The Tillman Family and Jessica Lynch

were pretty damning in their testimony about the administration's lies about what happened in their cases in Iraq.

These Next Couple of Years

ought to be fun with all of the scandals and subpoenas surfacing.

Wolfowitzgate

is the perfect example of what is wrong with this administration.

Bush, etc., thought it was perfectly appropriate to appoint him to the World Bank knowing there was an obvious conflict of interest.

Gonzalesgate.

We know lied.

The scandal gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and it appears somebody is channeling Rosemary Woods.

The plot thickens more.

Will Congress Have the Conjones or Whatever

it is to stop our dictator and Rove from destroying the executive branch and even itself?

While Vice President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld installed neoconservative ideologues throughout the national security apparatus, sidelining the senior military, diplomatic corps and intelligence community, and creating parallel operations to avoid assessment by professionals, Rove was handed the rest of the executive branch to arrogate for political purposes.

Consider the reports surfacing only within the past month: that scientists at the Fish and Wildlife Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency have again been forbidden to discuss climate change; that nine newly appointed U.S. attorneys are political cadres; that the new U.S. attorney for Minnesota, Rachel Paulose, cites Bible verses in the office, harshly orders underlings around and, according to one of four assistant U.S. attorneys in her office who voluntarily demoted themselves, treats disagreement as "disloyalty"; that the Election Assistance Commission last year, giving credence to Republican talking points of widespread voter fraud, ignored experts' testimony to the contrary; that between 2001 and 2006, the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department has purged 60 percent of its professional staff and not filed a single voting discrimination case on behalf of African-American or Native American voters; and that after the state Republican Party complained to Rove that the U.S. attorney in Wisconsin, Steven Biskupic, was not attacking voter fraud, Biskupic kept his job by filing corruption charges against an aide to the incumbent Democratic governor on the eve of the 2006 elections. (The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled the aide was "wrongly convicted" on evidence that was "beyond thin.")

On the one hand, Rove has sought to forge a permanent Republican majority. On the other hand, that project might not be completed in just two Bush terms. In either case, Rove's strategy has depended on subjecting the federal government to political objectives. He is not trying to achieve any abstract goal, such as reaching the conservative nirvana of limited government. The endless scandals revealed are not a random compendium of corruption and incompetence, though they are that, too. They are evidence of Rove's -- and Bush's -- larger strategy of hollowing out the federal government in the interest of building a political state.

As usual, Sidney Blumenthal hits it on the head.

Gonzalesgate.

Are the Democrats "caving in" to Bush on the attorney firings?

More Gonzalesgate.

From the horse's mouth the Horse's Ass blew it big time on the firings because the reasons for the dismissals were all lies.

George

says he is really and truly sorry about getting caught in the Walter Reed scandal and promises to fix up the mess.

And

all trails of political sewage lead to the Turd:

Mr. Rove’s role has put him in the center of a Senate inquiry into the dismissal of eight United States attorneys. Democrats and a few Republicans have raised questions about whether the prosecutors were being replaced to impede or jump-start investigations for partisan goals.

Political advisers have had a hand in picking judges and prosecutors for decades, but Mr. Rove exercises unusually broad influence over political, policy and personnel decisions because of his closeness to the president, tenure in the administration and longstanding interest in turning the judiciary to the right.

Gonzalesgate II.

All we need to do is follow the e-mails.

Those e-mails might be equivalent to the Nixon tapes.

Sampson will be in the hot seat.

Fredo ain't a very popular boss.

Gonzalesgate.

One thing we know about this scandal and that's the concept of loyalty is a one-way street for this administration.

Lyons goes back to the good old Whitewater "scandal" to find a similar case of a U.S. attorney not willing to play ball for the radical right.

Why Is It

our dictator is being so stubborn about the issue of Turd and Harriet testifying before Congress on the Gonzalesgate scandal?

The Racketeering-Style

of the far right of the Republican Party (or even of much of the national party at large) in pursuit of creating a "majority" is at the heart of almost all of the scandals that have happened in recent years, and especially Gonzalesgate.

The Republican Party needs to cleanse itself from this tendency or its future will be in doubt.

I noticed the WSWS hasn't written a peep about Gonzalesgate. That's probably because the Democrats can't be criticized too much.

Gonzalesgate.

I would say the Justice Department was in CYA mode once news of the attorney firings went public.

More Gonzalesgate.

Richard Nixon is alive in the form of our dictator, who decided he was going to pull his own version of the legendary White House edited transcripts by claiming his demands that his aides not testify under oath and not be transcribed are compromises.

He, like Nixon, thinks he is a law unto himself. He can demand Congress do these things "or else." But since his chief puppet in this matter, Turd Blossom, is a graduate of the Nixon School of Political Strategy, it's no surprise.

Despite the tough talk at his press conference, it was clear our dictator was severely stressed and rattled over the whole thing. His role in the scandal is no doubt important, but it is Turd who is at the very core of it.

People call him a genius, but he's not. Sociopathy is not genius. The Republican Party for at least the past 45 years has been under the spell of the sociopaths of the radical right. And unfortunately, these bastards keep coming back like bad pennies. Look at DeLay, who should be in prison, going around peddling his new book and talking about how Gonzales ought to hang in there. And what about Newt, whose "revolution" helped accelerate the ultimate decline of the Republican Party and nearly destroyed our democracy with the legal harassment and bogus impeachment of a sitting president? Why is this guy given ANY forum, much less be seriously considered as a presidential contender (remembering as I do the Elizabeth Drew article many years ago that he was hoping Clinton would be impeached and removed, and then Gore would be out, thus paving the way for HIS ascendancy to the presidency).

It's utterly bizarre and outrageous. But it appears the end may be near. Gonzalesgate may not be the absolute worst scandal of this scandalous administration (I rank the two stolen elections and Katrina ahead of it), but this may be the one that throws it into total disrepute. The difference, of course, is the Republicans are no longer in the catbird seat. The Democrats are now demanding accountability. The Republicans who remain in Congress for the most part feel no longer constrained by crooks like Tom DeLay to toe the line. They are less chickenshit to do something, but probably because they have no choice. It's work with the Democrats or wind up like the Whigs.

Bush and Cheney probably will never be impeached; it's too close to the next presidential election, and besides, their continued presence is a boon for Democrats. Gonzales, if he stays, could be another matter, and he could wind up being impeached. The best thing that could happen to this country is if Turd is finally thrown in the slammer and thrown out of politics.

I can dream, can't I?

Our Dictator

just finished his defensive, piss-poor press conference whereby he accused Democrats of "playing politics" and all of that other shit.

He and his administration are cooked over the attorney firings, and they know it.

What do you mean, George, you won't "allow" Rove and Miers to testify under oath, and that you will fight it in the courts "if necessary"?

The Democrats sure as hell aren't taking his bait and aren't backing down one iota.

It was gratifying to know that almost all of the Republicans joined the Democrats in plugging that loophole in the Patriot Act which left it open for the likes of Rove to exploit.

But if the move to get to the bottom of this scandal is bipartisan, it's because the Republicans have no choice. If Bush and company get the upper hand, the Republican Party as currently constituted would be destroyed. It probably will be anyway, as the radical fringe finds itself marginalized and more sane elements take over.

The current Republican candidates for president are trying to distance themselves from our dictator, and governors like Arnold have made it clear they aren't going to be puppets for the goons in the White House. It would seem to me these acts are acts of self-preservation.

If this latest mess is pursued, it would seem not only Gonzales is cooked, but also Karl Rove. Political discourse would be greatly improved if Karl Rove were gone from the scene, hopefully in an orange jumpsuit.

In any case, pass the popcorn.

Gonzalesgate.

The Justice Department is trying like hell to cover up the scandal, all for naught.

Gonzalesgate.

In his zeal to create a one-party government and to hell with how he does it, Turd Blossom has endangered his figurehead boss even further besides putting Gonzales on the chopping block.

Four Years Later,

the Iraq War has been a triumphant failure with plenty of blame to go around.

Gonzalesgate.

As everybody in the world knows, but I was too tired last night to post, Turd was linked to early queries about axing the 93 attorneys.

As we know, most of them were "loyal" enough to the sociopath, so he decided to just get rid of the eight who were causing the most trouble.
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Like Sununu, Oregon's Gordon Smith realizes the Republicans are in deep shit if they keep supporting every action of the administration.
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This editorial by the NYT is unusual in that it doesn't mince words as to what Gonzalesgate is really about:

In partisan Republican circles, the pursuit of voter fraud is code for suppressing the votes of minorities and poor people. By resisting pressure to crack down on “fraud,” the fired United States attorneys actually appear to have been standing up for the integrity of the election system.

John McKay, one of the fired attorneys, says he was pressured by Republicans to bring voter fraud charges after the 2004 Washington governor’s race, which a Democrat, Christine Gregoire, won after two recounts. Republicans were trying to overturn an election result they did not like, but Mr. McKay refused to go along. “There was no evidence,” he said, “and I am not going to drag innocent people in front of a grand jury.”

It was merely Act whatever in the seemingly neverending saga of the administration once again indulging in fraud for political ends. And Karl Rove is right at the center of it, as always.
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