DoJustice [was "The prosecutor purge"]

[Holly Stick]

The Republican National Committee and chairman of George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign have been ordered to preserve all e-mails related to White House business because they might be relevant to multiple congressional investigations...

...In another instance, the congressional investigation into the firing of eight US attorneys has also revealed an e-mail exchange in which J. Scott Jennings, the special assistant to the president and deputy director of public affairs, used an RNC e-mail account to communicate with Kyle Sampson, the former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who is due to testify about the firing on Thursday...

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/03/27/120/

[skdadl]

Here are the people who've been working hard to remind everyone of the Presidential Records Act (although I'm sure they're not alone).

And here are good summaries of what's involved.

[transplant]

Just in: Gonzales Runs Out Of Conference To Avoid Scandal Questions

Chicago Tribune via Huffington Post - Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales today cut short a press conference about Internet safety, leaving the room at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago when reporters questioned him about the firings of U.S. attorneys.

The questioning was to have lasted about 15 minutes, but it ended after less than three. ...

Link to Chicago Tribune [registration required]

[GDKitty]

I missed this, yesterday: Monica Goodling got her law degree from Pat Robertson's "Regent University."

h/t HuffPo frontpage

[pogge]

Digby has some comment on this and notes that Goodling did her undergraduate work at Messiah University.

[skdadl]

transplant's link comes with pictures.   :wink:

Kitty, when I first clicked on to that headline, "Who is Monica Goodling?" -- well, let's just say I had a misreading moment. (Sorry: I know it's scummy to make fun of people's names, but there's something about the shape of that question that is chuckleworth.)

What a strange world some people have constructed. I keep trying to believe that the fundies are irrelevant, annoying but irrelevant, but there they are, so many of them, wielding power in the most powerful nation on earth. If only there were some way to run a massive de-programming of that culture.

[Croghan27]

I missed this, yesterday: Monica Goodling got her law degree from Pat Robertson's "Regent University."

h/t HuffPo frontpage

I read that, GDKitty - in other cultures would it not be called a 'madrassah.'?

[fern hill]

Here's some background on Gonzales in an editorial from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

It seems the knives are being sharpened. People are questioning his experience. And his judgement.

My mother, who lives in the US, told me that Bush 'owes' Gonzales for this:

When the newly elected Gov. Bush hired Gonzales, a neophyte to politics and government, as his legal counsel in the mid-1990s, it turned out that one of his most important tasks would be to get Bush excused from jury duty in a drunken driving case. As described in Bill Minutaglio's 2006 book "The President's Counselor," it was little known at the time that Bush once had been arrested for drunken driving, but that information could have come out during the defense lawyer's questioning of prospective jurors.

Mum said that Gonzales had an 'in' with that particular judge and when that judge found out that he had been lied to by Gonzales, he went ballistic.

[skdadl]

Carol Lam -- her investigations and her firing -- are the linchpin.

I'm just drowning in the details, but they all keep leading back to the White House and/or Dick Cheney's office, yes?

Some of the sleaze is relatively petty -- but then you remember -- nothing is too petty for these guys as long as it's sleazy.

Firing Lam -- unbelievably stupid. Did they really think no one would notice what she was working on?

[faith]

The phrase "drunk on power" comes to mind when reading about the way in which this WH administration goes about their business.
They are so drunk they don't even remember to cover their tracks, or is it just arrogance?

Cheney and Bush and tout le gang, just seem to criminalize everything they touch.

[Holly Stick]

Have they ever been called to account for anything?  Maybe power addiction is like a gambling addiction; you keep doing it more and more, rationalizing stealing money from your employer or whatever, until someone stops you.  (Not that I'm an expert or anything)

[transplant]

Sampson has close relationship with GOP senators on committee that will question him

Raw Story - When D. Kyle Sampson, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's former chief of staff, appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow, he may get a warm reception from some committee Republicans, including a former boss who warned his colleagues against trying "to hurt the man" last week.

Sampson has agreed to testify on Thursday before the Judiciary Committee in the US Senate, a body where he used to work. One of the senators hearing his testimony, Orrin Hatch of Utah, is a former employer. Sampson served as counsel to Senator Hatch from 1999-2001. Records filed with the Federal Election Commission also show that Hatch received a $250 campaign donation in March 2006 from Sampson.

Senator Hatch made it clear in a Judiciary Committee hearing last week authorizing the issuance of subpoenas that he wants Sampson treated well before the Committee. ...

[arborman]

The thing with crooked megalomaniacs is that they never know when to quit, when they've done enough.

I mean, most of these guys, at the top anyways, are mega-rich.  Hundreds of millions of dollars.  And they are in their sixties and older - meaning that they can't be thinking of padding their retirement.  It's something else at play in their motivations.

This fallout is an inevitable consequence of the power they have, I think.  Not just the legal power they get from the constitution, but the additional free pass they got from the 911 hysteria.  They pushed a little, and got away with it.  They pushed some more, and got away with it.  They kept pushing, and getting away with it - even lauded for it - for a long time.

But they weren't/aren't smart enough to quit while they are ahead.  Hollywood has a whole movie formula about the successful scam artist/thief/hero who keeps doing 'one more job', and inevitably all hell breaks loose.  It's not like it isn't predictable - keep pushing your luck and sooner or later you lose.

So they are finally being brought up short.  It's just a goddamn shame that it took so long.  

They have made enormous hay with the most potent myth in US culture: 'The greatest democracy in the world, a beacon of freedom etc.'  People really want to believe that myth, and have disregarded an objectively overwhelming quantity of countervailing evidence to that end.  But the thing about mythologies is that once people finally give up on them - once they finally see behind the curtain, actually hear what everyone has been telling them - they get really pissed off.

There is nothing so painful as having one's most cherished myths destroyed by malevolent or selfish outsiders.  Every culture in the world has experiences it to some degree or other - it happens to indigenous peoples all the time. It takes a lot more evidence and work to discredit an empire mythos as potent as the American one, but it appears to be underway right now.

So the people will get pissed off, and they will either:
a) seek to destroy the mythbreakers - Bushco
b) find a new myth, or find a way to restore the old one some other way

It remains to be seen what will happen in the end.  I suspect outside events will have a large role, combined with the corruption of the emperor and his various courtiers.  This is not a new pattern, just a new context.  The Mayans and others killed off their rulers as the society collapsed and the myths fell apart.

I hope it doesn't go that far - I hope they bring down the emperor and revivify their constitution, rethink their engagement with the world.  But I don't know what will happen in the end.

Alexander Cockburn has a new book out about Rumsfeld.  He was just a super-confident, born-to-privilege, unscrupulous power player.

Rumsfeld always had a mean, corrupt edge in his pursuit of power.  Cheney was his creature.  Cheney wasn't a bright man.  Isn't.  But he would crudely say what the other, more polished assholes wanted to say themselves.

Their power has always protected them from their bungling.

I think the big thing with the bush II regime that really made them think they were invulnerable was actually getting away with stealing the election in 2000.

After doing that, ... what's an encore?

[Croghan27]

JAY-SUS arborman - wadda terrific analysis!