A look at what the Supreme Court's abortion decision portends for other important cases in the new Alito era.
--David Kurtz
The GOP's "bitch slap" theory of electoral politics, as advanced by your liberal media--in this case, by the queen bee herself.
--David Kurtz
CNN's Kyra Phillips informs us that Reid's "war is lost" comment is "discouraging" to the troops.
--Greg Sargent
The Wall Street Journal goes front page with the tangled web of Rep. Rick Renzi's business dealings.
--David Kurtz
You've undoubtedly heard the story of the scandal surrounding World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz and the generous salaries and favors he provided to his girlfriend, Shaha Ali Riza, in his capacity as president of the Bank. But look what Sid Blumenthal has dug up. The strings Wolfowitz pulled for Riza, the plums and sinecures go back into his time in the US government -- unexplained security clearances provided to a foreign national, special contracts apparently cooked up especially for her with US tax dollars. I had a hard time keeping all the intricacies and details straight in my head. But there definitely seems to be a story there. Oh, and Dick Cheney's daughter Liz -- MidEast democracy czar installed at the State Department to keep the neocons flame burning -- she's in the mix too.
--Josh Marshall
Here's a Friday afternoon quiz for you. Guess who said these remarks about Iraq -- Lieberman or the White House?
--Greg Sargent
Yet another lesson in positive thinking from the administration.
This time, it's White House spokeswoman Dana Perino emphasizing the number of figures in the administration who haven't received public pressure to resign.
--Paul Kiel
More on U.S. Attorney for Milwaukee Steve Biskupic.
Today, the appeals court released its written opinion of the case he brought against Georgia Thompson, a state bureaucrat, in a case that implicated Wisconsin's Dem governor. The verdict? "Preposterous."
--Paul Kiel
Guess who agrees with Harry Reid that the Iraq war is "lost"? Tony McPeak, who was a member of the Joint Chiefs during the Gulf War.
--Greg Sargent
CNN reported this morning that "the White House is waiting to see how this plays out with the public and members of Congress over the next couple of days."
Well, with respect to Congress, the signs are bad.
--Paul Kiel
Reminder: today is the last day to apply for the prestigious TPM Summer Internship.
--Andrew Golis
The verdict on Alberto Gonzales is in. And here's our updated rundown of Republican calls for his resignation -- by our count four senators have done so outright and two more have stopped just short.
And his supporters? Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) floated an odd reason for keeping Gonzales on.
--Paul Kiel
Here's something that's been oddly missing from all the media discussion of Harry Reid's assertion that the "war is lost": Much of the American public agrees with Reid.
--Greg Sargent
Want to do some sleuthing? Help the Sunlight Foundation snoop out the anti-transparency senator who put a hold on the electronic disclosure filing bill.
--Josh Marshall
Today's Must Read: Alberto Gonzales' supporters at the Justice Department provide a lesson in positive thinking.
--Paul Kiel
A lot's been said so far about Attorney General Gonzales's testimony today. I've said plenty myself. The key though was the response from the committee's Republicans. You know that Sen. Coburn (R-OK), an extremely conservative but not necessarily party-regular senator, told Gonzales he should resign. There was more though. Two other Republican senators, I think, basically told Gonzales that they weren't going to tell him to resign but that he should. That's my interpretation of Sens. Specter and Graham's statements, certainly. And you don't have to agree. But I think it's a fair one. And even Sen. Sessions (R-AL), who normally I'd expect to be signing the administration line, was pretty damning.
I think it's fair to say that Gonzales has lost the confidence of at least half the Republican senators on the committee. He's given people too many causes of termination to choose from. You can want him to go for subverting the federal justice system. Or if that's too much for you to handle you can say he should go for running Main Justice like some ungainly combination of a Young Republicans summer camp and Michael Brown's FEMA. And if even that creates too much collateral damage for you to deal with you can just say he should go for lying about everything that happened.
Plenty of reasons to go around.
--Josh Marshall
Droppin' like flies (from Roll Call ...)
In a second blow to House Republicans this week, the FBI raided a business tied to the family of Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) Thursday afternoon as part of an ongoing investigation into the three-term lawmaker.Details of the raid on Patriot Insurance Agency in Sonoita, Ariz., were not immediately available. Renzi’s most recent financial disclosure form lists the business as an asset belonging to his wife, Roberta, and valued at $1 million to $5 million.
--Josh Marshall
Statement from Deputy Press Secretary 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.
--Josh Marshall
Don't miss Alberto Gonzales' heartfelt ode to the importance of protecting the right to vote for minorities. This from a man who has gutted the department's Civil Rights Division.
There was a lot that's simply laughable in his performance today, but I think this takes the cake.
--Paul Kiel
We've opened up a reader discussion at TPMCafe: is this the end for the AG?
--Andrew Golis
From the buzz I'm hearing today, if Alberto Gonzales were a stock, we'd be at that point when those automatic trading halts kicked in because so many people are trying to sell. But let's not get distracted by Alberto Gonzales. He's just a cog. In almost every case, what we're talking about here is Gonzales's willingness to take orders from the White House -- most importantly from Karl Rove and President Bush -- on firing US Attorneys for corrupt purposes and using the Justice Department to suppress Democratic turnout in swing states. Mr. Gonzales is a secondary issue. The real players are in the White House.
--Josh Marshall
Earlier I mentioned the exchange between AG Gonzales and Sen. Schumer (D-NY) in which the senator clearly caught the AG in a ridiculously transparent falsehood -- claiming that the DOJ had told Carol Lam of their concerns with her immigration enforcement policies. That was a telling moment both in terms of the factual record and Gonzales's fitness for any public office. This was a particularly silly fib because we have sworn testimony both from Lam herself and Kyle Sampson that it is simply not true. Indeed, the publicly-released documents also show no evidence that this is true. So even if you come at this hearing from the perspective of wanting Gonzales to brazen it out, to successfully lie his way through the questioning -- even then, you'd have to wonder what he was thinking trying to pull this one off. Remember he's been actively preparing for this testimony for more than a month.
But, as I've
said earlier here at TPM, we should not let the impact of the exposure of the AG's falsehoods and attempted coverups to deflect our attention from what these facts mean. A wealth of circumstantial evidence points to the conclusion that Carol Lam was fired because her corruption investigation endangered Republican members of Congress and key administration officials. The DOJ and White House has sought to refute these claims with the suggestion that she was dismissed because of weak immigration enforcement. The fact that no one at the Department ever raised the issue with Lam points strongly to the conclusion that the 'immigration enforcement' line was developed as a cover to fire Lam for other reasons -- namely to disrupt her investigation.
Indeed, the fact that Gonzales felt the need to fib on this point testifies to how central such a fact would be to making his story credible.
This is the central issue in the Lam firing. It's central to the corruption Alberto Gonzales has brought to the Department of Justice.
--Josh Marshall
A new poll suggests that John McCain's "electability" problem may be as bad as Hillary's. What will the pundits say?
--Greg Sargent
NRO's Byron York: "It has been a disastrous morning for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales..."
It's really true. Quite apart from the substance of what we've learned since mid-January and Gonzales' past false statements, Gonzales has been surprisingly unable even to keep his made-up stories straight. As near as I can tell, only two Republican members of the committee have been even remotely sympathetic to his testimony. At least two Republican senators called him a liar. One gently -- Graham, and another not so gently, Specter.
Sens. Hatch (R) and Cornyn (R) have been pretty embarrassing in their effort to clean up Gonzales's mess on his behalf. But what's been most telling is how much they're the exceptions to the rule. None of the others are making much of any effort to cover for him.
--Josh Marshall
Department of good timing. President Bush gives speech on the War on Terror during Gonzales testimony.
--Josh Marshall
Breaking: Rep. Doolittle (R-CA) resigning from Approps committee in the wake of FBI raid.
TPMmuckraker has more details from the AP and Roll Call. The upshot seems to be that the House Minority Leader forced him off the committee.
--Josh Marshall
Gonzales to Durbin: "When there are attacks against the department, you're attacking the career professionals."
--Josh Marshall
In case you haven't seen it yet, here's some video of McCain singing about bombing Iran.
--Greg Sargent
TPM Reader TA gets meta ...
I defy you to take the performance of the Attorney General and put it up against any boardroom segment on the Donald Trump reality show The Apprentice and tell me if you see any difference in the plaintive, cloying arguments of Gonzales and the plaintive, cloying arguments of any of the contestants on that reality show when they are begging not to be fired. I defy you--defy you--to show me a difference in tone or substance.
--Josh Marshall
In one of the more humorous exchanges of the day, Mr. Gonzales called David Iglesias's failure to report the Wilson and Domenici calls to DOJ a "serious transgression." It is true that violated departmental guidelines. And Iglesias has rightly apologized. But let's not forget that Sen. Domenici appears to have reported the calls directly to Gonzales and the President of the United States. Or didn't he raise that when he contacted both men after Iglesias refused to budge in response to Domenici's threatening call?
--Josh Marshall
What a sorry, pathetic figure. Now AG Gonzales is claiming that the criticism of his behavior is damaging the DOJ and making it harder for DOJ employees to do their job.
--Josh Marshall
Here's some more behind-the-scenes color from yesterday's meeting between Bush and Congressional Dem leaders over Iraq.
--Greg Sargent
Sen. Graham to Gonzales: "Most of this [reasons for the firings] is a stretch."
--Josh Marshall
Sen. Feingold (D-WI) had one of the clearest and most damning exchanges with AG Gonzales earlier this morning. He made a clear and devastating point. The AG says he's not really aware of what input, advice and views went into compiling the list of fired US Attorneys. He fired the US Attorneys based on that list. But he's certain that no improper motives went into the compilation of the list, even though he's not aware of how the list was assembled or why different people's names were put on it. That's a logical contradiction.
Late Update: Here's the video ...
--Josh Marshall
Sen. Schumer (D-NY) catches Mr. Gonzales in one of several lies. Gonzales says Carol Lam was well aware of the DOJ's concerns about her immigration policy. Lam says that's false. Kyle Sampson says that's false. The documents say that's false.
First he claims the 'documents' show she was told. Not true. He gives up on that. Now he's saying that members of Congress told her, which is of course a non-sequitur since the question is whether the DOJ told her that they were concerned.
This is a telling moment for Gonzales since not only is he lying but he doesn't even seem to be even marginally prepped with what's in the public record.
Late Update: Now Sen. Schumer is confronting Gonzales with his lies to Sen. Pryor (D-AR).
Later Update: See the video here ...
Even Late Update: Gonzales backtracks on Lam fib.
--Josh Marshall
Senator Schumer is grilling Alberto Gonzales.
Since the beginning, he's been out in front in asking questions and demanding answers of the DoJ. Many conservatives have attributed this to his obviously significant partisan zeal.
But Jim Sleeper traces Schumer's sensitivity to the politicization of the DoJ back to the early 80s when he himself was the target of a dubious investigation by a Republican U.S. Attorney.
Sleeper's is a history of compromising relationships and vindictive power struggles amidst a messy urban politics. It includes Schumer, a young deputy U.S. Attorney named Rudolph Giuliani, a powerful muckraking journalist named Jack Newfield, a young reporter named Joe Conason, and Sleeper himself.
--Andrew Golis
One of the questions I've most wanted an answer to recently is 'What's the Democrats' endgame?' in their confrontation with President Bush over the Iraq funding bill. The president, almost certainly, will veto the funding bill. So what happens then? How far are they willing to take this? That's the question I asked Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) in part two of our interview ...
--Josh Marshall
McClatchy starts looking at the big picture on 'vote fraud' and the US Attorney Purge story ...
For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates.The administration intensified its efforts last year as President Bush's popularity and Republican support eroded heading into a midterm battle for control of Congress, which the Democrats won.
--Josh Marshall
The Gonzales hearing is about to start. We'll be posting running updates at TPMmuckraker.
--Paul Kiel
Today's Must Read: where you can expect senators to focus their questioning of Alberto Gonzales.
--Paul Kiel
David Broder channels liberal bloggers, finally sees the light about the mainstream media.
--Greg Sargent
Lost his senate seat, but not his legal troubles: ex-Sen. Burns (R-MT) near $300k and counting in Abramoff-related legal bills.
--Josh Marshall
Bush and Harry Reid square off...
Here's some behind-the-scenes color from the White House meeting today between the President and Congressional Dem leaders about Iraq.
--Greg Sargent
Roll Call: FBI raids Rep. Doolittle's (R-CA) home in Northern Va. More soon.
Backstory on the Doolittle investigation here.
Sounds like former staffer Kevin Ring may have sold Doolittle down the river.
Update: More here.
--Josh Marshall
Ed Kilgore sees a silver lining in the dark cloud of today's SCOTUS decision.
--Andrew Golis
WaPo's John Solomon pushes the White House line on Rove, Miers testimony.
--Greg Sargent
Get the run-down on Sen. Coleman's (R-MN) evolving story on US Attorney Rachel Paulose.
--Josh Marshall
Harriet Miers signs on again with old law firm, Locke Liddell & Sapp. She'll be based in DC.
--Josh Marshall
Me: large federal department specializing in prosecutions and law and order.
You: GOP activist lawyer looking to secure permanent Republican hegemony.
Interested? See more details here.
--Josh Marshall
The Presidential candidates are all starting to weigh in on today's Supreme Court decision on late-term abortion.
We've got statements from Edwards, Obama, McCain, and (best of all) Rudy right here at Election Central. And more coming.
--Greg Sargent
A lot of TPM Readers are big fans of the Colbert Report. So many of you probably saw Sen. Kerry's (D-MA) appearance on the show on Monday. It so happens we got to do a walkaround with him before he went on the show. On his way over to the studio, I talked to the senator about Iraq and his new book, This Moment on Earth. And then we got to video some backstage footage of Kerry and Colbert cracking some jokes just before the show.
This is part one of our afternoon with Kerry and Colbert. We'll bring you part two tomorrow when I ask Sen. Kerry what the Democrats' end-game is in their stand-off with the president over the Iraq funding bill.
--Josh Marshall
Today's Must Read: the Justice Department's 90 second review process for U.S. attorneys. Now that's efficiency!
--Paul Kiel
From MSNBC, pictures of the VT dead, and notes from their lives. Helps put the whole thing in perspective.
--Josh Marshall
Sounds like this is why John Conyers wants to talk to Pittsburgh US Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan (from WTAE in Pittsburgh) ...
The Justice Department consulted with U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan in Pittsburgh when it was drawing up a list of prosecutors to be fired, a former top aide to the attorney general told investigators, and now a House committee wants to interview her.Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, told Senate investigators Sunday that Buchanan was one of the senior officials he consulted about which U.S. attorneys should be asked to resign, according to a Senate Judiciary Committee aide who read a transcript of the interview. The aide requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
--Josh Marshall
Associated Press channels Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, writes a story about the price of John Edwards' haircut and labels him "pretty."
--Greg Sargent
Over at TPMCafe, we've been discussing Jon Cohn's new book, Sick, a study and indictment of the US health care insurance system. Last week we got a few moments to talk to Jon about the book before a book event at the Strand Bookstore here in lower Manhattan.
Coming up tomorrow ... You may have seen Sen. Kerry's (D-MA) interview on the Colbert Report last night. We got to interview Sen. Kerry before he went on the show. We talked about his new book, This Moment on Earth, and Iraq. There's even some fun backstage footage at the Colbert Report.
--Josh Marshall
Not just the US Attorneys, Gonzales and Co. have been purging the DOJ's Civil Rights Division too.
Go read Paul Kiel's report above. But I could not help excerpting this one passage. A good bit of the story turns on a Georgia voter ID bill (passed on the evidence contained in a book by John Fund) that the Bush Justice Department insisted on approving against the recommendation of all but one of the career attorneys in the voting section.
Here's one thing that the Bush political appointees insisted didn't raise any red flags. The sponsor of the bill, Georgia state Rep. Sue Burmeister told voting section staff that "if there are fewer black voters because of this bill, it will only be because there is less opportunity for fraud," and that "when black voters in her black precincts are not paid to vote, they do not go to the polls."
Can't imagine there was any bad motivations behind this bill.
--Josh Marshall
National House Dem strategists are predicting gains in what they see as a key 2008 battleground: The suburbs. Comes complete with a list of the DCCC's top 10 targeted GOP-held suburban districts.
--Greg Sargent
Finally, an answer to why so many different and conflicting accounts of why the U.S. attorneys were fired are coming out of the Justice Department.
It's complicated.
--Paul Kiel
It looks like Congress will likely be offering Monica Goodling immunity in order to secure her testimony. The House Judiciary Committee will vote on it tomorrow.
--Paul Kiel
Check out this key finding in the new WaPo/ABC poll: It very clearly demonstrates that the number of Americans who are buying the White House's central message is dropping precipitously.
--Greg Sargent
Today's Must Read: Kyle Sampson's private testimony to congressional investigators is bad news for the White House and Alberto Gonzales.
--Paul Kiel
There's a lot of talk this evening about ABC News' exclusive showing a June 6th 2006 email that contradicts the testimony Alberto Gonzales plans to give before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday. Gonzales says he was not involved in identifying the particular US Attorneys to be fired. But the email from Kyle Sampson portrays him as intimately involved in discussions about the firing of Carol Lam.
Now, first it's important to say that the email isn't new. We discussed the letter in late March at TPMmuckraker. And you can see the actual letter here. But kudos to ABC for noticing that the June 6th email contradicts Gonzales' soon-to-be-given testimony.
As ABC describes it ...
In the e-mail to other top Justice Department officials, Sampson outlined several steps that Gonzales suggested, culminating in Lam's replacement if she failed to bolster immigration enforcement."AG [Attorney General] has given additional thought to the San Diego situation and now believes that we should adopt a plan" that would lead to her removal if she "balks" at immigration reform, Sampson wrote.
The e-mail laid out other possible ways to deal with Lam short of dismissal. Gonzales supported the idea of first having "a heart to heart with Lam about the urgent need to improve immigration enforcement" and of working with her "to develop a plan for addressing the problem." Sampson said another alternative would be to "put her on a very short leash.
"If she balks on any of the foregoing or otherwise does not perform in a measurable way … remove her," Sampson wrote of Gonzales' suggested plan. "AG then appoints new U.S. [attorney] from outside the office."
The Lam situation gets to the heart of the U.S. attorney controversy and the focus of the upcoming Gonzales hearing. Senators want to know why the eight prosecutors were fired. Were they fired for cause? Was their performance at issue? Or were their political motives?
But here's the problem, here's what gets left unsaid. Should the AG have a 'heart to heart' or 'put her on a short leash' or what if she resists, etc. etc. etc. But do you remember that they never spoke to Lam? No leash or heart to heart. They never even mentioned any of it to her.
This is the part of the equation that just won't add up no matter how hard they try to push the numbers together.
Consider the scene. May 2006. Lam has already sent one congressman to prison. News has just broken that her investigation now threatens to bring down the House Appropriations Committee Chairman. And she'd just brought her probe to the heart of the Bush CIA.
While this is going on top Justice Department officials are having an entirely separate conversation about how to deal with Lam's record on immigration enforcement. Talk it out with her? Give her one last chance? Keep her on a short leash?
All these possibilities. But no one ever gets around to telling Lam anything about it.
Does that sound right to you?
What were these discussions really about?
Kyle Sampson went up to the Senate again over the weekend. And according to Sen. Schumer (D-NY), Sampson said that "on June 6, senior Justice officials including Sampson; the department's No. 3 official, William Mercer; Gonzales' former counselor Jeffrey Taylor, now the now U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., and others discussed the potential ouster of Lam." But DOJ spokesman Brian Roehrkasse says the meeting wasn't about Lam's ouster at all. It was about "congressional complaints about inadequate immigration enforcement in Lam's district."
The fact that the immigration issue was never raised with Lam by the Department of Justice points strongly to the conclusion that it was not the reason for her firing but the pretext for it.
--Josh Marshall
That is a very impressive number. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is at 53% approval in the WaPo/ABC poll. That's even a decent number for a president. But the Speakership is an inherently partisan position -- a post far easier to villify than to mobilize around. By way of contrast, Newt Gingrich maxed out at 41% approval and spent most of his time in the thirties.
--Josh Marshall
Rep. Conyers (D-MI) wants to talk to USAs Steven Biskupic (Milwaukee), Rachel Paulose (Minneapolis), Larry Gomez (acting USA in New Mexico, Iglesias's replacement), Mary Beth Buchanan (Western District of Pennsylvania) and others.
--Josh Marshall
Want to join us at TPM World HQ? The deadline for applying for the TPM Summer Internship is Friday.
--Andrew Golis
The Senate Judiciary Committee has postponed Alberto Gonzales' hearing until Thursday due to the Virginia Tech shootings.
--Paul Kiel
Tommy Thompson takes a stab at an apology for saying that money-making is "part of the Jewish tradition."
--Greg Sargent
The five big questions we're going to be looking for answers for in tomorrow's Alberto Gonzales testimony. That and why Andrea Koppel thinks there's still no evidence of wrongdoing in the Purge story.
--Josh Marshall
Now he tells us.
Former CIA director George Tenet apparently is now saying that he never told the Bush administration that the case against Saddam's WMDs was a "slam dunk." One problem, though...
--Greg Sargent
Bad news for Rep. Doolittle (R-CA).
Former Doolittle staffer and Abramoff associate Kevin Ring abruptly resigns from current law firm gig.
If the pattern holds, don't be surprised if you see Mr. Ring coming to an agreement with the government sometime soon. Last year, Neil Volz resigned from the same firm, Barnes & Thornburg, before coming to a plea agreement with prosecutors and helping bag former boss Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH).
Update: Here's a rundown at TPMmuckraker for why Doolittle's time seems to have finally come.
--Josh Marshall
Dana Perino doesn't know for sure that Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) didn't have a conversation with President Bush about U.S. attorney David Iglesias because she "hasn't asked."
--Paul Kiel
Remember "Mean Jean" Schmidt, the Ohio GOP Rep. who called John Murtha a "coward" before going on to win reelection by a mere percentage point?
Well, it looks like Mean Jean is now facing a rematch.
--Greg Sargent
In today's speech, Bush baselessly asserts that the troops want to stay in Iraq.
--Greg Sargent
I've written this post several times already. But as long as the president keeps fibbing, I'll keep writing it. The president says the Congress is substituting its judgment for that of the uniformed military. Not true. The uniformed military was against the surge. By most measures, it still is. The president disagreed so he fired the senior military leadership on the ground in Iraq and replaced them with people -- and there aren't that many of them -- who agreed with him.
--Josh Marshall