U.S. Justice Attorneys Refuse to Prosecute Guantanamo Cases

The government's legal arguments justifying the detention of hundreds of people at the Guantánamo Bay naval base have been repudiated three times by the U.S. Supreme Court. But it's not just outsiders who take issue with the U.S. Justice Department strategy: Up to one fourth of the department's own civil appellate staff has recently opted out of handling the government's cases against detainee appeals, two sources familiar with the matter tell U.S.

These conscientious objectors—their exact number is not known—have decided not to take part in the government's litigation against the detainees because of disagreements with the legal approach, these sources say.

  US News

Another One Bites the Dust

On the heels of Brad Schlozman, Wan Kim is resigning from the DoJ's Civil Rights Division. My, my, the list just keeps growing. The purge that was intended by the DoJ to get rid of "disloyal" federal attorneys seems to have backfired into a purge of the DoJ itself.

More Executive Privilege

And you didn't think there was room for any more.

The House Judiciary Committee was set to hold a hearing on the Civil Rights Division's voting rights section tomorrow, but no more. That's because the Justice Department has refused to allow the chief of the section, John Tanner, to testify. The committee has postponed the hearing until the Department allows Tanner to appear.

  TPM Muckraker

And on that day, Satan will be skating to work.

There Goes Another One

You already know that there was another car attack in the UK, but did you know that there was also another resignation from DoJ? (The count.)

....hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Show Down

The Senate subpoenaed the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney's office Wednesday, demanding documents and elevating the confrontation with President Bush over the administration's warrant-free eavesdropping on Americans.

  Yahoo

Game on.

Separately, the Senate Judiciary Committee also is summoning Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to discuss the program and an array of other matters that have cost a half-dozen top Justice Department officials their jobs, committee chairman Patrick Leahy announced.

Check.

Also named in subpoenas signed by Leahy were the Justice Department and the National Security Council. The four parties have until July 18 to comply.

[...]

"If there have been lies told to us, we'll refer it to the Department of Justice and the U.S. attorney for whatever legal action they think is appropriate," Leahy told reporters.

Square one.

There for a minute, I thought we might have a game. Whatever legal action the DoJ thinks is appropriate? And, tell me again who the head of the DoJ is....some guy named Gonzales, isn't it?

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Ooops, There Goes Another One

Acting Associate Attorney General William Mercer of the DoJ decided he'd rather do something else and resigned today. He joins the lineup: Kyle Sampson, Monica Goodling, Michael Battle, Paul McNulty, and Michael Elston.

Lots more office space at the DoJ these days.

Attorney Purge Redux

Like rats abandoning a sinking ship. On the heels of news that Gonzo is under investigation in his own DoJ...

Mike Elston, chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, is the fifth Justice official to leave after being linked to the dismissals of the prosecutors.

Elston was accused of threatening at least four of the eight fired U.S. attorneys to keep quiet about their ousters. In a statement Friday, the Justice Department said Elston was leaving voluntarily to take a job with an unnamed Washington-area law firm.

  Houston Chronicle

....hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

A Cancer in the DoJ

The investigation is now expanding into more areas: hiring practices in the Department of Justice Honors Program and Summer Law Intern Program and in the Department's Civil Rights Division.

The Arrow of Blame

Pointing in all directions at the DoJ.

He said, she said, continues...

Goodling said that Kyle Sampson had told her that there was no problem with taking politics into account in hiring immigration judges. And the reason, he said, was that the department's Office of Legal Counsel had said it was OK.

[...]

As Marty Lederman puts it, "Something is happening here, but we don't know what it is. Goodling obviously knew that her conduct in this regard was dubious, and testified about it even though no one had raised any question about it previously, so as to ensure that her immunity would extend to this episode, as well. (She was very well-advised by John Dowd.)"

To hear Goodling tell it, she was assured by the attorney general's chief of staff that there was a legal basis for stocking the nation's immigration courts with political loyalists -- when no such legal basis existed. And the Justice Department now disavows this activity all together.

  TPM Muckraker

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Purge

James Comey was John Ashcroft's assistant AG. Shortly after Ashcroft was replaced by Torture Gonzales, James Comey resigned. Today, Comey testified before the Senate committee investigating the Gonzales DoJ attorney purges. Unfortunately, I was not able to watch the testimony, and so I have been reading some blog and news articles to get the flavor of what went down. I'll try to be relatively brief relaying it.

It seems that after US Attorney Bud Cummins was fired, he received an email from the former Assistant AG in which Comey wrote:

"I will not sit by and watch good people smeared," Comey wrote in early March. "What's that quotation about all that's necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to remain silent?"

I wonder if he chose his words with intent. Evil.

Let's take a look at this man, as he performed his office. Going back to the news when Comey retired, an article at Law.com said,

The DOJ announced Comey's resignation Wednesday afternoon.

Comey has not yet found a new job, according to a DOJ source, because to even look for something new could be perceived as unethical.

What? No revolving door for Comey? Even avoiding the perception of being unethical? Hello, Paul Wolfowitz. Keep in mind that Comey is a Republican, appointed to his AG position by the Bush administration.

As the Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Comey "directed several high-profile securities and fraud investigations, including WorldCom, Adelphia and ImClone." Bush nominated him to the AG position in 2003. I can't tell you how the apparently honest and dedicated Comey slipped through the Bush Administration vetting routine. But the Law.com article goes on to report...

He was rumored to be a candidate for attorney general after his boss, John Ashcroft, stepped down. But his chances weren't good from the start. Some of the president's top advisers felt he was insensitive to political concerns, according to a story in Legal Times, a Recorder affiliate.

Among other tensions, Comey pushed for the DOJ to release so-called torture memos to the media and for controversial legal analyses regarding the use of torture to be rewritten. He also appointed a special prosecutor to take over the investigation into whether a White House official leaked a Central Intelligence Agency operative's name to the media.

And that's how Patrick Fitzgerald got the Plame case.

Comey was against torture. No wonder he wasn't chosen to replace Ashcroft. Bush needed an AG who would condone and permit him to use torture.

When asked about the CIA leak investigation during his Senate confirmation hearing, Comey said: "I don't care about politics. I don't care about expediency. I care about doing the right thing."

Cleary, he would never do in a position of power in a Bush administration.

Comey knew the score. In February of 2006, Newsweek reported on the occasion of Comeys' resignation, in an article about a small group of attorneys within the administration going up against the Vice President's office and the administration's "riding rough-shod" over the Constitution.

Comey thanked "people who came to my office, or my home, or called my cell phone late at night, to quietly tell me when I was about to make a mistake; they were the people committed to getting it right—and to doing the right thing—whatever the price. These people," said Comey, "know who they are. Some of them did pay a price for their commitment to right, but they wouldn't have it any other way."

When Comey refused reauthorization of Bush's secret eavesdropping program (during a hospital stay by Ashcroft), Bush started referring to him snidely as Cuomey (apparently in reference to Mario Cuomo, a liberal Democratic New York Governor).

On the 31st of December, 2005, Firedoglake reported:

Comey announced his resignation from the Justice Department in March 2005. And when BushCo. tried to appoint a Skull & Bones crony to oversee Fitzgerald, Comey did an end run around them and appointed the extremely ethical David Margolis to the task as his parting shot out the door.

It seems that before his resignation, Comey had generated his own list of US attorneys to be fired. Unsurprisingly, the list was not the same as the one that the Gonzales DoJ finally used. According to TPM Muckraker,

A former Justice official explained the discrepancy: "Comey's definition of incompetence turned out to be quite different from Sampson's and had nothing to do with politics."

In fact, Comey commented in today's testimony about those who were purged:

"My experience with the U.S. attorneys just listed was very positive," said Comey, now general counsel of Lockheed Martin Corp. Firing them for poor performance would not be "consistent with my experience," he said. "I had very positive encounters with these folks."

The Gavel has a short clip of Comey's testimony today, including this quote:

“If that was going on [hiring and firing for political purposes], that strikes at the core of what the Department of Justice is. You just cannot do that, you can’t hire assistant US Attorneys based on political affilation, because it deprives the Department of its lifeblood, which is the ability to stand up and have juries of all stripes believe what you say, and have sheriffs and judges and jailers and the people we deal with trust the Department of Justice."

And Firedoglake also has an excellent timeline of what's been brewing at the DoJ (and for how long), including Comey's influence and acts (and including Comey's farewell speech at DoJ).

I think we sometimes forget that there are honest Republicans with integrity.

We don't see many of them in this administration.

Purge

Monica Goodling, you will remember, resigned from her position at Justice and took the fifth before she was called to take the stand (a first?) by the congressional committee investigating the attorney purge. Then she was offered immunity by the committee in exchange for her testimony.

But now, the DoJ is investigating her. (I love it when agencies are permitted to police their own.)

[T]his raises a weird possibility: the fact that the DOJ is investigating Goodling could put a roadblock in the way of the investigating committees' efforts to give her immunity and force her to testify on Capitol Hill. So Goodling's new alleged wrongdoing could have the perverse effect of preventing her from being forced to go up to Capitol Hill and reveal what she knows about what happened in the Purge.

  TPM post

And wouldn't that be the whole point of the DoJ's investigation?

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Speaking of Mexico

I've been hearing on the news here that Texas doesn't want a border wall. Texan politicians, while they may be as crooked as the Rio Grande (el Rio Bravo), have enough sense to realize a couple of things: 1) the wall would have to be built on the US side of the river, which would obstruct access to the river for business and sports/leisure pursuits, and 2) it would be an obstacle to trade with Mexico. Plus border property owners don't think they want to give up their land to the Federal government. That would be downright un-Texan.

And, a Mexican drug kingpin, wanted by the U.S. for 15 years ($2 million reward), would have been extradicted to the U.S. early this year had the Justice Department filed a timely extradition request.

[A] Justice Department spokesman said his agency doesn't believe that the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Diego erred in not seeking the extradition of Arellano-Felix earlier. He added that "we are still talking with Mexico about extraditing him here, and we'd prefer to discuss the case with the Mexicans, not the media."

  McClatchy article

Undoubtedly.

Looking to Practice Law at the DOJ?

Seems like a variation of the K-Street Project. If you have liberal leanings, you need not apply, even if you went to Harvard or Yale. You won't even get an interview.

Students at fourth-tier religious institutions, however...

It would seem that the DoJ screens applicants for things like spelling errors on their applications, and "inappropriate information about them on the Internet." Inappropriate information in the case of the DoJ screeners appears to be any liberal activity.

You and What Army?

Congress thinks they're going to get the RNC/White House/Justice Department emails? Feh. I believe the WH has thumbed its nose at any law it chooses to ignore enough times that we can stop pretending they're ever going to do otherwise.

I think White House pressers Scott Stanzel can do a little better on telling us why the White House changed their email retention policy for RNC emails back in 2004.

[...]

[O]rders from Pat Fitzgerald were the reason for the change in White House policy in 2004. So the change in policy was tied to yet another criminal investigation of the White House. And the White House and the key employees in question -- namely Karl Rove and people working for him at the White House political office -- were specifically on notice not to destroy the emails they sent through the RNC servers. And yet they took affirmative steps to continuing destroying them, even after all of this had happened.

  TPM post

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

On the Lam and Taking the Fifth

A little background about Monica Goodling, the Justice official who is hiding out (on indefinite leave of absence) and refusing to testify, is in the Washington Post.

Goodling majored in communications at Messiah College, a Christian school in Grantham, Pa., that does not have co-ed dorms or allow alcohol on campus.

[...]

Goodling enrolled in law school at American University but transferred to Regent, founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson in Virginia Beach. [...] The "curriculum at Regent is different from other law schools. There is an attempt by professors to integrate biblical principles into areas of the law," said Dugan Kelley, who worked with Goodling on Regent's moot court.

You know, like "Thou shalt only lie when thy politics are at stake", and "Thou shalt hew the way for thy Lord", and "Thou shalt not tolerate whining".

Okay, that wasn't fair. Perhaps Ms. Goodling just didn't absorb what the school taught.

"She is very motivated by her faith," [former department co-worker, Susan Richmond] Johnson added. "She doesn't wear her faith on her sleeve, but she lives a very faithful life."

Oh, no question.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Purge

There goes another one....

White House political director Sara Taylor is out the door at the White House, according to Washington Wire. Taylor came up a number of times yesterday during the Kyle Sampson hearing as having worked closely with Sampson (along with another Karl Rove aide Scott Jennings) to install Rove's former aide Tim Griffin as the U.S. Attorney in eastern Arkansas.

  TPM Muckraker article

Better start keeping a tally.

And while we're on the subject...

There are some Supreme Court Justices who need to be replaced, too.

The Supreme Court ordered the federal government on Monday to take a fresh look at regulating carbon dioxide emissions from cars, a rebuke to Bush administration policy on global warming.

In a 5-4 decision, the court said the Clean Air Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to regulate the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from cars.

  Raw Story article

Protecting the Children

August 2006:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced a new public service campaign Monday that will warn teenage girls against posting information on the Internet that could put them at risk of attack by child predators.

"Every day, these predators are looking for someone to hurt," Gonzales said at the 18th annual Crimes Against Children Conference in Dallas. "Every day, we must educate parents and children about the threat."

  CBS article

Protecting them from the likes of Congressman Mark Foley, R-Fla, I suppose.

Protected against child predators unless your child somehow ends up in the hands of the Texas Youth Commission....

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, both already under siege for other matters, are now being accused of failing to prosecute officers of the Texas Youth Commission after a Texas Ranger investigation documented that guards and administrators were sexually abusing the institution's minor boy inmates.

[...]

The Texas Youth Comission controversy traces back to a criminal investigation conducted in 2005 by Texas Ranger Brian Burzynski. The investigation revealed key employees at the West Texas State School in Pyote, Texas, were systematically abusing youth inmates in their custody.

[...]

Burzynski presented his findings to the attorney general in Texas, to the U.S. Attorney Sutton, and to the Department of Justice civil rights division. From all three, Burzynski received no interest in prosecuting the alleged sexual offenses.

[...]

Angle says that while the U.S. Justice Department and Texas attorney general's office were not prosecuting in this case, they were actively pursuing minor voter fraud issues with only a handful of allegations to go on.

On March 2, 2007, Governor Rick Perry appointed Jay Kimbrough, his former staff chief and homeland security director, to serve as "special master" to lead an investigation into the Texas Youth Commission sex abuse scandal. Shortly thereafter, the commission stopped a hiring practice that had allowed convicted felons to work as administrators in the system. The practice had involved a requirement that prior criminal records be destroyed for employees hired by the commission.

On March 17, 2007, the entire Texas Youth Commission governing board resigned.

  Free Republic article

And here's how easy it is to fall into the hands of the Texas Youth Commission...

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

DALLAS - A teenager has been jailed for more than a year for shoving a teacher’s aide at her high school, a case that has sparked anger and heightened racial tensions in rural East Texas.

Shaquandra Cotton, who is black, claims the teacher’s aide pushed her first and would not let her enter school before the morning bell in 2005. A jury convicted the 15-year-old girl in March 2006 on a felony count of shoving a public servant, who was not seriously injured.

The girl is in the Ron Jackson Correctional Complex in Brownwood, about 300 miles from her home in Paris. The facility is part of an embattled juvenile system that is the subject of state and federal investigations into allegations that staff members physically and sexually abused inmates.

Under the sentence handed down by Lamar County Judge Chuck Superville, she will remain at the facility until she meets state rehabilitation standards or reaches her 21st birthday.

  Boston Herald article

And how is Gonzo Gonzales faring these days?

Princes of Darkness

In 2005, investigators from the Texas Rangers found that guards and administrator [of the Texas Youth Commission] were sexually abusing institutionalized youths, who were recruited to provide "entertainment" during night-long orgies.

[...]

The Texas Rangers submitted their report of sexual abuse to the A.G. in Texas and to the U.S. Attorney for that state, Johnny Sutton, and to the Department of Justice. The Rangers wanted someone to prosecute the bad guys, and they felt they had a strong case.

Now, Johnny Sutton -- unlike, say, Carol Lam -- was never in danger of losing his gig, since he is considered one of the "loyal Bushies" among the U.S. Attorneys.

[...]

When the Texas Rangers asked to have the Texas Youth Commission abuses prosecuted, Sutton's chief assistant sent an extraordinary response: The office had decided not to pursue the matter because the sexually abused boys had not sustained "bodily injury."

[...]

The Alberto Gonzales Department of Justice declined prosecution as well. The paperwork is here. Matt Angle of the Lone Star Project believes that the case was shut down on direct orders from Washington.

  Cannonfire post

Update 3:20pm: TJ at POAC reminds me of Gonzales' recent claim under fire: "I'm not going to resign," he said. "I'm going to stay focused on protecting our kids."

Matt Angle, you note, doesn't "know", but "believes". However, I can understand that belief, considering how past Republican White Houses involving the Bush name have managed to avoid investigation in this hideous realm.

And I guess we shouldn't have expected the Texas "Justice" Department to do anything other than to tie a criminal action in a sexual abuse case to "bodily injury". The paper reads:

As you know, our interviews of the victims revealed that none sustained "bodily injury". Federal courts have interpreted this phrase to include physical pain. None of the victims have claimed to have felt physical pain during the course of the sexual assaults which they described.

Just taking their cue from the AG's office - the guy who defined torture as something producing organ failure.

I always think I can get away from this subject, and the view of the Bush circle as fiends, but it just keeps coming back up. It's not like I haven't completely been convinced of their involvement in narcotics, or that they truly are a Crime Family, but there's something so much more insidious and heinous about this that I subconsciously continue to put it aside. Which may be why it keeps coming back into my window.

Just about two years ago, when the Jeff Gannon case brushed up against this dark story, I asked a question on YWA:

Will this hideous business finally break into the light of day and the criminal predators in our government be stopped? Or will it be buried again?

Apparently the latter

Buttie's idea of a good Supreme Court nominee

As an assistant White House counsel in 1984, John Roberts scoffed at the notion that men and women should earn equal pay in jobs of comparable importance, and he belittled three female Republican members of Congress who promoted that idea to the Reagan administration.

[...]

In his memo to White House counsel Fred Fielding, Roberts said the women's letter "contends that more is required because women still earn only $0.60 for every $1 earned by men, ignoring the factors that explain that apparent disparity, such as seniority, the fact that many women frequently leave the work force for extended periods of time. ... I honestly find it troubling that three Republican representatives are so quick to embrace such a radical redistributive concept. Their slogan may as well be, 'From each according to his ability, to each according to her gender.' "

[...]

The Feb. 20, 1984, memo from Roberts was among 5,393 pages of records released Monday by the National Archives that were from Roberts' work during the Reagan administration in the early 1980s.

The records, which have been stored at the Reagan presidential library in Simi Valley, Calif., did not include material from Roberts' tenure as deputy U.S. solicitor general from 1989 to 1993, a period in which he took part in cases involving abortion rights, school desegregation and religion in public places. Senate Democrats and the Bush administration continue to wrangle over the release of those papers. The administration has withheld the documents, saying that to release them would breach the attorney-client relationship.

  USA Today article

If they were willing to release that boner, I wonder what's in the records they won't release.

Expect this redeeming bit to ensure him a seat on the panel, regardless of what they turn up in his records:

In February 1986, Roberts drafted a letter for a White House official to a lawmaker who had raised concerns that Reagan might pardon people who had been convicted of bombing abortion clinics. "No matter how lofty or sincerely held the goal, those who resort to violence to achieve it are criminals," Roberts wrote, adding that "neither the cause ... nor the target of their violence will in any way be considered to mitigate the seriousness of their offense against our laws."

  USA Today article

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Gaps

Michigan Democrat John Conyers and nine Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee issued a letter to the U.S. Inspector General calling for an investigation into a 12-hour delay between the Justice Department learning of the outing of a CIA agent and telling the White House to preserve documents, RAW STORY has learned.

Perhaps more significantly, however, Judiciary Democrats point to the 67 day gap between the time the CIA called the Justice Department to investigate the CIA outing and the time that the Justice Department directed the FBI to investigate the matter.

  Raw Story article