Miscellaneous News from All Over

The White House continues to smear Joseph Wilson.
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When you act as your own attorney, don't expect judges to rule in your favor.
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A Sparks, Nevada, couple with 12 kids, 11 of whom are adopted, have received donations after word got out their home was about to be foreclosed. One of the donors is well-known painter Sean Scully.
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The Obama supporters' campaign against Larry Sinclair is in full force as his current website has been shut down.

More details are here.

And there's this:

This is my last post. Host Monster, the server where I had moved the blog www.larrysinclair0926.com to has deleted the site from their servers and will not host my web site any longer. Host Monster explained to me that they will cooperate with me and Mr. Sibley and provide Mr. Sibley with all information on those who visited the site and all attempts made to access the files and controls on the site. I am faxing the release authorization as I type this. Host Monster states that they do not wish to continue to Host my site as they have spent more time on complaints in the short period of time I was on that server than they have in the time they have been in business.

Host Monster stated it is not worth the harassment and resources expended.

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the “Barack Obama’s US of A”

I will end this post with a thought, if what I have said is untrue, then why is it that every blog and web site I have had has been attacked and the servers pressured into shutting them down? Why has so much time, effort and money been put into threatening, attacking me and my family? Why is it that Barack Obama does not have the guts to say I am lying?

He just said on the Roger Fredinburg show he is getting a new server and expects to be back up in about a week.
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There's one more Republican we need to throw out of the Senate.

Coburn's been nicknamed "Dr. No."
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So why has there been a recent wave of triathlete deaths?
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It's no surprise there were violations in hiring in the Justice Department.
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It's very sad news for columnist Bob Novak, 77. He has been diagnosed with a brain tumor.

As the Turd Blossoms.

Karl Rove has been taken away from his responsibilities of rigging this year's presidential election to be called in to testify in the Justice Department attorney scandal case.

Miscellaneous.

The nine U.S. attorneys who were sacked a year ago because of Republican pressure to have political hacks instead are actually doing okay.
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Canadian pig farmer Robert "Willie" Pickton was found guilty of murdering six women. He was alleged to have fed their remains to his pigs.
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Now This Is

interesting, to say the least:

A former U.S. attorney general on Tuesday accused the U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh of launching public corruption probes that targeted Democratic officeholders while looking the other way when presented with evidence of misconduct by Republican officials.

The incendiary remarks by Richard L. Thornburgh, a former Republican governor of Pennsylvania as well as the top Justice Department official from 1988 to 1991, represented some of the most extraordinary testimony yet in the continuing congressional investigation into allegations of politicization of the Justice Department under ousted Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales.

Thornburgh, now an attorney in private practice, represents nationally known forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht, who was indicted by a federal grand jury last year for allegedly misusing his elected position as the Allegheny County coroner. Prosecutors allege that Wecht directed employees at the coroner's office to spend substantial portions of their time performing tasks related to his private consulting business that reportedly grosses over $1 million a year.

Thornburgh said the indictment blew out of proportion what were, at most, a series of minor transgressions. He said prosecutors targeted Wecht because he was an outspoken and highly visible Democratic figure in western Pennsylvania. The case is set for trial in January.

Pass the popcorn, please.

We All Knew

John Edwards was the one candidate the Republicans didn't want up against our dictator in 2004, and they wanted to make damned sure he didn't get the nomination.

Of course he is now being branded as a hypocrite, if he is covered at all, by the same Republican-owned media. The powers-that-be will NOT allow John Edwards to take hold in this country.

The powers-that-be are not only the Republicans but also far too many Democrats in the party apparatus, and far too many of them support the unelectable Hillary Clinton.

Senior Republican operatives appear to have targeted John Edwards early in the process of the 2004 presidential election as the most likely Democratic nominee and opponent of the Bush-Cheney reelection effort; extensive efforts were apparently launched within both FEC and DOJ to go after Edwards’s campaign funding resources, with a particularly ferocious focus on trial lawyers. At the same time, the Justice Department took quite extraordinary steps to camouflage its conduct, for fairly obvious reasons—it was sensitive to the potentially adverse consequences for the Bush Administration and its re-election efforts that would result from the disclosure of its use of the machinery of the criminal justice process to attack a political adversary.

Yes, We Have Political Prisoners

in this country, as Time as well as Harper's tell us. The prosecution and conviction of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman is one of the most outrageous miscarriages of justice in recent times. But it was part and parcel of the wider, even more outrageous, Justice Department scandal.

Is there any doubt his prosecution was politically motivated?

Alabama is as red a state as the clay in its earth. After the years of rule by Southern Democrats, Republicans have now taken up residence in the Governor's mansion, as well as most statewide offices and congressional seats. In the 1990s Rove helped orchestrate a GOP near sweep of the Alabama Supreme Court.

In this new Republican landscape, Siegelman emerged as one of the few Democratic stars, winning the Governor's race in 1998. He lost the seat in a close and contested race in 2002, but polls in 2003 showed that he had a good chance of recapturing the governorship. Then came the first indictment from the U.S. Attorney in Birmingham, charging Siegelman with using his position to rig a state bidding process. A judge dismissed the case in 2004 for lack of evidence. Just as Siegelman was preparing to run for Governor again, a second round of charges was brought in 2005 by the U.S. Attorney's office in Montgomery. His trial in 2006 overlapped with Alabama's Democratic primary, in which Siegelman had initially been a heavy favorite.

And let's not forget the double-standard in effect here:

Legal experts say prosecutors enjoy wide latitude in deciding whom to charge in criminal cases. But according to Laurie Levenson, a former assistant U.S. Attorney and a prominent expert in legal ethics at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, there are limits. "Certainly prosecutors would face a professional obligation to check out or verify the allegations in this case," she says. "Not doing so would represent a potential abuse of prosecutorial discretion." The key, she adds, is whether prosecutors chose not to pursue evidence of criminal activity by Republicans because of political bias or a conflict of interest. Sometimes prosecutors have a more benign motive; they may simply verify that allegations are untrue or be unclear on how to categorize the offense or the relevant statute of limitations. Certainly in Young's statements about Sessions and Pryor, he did not allege a quid pro quo for his money laundering of their campaigns. And whatever the involvement of their campaigns, Sessions and Pryor both assert they were completely unaware of his confessed chicanery. But the U.S. Attorney's office chose to prosecute Siegelman in no small measure on the basis of Young's word and chose not to investigate Sessions and Pryor--or their campaigns--on the basis of that same word.

Several people involved in the Siegelman case who spoke to TIME say prosecutors were so focused on going after Siegelman that they showed almost no interest in tracking down what Young said about apparently illegal contributions to Sessions, Pryor, other well-known figures in the Alabama GOP and even a few of the state's Democrats. "It just didn't seem like that was ever going to happen," said an individual present during key parts of the investigation. "Sessions and Pryor were on the home team."

Was There Any Doubt

former Alabama governor Don Siegelman was a casualty of the Bush Justice Department scandal?

It sure as hell appears to be.

It Appears

the dictatorship knew John Edwards was going to run for president in 2004, and they hatched a scheme to wreck his chances:

In the last two weeks, two sources, one of them inside of the Justice Department, have told me that a scheme was hatched in the upper echelons of the Bush Administration shortly after it took office in 2001 or early in 2002. The project identified John Edwards and Hillary Clinton as likely Democratic challengers to President Bush, and identified prominent trial lawyers around the United States as the likely financial vehicle for Edward’s rise. It directed that their campaign finance records be fly-specked, and that offenses not be treated as administrative matters but rather as serious criminal offenses.

The scheme contemplated among other things that raids be staged on the law offices involved, and that the records seized not be limited to campaign finance—there was an acute interest in all politically oriented documents, in order to seize valuable intelligence on strategic planning from the enemy camp.

Now tell me again they didn't fear Edwards and still don't.

Just Because

Fredo is gone, that doesn't mean the administration's assault on civil liberties, including the right to fair elections, won't continue.

Gonzalesgate.

Fredo decided to get the hell out of Dodge.

He told our dictator he was through being his fall guy on Friday.

Harry Reid insists investigations will continue.

Gonzalesgate.

It goes without saying Gonzales needs to be impeached:

For all its emotional appeal, this

column has always opposed wasting

time and energy on the impeachment of President Bush. That’s not to say one couldn’t draw up a list of impeachable offenses, from taking the nation to war on false premises to countenancing such outrages against the Constitution as warrantless wiretaps, false imprisonment and torture. The votes, however, simply don’t exist. Congressional Republicans remain committed to Bush / Cheney, along with the party’s hard-core base. Dragging the nation through another fruitless, made-for-TV spectacle like the Clinton impeachment would look like cheap revenge. It would threaten to turn a grave constitutional remedy into a commonplace political sideshow. That said, Congress should quit pussyfooting around and impeach Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at once. Halfway measures like a special prosecutor would only produce more of what Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N. Y., characterizes as Gonzales’ strategy of “the half-truth, the partial truth and anything but the truth.” For once, I agree with Newt Gingrich. Appearing on “FOX News Sunday,” he declined to defend Gonzales against accusations of repeatedly lying to Congress.

Lotsa luck getting that done.

Gonzalesgate.

I am beginning to wonder if impeachment is in the cards now that it is clear beyond all doubt Fredo lied in front of Congress.

I mean he's cooked.

Gonzalesgate.

There are still more hearings going on today with Fredo being under oath, I guess, but he continues to try and get around telling the truth as much as he can.

Since They Know

the Democrats in both houses of Congress are powerless to do anything about it, the administration is openly defying them by claiming "executive privilege" in the Gonzalesgate scandal.

The WSWS whines and moans about this state of affairs, but nothing can be done about it. The voters fucked up back in 1994 by ever letting Republicans have control of Congress. Currently, there aren't enough Democrats to able to get rid of Bush and Cheney, and Republicans are all in lockstep in favor of the administration.

Gonzalesgate.

Our dictator once again thinks he is above the law by claiming he doesn't have to turn over documents to Congress.

Gonzalesgate.

Monica Goodling told all or something today, but I missed it.

Her work experience in the area of human resources has been widely ridiculed.

More here.
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Gonzalesgate.

Iglesias had a lot to say about his firing.

Gonzalesgate.

Deputy AG McNulty has decided to jump ship after only 18 months in office.

The fallout has led to a deepening rift between Gonzales, who was upset by the testimony about former U.S. attorney Bud Cummins, and McNulty, whose supporters believe he has been tarred by missteps and possible wrongdoing by former Gonzales aides, according to numerous Justice officials. McNulty has told congressional investigators that D. Kyle Sampson, then Gonzales's chief of staff, and Monica M. Goodling, then the department's White House liaison, did not brief him fully before his testimony.

Not Surprising

is this report that the White House was involved in attempts to suppress voter turnout last election by pressing for bogus "voter fraud" investigations.

Although the Justice Department has released thousands of documents related to the inquiry, officials haven't said whether they considered firing more prosecutors.

McClatchy Newspapers has reported that the department targeted at least four other prosecutors, including Biskupic.

Another former U.S. attorney, Todd Graves of Kansas City, Mo., revealed this week that he was asked to step aside for another candidate. He also said he had refused to sign off on a voting-rights lawsuit, which another Justice Department official later approved in Washington. The official, Brad Schlozman, later became Graves' temporary replacement.

Gonzales denied that the department considered removing Graves as part of the same firing plan.

Gonzalesgate.

The scandal ought to get really good when Goodling testifies.

Snip:

As the former senior counselor to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and principal liaison between Gonzales and the White House, Goodling is a key witness to the role of Bush and his top political aide, Karl Rove, in the politically motivated purge.

Seven of the prosecutors were fired last December 8, while the eighth was discharged a few months earlier. The firings had a clear political motivation: nearly all the US attorneys were under fire within the Bush administration and from congressional Republicans because they had either prosecuted high-level Republicans on corruption charges or declined to bring bogus vote fraud cases against Democrats in states that were closely contested politically.

Until now, Goodling, who resigned her position March 29, had refused to testify about the circumstances of the firings, citing her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. It is almost unprecedented for a top official of the chief law enforcement department of the federal government to invoke the Fifth Amendment, an action that suggests that the dismissal of the US attorneys could involve crimes, such as obstruction of justice.