Barry, meet Scooter

. . . and I don’t mean Rizzuto.

Ex-San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds, Major League Baseball’s record-holder for career and single-season homeruns, was indicted Thursday on five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying to federal prosecutors investigating steroid use by professional athletes linked to the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO).

Within hours of the indictment’s unsealing, President George W. Bush—who had earlier this summer congratulated Bonds on surpassing Hank Aaron as baseball’s all-time homerun king—rushed to jump on the Barry-be-bad bandwagon.

In Washington, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said: "The president is very disappointed to hear this. As this case is now in the criminal justice system, we will refrain from any further specific comments about it. But clearly this is a sad day for baseball."

Bush, who often likes to brag about having run the Texas Rangers (even though he was only a 5% owner), neglected to mention that during the time of his involvement with the Rangers, steroid use was understood to be rampant in baseball—a dirty little secret kept on the down-low by owners and players, alike, because all concerned liked what the juiced numbers were doing for the game’s bottom line.

But that’s not the height of the hypocrisy in the Bonds case—not anymore.

The President rushed to condemn Bonds for allegations that bare a remarkable resemblance to the charges on which Vice President Dick Cheney’s former Chief of Staff Scooter Libby was convicted earlier this year (for the record, that would be four counts of making false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice). Libby’s conviction carried mandatory jail time—as would the charges against Bonds, should they be proven at trial. But Lewis I. Libby never went to prison—George Bush pardoned Scooter soon after his conviction. Can Barry Lamar Bonds expect equal leniency from the man who was in this case, as he was in Libby’s, at least peripherally involved?


A sidebar, Your Honor

Bush’s involvement with Major League Baseball isn’t the only thread that ties the President to the BALCO investigation and the Bonds indictment. On the same day that the charges were revealed, Bush named the man who will prosecute Barry Bonds should the case go to trial.

A bit of background: The BALCO investigation was begun back in 2003 by then US Attorney Kevin Ryan—a George W. Bush appointee. But Ryan stepped down early this year, forced out, as were several other US attorneys, by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales because of a perceived lack of loyalty to the Bush Administration.

The turnover at the Northern California prosecutor’s office disrupted the ongoing BALCO investigation, likely causing a delay in the handing up of indictments. For the last eight months, the Bonds case was handled by interim US Attorney Scott Schools, a veteran DoJ lawyer.

With the confirmation and swearing in of new Attorney General Michael Mukasey, President Bush set about filling the vacancies created by the previous AG’s White House-directed purge. Joseph Russoniello, who served as US Attorney for ten years in the same district under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, has been nominated by his former boss’s son to take over the office now tasked with prosecuting Bonds.

And, one more thing, if this case doesn’t seem muddied enough by the behavior of the President and his appointees, defense attorney Mike Rains, representing Bonds in this matter, is accusing the feds of “unethical misconduct,” stating:

Every American should worry about a Justice Department that doesn't know if waterboarding is torture and can't tell the difference between prosecution on the one hand and persecution on the other.

I’m not ready to grant him that Bonds is simply being persecuted here, but as for his other observation, yeah, it—like this entire tangled web—has to get you thinking. . . .


UPDATE:

Questions about the timing of the Bonds indictment and its relationship to recent DoJ turmoil are asked in Saturday’s New York Times:

Why now? A defense lawyer for Barry Bonds and two outside legal experts raised questions yesterday about the timing of the perjury indictment against Bonds, saying they did not understand why it came this week and not months or even years ago.

But the United States attorney’s office in San Francisco declined to answer questions about the case against Bonds. . . .

The 10-page indictment issued by a grand jury Thursday consisted mostly of quotations from Bonds’s 2003 grand jury testimony, in which he repeatedly denied taking steroids or human growth hormone.

A government official involved with the case said the Department of Justice in Washington did not sign off on the decision to indict Bonds, which is not unusual. The official, who talked on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, who was officially sworn in Nov. 9, only learned of the indictment after Scott Schools, the acting United States attorney in the Northern District of California, called the office an hour before the indictment was announced.

The lead defense lawyer for Bonds, Michael L. Rains, said the indictment did not appear to contain much new information. “Nothing has changed in four years,” Rains said. . . .

Two former federal prosecutors, Tony West and Walt Brown, speculated that Schools might have wanted to issue the indictment before he was replaced by someone unfamiliar with the case.

Less than four hours after the indictment was announced Thursday, the White House nominated Joseph Russoniello to replace Schools, a career prosecutor who has served as interim head of the office since Kevin Ryan was fired in January.

The White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore said the timing of the announcement was “completely coincidental.” . . .

West, a defense attorney in San Francisco and a former federal prosecutor there, said, “It’s a logical way to think about it, that you don’t have to get another U.S. attorney up to speed on it.” West said he was otherwise perplexed why Bonds would have been indicted Thursday on evidence the government seemed to have collected months ago.

Assistant United States attorneys in the office pushed to indict Bonds in the summer of 2006, but Ryan wanted to get testimony from Greg Anderson, Bonds’s trainer.

Anderson was jailed for contempt for refusing to testify for the last year, and he has been steadfast in his refusal to appear before the grand jury — another reason the government may have decided not to wait any longer, West said.

Anderson was released from jail shortly after the indictment against Bonds was announced. . . .

Brown, a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles and now a defense lawyer in San Francisco, also said the coming change in United States attorneys might have been a factor. “You can’t help but notice the timing,” he said.

But Brown said the prosecutors might have also waited to charge Bonds until after the baseball season to avoid complaints that they had interfered with Bonds’s pursuit of Hank Aaron’s home run record.

So, either the indictment was rushed because the White House was about to replace the lead attorney (who was himself a replacement after the USA-gate purge), or the indictment was delayed so as not to interfere with the baseball season and Bonds’s pursuit of Aaron’s record—is that what counts as jurisprudence and due process these days?


(cross-posted to The Seminal and Daily Kos)

take the Terkel challenge

While Marcy Wheeler explains how Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and his Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have drafted a law on warrantless surveillance that not only gives retroactive immunity to the telecoms for their illegal complicity in White House supervised domestic spying, but immunizes President Bush and then WH Counsel Alberto Gonzales for their intentional violations of US Code and DoJ guidelines, as well, Studs Terkel, a plaintiff in one of the suits against the telecoms, puts the whole program in chilling context.

(Continued on capitoilette. . . .)

reality bites back

In choosing a retired federal judge to replace disgraced former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, George W. Bush got himself more than a good Jewish lawyer and the answer to a trivia question (What do Roy Cohen, Claus von Bulow, and Rudy Giuliani have in common?), he got himself a conundrum.

You see, Michael Mukasey was the presiding judge in the trial of Omar Abdel Rahman, the so-called “Blind Sheikh,” when he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison for his involvement in a plot to blow up New York City landmarks. President Bush himself made a big deal of Judge Mukasey’s involvement in that case, but what Bush can’t seem to reconcile, no less grasp, is that America successfully stopped a terrorist plot and locked away its planners by treating the plot as a crime and using the tools afforded under the existing criminal justice system to punish the would-be terrorists.

Back then, there was no USA Patriot Act, there was no Guantanamo, there were no military commissions/star chambers, there was no extraordinary rendition, there was no torture, and, last but not least, there was no “Global War on Terror.” But, the biggest difference, of course, is that the Blind Sheikh rots in a US prison, an historical footnote, at best, while Osama bin Laden is a free man, getting a dye-job somewhere in the northwest of Pakistan, an en ever-greater legend to an ever-growing number of radicalized Muslims.

If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say, the elevation of Judge Mukasey is a plum example of just how much the Bush/Cheney approach to terrorism bites.

not holding my breath

President Bush needs to appoint someone who does not come out of the world of electoral politics or the White House, and is not a “loyal Bushie.” He should consult with leaders of Congress in making the decision and choose someone with bipartisan support.

The above quote is from today’s New York Times editorial, and here is what I had to say just under a month ago in a post titled you don’t take the punching bag out of the gym:

[F]or a well below average president with a well above average number of failures and scandals, his lil’ friend, Alberto Gonzales, is the best thing that could happen.

Instead of focusing on a president’s blatant violations of the Constitution, instead of discussing the administration’s massive domestic spying program—warrantless eavesdropping, wholesale data mining, unsupervised surveillance of US citizens—we are debating whether the country’s chief law enforcement officer perjured himself, or just almost perjured himself.

Instead of screaming from the highest hills that the purge of US attorneys was, at its roots, part of a grand plan by the White House to corrupt the democratic process and steal elections, we instead wonder about how much various Gonzales underlings knew, and who they talked to, and whether the attorney general was directly involved, and who serves at the pleasure of the president, and whether we should hold various officials in contempt of Congress or just threaten to do so.

While Bush and Cheney continue to fail the American people, line the pockets of their friends, and systematically dismantle the Constitution, various members of Congress are threatening to call for a special prosecutor—to investigate Gonzales!

How about, instead of us all doing the Gonzo shuffle, we get a special prosecutor to look into some of the corrupt actions of the Attorney General’s bosses? From sleazy energy deals, to lying us into the Iraq war, to the money gone missing during the reconstruction of Iraq, to the no-bid contracts for cronies, to the failures before and after hurricane Katrina, to the domestic spying, to the politicization of public agencies, to the CIA leak case, to the secret prisons, extraordinary rendition, and torture, to the US attorneys scandal, and so many more, the number of dodgy, disingenuous, dishonest, and downright dastardly dealings that merit an investigation could keep attorneys and prosecutors busy for the next six or seven of the vice president’s defibrillator batteries.

OK, so, now that said punching bag is out of the gym (or will be as of September 17), we can get on with all that, right?

Again, not holding my breath.

everybody’s out of town

Gosh, if you ever wanted to hear an echo in your own echo chamber, just yell into the left side of the blogosphere Wednesday Afternoon – Thursday Morning. With everybody (but me) seemingly on their way to that “hate fest” known as Yearly Kos, there is scant little posted on many of my favorite sites.

So, nowhere do I see anyone who can provide me with the choice text of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee where I swear I heard Rummy say that he wasn’t going to admit that he knew that Cpl. Pat Tillman was fragged or that his “blue on black” killing was covered up because no one could produce any evidence that said that he (Rumsfeld) knew. . . which to my mind is quite a bit different from actually saying you didn’t know.

Cheney’s appearance on Larry King seems a tad under-covered, too. Though there is this great video on TPM that reveals Cheney’s rather transparent “tell.”

And then there is this matter, which, admittedly does have two big diaries dedicated to it over dKos, but I really wish someone was out there to boil it all down a bit. . . .

The story, which springs from a string of anonymous comments left on TPM since July 27, seemingly from someone with some inside knowledge. The comments, as best I can figure (and there are a lot of comments, so I am seriously reducing this), assert that by getting all wrapped up in Gonzo’s parsing of his parsing about the “TSP” or some “other” program, Congress, and those Americans that care, are sort of barking up the wrong tree.

The comments paint a picture of a much, much bigger program, run out of the NSC (National Security Council)—not the NSA—that is engaged in wholesale domestic surveillance of all kinds, and detentions and abductions, perhaps inside the US, and that all of this started prior to October 1, 2001.

The NSC, of course, does not have to report to the Department of Justice or its Office of Legal Counsel, and operates outside the jurisdiction of the FISA court.

Dick Cheney, naturally, has experience with such a dodge. A little poking around reminds me that then Representative Cheney (WY) helped steer the House Iran-Contra investigation away from George HW Bush, and, as vice president, Cheney had meetings with Iran-Contra felon Elliott Abrams and Iran-Contra player Saudi Prince Bandar where he discussed “lessons learned” from that Regan-era scandal. Iran-Contra was run off the books through the National Security Council.

And, I will add that, with this in mind, I notice that Cheney in his back and forth justification of his fourthbranch role in government, keeps mentioning that he sits on the NSC.

Guess it’s on his mind.

Why, it’s almost as if he’s begging someone to ask the right questions. . . .

So that he can then lie some more when he answers.


If anyone out there has answers to any of this (or, if not answers, ideas will do), please drop me a line.

you don’t take the punching bag out of the gym

Mike Lukovich
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Many analysts and bloggers are all hopped up this week about the parade of rats leaving the perceived-as-sinking ship, SS Alberto Gonzales. Representative Adam Putnam, Chair of the House Republican Caucus, said the attorney general’s loss of credibility “diminishes the justice department.” Fox “News” anchor Chris Wallace announced on Sunday that no one would come on his show to defend AG AG. Senator Arlen “Mumbles” Specter has apparently given the White House a deadline of high noon today to clean up the barf that the attorney general left all over a Senate hearing room last week. (If they refuse? Senator Mumbles will no doubt threaten to be very displeased at some point in the future, after additional deliberation, but let’s not be too hasty.) Even a sanctimonious shill like Senator Orrin Hatch slipped up on Sunday and admitted that Fredo has a credibility problem.

But if we have learned nothing this year, we have learned that reports of Fat Albert’s imminent demise are about as valuable as Dick “Death Throes” Cheney’s assessments of the Iraqi insurgency.

Yes, in an average time, with an average presidency, dealing with an average number of failures, scandals, and misdeeds, a high-ranking figurehead as fucked up as Fredo would be considered a drag on the administration. But these are not average times, and for a well below average president with a well above average number of failures and scandals, his lil’ friend, Alberto Gonzales, is the best thing that could happen.

Instead of focusing on a president’s blatant violations of the Constitution, instead of discussing the administration’s massive domestic spying program—warrantless eavesdropping, wholesale data mining, unsupervised surveillance of US citizens—we are debating whether the country’s chief law enforcement officer perjured himself, or just almost perjured himself.

Instead of screaming from the highest hills that the purge of US attorneys was, at its roots, part of a grand plan by the White House to corrupt the democratic process and steal elections, we instead wonder about how much various Gonzales underlings knew, and who they talked to, and whether the attorney general was directly involved, and who serves at the pleasure of the president, and whether we should hold various officials in contempt of Congress or just threaten to do so.

While Bush and Cheney continue to fail the American people, line the pockets of their friends, and systematically dismantle the Constitution, various members of Congress are threatening to call for a special prosecutor—to investigate Gonzales!

How about, instead of us all doing the Gonzo shuffle, we get a special prosecutor to look into some of the corrupt actions of the Attorney General’s bosses? From sleazy energy deals, to lying us into the Iraq war, to the money gone missing during the reconstruction of Iraq, to the no-bid contracts for cronies, to the failures before and after hurricane Katrina, to the domestic spying, to the politicization of public agencies, to the CIA leak case, to the secret prisons, extraordinary rendition, and torture, to the US attorneys scandal, and so many more, the number of dodgy, disingenuous, dishonest, and downright dastardly dealings that merit an investigation could keep attorneys and prosecutors busy for the next six or seven of the vice president’s defibrillator batteries.

While there is no doubt in my mind that Abu Gonzales deserves to be, no, needs to be impeached, I am no longer content to fiddle with Fredo while the Constitution burns. If our Representatives and Senators can walk and chew gum at the same time, if they can investigate and impeach Gonzales while going full bore after the real kingpins of the crime syndicate known as the Bush/Cheney Administration, then I wish them Godspeed. But, if we continue as we have this last week, and so many weeks this year, then my considered opinion at this point is: skip it.

Of course, if there suddenly were no Alberto Gonzales to kick around anymore, then Congress, the establishment and non-establishment media, and, indeed, the rest of America, would have to turn their attentions elsewhere. . . perhaps somewhere just up the org chart.

As Orrin Hatch repeated many times this weekend, “Gonzales is being used a punching bag by Democrats and, frankly, some Republicans.” Which is why you won’t be seeing anyone in White House accepting the Alberto Gonzales’ “resignation” anytime soon.

(cross-posted to capitoilette and Daily Kos)

next mechanism please

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) called again for the resignation of Attorney General (and “loyal Bushie”) Alberto Gonzales. Speaking during the debate to end the debate on the so-called “vote of no confidence,” Reid began as follows:

I rise in support of S.J. Res. 14, a resolution expressing the Sense of the Senate that Attorney General Gonzales has lost the confidence of Congress and the American people. The Senate has a responsibility to express its displeasure with a Cabinet officer who has grossly mismanaged his responsibilities and failed the American people. That is the one and only mechanism we have – short of impeachment – to address malfeasance by a high-ranking federal official.

Well, while a majority of the Senate clearly expressed their lack of confidence, the move for cloture failed to gain needed 60 votes. The final “yes” vote of 53 included seven Republicans; the 38 “no” votes included Republican toy balloon Joe Lieberman (Schmuck-CT).

I probably don’t need to remind you of the litany of Gonzo’s misdeeds (if you need reminders, New York Senator Chuck Schumer has a few here), but perhaps we all need reminding that, success or failure of S.J. Res. 14 notwithstanding, today, as yesterday, Alberto Gonzales is still the Attorney General, he is still in charge of the Department of Justice, he is still our nation’s “top law enforcement official.”

Senator Reid said the resolution was the only mechanism available short of impeachment—well, the cloture vote fell short, so what does that leave Reid, the US Senate, and the American people?

Senator Reid, Senator Schumer, Senator Leahy, Democrats—it’s time. Enough Pussyfootin’. If you want to keep the pressure on this miscreant and his lords and masters in the White House, if you want to start fighting back against the partisan political attacks on our Constitution and our electoral process, if you want to maintain your own credibility as the Party that stands in opposition to the criminal ways of the Bush Administration, then you need to start the wheels turning on that other mechanism. You need to begin hearings on the impeachment of Alberto Gonzales.

Now.

(almost) everybody must get stoned

These guys kill me. I mean, I know that they literally kill others, through their actions, but they, you know, in a head-shaking kind of disbelief way, stone-dead kill me.

Yesterday, it was Attorney General Alberto Gonzales taking the convenient opportunity to seize upon the resignation of his Deputy AG Paul McNulty to announce that, even though Gonzales had previously sworn little knowledge of what was going on regarding the US attorneys, and even though he had earlier the same day claimed that his chief deputy wasn’t actually a “top aid,” Abu-G now knew that the whole was USA-purge-gate mess was squarely McNulty’s fault.

Today, we read that the other guy vying for the title “Most Embattled Bushie,” World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, is holding his organization hostage by insisting the Bank take the blame for his, Wolfie’s, misdeeds:

After six weeks of combating efforts to oust him as president of the World Bank, Paul D. Wolfowitz began Wednesday to negotiate the terms under which he would resign, in return for the dropping or softening of the charge that he had engaged in misconduct, bank officials said.

Mr. Wolfowitz was said to be adamant that he be cleared of wrongdoing before he resigned, according to people familiar with his thinking.

This is after Wolfowitz already laid the blame for his troubles on his “companion” (or maybe former companion?) Shaha Riza:

Wolfowitz effectively blamed Riza for his predicament as well, saying that her "intractable position" in demanding a salary increase as compensation for her career disruption forced him to grant one to pre-empt a lawsuit.

Indeed, these are the kinds of men we want in charge of the Justice Department and the World Bank. This is an example of the high moral and ethical standards that America wants to hold up as a beacon to the rest of the planet. This is the kind of dedication to self and others, to friends, to country, to the institution you serve, run, and pretend to honor that it makes each of us want to stand up, salute, and vow to be better ourselves.

Not.

Rather, this is the kind of behavior that makes people turn off to public service, distrust their governments, and assume that rules are different for the rich and powerful. In short, it makes people cynical.

Which is likely a happy byproduct for the members of this cult of irresponsibility. Sure, first and foremost, it is an innate sense of entitlement and an imperial hubris that results in such behavior—and the likes of Gonzales and Wolfowitz (not to mention the likes of Bush and Cheney) probably don’t even realize it could or should be any other way. But, their religious dedication to blaming others, this pathological inability to see that the fault lies not in the stars, but somewhere much, much closer to home, thrives in the climate it creates, thus allowing the self-anointed forgivers of their own sins to continue in the same self-obsessed vein, and maybe contributing to even bigger abuses and grander claims of immunity.

What’s really funny, too, is how any number of these sorts like to wear their piety on their sleeves—so quick to tell everyone else they’ve got it wrong, have erred, have transgressed, are not worthy of trust or respect. . . . I guess if you are so certain that you yourself are without guilt, it is easier to cast that first stone.

Like I said, these guys kill me. Stone-dead kill me.


(cross-posted to Daily Kos)

fill in the blanks

As Alberto Gonzales is to Republicans, Blank Blank is to the Washington press corps.

Well, if you answered “David Broder,” give yourself an A:

The Democrats' Gonzales

By David S. Broder
Thursday, April 26, 2007; A29

Here's a Washington political riddle where you fill in the blanks: As Alberto Gonzales is to the Republicans, Blank Blank is to the Democrats -- a continuing embarrassment thanks to his amateurish performance.

If you answered " Harry Reid," give yourself an A. And join the long list of senators of both parties who are ready for these two springtime exhibitions of ineptitude to end.

I’ve got much, much more over at capitoilette.

going, going. . . Gonzo!

Dahlia Lithwick of Slate thinks that AG Alberto Gonzales actually, sorta, kinda, did a bang-up job, from the administration’s point of view, when he stammered and fumphered through a day’s worth of evasion testimony on Thursday. Her rationale is that by refusing to answer practically anything asked of him, by behaving with a sort of churlish arrogance, he was confirming the over-arching view of the Bush White House, often given the overly legitimating name of “the theory of the unitary executive,” but more appropriately summed up by the quote, "l’état, c’est moi."

I, of course, think Abu-G looked like an idiot—which is why I both agree and disagree with Lithwick. Yes, from the standpoint of the loyal Bushies—as we now know they are called (believe it or not, to them, that’s a compliment)—Gonzo did sort of, kind of hit a home run. . . but he hit it by taking one for the team.

By appearing on Capitol Hill to be every inch the un-prepared, in-over-his-head hack that he might in “real life” actually be, the Attorney General has allowed everyone—leading Republicans included—to chalk up the whole US attorney purge scandal as a story about incompetence. . . shall we say, unitary incompetence.

Now, at least as far as this story gets told at this time, Gonzales must resign because he is a bad manager or an ineffective bureaucrat—or maybe even because he is a bit of a jerk—but few of his newest detractors are even intimating that maybe, just maybe, Gonzales was doing his job (politicize the US attorneys to stop corruption probes and manipulate elections) as instructed by his bosses in the executive branch.

That would be Rove. That would be Cheney. And yes, that would be the singular, solitary, unitary President George W. Bush.

we cut out the middleman

From TPM:

Out of all the issues raised in today's Albuquerque Journal story on the Iglesias firing and any potential sourcing questions, the central fact asserted is that after Sen. Domenici's pressure call to Iglesias and before Iglesias's name appeared on the firing list, Sen. Domenici had a conversation about firing Iglesias with President Bush himself.

The ABQ Journal article has it all (minus a named source on the point and a WH denial of the charge), but the gist is so:

Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) pressured US attorney David Iglesias to bring a politically charged and baseless voter “fraud” prosecution in an attempt to influence close November 2006 congressional elections. Iglesias refused.

Sometime just after the November elections, Domenici calls Gonzales, Rove, and, most importantly, President George Bush to complain about Iglesias’s recalcitrance.

David Iglesias does not show up on the (now public) list of US attorneys to be fired that was drawn up by Justice in October of 2006. Iglesias is one of the eight attorneys fired on December 7, 2006.

By law, only the President of the United States has the authority to fire a US attorney.

Is everybody with me here? President Bush made sure that Iglesias was dismissed because Sen. Domenici complained that Iglesias didn’t do enough to tamper with an election.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will be on the hot seat tomorrow when he goes to Capitol Hill to testify—and he should be properly filleted (and, soon after, removed)—but AG AG is just the middleman. In the end, it is the White House, President Bush and Karl Rove, that made these bold moves in attempt to politicize the attorneys and corrupt the electoral process.

As they say, developing. . . .