. When Geraldo is the voice of reason driving home solid points, you know things are out of hand.

Today’s cable chat shows encourage this kind of overwrought exchange, shedding more heat than light and putting the star opinion-meisters front and center. The fact that the clip drew traffic on the internet only enhances its value. You don’t see thoughtful analyses from BBC World News or the PBS NewsHour attracting clicks on YouTube.

As the election cycle ratchets up, the provocateurs of cable will be angling for more attention. But they shouldn’t be allowed to steer the conversation. Let’s take it as an encouraging sign that the O’Reilly outburst is being laughed at in cyberspace more than it’s being seriously considered.

Was That You, Geraldo?
Steve Young
Apr 7 2007

For years the man who once seemed to be the young Mike Wallace in waiting, heroically stalking the corridors of Staten Island’s Willowbrook State School to expose the horrors surrounding the neglectful abuse of mentally retarded patients.

That Emmy-awarded investigator has been pretty much MIA ever-since. Some say he went on to more sordid and highly lucrative missions. Others think it was more a simple case of simple mind-napping.

Over the past thirty-some years, with the trail growing cold, the missing Geraldo-brain case had long been filed away along with Dennis Miller’s, Tammy Bruce’s and the other unsolved brain-thefts.

Many were written off to the “after 9-11 I turned to my liberal friends and realized they hated America” outbreak that swept the nation when coincidentally Regenry Publishing needed authors and Roger Ailes was handing out lucrative political Foxpert jobs.

But on Thursday evening, an old (much older) Gerlado sighting was reported on Bill O’Reilly’s “The Factor”. At first it could be written off as just the same brain-missing Geraldo who in recent years has climbed Brokeback Mountain many times with Bill.

But how appropriate during Passover did the somewhat Jewished Geraldo make this night different from any other night.

In what might be been billed as a Billdzilla vs Mothravera death match, O’Reilly and Geraldo roared at each other over a recent drunk-driving fatal crash in Virginia. Bill had already turned the tragedy into a political hammer to nail illegal aliens. Geraldo took eye-popping-out umbrage that Bill would take advantage of someone else’s misery to make political hay.

Perhaps Geraldo had never watched Bill’s show before or actually listened to the words coming out of Bill’s mouth when he was a guest.

Still Bill was at the top (bottom?) of his game…

Geraldo: Don’t obscure a tragedy to make a cheap political point!

O’Reilly: If I’m the father…!!

Geraldo: It’s a cheap political point — and you know it!!!

O’Reilly: No it isnt! This is justice!!!!

Ah, no number of exclamation remarks can do this classic lesson for the kids on how serious debate works today. Y’just got to see it to believe it. Turn up the sound to get the full effect.

BILLDZILLA VS MOTHRAVERA

If National Lampoon doesn’t jump on this one to create the ultimate Fox News Japanese Monster movie (of course they’d have to come to me to greenlight it), then they should close their doors tomorrow.

Catching himself towards the end, the Willowbrookless Geraldo used the moment to offer Bill and their hi-decibel’d, macho moment as just another example of Fox’s fair and balanced style. See kids. Hollarin’ over one another and shoving your finger in the face of your balance would never get past the unbalanced purveyors of lies at CBS and NBC.

I don’t know if Geraldo’s refusal to accept Bill’s usual tawdry attempt to spin every news (or near-news) item into his “Independent” dagger to the heart of the evil far left loons - i.e. every Democrat left of Zel Miller - was a call for help by what’s left of the old Rivera’s brain.

But I would hope that he would soon sit alone and watch this past Thursday’s Factor tape and listen closely to what he heard from Bill and realize that this was far from the first time the no spinster has obscured a tragedy to make a cheap political point.

This might just be the last chance for what’s left of the old Geraldo’s brain to escape and dig up the Willowbrook Geraldo to once again do the work that actually advances humanity. If not, he might as well order the epitaph on his tombstone (or at least his Wikipedia bio) right now.

“It was always for a cheap political point — and I knew it!!!”

Open these two links for FOX screen shots:

Fox News At Its Finest
Welcome to Pottersville

Fox News At Its Finest, Parte Deux
Welcome to Pottersville

Sweet Little Lies
PAUL KRUGMAN, New York Times
Sunday, April 08, 2007

Four years into a war fought to eliminate a nonexistent threat, we all have renewed appreciation for the power of the Big Lie: people tend to believe false official claims about big issues, because they can’t picture their leaders being dishonest about such things.

But there’s another political lesson I don’t think has sunk in: the power of the Little Lie — the small accusation invented out of thin air, followed by another, and another, and another. Little Lies aren’t meant to have staying power. Instead, they create a sort of background hum, a sense that the person facing all these accusations must have done something wrong.

For a long time, basically from 9/11 until the last remnants of President Bush’s credibility drowned in New Orleans, the Bush administration was able to go big on its deceptions. Most people found it inconceivable that an American president would, for example, assert without evidence that Saddam and Al Qaeda were allies. Mr. Bush won the 2004 election because a quorum of voters still couldn’t believe he would grossly mislead them on matters of national security.

Before 9/11, however, the right-wing noise machine mainly relied on little lies. And now it has returned to its roots.

The Clinton years were a parade of fake scandals: Whitewater, Troopergate, Travelgate, Filegate, Christmas-card-gate. At the end, there were false claims that Clinton staff members trashed the White House on their way out.

Each pseudoscandal got headlines, air time and finger-wagging from the talking heads. The eventual discovery in each case that there was no there there, if reported at all, received far less attention. The effect was to make an administration that was, in fact, pretty honest and well run — especially compared with its successor — seem mired in scandal.

Even in the post-9/11 environment, little lies never went away. In particular, promoting little lies seems to have been one of the main things U.S. attorneys, as loyal Bushies, were expected to do. For example, David Iglesias, the U.S. Attorney in New Mexico, appears to have been fired because he wouldn’t bring unwarranted charges of voter fraud.

There’s a lot of talk now about a case in Wisconsin, where the Bush-appointed U.S. attorney prosecuted the state’s purchasing supervisor over charges that a court recently dismissed after just 26 minutes of oral testimony, with one judge calling the evidence “beyond thin.” But by then the accusations had done their job: the unjustly accused official had served almost four months in prison, and the case figured prominently in attack ads alleging corruption in the Democratic governor’s administration.

This is the context in which you need to see the wild swings Republicans have been taking at Nancy Pelosi.

First, there were claims that the speaker of the House had demanded a lavish plane for her trips back to California. One Republican leader denounced her “arrogance of extravagance” — then, when it became clear that the whole story was bogus, admitted that he had never had any evidence.

Now there’s Ms. Pelosi’s fact-finding trip to Syria, which Dick Cheney denounced as “bad behavior” — unlike the visit to Syria by three Republican congressmen a few days earlier, or Newt Gingrich’s trip to China when he was speaker.

Ms. Pelosi has responded coolly, dismissing the administration’s reaction as a “tantrum.” But it’s more than that: the hysterical reaction to her trip is part of a political strategy, aided and abetted by news organizations that give little lies their time in the sun.

Fox News, which is a partisan operation in all but name, plays a crucial role in the Little Lie strategy — which is why there is growing pressure on Democratic politicians not to do anything, like participating in Fox-hosted debates, that helps Fox impersonate a legitimate news organization.

But Fox has had plenty of help. Even Time’s Joe Klein, a media insider if anyone is, wrote of the Pelosi trip that “the media coverage of this on CNN and elsewhere has been abysmal.” For example, CNN ran a segment about Ms. Pelosi’s trip titled “Talking to Terrorists.”

The G.O.P.’s reversion to the Little Lie technique is a symptom of political weakness, of a party reduced to trivial smears because it has nothing else to offer. But the technique will remain effective — and the U.S . political scene will remain ugly — as long as many people in the news media keep playing along.

snipped from Hotline After Dark: Rebel, Rebel
National Journal

Lots of talk about Don Imus last night:

MSNBC’s Dan Abrams:

“People have every right to be angry, insulted and hurt by Imus’s comments. And Imus himself has said they have every right to call for his resignation. Those opinions are heartfelt, and I can tell you they have been heard loud and clear by MSNBC and NBC News. The one set of instigators who should be ignored are our friends over at Fox News, who have made this part of an ongoing political campaign against MSNBC over everything and anything they can find. Now, I understand why they’re doing it. It’s a good strategy to attack a network that’s suddenly offering up a challenge to them on a number of fronts. But one would hope another network would attack with clean hands. We all know that’s not the case over at Fox, not even on this sort of issue” (”Scarborough Country,” 4/9).

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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2 comments April 10th, 2007

Eight Gate — the tainted gene pool

The Department of Justice defines America … rule of law, applied without prejudice and bias. That Democratic experiment has never been entirely clean, given our own racism and prudishness, but at least it sought balance prior to this point and came under the scrutiny of the public eye. What the NeoCon coup has produced is criminal — and when the lawgivers, the legal eagles, the enforcers become criminals themselves there is only chaos.

Here’s MSM reads on the laptops, the poor management, the Congressional demands, first — then a couple of articles on the Christocrat factor. Over 150 of Pat Robertson’s people are salted into this Department – Pat “pray for Lefty Supreme’s to die, assassinate Chavez, Katrina was God’s wrath visited on gays” Robertson — and we’re seeing the results of their loyalist “Praise Jesus” lock-step.

In the Big Picture, there’s a premise or two the Bushies got Dead Wrong:

1] The government IS NOT a party
2] The government DOES NOT not own America
3] The government MAY NOT make it up as it goes along

The longer Congress pounds away at this scandal, like a dog worries a bone, the more meat we’ll find on it … and the more the essential GOP/Fundy rot will see the light of day.

As lawyer Christy Harden Smith often says on her blog — I love the smell of oversight in the morning!

Jude

Party-issued laptops now a White House headache
Democrats say a private e-mail system was used in violation of federal rules.
Tom Hamburger, LA Times
April 9, 2007

WASHINGTON — When Karl Rove and his top deputies arrived at the White House in 2001, the Republican National Committee provided them with laptop computers and other communication devices to be used alongside their government-issued equipment.

The back-channel e-mail and paging system, paid for and maintained by the RNC, was designed to avoid charges that had vexed the Clinton White House — that federal resources were being used inappropriately for political campaign purposes.

Now, that dual computer system is creating new embarrassment and legal headaches for the White House, the Republican Party and Rove’s once-vaunted White House operation.

Democrats say evidence suggests the RNC e-mail system was used for political and government policy matters in violation of federal record preservation and disclosure rules.

In addition, Democrats point to a handful of e-mails obtained through ongoing inquiries suggesting the system may have been used to conceal such activities as contacts with lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who was convicted on bribery charges and is now in prison for fraud.

Democratic congressional investigators are beginning to demand access to this RNC-White House communications system, which was used not only by Rove’s office but by several top officials elsewhere in the White House.

The prospect that such communication might become public has further jangled the nerves of an already rattled Bush White House.

Some Republicans believe that the huge number of e-mails — many written hastily, with no thought that they might become public — may contain more detailed and unguarded inside information about the administration’s far-flung political activities than has previously been available.

“There is concern about what may be in these e-mails,” said one GOP activist who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject.

“The system was created with the best intentions,” said former Assistant White House Press Secretary Adam Levine, who was assigned an RNC laptop and BlackBerry when he worked at the White House in 2002. But, he added, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, last week formally requested access to broad categories of RNC-White House e-mails.

Waxman told the Los Angeles Times in a statement that a separate “e-mail system for high-ranking White House officials would raise serious questions about violations of the Presidential Records Act,” which requires the preservation and ultimate disclosure of e-mails about official government business.

Waxman’s initial request to the RNC seeks e-mails relating to the presentation of campaign polling and strategy information to Cabinet agency appointees. He is also expected to ask for e-mails relating to Abramoff’s activities, which Waxman is also investigating.

The Senate and House Judiciary Committees are also expected to formally request e-mail records from the RNC that relate to last year’s firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

The private e-mail system came to light in the U.S. attorney controversy because one of Rove’s deputies used an RNC-maintained e-mail domain — gwb43.com — to communicate with the Justice Department about replacing one of those prosecutors.

White House officials said the system had been used appropriately and was modeled after one used by the Clinton White House political office in the late 1990s.

“The regular staffers who interface with political organizations have a separate e-mail account, and that’s entirely appropriate,” said White House spokesman Scott M. Stanzel. “The practice is followed to avoid inadvertent violations of the law.”

Stanzel said he did not know how many officials used the separate system. Another White House official called it “a handful.”

Some Republican activists say the e-mail request will not create great difficulty for the White House because nothing nefarious happened and because the RNC automatically purges some e-mails after 30 days.

RNC officials are expected to meet with House Government Reform and Judiciary Committee lawyers as early as this week to discuss the first document request.

“We’d like to cooperate to whatever level is appropriate,” Republican Party spokeswoman Lisa Camooso Miller said Friday.

Waxman focused on the e-mails after a hearing last month examining a presentation of campaign forecasts and polling data made by a Rove deputy to top appointed officials of the Government Services Administration, some of whom believed they were being instructed to help GOP candidates.

White House staff arranging for the GSA briefing by a Rove deputy, Scott Jennings, used the gwb43.com e-mail domain name. That caught the attention of Waxman’s investigators, who had previously examined e-mails from Abramoff to Rove’s executive assistant, Susan B. Ralston, to object to an impending Interior Department decision. The decision, he wrote, was “anathema to all our supporters it’s important if possible to get some quiet message from the WH [White House] that this is absurd.”

Ralston used outside accounts — including at rnchq.org — to communicate with Abramoff and his partners. One e-mail from an Abramoff associate said that White House personnel had warned “it is better to not put this stuff in writing in [the White House] … e-mail system because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc.”

Abramoff’s response, according to a copy of his e-mail released by Waxman’s committee, was: “Dammit. It was sent to Susan on her rnc pager and was not supposed to go into the WH system.” Ralston later resigned in connection with the lobbying scandal.

Waxman told RNC Chairman Mike Duncan in a letter that such exchanges “indicated that in some instances White House officials were using nongovernment accounts specifically to avoid creating a record of communications” that could be reviewed by congressional committees or released under the Presidential Records Act.

Lawyers for the committees say that use of campaign-connected e-mail addresses may make it easier to gather information because it would be harder for the White House to make a broad claim of executive privilege. Lawyers for congressional Democrats have anticipated that the White House will invoke executive privilege in an effort to block requests for information about its role in the firing of U.S. attorneys, Abramoff and other matters.

In the U.S. attorney case, Rove deputy Jennings used the RNC e-mail system to write to D. Kyle Sampson, then Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales’ chief of staff, in August 2006 about replacing Arkansas U.S. Atty. H.E. “Bud” Cummins III with former Rove protege Tim Griffin.

“We’re a go for the U.S. atty plan. WH leg, political and communications have signed off and acknowledged that we have to be committed to following through once the pressure comes,” Jennings wrote in an e-mail from the gwb43.com domain name. Sampson noted in a related e-mail that “getting him appointed was important to” Rove, then-White House Counsel Harriet E. Miers and other officials.

The gwb43.com account, and others like it, have been traced to the Republican National Committee computer servers, Waxman’s staff said.

Doug Sosnik, White House political director under Clinton, says that his office had a small number of separate computers and cellphones for campaign-related matters but that the scope of the political operation was smaller than that in the Bush White House.

For both administrations, the separate system was an acknowledgment that certain White House jobs necessarily mixed policy and politics. Though campaign-related activity is prohibited for federal workers on the job, White House appointees typically work extraordinarily long hours and are required to be available around the clock.

Sosnik said only a handful of people used the political computers in the Clinton White House, which were purchased with campaign funds. However, he said, the political messaging from the Bush team appears to have been broader than that of Clinton’s. He could recall no instance, for example, in which campaign computers or cellphones were used to communicate with the Justice Department.

Levine, the former Bush press aide, said he saw senior White House colleagues, including Rove and his top staff, moving fluidly between the two computer systems, which often sat on officials’ desks along with their government computers.

But Levine said he found the two computers with their separate purposes and log-in procedures confusing and inefficient. So he quietly slid his RNC laptop into a desk drawer, deciding to use the telephone rather than e-mail to communicate anything that was not considered official government business.

“In retrospect,” he said last week, “I was lucky.” ++

Six U.S. Attorneys Given 2nd Posting in Washington
Dan Eggen, Washington Post
Tuesday, April 10, 2007

A half-dozen sitting U.S. attorneys also serve as aides to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales or are assigned other Washington postings, performing tasks that take them away from regular duties in their districts for months or even years at a time, according to officials and department records.

Acting Associate Attorney General William W. Mercer, for example, has been effectively absent from his job as U.S. attorney in Montana for nearly two years — prompting the chief federal judge in Billings to demand his removal and call Mercer’s office “a mess.”

Another U.S. attorney, Michael J. Sullivan of Boston, has been in Washington for the past six months as acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He is awaiting confirmation to head the agency permanently while still juggling his responsibilities in Massachusetts.

The number of U.S. attorneys pulling double duty in Washington is the focus of growing concern from other prosecutors and from members of the federal bench, according to legal experts and government officials.

The growing reliance on federal prosecutors to fill Washington-based jobs also comes amid controversy over the firings of eight other U.S. attorneys last year. One of them, David C. Iglesias of New Mexico, was publicly accused by the Justice Department of being an “absentee landlord” who was away from his job too much.

“I can’t think of a time when there’s been this many U.S. attorneys doing double duty at one time,” said Dennis Boyd, executive director of the National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys, which represents current federal prosecutors.

Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse characterized the fact that U.S. attorneys were filling other Washington-based Justice jobs as both unremarkable and beneficial. He cited four examples of chief prosecutors who also served stints in the deputy attorney general’s office during the George H.W. Bush administration, and two similar examples during the Clinton years.

“Having U.S. attorneys serve at the department ensures that a local perspective is brought to policy-making decisions,” Roehrkasse said in a statement. “. . . U.S. Attorneys assigned to the Department’s headquarters also gain a national perspective and can bring this perspective and national focus to their districts.”

But Boyd said the prolonged absence of a chief prosecutor can lead to a lack of direction and leadership in U.S. attorneys’ offices. The Justice Department made a similar argument in defending the firing of Iglesias, alleging that he had entrusted too much responsibility to his first assistant.

“Quite frankly, U.S . attorneys are hired to run the office, not their first assistants,” William E. Moschella, the principal associate deputy attorney general, told the House Judiciary Committee last month.

Iglesias filed a complaint with federal investigators last week, alleging that his dismissal amounted to discrimination based on his status as an officer in the Navy Reserve, which took him away from the job for 40 to 45 days a year. Alleged absenteeism has been the Justice Department’s main public criticism of Iglesias, although officials have more recently added concerns about his handling of voter fraud and immigration cases to their arguments about him.

“It’s a double standard and it’s hypocritical,” Iglesias said. “Not one judge from my district wrote a letter to main Justice saying I was gone too much. . . . Most of my absences were military-related.”

At the moment, at least six sitting U.S. attorneys, including Mercer and Sullivan, also hold senior spots at Justice. Each prosecutor continues to draw a regular U.S. attorney’s salary and is not paid extra for the executive position, Roehrkasse said.

The most prominent example is Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago, who was named special prosecutor in the CIA leak case in December 2003. Others include U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan of Pittsburgh, also the acting director of the Office of Violence Against Women, and U.S. Attorney Kevin J. O’Connor of Connecticut, who is also an associate deputy attorney general in Washington coordinating anti-gang policies.

The most recent addition is U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg of Alexandria, who was named last month as the new chief of staff to the attorney general. Gonzales’s previous chief aide, D. Kyle Sampson, resigned in the fallout over the U.S. attorney firings, which he coordinated.

Mercer currently wears two hats as the U.S. attorney in Montana and as third-in-command at Justice, behind Gonzales and his deputy, Paul J. McNulty. Mercer has been pulling double duty since June 2005, when he was first appointed to a different executive position at Justice headquarters.

His regular absence from the U.S. attorney’s office in Billings has caused severe friction between Mercer and U.S. District Chief Judge Donald W. Molloy, a Clinton appointee. Molloy wrote a letter to Gonzales in October 2005 demanding that Mercer be replaced.

Molloy wrote that Mercer’s absence had led to “a lack of leadership” in the Montana office and created “untoward difficulties for the court” and for career prosecutors. The judge also questioned whether Mercer complied with residency requirements.

Gonzales wrote back the next month that Mercer was handling both jobs admirably, and suggested that Mercer’s absence would be short-lived.

Relations between Mercer and Molloy have not improved since. Molloy berated Mercer during a court hearing last year, accusing him of bringing weak cases to court to pump up statistics and telling him: “You have no credibility — none.”

“Your lawyers are not getting their briefs in on time,” Molloy said. “You’re in Washington, D.C., and you ought to be here in Montana doing your work. Your office is a mess.”

Molloy declined to comment last week.

Mercer has figured prominently in the U.S. attorney firings, in part because he told prosecutors in Arizona and Nevada they were being removed to make way for new Republican loyalists.

Roehrkasse said Mercer has “effectively served” in his simultaneous postings but that “Congress should move forward quickly to confirm his nomination, which has been pending for eight months.” Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have indicated they will not proceed on the appointment until after the panel’s probe of the U.S. attorney firings is completed. ++

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Another Layer of Scandal
New York Times Editorial
April 9, 2007

As Congress investigates the politicization of the United States attorney offices by the Bush administration, it should review the extraordinary events the other day in a federal courtroom in Wisconsin. The case involved Georgia Thompson, a state employee sent to prison on the flimsiest of corruption charges just as her boss, a Democrat, was fighting off a Republican challenger. It just might shed some light on a question that lurks behind the firing of eight top federal prosecutors: what did the surviving attorneys do to escape the axe?

Ms. Thompson, a purchasing official in the state’s Department of Administration, was accused by the United States attorney in Milwaukee, Steven Biskupic, of awarding a travel contract to a company whose chief executive contributed to the campaign of Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat. Ms. Thompson said the decision was made on the merits, but she was convicted and sent to prison before she could appeal.

The prosecution was a boon to Mr. Doyle’s opponent. Republicans ran a barrage of attack ads that purported to tie Ms. Thompson’s “corruption” to Mr. Doyle. Ms. Thompson was sentenced shortly before the election, which Governor Doyle won.

The Chicago-based United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit seemed shocked by the injustice of her conviction. It took the extraordinary step of releasing Ms. Thompson from prison immediately after hearing arguments, without waiting to issue a ruling. One of the judges hinted that Ms. Thompson may have been railroaded. “It strikes me that your evidence is beyond thin,” Judge Diane Wood told the lawyer from Mr. Biskupic’s office.

Ms. Thompson’s case is not the only one raising questions about whether prosecutors tried last year to tilt close elections toward the Republicans. New Jersey’s federal prosecutor conducted an investigation of weak-looking allegations against Senator Robert Menendez that was used in Republican ads.

Congress should look into both cases to determine whether partisan politics played a role — and whether they were coordinated with anyone at the Justice Department or the White House.

The list of things to investigate keeps growing. A federal agency that protects the rights of military employees is now investigating the firing of David Iglesias, the New Mexico United States attorney. Justice Department officials said he was fired in part because he was out of the office due to his commitments as a Navy military reservist. If so, the firing may have been illegal.

There is also trouble in the Minnesota United States attorney’s office, where the administration recently installed Rachel Paulose, a 34-year-old with scant management experience. Three of her top assistants have resigned their management positions, and The St. Paul Pioneer Press reports that they did so out of dissatisfaction with her. Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, said the resignations were more evidence of the attorneys’ offices being “deprofessionalized.”

The White House is resisting making Karl Rove; Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel; and other top officials available to Congress. Mr. Schumer proposed last week that their testimony could, at least as a first step, be taken in private, but with a transcript.

Clearly, he made the offer to move the investigation forward. But any agreement to conduct such interviews should make it clear that they would be followed by open testimony before Congress. The integrity of the Justice Department is a matter of overriding importance.

Voters should be able to see and hear the testimony for themselves. ++

Scandal puts spotlight on Christian law school
Grads influential in Justice Dept.
Charlie Savage, Boston Globe
April 8, 2007

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — The title of the course was Constitutional Law, but the subject was sin. Before any casebooks were opened, a student led his classmates in a 10-minute devotional talk, completed with “amens,” about the need to preserve their Christian values.

“Sin is so appealing because it’s easy and because it’s fun,” the law student warned.

Regent University School of Law, founded by televangelist Pat Robertson to provide “Christian leadership to change the world,” has worked hard in its two-decade history to upgrade its reputation, fighting past years when a majority of its graduates couldn’t pass the bar exam and leading up to recent victories over Ivy League teams in national law student competitions.

But even in its darker days, Regent has had no better friend than the Bush administration. Graduates of the law school have been among the most influential of the more than 150 Regent University alumni hired to federal government positions since President Bush took office in 2001, according to a university website.

One of those graduates is Monica Goodling , the former top aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who is at the center of the storm over the firing of US attorneys. Goodling, who resigned on Friday, has become the face of Regent overnight — and drawn a harsh spotlight to the administration’s hiring of officials educated at smaller, conservative schools with sometimes marginal academic reputations.

Documents show that Goodling, who has asserted her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to avoid testifying before Congress, was one of a handful of officials overseeing the firings. She helped install Timothy Griffin , the Karl Rove aide and her former boss at the Republican National Committee, as a replacement US attorney in Arkansas.

Because Goodling graduated from Regent in 1999 and has scant prosecutorial experience, her qualifications to evaluate the performance of US attorneys have come under fire.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, asked at a hearing: “Should we be concerned with the experience level of the people who are making these highly significant decisions?”

And across the political blogosphere, critics have held up Goodling, who declined to be interviewed, as a prime example of the Bush administration subordinating ability to politics in hiring decisions.

“It used to be that high-level DOJ jobs were generally reserved for the best of the legal profession,” wrote a contributor to The New Republic website . “. . . That a recent graduate of one of the very worst (and sketchiest) law schools with virtually no relevant experience could ascend to this position is a sure sign that there is something seriously wrong at the DOJ.”

The Regent law school was founded in 1986, when Oral Roberts University shut down its ailing law school and sent its library to Robertson’s Bible-based college in Virginia. It was initially called “CBN University School of Law” after the televangelist’s Christian Broadcasting Network, whose studios share the campus and which provided much of the funding for the law school. (The Coors Foundation is also a donor to the university.) The American Bar Association accredited Regent ’s law school in 1996.

Not long ago, it was rare for Regent graduates to join the federal government. But in 2001, the Bush administration picked the dean of Regent’s government school, Kay Coles James, to be the director of the Office of Personnel Management — essentially the head of human resources for the executive branch. The doors of opportunity for government jobs were thrown open to Regent alumni.

“We’ve had great placement,” said Jay Sekulow , who heads a non profit law firm based at Regent that files lawsuits aimed at lowering barriers between church and state. “We’ve had a lot of people in key positions.”

Many of those who have Regent law degrees, including Goodling, joined the Department of Justice. Their path to employment was further eased in late 2002, when John Ashcroft , then attorney general, changed longstanding rules for hiring lawyers to fill vacancies in the career ranks.

Previously, veteran civil servants screened applicants and recommended whom to hire, usually picking top students from elite schools.

In a recent Regent law school newsletter, a 2004 graduate described being interviewed for a job as a trial attorney at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in October 2003. Asked to name the Supreme Court decision from the past 20 years with which he most disagreed, he cited Lawrence v. Texas, the ruling striking down a law against sodomy because it violated gay people’s civil rights.

“When one of the interviewers agreed and said that decision in Lawrence was ‘maddening,’ I knew I correctly answered the question,” wrote the Regent graduate . The administration hired him for the Civil Rights Division’s housing section — the only employment offer he received after graduation, he said.

The graduate from Regent — which is ranked a “tier four” school by US News & World Report, the lowest score and essentially a tie for 136th place — was not the only lawyer with modest credentials to be hired by the Civil Rights Division after the administration imposed greater political control over career hiring.

The changes resulted in a sometimes dramatic alteration to the profile of new hires beginning in 2003, as the Globe reported last year after obtaining resumes from 2001-2006 to three sections in the civil rights division. Conservative credentials rose, while prior experience in civil rights law and the average ranking of the law school attended by the applicant dropped.

As the dean of a lower-ranked law school that benefited from the Bush administration’s hiring practices, Jeffrey Brauch of Regent made no apologies in a recent interview for training students to understand what the law is today, and also to understand how legal rules should be changed to better reflect “eternal principles of justice,” from divorce laws to abortion rights.

“We anticipate that many of our graduates are going to go and be change agents in society,” Brauch said.

Still, Brauch said, the recent criticism of the law school triggered by Goodling’s involvement in the US attorney firings has missed the mark in one respect: the quality of the lawyers now being turned out by the school, he argued, is far better than its image.

Seven years ago, 60 percent of the class of 1999 — Goodling’s class — failed the bar exam on the first attempt. (Goodling’s performance was not available, though she is admitted to the bar in Virginia.) The dismal numbers prompted the school to overhaul its curriculum and tighten admissions standards.

It has also spent more heavily to recruit better-qualified law students. This year, it will spend $2.8 million on scholarships, a million more than what it was spending four years ago.

The makeover is working. The bar exam passage rate of Regent alumni , according to the Princeton Review, rose to 67 percent last year. Brauch said it is now up to 71 percent, and that half of the students admitted in the late 1990s would not be accepted today. The school has also recently won moot-court and negotiation competitions, beating out teams from top-ranked law schools.

Adding to Regent’s prominence, its course on “Human Rights, Civil Liberties, and National Security” is co taught by one of its newest professors: Ashcroft.

Even a prominent critic of the school’s mission of integrating the Bible with public policy vouches for Regent’s improvements. Barry Lynn , the head of the liberal Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, said Regent is churning out an increasingly well-trained legal army for the conservative Christian movement.

“You can’t underestimate the quality of a lot of the people that are there,” said Lynn, who has guest-lectured at Regent and debated professors on its campus.

In light of Regent’s rapid evolution, some current law students say it is frustrating to be judged in light of Regent alumni from the school’s more troubled era — including Goodling.
One third-year student, Chamie Riley , said she rejected the idea that any government official who invokes her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination could be a good representative of Regent.

As Christians, she said, Regent students know “you should be morally upright. You should not be in a situation where you have to plead the Fifth.”++

Who’s the Boss?
How Pat Robertson’s law school is changing America.
Dahlia Lithwick, Slate
Saturday, April 7, 2007

Monica Goodling has a problem. As senior counsel to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Justice Department liaison to the White House, Goodling no longer seems to know what the truth is. She must also be increasingly unclear about who her superiors are. This didn’t used to be a problem for Goodling, now on indefinite leave from the DoJ. Everything was once very certain: Her boss’s truth was always the same as God’s truth. Her boss was always either God or one of His staffers.

This week, through counsel, Goodling again refused to testify about her role in the firings of several U.S. attorneys for what appear to be partisan reasons. Asserting her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, Goodling somehow felt she may be on the hook for criminal obstruction. But it was never clear whose truths she was protecting or even whose law seems to have tripped her up. She resigned abruptly Friday evening without explanation.

Goodling is an improbable character for a political scandal. She’s the mirror opposite of that other Monica—the silly, saucy minx who felled Bill Clinton. A 1995 graduate of an evangelical Christian school, Messiah College, and a 1999 graduate of Pat Robertson’s Regent University School of Law (this seems to be her Web page), Goodling’s chief claim to professional fame appears to have been loyalty to the president and to the process of reshaping the Justice Department in his image (and thus, His image). A former career official there told the Washington Post that Goodling “forced many very talented, career people out of main Justice so she could replace them with junior people that were either loyal to the administration or would score her some points.” And as she rose at Justice, according to a former classmate, Goodling “developed a very positive reputation for people coming from Christian schools into Washington looking for employment in government.”

Start digging, and Goodling also looks to be the Forrest Gump of no comments: Here she is in 1997, fielding calls from reporters to Regent’s School of Government admissions office. Asked whether non-Christians were admitted, she explained that “we admit all students without discrimination. We are a Christian institution; it is assumed that everyone in the classes are Christians.” Here, in 2004, she’s answering phones at the Justice Department about whether then-Deputy Solicitor General Paul Clement knew about the abuses at Abu Ghraib when he told the Supreme Court that the United States does not torture. Said Goodling, in lieu of taking the Fifth: “We wouldn’t have any comment.” (Jenny Martinez, who argued against Clement that day at the court, suggested to Salon’s Tim Grieve: “When Mr. Clement said to the court that we wouldn’t engage in that kind of behavior, either he was deliberately misleading the court or he was completely out of the loop.” Sound familiar?)

Goodling is only one of 150 graduates of Regent University currently serving in this administration, as Regent’s Web site proclaims proudly, a huge number for a 29-year-old school. Regent estimates that “approximately one out of every six Regent alumni is employed in some form of government work.” And that’s precisely what its founder desired. The school’s motto is “Christian Leadership To Change the World,” and the world seems to be changing apace. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft teaches at Regent, and graduates have achieved senior positions in the Bush administration. The express goal is not only to tear down the wall between church and state in America (a “lie of the left,” according to Robertson) but also to enmesh the two.

The law school’s dean, Jeffrey A. Brauch, urges in his “vision” statement that students reflect upon “the critical role the Christian faith should play in our legal system.” Jason Eige (’99), senior assistant to Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell, puts it pithily in the alumni newsletter, Regent Remark: “Your Résumé Is God’s Instrument.”

This legal worldview meshed perfectly with that of former Attorney General John Ashcroft—a devout Pentecostal who forbade use of the word “pride,” as well as the phrase “no higher calling than public service,” on documents bearing his signature. (He also snatched the last bit of fun out of his press conferences when he covered up the bared breasts of the DoJ statue the “Spirit of Justice”). No surprise that, as he launched a transformation of the Justice Department, the Goodlings looked good to him.

One of Ashcroft’s most profound changes was to the Civil Rights Division, launched in 1957 to file cases on behalf of African-Americans and women. Under Ashcroft, career lawyers were systematically fired or forced out and replaced by members of conservative or Christian groups or folks with no civil rights experience. In the five years after 2001, the civil rights division brought no voting cases on behalf of African-Americans. It brought one employment case on behalf of an African-American. Instead, the division took up the “civil rights” abuses of reverse discrimination—claims of voter fraud or discrimination against Christians. On Feb. 20, Gonzales announced a new initiative called the First Freedom Project to carry out “even greater enforcement of religious rights for all Americans.” In his view, the fight for a student’s right to read a Bible at school is as urgent a civil rights problem as the right to vote.

We may agree or disagree on that proposition, but it certainly explains how Goodling came to confuse working to advance Gonzales’ agenda with working to advance God’s. But while God may well want more prayer in the public schools, it’s not clear He wanted David Iglesias fired on a pretext. In an excellent 2005 article about Regent in the American Prospect Online, Christopher Hayes points out that more than two-thirds of the students at Regent identified as Republicans, and only 9 percent identified as Democrats. As he concludes, “what students are taught at a place like Regent, or even Calvin and Wheaton, is to live out a Christ-centered existence in all facets of their lives. But what they learn is to become Republicans.”

Is there anything wrong with legal scholarship from a Christian perspective? Not that I see. Is there anything wrong with a Bush administration that disproportionately uses graduates from such Christian law schools to fill its staffing needs? Not that I see. It’s a shorthand, not better or worse than cherry-picking the Federalist Society or the bar association. I can’t even get exercised over the fact that Gonzales, Rove, and Miers had their baby lawyers making critical staffing decisions for them. The baby lawyers had extremely clear marching orders.

No, the real concern here is that Goodling and her ilk somehow began to conflate God’s work with the president’s. Probably not a lesson she learned in law school. The dream of Regent and its counterparts, like Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, is to redress perceived wrongs to Christians, to reclaim the public square, and reassert Christian political authority. And while that may have been a part of the Bush/Rove plan, it was, in the end, only a small part. Their real zeal was for earthly power. And Goodling was left holding the earthly bag.

At the end of the day, Goodling and the other young foot soldiers for God may simply have run afoul of the first rule of politics, codified in Psalm 146: “Put no trust in princes, in mere mortals in whom there is no help.” ++

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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