Thanks to the document dump, we now have a few more details on the plan to purge a "target list" of prosecutors that had fallen from political favor in the Bush administration. One of the more notable memos is from Sept 13th of last year, a memo from Kyle Sampson, Alberto Gonzales' Chief of Staff, to Harriet Miers...
I am only in favor of executing on a plan to push some USAs out if we really are ready and willing to put in the time necessary to select candidates and get them appointed -- It will be counterproductive to DOJ operations if we push USAs out and then don't have replacements ready to roll immediately. In addition, I strongly recommend that as a matter of administration, we utilize the new statutory provisions that authorize the AG to make USA appointments. [...] By not going the PAS route, we can give far less deference to home state senators and thereby get 1.) our preferred person appointed and 2.) do it far faster and more efficiently at less political costs to the White House.
Of course, that describes exactly what happened here, so kudos to Sampson for unintentionally outlining the entire scandal in a single luminously quotable paragraph. The White House and Alberto Gonzales have been accused of using the Patriot Act to remove a White House "target list" of US Attorneys while intentionally circumventing Senate confirmations of their new replacement candidates -- precisely what Gonzales' Chief of Staff proposed they do, in this memo -- and lying to Congress about that intention.
Gonzales, of course, is terribly shocked that such a thing could happen, and has set up his own Chief of Staff as the fall guy (note to self: Republican loyalty, like Republican money, always flows uphill, never back down.)
But here's the thing -- and forgive me for lapsing into exasperation, at this point, but the mind-numbing stupidity of what we are being asked to believe, and what some news outlets are repeating with apparent seriousness -- that is, without any large winking emoticons, or circus music, or Benny Hill end credits, or a parade of small dogs in sweaters, or any of the other things that should be overlayed onto the video of Gonzales' statements, in order to give them the only gravity they could possibly merit -- it is too much. A little too damn ridiculous for a Tuesday.
If it was just a runaway Kyle Sampson acting on his own, then the matter would have dropped. The "target list" of U.S. Attorneys wouldn't have been forced out. The Patriot Act provisions would not have been used. And yet, they were forced out, and yet, the Patriot Act was used. By Gonzales himself.
This is one of those things so basic, so absolutely incapable of being spun away that it boggles the mind to be required to explain it. The issue here is not that some guy named Kyle Sampson wrote a note about how to force out politically uncooperative U.S. Attorneys by using a tucked-away political provision of the godforsaken "Patriot Act", the single most unpatriotic piece of legislation passed in the last sixty years. The issue is that the White House and the Attorney General of the United States then did it. They, you know, "acted upon that plan in a coordinated fashion" is I guess what the hip kids today would be calling it. It's res ipsa loquitur on a planetary scale.
They came up with a plan. Then they executed the plan. Then they lied about the plan. Alberto Gonzales' Chief of Staff may have suggested it. But Gonzales and Miers and other elements of the White House political apparatus then did it.
Alberto Gonzales is attempting to spin this such that he didn't use the Patriot Act provisions he himself used to replace the Attorneys he himself replaced, or that he somehow didn't realize he was doing it. That's ridiculous. It's inane. And like much of everything else that's happened in the last six years, it's humiliating that we live in a country where ear-bleedingly insulting hokum like that is taken seriously even for a moment. This man should not be a dogcatcher at this point, much less Attorney General.
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