| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Michelle Malkin" |
| Date: |
15 Mar 2007 11:07:17 AM |
| Object: |
OT: All Roads Lead to Rove |
All roads lead to Rove
The White House political director was clearly at the center of the partisan
plot to fire U.S. attorneys, despite the administration's clumsy attempts to
pretend otherwise.
By Sidney Blumenthal
Karl Rove
March 15, 2007 | The Bush administration's first instinct was to shield Karl
Rove from scrutiny when Congress began inquiring about the unusual firings
of eight U.S. attorneys. Among the replacements, the proposed new U.S.
attorney for Arkansas happened to be one of Rove's most devoted underlings,
his head of opposition research, Tim Griffin, who boasted during the 2000
presidential election about the effectiveness of the negative campaign
against Al Gore: "We make the bullets!" Griffin also posted a sign in his
department at Bush headquarters: "Rain hell on Al!" A letter written by the
Department of Justice in late February informed Congress: "The department is
not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Mr.
Griffin." Despite this categorical disavowal, a sheaf of internal Justice
Department e-mails released this week to Congress under subpoena revealed
Kyle Sampson, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff, writing in
mid-December 2006, "I know getting him appointed was important to Harriet,
Karl, etc." Harriet, of course, was Harriet Miers, then the White House
legal counsel.
The Justice Department's statement on Karl Rove was simply one part of its
coverup. The department's three top officials -- Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales, Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty and William E. Moschella,
principal associate deputy attorney general -- all testified before Congress
under oath that the dismissed U.S. attorneys had been removed for
"performance" reasons, not because they had been insufficiently partisan in
their prosecution of Democrats or because they would be replaced by those
who would be. Yet another Sampson e-mail, sent to Miers in March 2005, had
ranked all 93 U.S. attorneys on the basis of being "good performers," those
who "exhibited loyalty" to the administration, or "low performers," those
who "chafed against Administration initiatives, etc."
The day before the e-mails were made public Sampson resigned, offering a
classic fall-guy statement, claiming that he was the one who failed to
inform Gonzales and other officials about the firings. Sampson, who was
Gonzales' closest aide, accompanying him from the White House Counsel's
Office to the Justice Department when Gonzales was appointed attorney
general, had sought to become a U.S. attorney himself through the purge. And
Sampson was considered to be politically adept enough to be considered a
stand-in for the supposedly indispensable Rove. When it was rumored that
Rove might be indicted in the Valerie Plame case, the Washington Post
reported that Sampson was likely to replace him.
Sampson's abrupt departure was followed by Gonzales' bizarre press
conference on Wednesday. Speaking in a passive voice that "mistakes were
made," he pleaded ignorance of "all decisions" at his department, explained
that it has 110,000 employees, appealed to his modest origins, and promised
to oversee the investigation of his own misfeasance. His defense was the
very grounds used to fire the U.S. attorneys: poor performance. He used his
failure as a shield.
But the day before, Gonzales' ignorance defense had already been punctured.
A White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, acknowledged that the U.S.
attorneys' dismissals were preceded by a conversation between President Bush
and Gonzales last October in which Bush complained that some prosecutors
were not pursuing voter fraud investigations. These were, in fact, cases
that Rove thought were especially important to Republicans.
Rove was the conduit for Republican political grievances about the U.S.
attorneys. He was the fulcrum and the lever. He was the collector of
information and the magnet of power. He was the originator, formulator and
director. But, initially, according to the administration, like Gonzales, he
supposedly knew nothing and did nothing.
Even after the administration alibis had collapsed, the White House trotted
out Dan Bartlett, the cool and calm communications director, to engage in a
bit of cognitive dissonance. There was no plot, and maybe Rove was involved
in the thing that didn't happen. "You're trying to connect a lot of dots
that aren't connectible," Bartlett said, adding, "It wouldn't be surprising
that Karl or other people were receiving these complaints." Thus the "dots"
are invisible and Rove is at their center.
To the extent that the facts are known, Rove keeps surfacing in the middle
of the scandal. And it is implausible that Sampson, the latest designated
fall guy, was responsible for an elaborate bureaucratic coup d'état. Nor is
it credible that Gonzales -- or Harriet Miers, who has yet to be heard --
saw or heard no evil. Neither is it reasonable that Gonzales or Miers, both
once Bush's personal attorneys in Texas, getting him out of scrapes such as
his drunken driving arrest, could be the political geniuses behind the
firings. Gonzales' and Miers' service is notable for their obedience, lack
of originality and eagerness to act as tools. The scheme bears the marks of
Rove's obsessions, methods and sources. His history contains a wealth of
precedents in which he manipulated law enforcement for political purposes.
And his long-term strategy for permanent Republican control of government
depended on remaking the federal government to create his ultimate goal -- a
one-party state.
"We're a go for the US Atty plan," White House deputy counsel William Kelley
notified the Justice Department on Dec. 4, 2006, three days before seven of
the eight U.S. attorneys were dismissed. "WH leg[islative affairs],
political, and communications have signed off..."
From the earliest Republican campaigns that Rove ran in Texas, beginning in
1986, the FBI was involved in investigating every one of his candidates'
Democratic opponents. Rove happened to have a close and mysterious
relationship with the chief of the FBI office in Austin. Investigations were
announced as elections grew close, but there were rarely indictments, just
tainted Democrats and victorious Republicans. On one occasion, Rove himself
proclaimed that the FBI had a prominent Democrat under investigation -- an
investigation that led to Rove's client's win. In 1990, the Texas Democratic
Party chairman issued a statement: "The recurring leaks of purported FBI
investigations of Democratic candidates during election campaigns is highly
questionable and repugnant."
A year later, Rove received a reward. Gov. Bill Clements, a Rove client,
appointed him to the East Texas State University board of regents. Appearing
before the state Senate's Nominations Committee, a Democratic senator asked
Rove about how long he had known the local FBI chief. "Ah, Senator," replied
Rove, "it depends. Would you define 'know' for me?"
Rising to the White House as Bush's chief political strategist, Rove well
understood the power of U.S. attorneys to damage Democrats and protect
Republicans, and he paid close attention to their selection. When U.S.
senators, who recommend the U.S. attorneys for their districts, wanted a
more independent-minded professional, Rove leaned on them. In 2001, he
instructed Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, R-Ill., to sponsor a safe choice from
within Republican state circles. Rove "just said we don't want you going
outside the state. We don't want to be moving U.S. attorneys around,"
Fitzgerald told the Chicago Tribune on March 12. But Sen. Fitzgerald would
not relent, and his nominee, Patrick Fitzgerald, an assistant U.S. attorney
from New York, became the U.S. attorney in Illinois, where he successfully
prosecuted Republicans, including the incumbent governor, George Ryan, for
corruption, and went on to be appointed special prosecutor in the Plame
case. "That Fitzgerald appointment got great headlines for you, but it
ticked off the base," Rove told Sen. Fitzgerald.
In 2002, the first midterm elections of the Bush presidency, Republicans
systematically raised charges of voter fraud involving Native Americans in
the hotly contended U.S. Senate race in South Dakota. Though the accusations
were never proved and the GOP failed to depose the Democratic senator, Tim
Johnson, the campaign served as a template.
By the election of 2004, Rove became a repository of charges of voter fraud
across the country, from Philadelphia to Milwaukee to New Mexico, all in
swing states. In the campaign, unproven voter fraud charges, always aimed at
minority voters, became a leitmotif of Republican efforts.
In Washington state, when the Democrat won the governorship by 129 votes,
the state Republican Party chairman, Chris Vance, demanded that U.S.
attorney John McKay tell him the status of his investigation. At that time,
Vance was in constant contact with Rove. "I thought it was part of my job,
to be a conduit," Vance told the Seattle Times. "We had a Republican
secretary of state, a Republican prosecutor in King County and a Republican
U.S. attorney, and no one was doing anything." McKay refused to have any
conversation about an investigation. And he found no basis for charging
anyone with voter fraud. In a Sept. 13, 2006, e-mail, Kyle Sampson
identified McKay as one of those "we should now consider pushing out" -- and
he was among the eight attorneys fired.
In 2006, Rove addressed the Republican Lawyers Association on the "growing
problem," as he put it, of voter fraud. Every instance he cited was in a
swing state. New Mexico was one of them.
Rove had heard complaints from the New Mexico Republican Party chairman,
Allen Weh, about David Iglesias, the state's U.S. attorney, for his supposed
refusal to indict Democrats for voter fraud. Iglesias appeared to be a dream
figure for local Republicans -- the model for the movie "A Few Good Men,"
Hispanic and evangelical. "Is anything ever going to happen to that guy?"
Weh asked Rove at a White House Christmas party. "He's gone," Rove replied.
Indeed, Iglesias' firing was already a done deal.
In California, it was time for payback against U.S. attorney Carol Lam, who
had prosecuted Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham in the most flagrant corruption
case involving a member of Congress. Her probe was expanding to encompass
the dealings of Rep. Jerry Lewis, another California Republican. On May 11,
2006, Sampson e-mailed the White House Counsel's Office regarding "the real
problem we have right now with Carol Lam." Soon, she was axed, one of the
eight.
Those fired were not completely "loyal," as Sampson's e-mails emphasized.
But to what policies should a prosecutor be "loyal"? Two academics, Donald
C. Shields of the University of Missouri and John F. Cragan of Illinois
State University, studied the pattern of U.S. attorneys' prosecutions under
the Bush administration. Their conclusions in their study, "The Political
Profiling of Elected Democratic Officials," are that "across the nation from
2001 through 2006 the Bush Justice Department investigated Democratic office
holders and candidates at a rate more than four times greater (nearly 80
percent to 18 percent) than they investigated Republican office holders and
seekers." They also report, "Data indicate that the offices of the U.S.
Attorneys across the nation investigate seven times as many Democratic
officials as they investigate Republican officials, a number that exceeds
even the racial profiling of African Americans in traffic stops." Thus what
the 85 U.S. attorneys who were not dismissed are doing is starkly detailed.
If the Democrats hadn't won the midterm elections last year there is no
reason to believe that the plan to use the U.S. attorneys for political
prosecutions -- as they have been used systematically under Bush -- wouldn't
have gone forward completely unimpeded. Without the new Congress issuing
subpoenas, there would be no exposure, no hearings, no press conferences --
no questions at all.
The replacement of the eight fired U.S. attorneys through a loophole in the
Patriot Act that enables the administration to evade consultation with and
confirmation by Congress is a convenient element in the well-laid scheme.
But it was not ad hoc, erratic or aberrant. Rather, it was the logical
outcome of a long effort to distort the constitutional framework for
partisan consolidation of power into a de facto one-party state.
This effort began two generations ago with Richard Nixon's drive to forge an
imperial presidency, using extralegal powers of government to aggrandize
unaccountable power in the executive and destroy political opposition. Nixon
was thwarted in the Watergate scandal. We will never know his full
malevolent intentions, but we do know that in the aftermath of the 1972
election he wanted to remake the executive branch to create what the Bush
administration now calls a "unitary executive." Nixon later explained his
core doctrine: "When the president does it, that means it's not illegal."
Karl Rove is the rightful heir to Nixonian politics. His first notice in
politics occurred as a witness before the Senate Watergate Committee. From
Nixon to Bush, Rove is the single continuous character involved in the
tactics and strategy of political subterfuge.
.
|
|
| User: "johac" |
|
| Title: Re: OT: All Roads Lead to Rove |
17 Mar 2007 02:29:31 AM |
|
|
In article <W4CdnXbJCey28mTYnZ2dnUVZ_r6vnZ2d@comcast.com>,
"Michelle Malkin" <hypatiab7@comcast.net> wrote:
All roads lead to Rove
The White House political director was clearly at the center of the partisan
plot to fire U.S. attorneys, despite the administration's clumsy attempts to
pretend otherwise.
It seems that when anything underhanded happens in Washington these
days, you don't have to wait long before the name Rove comes up. I think
it's past time for the obnoxious little toad to go.
By Sidney Blumenthal
Karl Rove
March 15, 2007 | The Bush administration's first instinct was to shield Karl
Rove from scrutiny when Congress began inquiring about the unusual firings
of eight U.S. attorneys. Among the replacements, the proposed new U.S.
attorney for Arkansas happened to be one of Rove's most devoted underlings,
his head of opposition research, Tim Griffin, who boasted during the 2000
presidential election about the effectiveness of the negative campaign
against Al Gore: "We make the bullets!" Griffin also posted a sign in his
department at Bush headquarters: "Rain hell on Al!" A letter written by the
Department of Justice in late February informed Congress: "The department is
not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Mr.
Griffin." Despite this categorical disavowal, a sheaf of internal Justice
Department e-mails released this week to Congress under subpoena revealed
Kyle Sampson, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff, writing in
mid-December 2006, "I know getting him appointed was important to Harriet,
Karl, etc." Harriet, of course, was Harriet Miers, then the White House
legal counsel.
Miers is another one. She looks like the sweet grandmotherly type but I
wouldn't turn my back on her.
--
John #1782
"We should always be disposed to believe that which appears to us to be
white is really black, if the hierarchy of the church so decides."
- Saint Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) Founder of the Jesuit Order.
.
|
|
|
|
|
Related Articles |
Re: Israel jews bombing Radio towers, oil storage tanks, bridges, roads, airports...WHAT does this have to do with Muslim Terrorists?
Too Many Truckers Endanger Others on Roads . . .
An Evening with Ellery Schempp Hampton Roads Va
OT: Congress seen paving way for private toll roads
OT: Sugar powers a revolution on Brazil's roads
OT: In an African City, All Roads Lead to Rome
Hampton Roads Sep C&S Group
Re: When Rove Gets Desperate, It's Time to Kill a Lot of People --Novemeber is Impeachment Referendum ... do your part to save us all
| OT: Karl Rove
OT: Four More Years Attributed to Rove's Strategy
OT: Rove Is Promoted To Deputy Staff Chief
OT: With Bush Safely Re-elected, Rove Turns Intensity to Policy
Military Veteran Calls Karl Rove, Bush and NeoCons "Cowards"
OT: Karl Rove's America
BuzzFlash Interview With Sen Harry Reid Rips Bush, Rove, Bolton To Shreds
|
|
|
