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Wanker Of The Week

Okay, so he’s not nearly as bad as Michael “Autistic kids are whiny brats” Savage, but Ron Fournier is still pretty heinous:

Last week, we learned that while investigators for the House Oversight Committee were looking into the 2004 death of Cpl. Pat Tillman… they discovered that top political aide Karl Rove had exchanged emails with the Associated Press’ Ron Fournier on the day the news of Tillman’s death broke.

In one email, Rove asked, “How does our country continue to produce men and women like this?” Fournier responded: “The Lord creates men and women like this all over the world. But only the great and free countries allow them to flourish. Keep up the fight.”

(…)

Fournier, now the wire service’s D.C. bureau chief, shrugged off the embarrassing revelation, conceding only: “I regret the breezy nature of the correspondence.”

Of course, Fournier wasn’t simply being breezy. “Have a great weekend” — that’s “breezy.”

(…)

The Fournier revelation came as no surprise to anyone who has read his recent campaign work, which has routinely been caustic and dismissive of Democratic contenders. In two “Analysis” pieces and a column, Fournier questioned whether John Edwards was a “phony,” announced the Clintons suffered from “utter self-absorption,” and claimed that Barack Obama was “bordering on arrogance.” That’s the right of a pundit. But at the same time, Fournier avoided raising any doubts about Sen. John McCain, and in fact rushed to his aid in print during the senator’s time of campaign need.

(…)

Just in case this isn’t perfectly obvious, just in case people might be wondering if it’s common for objective political reporters to email partisan operatives off the record and behind the scenes, urging them to “keep up the fight,” the answer is a resounding no. Because it violates the basic journalistic guideline of maintaining neutrality. Especially at the AP, that kind of correspondence should be considered breathtakingly inappropriate.

Think about it: That year, Rove was engineering the president’s re-election — a campaign Fournier was covering as an AP reporter — and Fournier urged Rove to “keep up the fight”? Even if that phrase was not written in connection with the campaign, that kind of communication is just wrong. If Fournier could produce emails from 2004 in which he urged top Democratic strategists to “keep up the fight,” it would certainly remove doubts about his relationship with Rove, but I suspect Fournier cannot.

(…)

But let’s dig a little deeper: In his attempt to dismiss the Rove correspondence, Fournier said that the exchange came “in the course of following an important and compelling story” while he was an AP political reporter. Meaning Fournier was just doing his job.

Yet according to a search of Nexis, Fournier didn’t write any bylined articles about Pat Tillman’s death in April 2004. Or ever, for that matter. That means Fournier wasn’t reaching out as a reporter to Rove for information, quotes, or context about the sad Tillman story. Fournier didn’t need Rove to be a “source” for the Tillman story because Fournier wasn’t covering the Tillman story.

Instead, Fournier seemed to be using the Tillman story as an opportunity to initiate contact with Rove and let him know that Fournier was on his side, and to urge Rove to “keep up the fight.”

But wait, there’s more!  This is what separates a Wanker Of The Week from a mere Wanker Of The Day:

Warning Clinton during the primaries about the dangers of having a candidate’s character questioned by the press, Fournier noted that Al Gore got unfairly tagged during the 2000 presidential campaign for having claimed to have invented the Internet. Fournier patiently set the record straight, noting that Gore “never said he invented the Internet,” that “his mistake was to place himself more centrally than warranted at the creation of the technology,” and that “such nuance was lost on people who voted against him in 2000.”

Silly voters. But how on earth did they come to the false conclusion that Gore ever claimed to have invented the Internet? Answer: By reading Ron Fournier.

• “He [Gore] claimed credit for inventing the Internet, and comics had a punch line for months.” [November 13, 1999]
• “Gore, who once claimed to have invented the Internet, e-mailed Bush and said Democrats won’t air TV ads purchased with unlimited, unregulated donations called ’soft money’ unless Republicans do so first.” [March 15, 2000]

Awesome.  Ron Phonier is a wanker on so many levels.

Add comment July 22nd, 2008 at 09:22pm Posted by Eli

Well, Which Is It?

From Paul Alexander’s new biography of Karl Rove:

“Every Republican I know looks at the Bush administration as a total failure,” said Matt Towery, chairman of Newt Gingrich’s political organization.

“To do what he did politically to us is unforgivable,” Rep. Tom Tancredo told Alexander. “It will take generations to recover. I don’t know how long; maybe never.”

“I think the legacy is that Karl Rove will be a name that’ll be used for a long, long time as an example of how not to do it,” said long-time GOP strategist Ed Rollins.

National Journal, reporting on the McCain campaign:

“Generally speaking, Rove’s advice is action-oriented and useful,” said another senior consultant to the McCain camp. “It’s always well received.” This McCain adviser noted that Rove talks periodically to Black and a few other top campaign aides on several key matters. “It can be policy ideas, messaging ideas, fundraising prospects, or people who need calls from someone in the campaign.” Rove is “part of the information network that the campaign has,” this adviser said, adding that Rove talks fairly regularly to such key people as Wayne Berman, a major fundraiser for McCain; Nicolle Wallace, a communications adviser; and Steve Schmidt, a senior aide.

Seems like there might be some difference of opinion on whether Karl Rove and his math are an asset or a liability.  I guess we shouldn’t be surprised when the McCain campaign goes all-in on fearmongering, hateful smears, and impugning “Democrat” patriotism.  I can hardly wait.

Add comment June 13th, 2008 at 06:45pm Posted by Eli

Et Tu, Scotté?

I’m not the least bit surprised by the revelations/accusations, but I am pretty surprised by the source:

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan writes in a surprisingly scathing memoir to be published next week that President Bush “veered terribly off course,” was not “open and forthright on Iraq,” and took a “permanent campaign approach” to governing at the expense of candor and competence.

Among the most explosive revelations in the 341-page book, titled “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception” (Public Affairs, $27.95):

• McClellan charges that Bush relied on “propaganda” to sell the war.

• He says the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war.

• He admits that some of his own assertions from the briefing room podium turned out to be “badly misguided.”

• The longtime Bush loyalist also suggests that two top aides held a secret West Wing meeting to get their story straight about the CIA leak case at a time when federal prosecutors were after them — and McClellan was continuing to defend them despite mounting evidence they had not given him all the facts.

• McClellan asserts that the aides — Karl Rove, the president’s senior adviser, and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff — “had at best misled” him about their role in the disclosure of former CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.

(…)

The eagerly awaited book, while recounting many fond memories of Bush and describing him as “authentic” and “sincere,” is harsher than reporters and White House officials had expected.

McClellan was one of the president’s earliest and most loyal political aides, and most of his friends had expected him to take a few swipes at his former colleague in order to sell books but also to paint a largely affectionate portrait.

Instead, McClellan’s tone is often harsh. He writes, for example, that after Hurricane Katrina, the White House “spent most of the first week in a state of denial,” and he blames Rove for suggesting the photo of the president comfortably observing the disaster during an Air Force One flyover. McClellan says he and counselor to the president Dan Bartlett had opposed the idea and thought it had been scrapped.

But he writes that he later was told that “Karl was convinced we needed to do it — and the president agreed.”

“One of the worst disasters in our nation’s history became one of the biggest disasters in Bush’s presidency. Katrina and the botched federal response to it would largely come to define Bush’s second term,” he writes. “And the perception of this catastrophe was made worse by previous decisions President Bush had made, including, first and foremost, the failure to be open and forthright on Iraq and rushing to war with inadequate planning and preparation for its aftermath.”

(…)

“I still like and admire President Bush,” McClellan writes. “But he and his advisers confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war. … In this regard, he was terribly ill-served by his top advisers, especially those involved directly in national security.”

(…)

McClellan repeatedly embraces the rhetoric of Bush’s liberal critics and even charges: “If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq.

“The collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. … In this case, the ‘liberal media’ didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.”

Wow.  History’s judgment continues to trickle out, doesn’t it.  My only complaint is that Scottie is a little too willing to let Dubya personally off the hook and blame everything on his advisers.  Who hired the advisers?  Who made the decision to listen to them even when their advice was obviously flawed at best, insane and evil at worst?  Bush is either a monster or a chump, and history will not be kind either way.

Add comment May 28th, 2008 at 07:20am Posted by Eli

Quotes Of The Day

Just some things that made me smile today.

Hans von Spakovsky:

Dear President Bush:

It is with great regret that I write to request that you withdraw my nomination to be a Commissioner on the Federal Election Commission.  My nomination has been pending for almost two and one half years in the Senate without any resolution.  This process has been extremely hard on my family, and quite frankly, we do not have the financial resources to continue to wait until this matter is resolved.  I also agree with my former colleague Robert Lenhard, who recently withdrew his nomination, that it was past time that the FEC was reconstituted - the agency that is tasked with policing our campaign finance system needs to be operational during a presidential election year.  Ths opposition to my nomination (however unfair) is preventing that from happening.

He actually makes a very commendable point at the end there (aside from the “however unfair” part), so it appears that he does feel some rudimentary sense of civic responsibility then again, his vision of what the FEC should be doing during a presidential election year is very different from ours.

In case you’ve forgotten why he’s a total bastard who should never have been allowed within 3000 miles of the FEC, check out the roundup at the end of this TPMMuck post.

John Conyers:

We’re closing in on Rove. Someone’s got to kick his ass.

Tom Davis, by way of Peggy Noonan:

The party, Mr. Davis told me, is “an airplane flying right into a mountain.” Analyses of its predicament reflect an “investment in the Bush presidency,” but ‘the public has just moved so far past that.” “Our leaders go up to the second floor of the White House and they get a case of White House-itis.” Mr. Bush has left the party at a disadvantage in terms of communications: “He can’t articulate. The only asset we have now is the big microphone, and he swallowed it.”

Jay Leno:

Huge political fireworks today after President Bush went to Israel and he talked about American politicians who might want to talk with Hamas or other leaders. Politicians who would sit down and appease terrorists. He said he would not do it. He would not put up with it. He would never talk to terrorists. And then he flew to Saudi Arabia to spend a couple of days with the Saudi royal family.

Jon Stewart (while showing footage of Dubya biking, fishing, and dancing):

You know what?  Pictures matter.  Image is everything.  And when you ask military families to sacrifice so much — through stop-loss, or multiple tours without proper stateside rest, or refusing to fund a proper GI Bill, the least you can do is not force them to see you dicking around like you don’t have a care in the world.

Awesome.

(h/t All-Seeing Eye Of Froomkin)

Add comment May 16th, 2008 at 08:23pm Posted by Eli

Bloch Busted

But is it for being too corrupt… or not corrupt enough?

NPR is reporting that FBI agents have raided both the home and office of Scott Bloch:

FBI agents on Tuesday raided the offices of Special Counsel Scott J. Bloch, who oversees protection for federal whistleblowers. The agents seized computers and shut down email service as part of an obstruction of justice probe, NPR has exclusively learned.

FBI agents also searched Bloch’s home and a Special Counsel field office in Dallas. A grand jury in Washington issued subpoenas for several OSC employees, including Bloch, according to NPR sources who spoke on condition their names not be used.
–snip–
This morning, FBI agents in Washington took Bloch into a separate room at OSC to interview him, while additional investigators searched his office. They also arrived at his home in Alexandria, Va., with a search warrant.

The Office of Personnel Managment’s Inspector General has been looking into allegations that Bloch retaliated against career employees and obstructed an investigation. Sources close to the probe said the FBI’s raid this morning was related to work the Inspector General had already done.

The first thing that ran through my mind was, “Hey, how’s that US Attorney firings investigation coming?”

The Office of Special Counsel is preparing to jump into one of the most sensitive and potentially explosive issues in Washington, launching a broad investigation into key elements of the White House political operations that for more than six years have been headed by chief strategist Karl Rove.

The new investigation, which will examine the firing of at least one U.S. attorney, missing White House e-mails, and White House efforts to keep presidential appointees attuned to Republican political priorities, could create a substantial new problem for the Bush White House.

First, the inquiry comes from inside the administration, not from Democrats in Congress. Second, unlike the splintered inquiries being pressed on Capitol Hill, it is expected to be a unified investigation covering many facets of the political operation in which Rove played a leading part.

So, are Bloch and the OSC under fire for their legitimately illegitimate practices (of which there appear to be many, but when has that ever bothered BushCo. before?), or because they were getting too close to paydirt on the US Attorney firings or Rove’s Hatch Act violations? Or as retaliation for helping to boot Lurita Doan out the door?

Add comment May 6th, 2008 at 08:51pm Posted by Eli

Irony Of The Week

In case you were wondering why the GOP isn’t making a big deal about Obama’s connection to Tony Rezko…

With federal investigators closing in, Illinois political insiders hoped to avoid prison by having Bush administration architect Karl Rove oust U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, according to accusations made in federal court today.

An attorney for Rove and the Republican insider accused of leaning on him, Bob Kjellander, flatly denied the accusations this afternoon.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago dropped the bombshell allegations as part of the federal corruption trial against Antoin “Tony” Rezko, a former Gov. Rod Blagojevich fundraiser and confidant.

Federal prosecutors say two witnesses could testify that they were told by two separate people close to Kjellander that he was working to get Fitzgerald removed by leaning on Rove, his old friend.

The power play was allegedly plotted before Fitzgerald received a questionably low ranking by the Bush Administration and the controversial ousting of eight U.S. Attorneys.

The first hints of the far-reaching accusations came out in court late Tuesday when Assistant U.S. Attorney Carrie Hamilton read the grand jury statements of Steven Loren, a co-schemer in the Rezko case.

Veteran insider Bill Cellini “said it was Bob Kjellander’s job to take care of the U.S. Attorney,” Hamilton read from the transcript, which recounted a 2004 meeting between Cellini and Loren over how to handle the deepening federal probe.

(…)

…Hamilton… said Rezko business partner Ali Ata is expected to testify Rezko told him the same thing in 2004.

“Mr. Kjellander is working with Mr. Rove to have Mr. Fitzgerald removed so someone else can come in (and end the corruption investigation),” Hamilton said in summarizing Ata’s expected testimony about Rezko’s statements.

(…)

Kjellander, an Illinois lobbyist, is a national Republican party player who recently served as treasurer to the Republican National Committee. He has been friends with Rove since the early 1970s when the two got their start in politics while still in college.

Kjellander helped orchestrate George Bush’s Midwest campaigns.

(…)

In late 2004, Fitzgerald was also the special prosecutor probing the Valerie Plame leak in which White House officials were accused of illegally disclosing her CIA identity in retribution for her husband’s opposition to the Iraq war.

Rove was questioned in that case. The investigation ultimately ended in the conviction of Dick Cheney aide Scooter Libby for perjury.

In 2005, the Bush administration ranked Fitzgerald as one of several U.S. attorneys who did “not distinguish themselves” - at the same time he was pursuing landmark cases covering Plame, the Chicago Outfit and former Republican Gov. George Ryan as well as the administrations of Blagojevich, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and Cook County President John Stroger.

The rankings later evolved into the notable ousting of eight U.S. attorneys in 2006, a move that was widely criticized as being politically motivated. Two of those attorneys fired were given the same ranking as Fitzgerald.

(…)

Blagojevich spokeswoman Abby Ottenoff said the governor was unaware of any moves to oust Fitzgerald.

This is rich.  Rove and the Republicans actually tried to sabotage the case that would have otherwise been the centerpiece of their campaign against Obama.  Of course, they didn’t know that at the time - they were just reflexively gaming the system to defend Republican criminals, like they always do.  But now they can’t draw too much attention to Rezko, lest they draw attention to Rove’s involvement, and to the US Attorney firings.  Even so, Obama should have a good strategy to bring the pain if the Republicans do come after him on Rezko.

But he’d better be careful - being tied to Rove is the worst thing that could happen to him.

(For the record, I think the Obama-Rezko connection is tenuous, and it’s a manufactured scandal - but that doesn’t mean the Republicans wouldn’t have made a big deal about it.  Quite the contrary.)

(h/t Twolf)

3 comments April 23rd, 2008 at 08:30pm Posted by Eli

The English Language Is Officially Dead

Karl Rove has tortured it well beyond the point of major organ failure:

ROVE: …[Obama] is a very left-wing Democrat. He came out of a very radical background in organizing. His record in the Senate is the most liberal, according to the “National Journal.” He has been a conventional far-left Democrat. And we ought to recognize that. As a result, he has these associations and these people he has been comfortable being with who are not in mainstream America. Look, after 9/11, when he said true patriotism did not consist of wearing a lapel pin - - an American flag lapel pin on your lapel, but instead speaking out on the issues, he was basically, with the back of his hand, being very dismissive to millions of Americans who thought it was a patriotic act to put a flag pin on their lapel.

COLMES: Does he lack patriotism because he does not wear a lapel pan? Is he basically saying, patriotism isn’t about a pin? That is his point of view.

ROVE: Alan, I didn’t say that. What he said was that people — he was implicating that people who did wear a flag on the lapel were not true patriots. My point is not — in America, you get to decide whether you want to wear a flag lapel pin or not. What he did though was say, it was true patriotism to speak out on the issue, not to wear a flag lapel pen. He was the one questioning the patriotism of people with flags on their lapels.

COLMES: I didn’t get that from what he said. What I got –

ROVE: Read the statement carefully. He said, true patriotism — quote, true patriotism consisted of speaking out on the issues, not wearing a flag lapel pin.

COLMES: He wasn’t questioning people who wore it. He was questioning the war.

ROVE: No, he was questioning the patriotism of those who did put a flag on their lapel. Admit it. I’m not questioning his patriotism. But he certainly questioned the patriotism of millions of people who felt the simple gesture of putting the flag on their lapel was a patriotic act, and it was.

Uh-huh. If Obama questioned anyone’s patriotism with that statement, it was the patriotism of people who didn’t speak out on the issues. In other words, people who wore a flag pin but didn’t say or do squat. Or, more to the point, people who just went along with whatever the president told them to do, no matter how insane, ill-advised, unconstitutional, or downright criminal it might be.

I can certainly see where Karl might feel the need to stick up for those people. Oh, and bonus points for working in the bogus Obama-is-the-most-liberal-Senator canard.

(h/t to The All-Seeing Eye Of Froomkin)

1 comment February 29th, 2008 at 07:56pm Posted by Eli

This Is What Not Having It Both Ways Looks Like

I’m way late on this, I know. I had planned to post it from the airport, but that didn’t exactly work out as planned. From yesterday’s NYT:

A Senate chairman said Thursday that President Bush was not involved in the firings of U.S. attorneys last winter, and he therefore ruled illegal the president’s executive privilege claims protecting his chief of staff, Josh Bolten, and former adviser Karl Rove.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy directed Bolten, Rove, former White House political director Sara Taylor and her deputy, J. Scott Jennings, to comply ”immediately” with their subpoenas for documents and information about the White House’s role in the firings of U.S. attorneys.

”I hereby rule that those claims are not legally valid to excuse current and former White House employees from appearing, testifying and producing documents related to this investigation,” wrote Leahy, D-Vt.

(…)

The executive privilege claim ”is surprising in light of the significant and uncontroverted evidence that the president had no involvement in these firings,” Leahy wrote in his ruling. ”The president’s lack of involvement in these firings — by his own account and that of many others — calls into question any claim of executive privilege.’

(…)

”If he is now saying that the president wasn’t aware of it, as we have said from the beginning, then I don’t understand why he continues to have this rope-a-dope that’s not going to go anywhere,” [White House Press Secretary Dana] Perino told reporters.

You can’t simultaneously claim executive privilege and lack of presidential involvement. They’re mutually exclusive.

Good on Leahy for finally calling BushCo. out on this, but it would have been nice if he had done it a few months ago.

2 comments November 30th, 2007 at 09:38pm Posted by Eli

Whopper Of The Month

And I thought Dana Perino claiming that Dubya never harbors resentments was rich:

You are not going to believe this, well, actually you will… According to Karl Rove (on Charlie Rose), the Bush Administration did not want Congress to vote on the Iraq War resolution in the fall of 2002, because they thought it should not be done within the context of an election. Rove, you see, did not think the war vote should be “political”.

Moreover, according to Rove, that “premature vote” led to many of the problems that cropped up in the Iraq War. Had Congress not pushed, he says, Bush could have spent more time assembling a coalition, and provided more time to the inspectors.

(…)

It is worth remembering that the Senate in the fall of 2002 was controlled, barely, by Democrats. Get it? George Bush, we are being told, wanted to delay, wanted to hold back, wanted to take the time to build a coalition and let the inspectors finish their job, but that damn Congress just pushed him into it. George Bush, you see, is a careful, prudent, leader, deeply concerned about the consequences of premature.

It makes one’s head spin. Dubya wanted to be deliberate and careful, but those crazy loose cannon Democrats authorized him to use military force, thus forcing him to do so. It’s a crock, Rove knows it’s a crock, and Rove knows that we know it’s a crock.

It’s like in one of those crime shows like CSI or Law & Order, that scene where everyone knows this guy is the killer, and he knows that they know, but they don’t have any hard evidence. You know, the scene where the killer pours on the naked insincerity and says, “Why, Lieutenant, I could never do something terrible like that to her. I loved her.” All while looking the interrogator right in the eye and smirking.

It’s that exact same kind of in-your-face, ha-ha-you-can’t-touch-me fuck you to everyone who’s been paying attention, to everyone who can actually remember events from more than two days ago. “I can lie as much as I want and no-one will say anything. Sure, you bloggers can scream all you want, but we own the media, and they won’t say squat about this, except for the ones who say I’ve made an excellent and perceptive point, even though they know as well as you do that it’s just a big, wet, stinky lie I made up to piss you liberals off. Put that in your blogs and smoke it. Also, here is my ass, I am showing it to you now.”

Now, if Rove had said, “They handed a gun to a bloodthirsty sociopath; what did they think was going to happen?”, I would have been okay with that.

Add comment November 27th, 2007 at 11:10pm Posted by Eli

And Now, Your Moment Of Bwahaha.

It’s not often that I feel the urge to pat Time Magazine on the back, but this is just too beautiful to go unpraised:

Time magazine said nothing publicly about Rove’s arrival at Newsweek, but a well-placed source told me that Bob Barnett (every Washington literati’s favorite lawyer, including Bill Clinton) had traveled to the Time-Life building on Sixth Avenue to offer Rove’s services before Newsweek snared them. Time’s editors apparently felt the cost/benefit analysis wouldn’t be in their favor if they embraced the man who has done more than anyone to keep the spirit of Joe McCarthy alive and well in American politics. (Read Joshua Green’s definitive profile from the Atlantic in 2004.) “Time thought this wouldn’t be like hiring George Stephanopoulos,” my source explained. “They think Karl is essentially like an unindicted coconspirator in a whole string of felonies.”

Excellent. It’s so very rare and refreshing to see a mainstream media outlet, any mainstream media outlet, decide that some Republicans are just too disreputable to associate themselves with. On the other hand, Time thinks Ann Coulter is a delightful prankster and Joe Klein’s a journalist, so they still have some ways to go.

(h/t Think Progress, by way of MakeThemAccountable)

1 comment November 21st, 2007 at 09:11pm Posted by Eli

Memories… In The Corner Of My Something Something…

ymr049c has drawn my attention to this brilliant Tom Tomorrow strip, reminding us what life in the Gonzales Justice Department was like.

Ah, those were the good ol’- wait, what was I talking about?

Add comment August 29th, 2007 at 07:27pm Posted by Eli

A Modern Metamorphosis

I was just thinking about an updated version of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. I’ve got the first sentence all worked out:

Karl Rove awoke one morning and discovered that he was no longer an enormous cockroach.

The rest of the story would be about how all his Republican friends would recoil from him in horror and try to destroy him.

Obviously, it would be as much of a fantasy as the original, just… happier.

Add comment August 27th, 2007 at 06:10pm Posted by Eli

Scott Ritter Is Shrill

My mother sent me this great Scott Ritter piece, in which he takes some great shots at Rove, Cheney, and feckless Democrats.

Bit long, but definitely worth a read.

1 comment August 26th, 2007 at 03:32pm Posted by Eli

Minor Quibble

Bill Scher has some very good questions that will not be asked of Rove by any of the Sunday talking-head-show hosts, but I have to nitpick on the last one:

3. You were at the intersection of politics and policy in the White House.

When you came into power in 2001, the conservative Heritage Foundation counseled that the Bush Administration: “must make appointment decisions based on loyalty first and expertise second, and that the whole governmental apparatus must be managed from this perspective.”

It appears you took that advice. Two years later, a former Bush official criticized your operation, saying, “What you’ve got is everything—and I mean everything—being run by the political arm. It’s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis.”

The politicization of basic government functions has been widespread. For example, purging US attorneys, muzzling of climate scientists, arm-twisting intelligence analysts, using government agencies to spread misinformation about Social Security and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, directing government employees to be part of partisan campaigns.

You’re known to say that good policy makes good politics. What good policies came out of this approach to politics?

It hasn’t been “loyalty first and expertise second.” Expertise hasn’t been a consideration at all. If anything, BushCo. views it as an impediment.

2 comments August 18th, 2007 at 01:47pm Posted by Eli

Wanker Of The Day

The inimitable and apparently unshameable Michael Gerson:

…[Rove's] background in direct mail, along with the experience he gained while converting Lyndon Johnson’s Texas into a Republican stronghold, has given him a comprehensive understanding of the technologies and trends of politics.

But in several years as a colleague, I found Rove to be the most unusual political operative I have ever known; so exceptional he doesn’t belong in the category. His most passionate, obsessive love — after his wife — is American history…. And from American history Rove knows: Events are not moved primarily by techniques; they are moved by ideas.

Rove’s main influence on the Republican Party has not been a series of tactical innovations but a series of strategic arguments. In this way, Rove is the opposite of a cynical political operator. He is not only a partisan for George W. Bush but the most serious, tireless advocate of Bushism.

Yep, you read that right: Karl is not a dirty trickster and manipulator, but a bold, big-picture visionary.

First, Rove argues that Republicans win as activist reformers, in the tradition of Lincoln, McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. “We were founded as a reformist party,” he said in our conversation this week, “not to be against something, but to help the little guy get ahead.”

My head just exploded.

The models he cites are 401(k)s and the mortgage interest deduction — government policies that encouraged individual wealth and ownership. Then Rove spent several minutes describing, with wonkish delight, the momentum and virtues of health savings accounts, a Bush-era innovation allowing individuals to save tax-free for routine medical expenses.

Hey, I think you left out bankruptcy reform, dude.

The activist use of government to help individuals get ahead may not sound controversial. Among Republicans, it is.

No it isn’t. They’re all opposed to it. The only disagreement is on how far to go in pretending otherwise.

Rove’s other two Brilliant Strategerical Ideas are that you can appeal to the base and reach out to the middle with stuff like the prescription drug benefit and immigration reform (yeah, those both worked out really well…); and that the GOP needs to reach out to minorities (or at least to socially conservative minority churchgoers who can be swayed by homophobia and faith-based initiative cash).

But the conclusion is the best part:

t is sometimes alleged that Rove’s arguments have not fully prevailed in the GOP — which is true. It is further alleged that these arguments have been discredited by events — which is not true. The complications of Iraq have obscured Rove’s victories, not undone them. And his key historical insight is unavoidable: Republicans win as conservative reformers.

Yes, that’s right: Karl Rove did not fail the Republican Party; the Republican Party failed Karl Rove.

Add comment August 17th, 2007 at 11:52am Posted by Eli

When The Rovee Breaks

The Ann Kornblut/Michael Shear entry in the Rove’s Legacy essay competition asks the question, “What, exactly, did the architect build?” I, too, have puzzled over this question - a castle or fortress built on a foundation of sand, perhaps?

But no, I think I finally have it now: It’s a levee, or a dike. Rove’s great “achievement” was to insulate Bush and the GOP from the consequences of their incompetence and foolishness for three election cycles. They mistakenly interpreted that electoral success as a “mandate,” and went ahead sinking the country and their party lower and lower, as the roiling waters of dissatisfaction rose higher and higher, angrier and angrier.

Rove’s edifice of dirty tricks, deceit, and naked partisanship was finally washed away in November of 2006, fatally weakened by the failure of the real levees around New Orleans, and now Bush and the Republicans are up to their necks and flailing around desperately.

It would be a lot more satisfying if the Democrats would stop throwing them life preservers.

Add comment August 14th, 2007 at 10:34pm Posted by Eli

Even David Frum Mostly Gets It

Now that Rove is on his way out the door, some conservative pundits are suddenly realizing that maybe his strategy of dirty tricks, mobilizing the base, and turning the federal government into a partisan arm of the Republican Party was not such a great idea. Funny, none of these oh-so-principled conservatives seemed to mind when it was winning elections for them…

David Frum shows us how it’s done:

AS a political strategist, Karl Rove offered a brilliant answer to the wrong question.

The question he answered so successfully was a political one: How could Republicans win elections after Bill Clinton steered the Democrats to the center?

The question he unfortunately ignored was a policy question: What does the nation need - and how can conservatives achieve it?

Mr. Rove answered his chosen question by courting carefully selected constituencies with poll-tested promises: tax cuts for traditional conservatives; the No Child Left Behind law for suburban moderates; prescription drugs for anxious seniors; open immigration for Hispanics; faith-based programs for evangelicals and Catholics.

These programs often contradicted each other. How do you cut taxes and also create a big new prescription drug benefit? If the schools are failing to educate the nation’s poor, how does it make sense to expand that population by opening the door to even more low-wage immigration?

Instead of seeking solutions to national problems, “compassionate conservatism” started with slogans and went searching for problems to justify them. To what problem, exactly, was the faith-based initiative a solution?

This was a politics of party-building and coalition-assembly. It was a politics that aimed at winning elections. It was a politics that treated the problems of governance as secondary. But of course governance is what incumbents get judged on - and since 2004, the negative verdict on President Bush’s governance has created a lethal political environment for Republican candidates.

Inspiring rhetoric and solemn promises can do only so much for an incumbent administration. Can it win wars? Can it respond to natural disasters? Can it safeguard the nation’s borders? Can it fill positions of responsibility with worthy appointees? If it cannot do those things, not even the most sophisticated get-out-the-vote operation can save it.

(…)

…Play-to-the-base politics can be a smart strategy - so long as your base is larger than your opponents’.

But it has been apparent for many years that the Democratic base is growing faster than the Republican base. The numbers of the unmarried and the non-churchgoing are growing faster than the numbers of married and church-going Americans. The nonwhite and immigrant population is growing at a faster rate than that of white native-borns. The Democrats are the party of the top and bottom of American society; the Republicans do best in the great American middle, which is losing ground.

Frum is right in general terms, but his specifics seem iffy at best and offensive at worst. I particularly like how he says the Democrats are the party of the upper and lower classes, while the Republicans are the party of the middle class. Yeah, ‘cuz the Democrats have always been all about big business and tax cuts for the superrich…

Mr. Rove often reminded me of a miner extracting the last nuggets from an exhausted seam. His attempts to prospect a new motherlode have led the Republican party into the immigration debacle.

…We took the self-evident brilliance of our plans so much for granted that we would not even meet, for example, with conservative academics who had the facts and figures to demonstrate the illusion of Rovian hopes for a breakthrough among Hispanic voters.

Boy, that David Frum really hates immigration, doesn’t he? Immigration reform might not have delivered a huge majority of Hispanics to the GOP, but it sure as hell wouldn’t deliver them to the Democrats.

Note to David Frum and all the other anti-immigrant true believers: You are not going to deport all the Hispanics, so you might as well try to get along with them instead of turning them into Democrats. But hey, it’s your party’s funeral.

Frum then has a very lucid paragraph, but quickly gets silly again:

Building coalitions is essential to political success. But it is not the same thing as political success. The point of politics is to elect governments, and political organizations are ultimately judged by the quality of government they deliver.

(…)

The outlook is not, however, entirely bleak for Republicans. I notice that much of the Democratic party, and especially its activist netroots, has decided that the way to beat Rove Republicanism is by emulating it. They are practicing the politics of polarization; they are elevating “framing” above policy; they have decided that winning the next election by any means is all that matters - and never mind what happens on the day after that.

If they follow this path, they should not be surprised when they discover that it leads to the same destination.

Yes, very cute, liberals are just as bad as conservatives, right, DailyKos is a hotbed of antisemitism, yadda yadda yadda.

The thing is, the polarized atmosphere that Bush, Rove, and the Republican Party have created leaves Democrats with only two choices: opposition or capitulation. Republicans are so loyal to the ultra-right that they will not reach across the aisle to compromise with Democrats, only demand that Democrats reach across to compromise with them.

So given those choices, not to mention the tiny little detail that a large majority of the American people agree with our “extremist” positions, an oppositional stance looks pretty darn rational.

Or, to look at it from a slightly different direction, Republicans and conservatives unconditionally opposed success and unconditionally support failure, while progressives (I only wish I could say Democrats) not-so-unconditionally supported success and oppose failure. I guess we’ll find out next year which approach the voters prefer.

1 comment August 14th, 2007 at 11:18am Posted by Eli

OMG!!!!

No way!

Karl Rove, the political adviser who masterminded President George W. Bush’s two winning presidential campaigns, is resigning.

In an interview published today in The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Rove said, “I just think it’s time,” adding, “There’s always something that can keep you here, and as much as I’d like to be here, I’ve got to do this for the sake of my family.”

Mr. Rove said he had first considered leaving a year ago but stayed after his party lost the crucial midterm elections last fall, putting Congress in Democratic hands, and Mr. Bush’s problems mounted in Iraq and in his pursuit of a new immigration policy.

He said his hand was forced when the White House chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten, recently told senior aides that if they stayed past Labor Day they would be expected to stay through the rest of Mr. Bush’s term.

(…)

“He’s been talking with the president for a long time - about a year, regarding when might be good to go,” said Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman. “But there’s always a big project to work on, and his strategic abilities - and our need for his support - kept him here.” Ms. Perino said Mr. Rove would leave at the end of August.

Wow. Just… wow. I wonder if it’s just burnout - God knows, I’m sure Karl has never had to deal with this kind of full-time damage control before - or if this is yet another instance of someone resigning before an investigation zeroes in on them.

It’ll be interesting to see what changes. I’m guessing it won’t have any effect on policy, since that’s still in the hand of ideological morons, but we’ll see if the White House’s spin capabilities diminish, like they did when Rove was distracted or sidelined by illness and the Libby investigation.

Add comment August 13th, 2007 at 07:18am Posted by Eli

When The Math And The Policy Collide

Apparently, Karl Rove made the claim yesterday that the Iraqupation would not be an issue in 2008 because we will already be in the process of withdrawing.

Umm… Karl? Have you talked to your boss lately? He. Is. Not. Leaving. If we’re withdrawing troops in 2008, it’ll only be because Congressional Democrats grew spines and Congressional Republicans grew brains. Frankly, after six-and-a-half years of watching Congress cave in to Bush again and again, I can’t say I’m holding out a lot of hope.

But even if we are getting out of Iraq sometime next year, it’s still not all roses and daffodils for the Republicans. For one thing, the voters probably will not have forgotten just which party it was that clung to the war like it was their only baby. And for another, well, to be brutally blunt, what are the odds that the withdrawal itself won’t be a complete bloody disaster? From Siun:

I received a message from some friends who are in Iraq at the moment. (These friends have extensive military experience but not with US forces.) They ask a terrifying question: “How many tens of thousands are the US willing to see killed - tens of thousands of US troops that is?”

They are asking us to take this seriously - they believe that no matter what routes are picked, the US forces will have to fight their way out. They cannot believe that no one seems to understand how truly bad the situation is - and how many US soldiers are going to die as the whole situation implodes - and how completely untenable are any troops left in Iraq.

One contact wrote this weekend that the mood in Iraq is no longer just a desire to see the US leave - but to hurt the US troops as much as possible as they leave as payback for episodes such as the one I wrote about last night at Firedoglake.

They believe that what we have seen so far has been testing and preparation for greatly increased attacks on US troops esp as the surge tactics have spread them in vulnerable ways. To get a feel for the situation, one example: the US/MNF this weekend boasted about a successful shipment of water by air to one base. This means that the MNF is having trouble even moving an essential like water - see Main and Central’s analysis. At the same time, remember that tanks get only 1.8 MPG (and less in real world conditions) but there are reports that there’s even a gas shortage in the Green Zone itself. Add in the campaign to destroy all the bridges on major routes and you begin to see the level of disaster shaping up.

I suppose it’s possible that a well-crafted diplomatic and military strategy and some crack logistics could get our troops out of Iraq with a minimum of bloodshed (after all, it’s not like the Iraqis will be sorry to see us go), but in what parallel universe could BushCo. come up with a well-crafted strategy for anything?

On the other hand, maybe that’s Rove’s real strategy: Turn the withdrawal into an incompetent slaughter (now that, Dubya can do!), and then blame those whiny Democrats for bringing it about with their wimpy refusal to stay the course. I suppose that might work, but Bush’s incompetence is so well-established now, especially where Iraq is concerned, that it could easily backfire. I hope we don’t have to find out.

Add comment July 9th, 2007 at 08:25pm Posted by Eli

Another One Bites The Dust

Good bloody riddance:

The Arkansas Times reports that the controversial U.S. attorney in Arkansas, Tim Griffin, has resigned:

The U.S. Justice Department has notified Arkansas’s congressional delegation that Interim Eastern District U.S. Attorney Tim Griffin is resigning effective Friday, June 1.

Griffin, a former protege of Karl Rove, was formerly research director of the Republican National Committee. In 2004, BBC News published a report showing that Griffin led a “caging” scheme to suppress the votes of African-American servicemembers in Florida.

Griffin became the poster boy for the politicization of the U.S. attorney process. Former Justice official Kyle Sampson noted that getting Griffin into office “was important to Harriet [Miers], Karl, et cetera.” The traditional 120-day term for “interim” U.S. attorneys had expired for Griffin on April 20, yet the Justice Department continued to allow him to serve.

ThinkProgress earlier spoke with Rep. John Boozman’s (R-AR) office, which said that the congressman submitted names of replacements for Griffin to the White House on March 30. So far, no word from the Justice Department on the name of the new U.S. attorney.

In the meantime, assistant U.S. attorney Jane Duke will take over. The Justice Department had previously passed her over to install Griffin, using sexual discrimination as an excuse because Duke had been on maternity leave at the time.

I just have one question: Why was Griffin’s caging scheme only reported by British news? No, wait, don’t answer that.

11 comments May 30th, 2007 at 10:16pm Posted by Eli

Red Flag Of The Day

When the DoJ has an urgent meeting with the White House to fine-tune the message that… the White House was barely involved.

Back on March 5, several top Justice Department officials were summoned for an emergency meeting at the White House. On the agenda: Going over “what we are going to say” about why eight U.S. attorneys had been summarily fired.

The reason for the urgency: principal associate deputy attorney general William Moschella was testifying before the House Judiciary Committee the next day.

Deputy White House counsel William Kelley sent an e-mail over to Justice early in the afternoon, saying that he had “been tasked” with pulling the meeting together, and that “we have to get this group together with some folks here asap.”

The meeting was held at the White House later that day. And who did Kelley mean by “some folks here”? Well, among others, Karl Rove — the White House’s chief political operative, and the man who may very well have set the unprecedented dismissals in motion in the first place.

But after the coaching session, Moschella went out and told Congress that there was no significant White House involvement in the firings, as far as he knew.

So they needed the White House to tell them that the White House had nothing to do with the firings. Yeah, that’s real convincing.

Josh Marshall has a question:

Remind me. Why do you need to ‘agree on clear reasons why each prosecutor was fired’ if the reasons were actually clear when you did the firing and if the reasons can be stated publicly? Think about it. Why do Rove and the other heavies from the White House need to tell these guys how important it is to get their stories straight? If I fire someone, I know why I fired them. I don’t need to get my story straight unless the real reason can’t be stated and I need to come up with a defensible and plausible alternative explanation.

Really, any time you need to meet to “get your stories straight,” that’s a bad sign - even more so when people who were supposedly peripheral to the decision process are driving the story-straightening process.

1 comment May 4th, 2007 at 06:56pm Posted by Eli

How Much Will Bloch Tackle?

Okay, so, here’s the good news:

Most of the time, an obscure federal investigative unit known as the Office of Special Counsel confines itself to monitoring the activities of relatively low-level government employees, stepping in with reprimands and other routine administrative actions for such offenses as discriminating against military personnel or engaging in prohibited political activities.

But the Office of Special Counsel is preparing to jump into one of the most sensitive and potentially explosive issues in Washington, launching a broad investigation into key elements of the White House political operations that for more than six years have been headed by chief strategist Karl Rove.

The new investigation, which will examine the firing of at least one U.S. attorney, missing White House e-mails, and White House efforts to keep presidential appointees attuned to Republican political priorities, could create a substantial new problem for the Bush White House.

First, the inquiry comes from inside the administration, not from Democrats in Congress. Second, unlike the splintered inquiries being pressed on Capitol Hill, it is expected to be a unified investigation covering many facets of the political operation in which Rove played a leading part.

“We will take the evidence where it leads us,” Scott J. Bloch, head of the Office of Special Counsel and a presidential appointee, said in an interview Monday. “We will not leave any stone unturned.”

(…)

The 106-person Office of Special Counsel has never conducted such a broad and high-profile inquiry in its history. One of its primary missions has been to enforce the Hatch Act, a law enacted in 1939 to preserve the integrity of the civil service.

Bloch said the new investigation grew from two narrower inquiries his staff had begun in recent weeks.

One involved the fired U.S. attorney from New Mexico, David C. Iglesias.

The other centered on a PowerPoint presentation that a Rove aide, J. Scott Jennings, made at the General Services Administration this year.

That presentation listed recent polls and the outlook for battleground House and Senate races in 2008. After the presentation, GSA Administrator Lorita Doan encouraged agency managers to “support our candidates,” according to half a dozen witnesses. Doan said she could not recall making such comments.

(…)

In the course of investigating the U.S. attorney matter and the PowerPoint presentations, Democratic congressional investigators discovered e-mails written by White House personnel using accounts maintained by the Republican National Committee.

So far, so good. Unfortunately, Bloch sounds like a real piece of work, and he has a history of protecting the administration from whistleblowers rather than the other way ’round. So some of my liberal blogobrethren are suggesting that this whole investigation is some kind of strategic whitewash/smokescreen/inoculation against less congenial investigations by big ol’ meanies like Waxman and Conyers and Leahy. I can buy this only partially, and I don’t think it will work.

Yes, given Bloch’s history, there’s a very good chance that the investigation will be a whitewash, but I don’t believe that it was the plan all along. The investigation was at least partially initiated by fired US Attorney David Iglesias, who appears to be a genuinely straight arrow. And because his situation is part of the much larger story of the Attorney firings, the administration politically cannot afford to ignore or bury his complaint. The best they can do is to have the OSC go through the motions of an investigation and then claim to have found nothing improper. And as far as using this investigation to somehow shield the administration from congressional investigations, my legal counsel in the FDL comments don’t think that will fly (largely because the OSC’s investigations are administrative rather than criminal), although they certainly can and will use the can’t-comment-on-an-ongoing-investigation dodge with the media.

Whether or not a whitewash will be successful really depends on your definition of success. If your definition of success is “conduct an investigation that doesn’t end with a recommendation to fire Karl Rove,” then sure, there’s an excellent chance of success. If your definition of success is “salvage the reputation of the Bush administration and the Republican Party as a whole,” I really don’t see it working. If anything, I think it’ll make things worse.

First of all, the very existence of an internal (i.e., not Democrat-driven) investigation of an overall pattern of political tampering with the basic nuts-and-bolts of government calls attention to that pattern and gives it added legitimacy; ironically, in much the same way partisan US Attorneys’ investigations can damage the reputation of opposition party members, even if they’re never indicted or convicted. In short, this is simply not a conversation the Republicans want to be having.

Second of all, and even more ironically, declaring that the governmental investigation into the improper politicization of government found no wrongdoing will, in fact, only reinforce the idea that the government is improperly politicized.

And all the while, Waxman et al. can continue with their own investigations if it doesn’t look like this one is being pursued aggressively. And in 2008, Democratic candidates for House, Senate, and President can remind voters that all of this politicization, and all of the unethical (and probably illegal) activities that took place, were all enabled by the Republican (Enablican?) Congress’ refusal to live up to its oversight responsibilities. They can hammer home that the Republicans cheat on a scale never before seen in American history, and that they will always party over country, Every. Single. Time, without fail.

I can live without Rove’s scalp, if the tradeoff is the destruction of Republican credibility for the next 20-30 years.

1 comment April 25th, 2007 at 07:47am Posted by Eli

NYT Cuts To The Chase

From today’s lead editorial:

If Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had gone to the Senate yesterday to convince the world that he ought to be fired, it’s hard to imagine how he could have done a better job, short of simply admitting the obvious: that the firing of eight United States attorneys was a partisan purge.

Mr. Gonzales came across as a dull-witted apparatchik incapable of running one of the most important departments in the executive branch.

(…)

At the end of the day, we were left wondering why the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer would paint himself as a bumbling fool. Perhaps it’s because the alternative is that he is not telling the truth. There is strong evidence that this purge was directed from the White House, and that Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s top political adviser, and Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, were deeply involved.

(…)

We don’t yet know whether Mr. Gonzales is merely so incompetent that he should be fired immediately, or whether he is covering something up.

But if we believe the testimony that neither he nor any other senior Justice Department official was calling the shots on the purge, then the public needs to know who was. That is why the Judiciary Committee must stick to its insistence that Mr. Rove, Ms. Miers and other White House officials testify in public and under oath and that all documents be turned over to Congress, including e-mail messages by Mr. Rove that the Republican Party has yet to produce.

Exactly. Incompetent wanker though he is, Gonzo is just the fall guy here, loyally stone/firewalling for Rove and Bush, as well as giving Republican senators a golden opportunity to look like they’re not really mindless rubberstamping tools.

The Republicans may be beating up on Gonzo in public, but behind closed doors, I think they’re whispering reverentially about the depth of his sacrifice. It takes real courage to let yourself look this bad to protect someone you love, and Dubya is obviously very grateful.

I still want to see the little weasel in jail, though.

Add comment April 20th, 2007 at 11:15am Posted by Eli

Going, Going, Gonzales

The Toastmaster Attorney General.

So, what did AG-Squared have to do to save his job today? WaPo, by way of Christy:

Bush does not think Gonzales did anything wrong in dismissing the prosecutors, according to aides, but has been aggravated by his friend’s clumsy, shifting explanations of what happened. In effect, advisers said, Bush is giving Gonzales a chance to fix the situation today.

What happens if he does not remains unclear. No one in the White House believes Gonzales can say anything that would get Democrats to drop the matter, but his supporters hope he can be confident and consistent enough to explain his role without providing more ammunition for critics. Should he stumble, some Republicans said, Gonzales has a responsibility to fall on his sword, sparing Bush having to ask.

So, how’d he do? Well, um, not so hot:

CNN reporting quotes from White House senior aides.

“Going down in flames.”

“Not doing himself any favors.”

“Watching clubbing a baby seal.” (watching testimony)

“Very troubling.”

“Don’t understand that tactic Gonzales used.”

A lot of ex-prosecutors in the Senate, and they smell blood. Even the Republicans, who are taking this opportunity to score some easy Independent-Minded-Defenders-Of-The-Constitution points against the Dead AG Walking.

Really, just a complete disaster by all accounts. Only a clueless blithering idiot would think Gonzo did well.

Statement from White House spokeswoman Dana Perino:

President Bush was pleased with the Attorney General’s testimony today. After hours of testimony in which he answered all of the Senators’ questions and provided thousands of pages of documents, he again showed that nothing improper occurred. He admitted the matter could have been handled much better, and he apologized for the disruption to the lives of the U.S. Attorneys involved, as well as for the lack of clarity in his initial responses. The Attorney General has the full confidence of the President, and he appreciates the work he is doing at the Department of Justice to help keep our citizens safe from terrorists, our children safe from predators, our government safe from corruption, and our streets free from gang violence.

Yeswell. Like I said.

UPDATE: I almost forgot about Jeffrey Feldman’s brilliant Tao of Gonzo:

Verse 1:

“I now understand that there was a conversation between me and the President.” –Tao of Gonzo, Apr 19, 2007

Ah, yes. Here we are introduced to a moment of deep spiritual contemplation. There are times in our lives, he is saying, when we understand the experiences we have when we are having them. I at a sandwich, I understand. I drive to work, I understand. But there are other times when we have an experience, but we do not understand the experience as such at the time. For argument’s sake, we could call these “moments we are breaking the law.” For example, if we are having a conversation with the President and his advisers about illegally circumventing the authority of Congress, it may be difficult to understand that it is happening at the time. One might say, I am having this conversation, but is this really me? Is this really a conversation? Is this really a law and if it is not a law, then can I be breaking this law in this conversation that may or may not be happening? These are moments of spiritual drift, vagueness of identity. Am I undermining the Constitution? Hard to say. Am I in violating the public trust? Hard to say. Am I in charge of my own actions? Not clear. They are moments of great spiritual questioning, wonderment, lack of understanding.

It is only when we revisit these moments of spiritual doubt under duress of, say, being convicted of perjury by a Senate committee–only in these moments does our spiritual fuzziness snap into sudden focus. Ah, yes! Like rings on the duck pond, the ambiguity recedes to the shores of self-doubt, leaving behind a moment of clarity. Indeed it was a conversation. Indeed it was the President. Indeed it was a conversation. “I understand that there was a conversation between me and the President.” Which is to say, “Now, unlike before, I am able to see. I can understand that my own actions were indeed actions and that I did indeed experience them.” I understand, now.

*applauds with one hand*

3 comments April 19th, 2007 at 09:19pm Posted by Eli

Caveat Pre-Emptor; Or, Seller Beware

It’s a little late now…

On a visit to Ohio yesterday, White House senior political adviser Karl Rove claimed he never wanted the war in Iraq:

“I wish the war were over,” Rove said. “I wish the war never existed... History has given us a challenge.”

History shows Rove was exceptionally eager in 2002 for the upcoming Iraq war, anxious to reap what he viewed would be the political gains for conservatives leading another military conflict [examples follow.]

Sorry, Karl - you thought it was a great idea at the time, back when everyone thought it would be all lemonade and ponies and Dubya could play the Heroic Manly War President, but now that it’s turned to unrelenting death and shit, well… no backsies. You and Dick and Don and Dubya brought this on yourselves, and now you get to wallow in your own filth. Or better yet, roll around a whole lot and make sure to get it all over the rest of your Republican buddies in Congress.

Of course, when you’re in trouble, always blame the boogeyman:

Rove also claimed yesterday that it was bin Laden, not President Bush, who decided to launch the Iraq war:

In a question-and-answer period after his speech, Rove was asked whose idea it was to start a pre-emptive war in Iraq.

“I think it was Osama bin Laden’s,” Rove replied.

Rove’s comments are part of re-emerging tactic by the Bush administration to associate the ongoing war in Iraq with 9/11. Rove and company appear to have forgotten that President Bush said 9/11 had “nothing” to do with the war in Iraq.

Just because the invasion and disastrous occupation of Iraq was the best thing Osama could have hoped for, does not mean it was his idea. Even in his wildest madman’s dreams, I don’t think he ever imagined that the US would do something so catastrophically stupid. But then, who hasn’t misunderestimated George W. Bush at one time or another?

(Cross-posted at Greatscat!)

Add comment April 19th, 2007 at 08:35pm Posted by Eli

Executive Overreach

Unbelievable:

The House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), wants to get its hands on those RNC-issued email accounts used by Karl Rove and other White House personnel. Congressional investigators want to know about Rove’s and his deputy’s involvement in the U.S. attorney firings. But the White House insists that it review the emails first, before handing anything over to Democrats. Last week, Conyers warned the RNC not to do that, saying that it would be “an unjustified delay” and “potentially… an obstruction of our investigation.”

And today, in a letter to the RNC, the White House made their position clear: you have to give them to us first. There “exists a clear and indisputable Executive Branch interest” in the emails on the RNC-issued accounts, wrote Emmet Flood, Special Counsel to the President.

Okay, I’m not a lawyer, so can someone help me out? What the hell legal principle are they using here??? Does “Because the President says so” really have the force of law?

6 comments April 17th, 2007 at 08:56pm Posted by Eli

A Subpoena Is A Wish Your Heart Makes

Well, I guess this doesn’t really surprise anyone:

Today, U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) issued the following statement in response to the Justice Department’s failure to comply with the Committee’s subpoena response deadline of 2 p.m. today. The subpoena seeks information the Department has continued to refuse to provide or has provided only in redacted form.

“We are disappointed that the Justice Department failed to produce the documents and other materials for which we issued a subpoena last week. While we understand that the Department considers this effort a priority and we plan to continue working with them, we will review all available legal options to secure compliance with the subpoena.”

Gee, I think that last part might have been a threat…

Okay, I know the Bushies think that everything in the Executive branch, and even everything that touches the Executive branch (*coughcoughRNCmailserverscough*) is covered under the magic veil of executive privilege, but shouldn’t they at least have the balls to go to court and assert it, rather than just passive-aggressively ignoring the subpoena like they do so many other requests from John/Henry? Is there some legal principle or strategy at work here? Or are they just stalling for time, like until maybe after Gonzo testifies? It’s not like he’s real hard to trip up…

1 comment April 16th, 2007 at 07:10pm Posted by Eli

18 Minutes, 18 Days, 18 Months

A pair of very interesting missing e-mail stories back-to-back in TPMmuckraker today. First, the WH e-mail system:

From Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington:

In a startling new revelation, CREW has also learned through two confidential sources that the Executive Office of the President (EOP) has lost over five million emails generated between March 2003 and October 2005. The White House counsel’s office was advised of these problems in 2005 and CREW has been told that the White House was given a plan of action to recover these emails, but to date nothing has been done to rectify this significant loss of records.

(…)

When I spoke to CREW’s Naomi Seligman Steiner, she could only say that the missing emails were generated over a period of “hundreds of days within that two year period.” Furthermore, it’s not clear whose emails they are, or why those emails are missing as opposed to others. “We’re dealing with people who are only willing to tell us so much,” she said.

And the RNC system:

In a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales today, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, asked that the Justice Department retain all emails received or sent to a White House official’s RNC-issued email address.

…[T]here are some very tantalizing details concerning Karl Rove…

From the letter:

According to Mr. Kelner, the RNC had a policy, which the RNC called a “document retention” policy, that purged all e-mails from RNC e-mail accounts and the RNC server that were more than 30 days old. Mr. Kelner said that as a result of unspecified legal inquiries, a “hold” was placed on this e-mail destruction policy for the accounts of White House officials in August 2004. Mr. Kelner was uncertain whether the hold was consistently maintained from August 2004 to the present, but he asserted that for this period, the RNC does have a large volume of White House e-mails. According to Mr. Kelner, the hold would not have prevented individual White House officials from deleting their e-mail from the RNC server after August 2004.Mr. Kelner’s briefing raised particular concems about Karl Rove, who according to press reports used his RNC accountfor 95% of his communications. According to Mr. Kelner, although the hold started in August 2004, the RNC does not have any e-mails prior to 2005 for Mr. Rove. Mr. Kelner did not give any explanation for the e-mails missing from Mr. Rove’s account, but he did acknowledge that one possible explanation is that Mr. Rove personally deleted his e-mails from the RNC server.

Mr. Kelner also explained that starting in 2005, the RNC began to treat Mr. Rove’s emails in a special fashion. At some point in 2005, the RNC commenced an automatic archive policy for Mr. Rove, but not for any other White House officials. According to Mr. Kelner, this archive policy removed Mr. Rove’s ability to personally delete his e-mails from the RNC server. Mr. Kelner did not provide many details about why this special policy was adopted for Mr. Rove. But he did indicate that one factor was the presence of investigative or discovery requests or other legal concerns. It was unclear from Mr. Kelner’s briefing whether the special archiving policy for Mr. Rove was consistently in effect after 2005. [TPMmuck emphasis]

So, this gives us a timeframe from March 2003 to August 2004 where any incriminating e-mails of interest from White House staffers could easily be missing from both WH and RNC servers, with that “blackout” timeframe extended out to “some point in 2005″ (October?) for Karl Rove. In fact, if all the WH staffers were industrious about deleting the most sensitive RNC-mails, this timeframe could effectively extend all the way to up to October 2005. Prior to this timeframe, it can be assumed that all WH e-mails should be available, and that all RNC-mails would be unavailable. After this timeframe, it can be assumed that all WH and Rove RNC-mails should be available, but there are absolutely no guarantees about the RNC-mails of any other staffers.

So, what does this timeframe cover? Just off the top of my head, it would cover the start of the Iraq war, the Plame leak and coverup, the 2004 election, most or all of the Abramoff and Cunningham investigations, and even Hurricane Katrina, if we assume that everyone was manually deleting their incriminating RNC-mails. On the positive side, this gap would not include any conversations about the Wilkes-Foggo investigation or the US Attorney firings - or any segue between them, i.e., any possible “We have to get rid of Lam before she takes down any more of our guys” e-mails, unless Rove stayed out of them.

Also on the positive side is the fact that there is absolutely no technical excuse not to produce any Rove e-mails from October 2005 on, so any directives or feedback he might have given about which USAs to fire and why should be available, whether he used WH or RNC e-mail systems. If the WH or RNC say they cannot produce them, then they are essentially admitting to a coverup.

On the other hand, if Rove was aware that his e-mails were being archived (it’s unclear whether he knew this, or if he was ineffectually deleting away, thinking he was untouchable - it’s hard to imagine the RNC wouldn’t warn him, though), there’s a good chance that he would save his most sensitive communications for the phone, or route them through a trusted aide (Jennings?) whose e-mails were not being archived.

My first thought was that Rove is so arrogant that he wouldn’t have taken such precautions until after the 2006 election proved “the math” wrong and ushered in The Age Of Oversight, but if that were the case he wouldn’t have been deleting all his e-mails in the first place. Bottom line: It’s entirely conceivable that there are simply no incriminating Rove e-mails available, and no way to bust him for circumventing even the off-the-books e-mail system… unless someone squeals.

Finally, here’s the question that keeps nagging at me: Let’s suppose, just hypothetically, that the Bush White House and the RNC are completely unethical. I know, I know, but bear with me. Now suppose that they hand over most of their e-mails in response to the subpoena, and claim that they’ve complied fully - would the Democrats be able to tell? I know a lot of them are former prosecutors, and I bet a lot of their staffers are, too (to say nothing of the Blogger Street Irregulars) - and Fitz has demonstrated just how much a good prosecutor can find out, even in the face of a coverup. Maybe they can spot the contour of an empty space where an e-mail chain should be, or a reference to a missing e-mail in another e-mail, or in someone’s testimony, and then… what? Who gets busted? Will they have a fall guy like Libby again, maybe some Regents grad willing to take one for Team Jesus?

I really want to believe that the truth will come out, but I know the Bushies can afford to let it. At the very least, I’m hoping that, like Nixon’s missing 18 minutes, the evidence of criminal obstruction will be so obvious and unspinnable that it makes the Republican Party radioactive for the next thirty years. But I’m sure that’s what we were saying in 1974, too. (Well, I was probably saying something like, “Ooo, pwetty truck!”, but you know what I mean.)

UPDATE: Just noticed this over at FDL. These are the kinds of things that don’t register on you when you’re not a prosecutor, and kinda brain-dead to boot:

[M]ay I just say for the record that if Mr. Rove knew that his e-mails were to be preserved due to a pending criminal investigation and deleted them anyway in an effort to keep them from being viewed in discovery under a valid request from, say, a certain tall special prosecutor whose name might be Fitzgerald - well, that could be construed in a whole lot of places as obstruction of justice.

Mwahahaha… This would, of course, also apply to any of his minions who might be deleting their e-mails as well.

6 comments April 12th, 2007 at 11:07pm Posted by Eli

Oopsie!

Okay, now I’m officially done with the Imus story.

Raise your hand if you’re surprised (AP, via TPM and *xyz at FDL):

The White House said Wednesday it had mishandled Republican Party-sponsored e-mail accounts used by nearly two dozen presidential aides, resulting in the loss of an undetermined number of e-mails concerning official White House business.

Congressional investigators looking into the administration’s firing of eight federal prosecutors already had the nongovernmental e-mail accounts in their sights because some White House aides used them to help plan the U.S. attorneys’ ouster. Democrats were questioning whether the use of the GOP-provided e-mail accounts was proof that the firings were political.

…The announcement of the lost e-mails - a rare admission of error from the Bush White House at a delicate time for the administration’s relations with Democratically controlled Capitol Hill - gave new fodder for inquiry on this front.”This sounds like the administration’s version of the dog ate my homework,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. “I am deeply disturbed that just when this administration is finally subjected to meaningful oversight, it cannot produce the necessary information.”

(…)

[RNC spokesman Scott] Stanzel said some e-mails have been lost because the White House lacked clear policies on complying with Presidential Records Act requirements.

Before 2004, for instance, e-mails to and from the accounts were typically automatically deleted every 30 days along with all other RNC e-mails. Even though that was changed in 2004, so that the White House staffers with those accounts were excluded from the RNC’s automatic deletion policy, some of their e-mails were lost anyway when individual aides deleted their own files, Stanzel said.

He could not say what had been lost, and said the White House is working to recover as many as they can. The White House has now shut off employees’ ability to delete e-mails on the separate accounts, and is briefing staffers on how to better make determinations about when - and when not - to use them, Stanzel said.

So… deleting your e-mail from your RNC mailbox removes it from the server completely, w