Saturday, March 24, 2007

The Imperative of Congressional Testimony Under Oath (12:46 pm)

Evan Perez for the WSJ’s Washington Wire reports that two noteworthy recent criminal convictions of Bush administration officials - J. Steven Griles and David Safavian - were both due in significant part to charges that they had each lied to Senate investigators.

The importance isn’t lost on lawmakers who are pushing the White House to reconsider its insistence that President Bush’s political adviser, Karl Rove, former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and other aides can be interviewed only in private, not under oath and with no transcript.

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John and Elizabeth Edwards Scheduled to Appear On 60 Minutes (12:27 pm)

Taegan Goddard reports that

John and Elizabeth Edwards will discuss her recent cancer diagnosis and his presidential bid in an interview with Katie Couric on 60 Minutes to be broadcast on Sunday at 7:00 PM, ET/PT

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Saturday Cartoon (6:47 am)

Porky In Wackyland

Directed by Bob Clampett, this 1938 Warner Bros. Looney Tune contributed significantly to expanding the realm of imaginative possibility in filmmaking. The surrealist influence of Salvador Dali is rather quite evident. It was also a landmark in helping establish the “Warner Style” of comedy, in both inventiveness of story and sense of cartoon humor.

Animation: Norman McCabe, I. Ellis
Musical Direction: Carl Stalling

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Bush’s Police State (6:12 am)

In a WaPo op-ed, the recipient of an illegally issued FBI National Security Letter, who is an innocent third party upon whom a gag order has been imposed precluding discussion of the letter and related matters, anonymously describes the experience of existing in the repressive regime of Bush’s authoritarian law.

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Friday, March 23, 2007

Proof that Naughty Alberto Told a Big Fib (5:40 pm)

Lara Jakes Jordan for AP reports:

WASHINGTON - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales approved plans to fire several U.S. attorneys in a November meeting, according to documents released Friday that contradict earlier claims that he was not closely involved in the dismissals.

The Nov. 27 meeting, in which the attorney general and at least five top Justice Department officials participated, focused on a five-step plan for carrying out the firings of the prosecutors, Justice Department officials said late Friday.

There, Gonzales signed off on the plan, which was crafted by his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson. Sampson resigned last week amid a political firestorm surrounding the firings.

Previously, Gonzales had stated:

“I knew my chief of staff was involved in the process of determining who were the weak performers — where were the districts around the country where we could do better for the people in that district, and that’s what I knew,” Gonzales said last week. “But that is in essence what I knew about the process; was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on. That’s basically what I knew as the attorney general.”

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Phony “Voting Fraud” Charges by DoJ Designed By Bush/Rove As Weapon Against Democratic Voters (2:00 pm)

Greg Gordon, Margaret Talev and Marisa Taylor for McClatchy connect the dots:

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.

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.

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.
(…)
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... read more

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Waxman Asks for Documents Related to DoJ’s Politically Motivated Interference in Tobacco Litigation (7:55 am)

Jane Hamsher at firedoglake reports that Henry Waxman has requested documents and communications between the Department of Justice and the White House relating to the litigation, following the report by Sharon Eubanks, the Department’s lead attorney in the case, of political interference.

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Obey vs WaPo War Cheerleaders (7:29 am)

More of this, please!
Greg Sargent calls attention to, and provides a partial transcript of, this clip wherein David Obey slams the pro-war cheerleading of the Washington Post.