Where's the Outrage?

You know, there are some days when you sit in front of the computer keyboard and all you want to do is play computer games. Today has been one of those days.

• The death toll in the deadly tornado in Joplin, Missouri has risen to 122.
• Is there a link between the terrible tornadoes that has destroyed most of Joplin, Missouri and climate change? Of course not (click the link before you comment on my sarcasm).
• A new poll suggests that Americans are more worried about the deficit than they are worried about defaulting. Again, another poll that shows that Americans do not put things together as well as I would like. Exactly what would happen if we defaulted on our national debt is described in this article in Slate. It is not a pretty picture. The probability of us defaulting on our debt has actually been calculated. You can find those calculations here.
• Alberto Gonzales, former Attorney General, seems to be trying to rehabilitate his image. After disgracing himself and his family he’s got a lot of work to do.
• House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has sunk to a new low. He has now stated that aid to help the victims of the Missouri tornado needs to have offsets. He can go find all of those offsets by asking the Chamber of Commerce to fork over some of that money that they seem to be sitting on. Even the Hammer, Tom Delay didn’t go this far.
• We need to rethink government contractors and political spending.
• If you are a Republican and you’re going to hold a town hall meeting, you can expect some angry seniors to show up and ask you about your vote to end Medicare. So, as a young congressman, how do you face this mob? You don’t. You call security and have them and the reporters escorted out of the room. Very Classy Representative Justin Amash.
• Representative Patrick McHenry (of my state of NC) acts like a jerk to Elizabeth Warren for no particular reason. Whether it was a misunderstanding or a mix up doesn’t matter. We can still treat each other with dignity and respect. In the south that is how we are raised. I have no idea how Rep McHenry was raised.
• The Patriot Act, which I thought was a done deal, isn’t.  Rand Paul wants to vote on several provisions and, because of this, Senate majority leader Harry Reid has tabled a motion to extend the Patriot Act. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.
• The Dallas Mavericks showed a lot of heart and tenacity by pulling out a victory in Oklahoma City last night to take a 3-1 led in the best of 7 series. On the other hand, the Oklahoma City Thunder caved under pressure. The Dallas Mavericks are down by 15 points with just over 5 min. to play in regulation. Dirk Nowitski played amazingly down the stretch with excellent leadership from Jason Kidd. Oklahoma City Thunder got no leadership from Kevin Durant or Russell Westbrook. If you’re a Dallas fan it was on the watch, if you’re in Oklahoma City fan it would break your heart.

Tags: Budget, Environment, Healthcare, Party Politics, Sports, US Attorneys by ecthompson md
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• Isn’t calling for a sitting president to be tortured (water boarded) a treasonable offense? I might have to look that up. It’s clearly un-American.
• President Obama honored those who died at Ground Zero.  “When we say we will never forget, we mean what we say.”
• Corporations continue to pay some of the lowest taxes they’ve seen in over 50 years.

• As a government, our lack of revenue is the problem. The middle class is ponying up their share. It is corporations and the top 1% who are taking home more and paying less.
• Pakistan plays the Sergeant Schultz card. (See the video below.) They knew nothing about Bin Laden chillin’ in their country.

• The Republican chair of the House Ways and Means Committee Representative Dave Camp announced today that repeal of the healthcare law is “dead.”
• Republicans continue to get blow back from Americans in their own districts about their attempts to dismantle healthcare reform.
• Pakistan has released photos from inside bin Laden’s compound.
• Remember Monica Goodling? She was a central figure in the US attorney scandal. She received an official reprimand from the Virginia bar.

Tags: Bin Laden, Economy, Healthcare, Pakistan, US Attorneys by ecthompson md
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House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) today released over 700 pages of on-the-record interview transcripts of Karl Rove and Harriet Miers on the U.S. attorney firings and the Bush administration’s politicization of the Department of Justice. Conyers also released over 5,400 pages of Bush White House and Republican National Committee e-mails on these subjects.

The released materials reveal that White House officials were deeply involved in the U.S. attorney firings and the administration made a concerted effort to hide that fact from the American people. “After all the delay and despite all the obfuscation, lies, and spin,” Conyers said, “this basic truth can no longer be denied: Karl Rove and his cohorts at the Bush White House were the driving force behind several of these firings, which were done for improper reasons. Under the Bush regime, honest and well-performing U.S. attorneys were fired for petty patronage, political horsetrading and, in the most egregious case of political abuse of the U.S. attorney corps – that of U.S. Attorney Iglesias – because he refused to use his office to help Republicans win elections. When Mr. Iglesias said his firing was a ‘political fragging,’ he was right.”

Key new facts revealed in the materials released today include:

• 2005 White House “Decision” to fire David Iglesias – It has previously been known that New Mexico Republicans pressed for Iglesias to be removed because they did not like his decisions on vote fraud cases.  New White House documents show that Rove and his office were involved in this effort no later than May 2005 (months earlier than previously known) – for example, in May and June 2005, Rove aide Scott Jennings sent e-mails to Tim Griffin (also in Rove’s office) asking “what else I can do to move this process forward” and stressing that “I would really like to move forward with getting rid of NM US ATTY.” In June 2005, Harriet Miers e-mailed that a “decision” had been made to replace Iglesias.  At this time, DOJ gave Iglesias top rankings, so this decision was clearly not just the result of the White House following the Department’s lead as Rove and Miers have maintained.1
• Iglesias criticized by Rove aide for not “doing his job on” Democratic Congressional Candidate Patricia Madrid – An October 2006 e-mail chain begun by Representative Heather Wilson criticized David Iglesias for not bringing politically useful public corruption prosecutions in the run up to the 2006 elections. Scott Jennings forwarded Wilson’s email to Karl Rove and complained that Iglesias had been “shy about doing his job on Madrid,” Wilson’s opponent in the 2006 Congressional race. Just weeks after this e-mail, Iglesias’ name was placed on the final firing list.2
• An “agitated” Rove pressed Harriet Miers to do something about Iglesias just weeks before Iglesias was placed on the removal list – Karl Rove phoned Harriet Miers during a visit to New Mexico in September 2006 – according to Miers’ testimony, Rove was “agitated” and told her that Iglesias was “a serious problem and he wanted something done about it.”3
• Senator Domenici personally asked Bush’s Chief of Staff Josh Bolten to have Iglesias replaced – In October 2006, Senator Domenici stepped up his campaign to have Iglesias replaced. According to White House phone logs and emails, as well as Rove’s own testimony, Domenici spoke with President Bush’s Chief of Staff Josh Bolten about Iglesias on October 5, 2006, and during October 2006, Domenici or his staff spoke with Karl Rove at least four times.4

[Read more →]

Tags: US Attorneys by ecthompson md
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I don’t pretend to know what the editors are thinking over there at the Times.  Recently, the New York Post has shown more journalist excellence.

From Scott Horton:

The dog days of the news season are just about to arrive, but the editors at the nation’s newspaper of record already seem to have gone on vacation. This morning’s issue leads with Michael Gordon breathlessly recounting a real scoop: a sensitive memo by a senior military advisor to the Baghdad command who advocates an immediate pull-out of U.S. forces from Iraq. Just one problem—which the Times later had to adjust their account to reflect—the memo was nothing more than the private thoughts of a blogger, Col. Timothy R. Reese, which had already been posted to the rightwing TownHall website, where he is a regular contributor. Although it was pulled from the TownHall site, it was reposted at several other sites, including the invaluable Washington Independent. Reese’s analysis is pretty interesting; it reflects far more serious thought than his recent tirade against healthcare reform, for instance. I agree that the memo is worth a mention and some discussion. What I don’t understand is the editorial judgment underlying making a rightwing blog post the lead news story of the day. Perhaps this should be balanced by giving tomorrow’s lead to a post at the Daily Kos…

Turning the page we find the Times punk’d yet a second time, in the more conventional way. Karl Rove, violating his agreement with the House Judiciary Committee (which I discussed here), gave “exclusive” interviews to the Times and the Washington Post, in a determined effort to spin the bad news about his role in the firing of the U.S. attorneys and his unseen hand in the work of the Justice Department generally. The Post’s piece, by Carrie Johnson, shows an appropriate level of balance and skepticism about Rove’s self-serving and highly misleading claims. Not so the Times. Indeed, the headline tells the whole story: “Rove Says His Role in Prosecutor Firings Was Small.” The problem, of course, is that the evidence the Judiciary Committee has collected, and the investigation by special prosecutor Nora Dannehy, show precisely the opposite. They put Karl Rove squarely in the center of the effort to remove the U.S. attorneys fired in the December 7, 2006 massacre, and they show that the firings were motivated by improper partisan political considerations. Rove was positioned as the enforcer of Republican Party discipline—ensuring that U.S. attorneys implement the party’s electoral program, including voter intimidation and suppression, or be forced to walk the plank.

I furnish some insights into the twin investigations and where they’re headed in “Will She or Won’t She?,”(sub. req’d) a piece appearing tomorrow in the August American Lawyer. Bottom line: the special prosecutor is studying possible indictments, recognizes that she is in essentially uncharted territory, and is still some distance short of a final decision to seek them. Alberto Gonzales, Karl Rove, and New Mexico politicians Pete Domenici and Heather Wilson are names that figure prominently in the probe.

Tags: Media, US Attorneys by ecthompson md
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The House Judiciary Committee has released a statement that they have secured with the White House and former President George Bush for Harriet Miers and Karl Rove to testify on the US Attorney firings. I don’t know what will really happen. I doubt that we will see Rove being open and candid.

Rachel Maddow has a great segment on this. She interviews Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, who may have been wrongly imprisoned. Watch the video:

Tags: Domestic Issues, Rachel Maddow Show, US Attorneys by ecthompson md
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Just a couple of items tonight have caught my eye.

First, (someone break out the orchestra and start the sympathy music), former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales asks, “What did I do that was so fundamentally wrong that deserves this kind of response to my service?” He said this in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.  If I can stop laughing long enough I should be able to also mention that this is part of the Bush administration’s “charm” offensive.  They are trying to become more likable.  Whatever.

Some of Alberto Gonzales’s history that clearly explains what he did that was “fundamentally wrong” from Think Progress:

Politicized the DOJ: – Gonzales approved the firing and hiring of federal prosecutors for political reasons and lied to Congress about the scandal.

Approved torture: In 2002, Gonzales “raised no objections and, without consulting military and State Department experts in the laws of torture and war,” approved an infamous August 2002 memo giving CIA interrogators “legal blessings.” Gonzales witnessed an interrogation at Gitmo in 2002 and approved of “whatever needs to be done” to detainees.

Lied about warrantless wiretapping: Gonzaled lied to Congress multiple times about the Bush administration’s illegal wiretapping program, saying there wasn’t “any serious disagreement” about the program (there was).

Distorted pre-war intelligence: Last month, the House Oversight Committee revealed evidence showing that Gonzales lied to Congress in 2004 by claiming that the CIA “orally” approved Bush’s claim that Iraq sought uranium from Africa.

Jon Swift is a popular conservative blogger who never seemed to really go over to the dark side (become a neoconservative). I frequented his blog numerous times before he took a sabbatical. I thought he was reasonable in many of his discussions and I applaud him for that. He has asked several, if not hundreds, of bloggers to submit their “Best Blog Posts of 2008.” He put all the submissions together in one post. Unique idea (also drives traffic to your site).  Well worth the read.  Here’s a small section which includes what I thought was my best post. (This is not in the order in which he posted them. Oh, and the blurbs are Jon’s.)

Where’s the Outrage?
Supply-side Economics Never Made Sense
“Maybe this ‘Me First, Everything Else Second’ mentality helped cause the craziness that we’re seeing on Wall Street,” writes Errington Thompson. Personally, I think it’s the “Me first, Jon Swift second” mentality that’s the problem.

skippy the bush kangaroo
8-8-88: it was 20 years ago today…everything changed - a skippy musing
skippy remembers a day that will in infamy.

Daily Kos
Three Times Is Enemy Action
Markos Moulitsas Zúniga nominates Devilstower’s post, which links our economic woes to deregulation that began in the 1980s. But just because something doesn’t work out the first few times doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try it again.

The Agonist
Who Got It Right
Numerian points out modestly that The Agonist predicted what would happen to the economy long before many of the experts did. OK, smart guy, what’s going to happen next?

Rude Pundit
Time to Rub Their F—ing Faces in It
Rude Pundit reaches across the aisle in his own special way.

Tbogg
Your Mumia Sweatshirt Won’t Get You Into Heaven AnymoreTbogg visits some Ralph Nader voters in Happy Gumdrop Fairy-Tale Land and kills them.

A Blog Around the Clock
The Nobel Prize Conundrum
Coturnix explains the negative side of the Nobel Prizes, besides the fact that there isn’t one for blogging.

Informed Comment
Barack Hussein Obama, Omar Bradley, Benjamin Franklin and other Semitically Named American Heroes
Juan Cole says that Barack Hussein Obama should be as proud of his name as Abraham Hussein Lincoln and John Hussein Adams were.

Firedoglake
Iqbal And The Question Of Accountability For Torture Decision-Makers At The Top
Christy Hardin Smith says that one question the Iqbal case will answer is “What is justice here — and is it even possible to accomplish?” I agree with President Nixon: “When the president’s men do it, that means that it is not illegal.”

The Moderate Voice
Obama’s Election: A Sea Of Shattered Assumptions
Joe Gandelman lists 12 assumptions shattered by Obama’s election, not to mention the assumption he couldn’t win, and provides an exhaustive roundup of news media and weblog reaction on the day he won.

Pam’s House Blend
Thoughts on Barack Obama’s ‘A More Perfect Union’
Pam Spaulding muses about the impact of Obama’s speech “in terms of the relief it gave me to hear someone articulate so clearly the need to have a discussion about race because I felt like I was screaming into a void.” Conservatives are just happy we never have to talk about race again.

Comedy Central’s Indecision 2008
Breakfast with Jon Stewart, Part One
Dennis DiClaudio experiences “second most fascinating, most I-can’t-believe-I’m experiencing-this, thing I have ever witnessed in my admittedly very unfascinating and inexperienced life.”

Wonkette
Your Lengthy Guide To The Insane McCain-Palin Cold War
Wonkette details the inside story of the brilliant, hard-fought campaign McCain and Palin aides waged against each other.

Tags: Blogging issues, US Attorneys by ecthompson md
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Friday Evening News Roundup

• I’m very happy to announce that tomorrow on the Errington Thompson show, I will have as my special guest Markos Moulitsas, founder of the Daily Kos and author of Taking on the System-Rules for Radical Change in a Digital Era.  I’ll also be giving away tickets to Oliver Stone’s new movie W!! Tune in tomorrow at 9 am (Eastern standard Time). (streaming here)
• Good news! Nancy Reagan has been released from the hospital. Nancy Reagan is currently 87 years old. She fell sometime last week but did not seek medical attention until this week. She has a pelvic fracture.  As a trauma surgeon, I’ll just say that falls among the elderly are a leading cause of death. I wish the former first lady well.
• There seems to be an accounting stumbling block in the treasury’s “rescue plan”. Current accounting rules prevent banks from counting the infusion of cash from the treasury as part of their core capital. If banks are unable to do this, they will continue to appear shaky. It seems as if they should probably have had this worked out before they announced it as the cornerstone of their plan.
• The Supreme Court overturned an Ohio circuit court’s ruling today. As you recall, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals had directed Ohio’s Secretary of State to verify hundreds of thousands of voter registrations. This will not be the last major play in Ohio with a regards to registering voters. I promise.
• The Obama campaign has asked US Attorney General Michael Mukasey to expand the powers of the current special prosecutor looking into the US Attorney scandal. The Obama campaign wants to look for illegal links among the White House, the RNC and the Justice Department with regard to trying to “rig” the election toward Republicans.
• Yesterday Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska took the stand in his own defense. Senator Stevens is accused of accepting more than $250,000 worth of renovations and gifts from convicted millionaire Bill Allen on his retreat. Today in his cross-examination Senator Stevens got testy. If I were looking at certain jail time, I guess I would get testy also.
• Christopher Buckley, son of conservative guru William F. Buckley, Jr., has just endorsed Barack Obama and resigned from the conservative journal that his father started, The National Review.
• Radio talk show host Ed Schultz was on “Fox and Friends” early this morning. He was asked a ridiculously stupid question about Joe the Plumber which he tried to answer, but he kept getting interrupted. After the third or fourth interruption, he simply got up and walked off. Good for him!
• So the Boston Red Sox were down to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays 7-0 midway through the seventh inning. They lead the best-of-seven series three games to one. The series was basically over. All the Devil Rays had to do was not give up eight runs in two and a half innings. They couldn’t do it! The Boston Red Sox scored four runs in the seventh inning, three in the eighth and one run in the bottom of the ninth to win the game 8-7. An absolutely an amazing comeback.

Tags: Civil Liberty, Election 2008, Senate, Supreme court, US Attorneys by ecthompson md
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Sunday morning news Round-up

• Do you remember the US attorney scandal? Seven US attorneys general were surprisingly all fired at once. After further investigation we learned that more US attorneys general had been fired, bringing the total to nine. To make a long story short, the Office of the Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility in the Justice Department came out with a 392-page report which detailed some of the circumstances surrounding the firings. The report harshly criticized Alberto Gonzales, Kyle Sampson, (Gonzalez’s former chief of staff), and top Justice Department deputy Paul McNulty. Of course many senior officials in the Bush administration, including Harriet Miers and Karl Rove, refused to cooperate with the investigation.
• GM and Chrysler are in discussions about a possible merger. When you take two poorly managed companies and merge them together what do you get?
• The Bush administration has removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. In return, North Korea is continuing to dismantle their plutonium reactor. Remember that we can’t talk to our enemies. We don’t want progress.
• The FBI released the files of longtime columnist Jack Anderson. Anderson was a critic, to put it mildly, of J. Edgar Hoover. He even earned a spot on Nixon’s “enemies list.”
• Sunday morning pundit round-up — here.
• Yesterday, Bob Herbert, NY Times columnist, had a great piece on the complete failure of conservatism. “The first is how wrong conservative Republicans have been on so many profoundly important matters for so many years. The second is how the G.O.P. has nevertheless been able to persuade so many voters of modest means that its wrongheaded, favor-the-rich, country-be-damned approach was not only good for working Americans, but was the patriotic way to go.” Amen!!
• NATO forces are planning to target the heroin networks that are funding the Taliban. This sounds all well and good until you figure that we were supposed to be doing this in Afghanistan over six years ago. There should no longer be a Taliban. There should no longer be heroin networks. This is simply the latest in a string of bad news coming out of Afghanistan.
• Longtime Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe was supposed to be in a power-sharing arrangement with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Well, not so much. The heads of all the ministries have been appointed by none other than President Mugabe.
• This is a great time to be a sports fan. Basketball and hockey are starting. Baseball is deep into the playoffs (Tampa wins in the 11th?). Week six of the NFL begins today.  I’m sure you could probably find a soccer game and a tennis match somewhere. Ah, Sports Heaven.

Tags: Afghanistan, Bush Administration, North Korea, Party Politics, US Attorneys by ecthompson md
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I found this article on my computer. I wrote this article back in May of 2007. Hope that you enjoy it.

————-

Just because something is complex does not mean it’s not understandable. The US Attorney scandal is confusing. The question is, what’s going on? Well, in order to figure out everything that’s going on there must be investigations. Some folks on Capitol Hill are calling the current investigations a witch hunt and “political theater.”

Question B if a policeman sees someone walking down the street with a large plasma TV should he be curious? So he asks the guy, “What are you doing with that TV?” He replies, “I’m fixing it for Ms. Smith.” “Ms. Smith? There’s no Ms. Smith that lives on this street.” “Did I say fixing it? I meant delivering it to Mr. Jones.” I think that everyone would assume that this situation deserves further investigation.

The same type of thing has happened with the Justice Department. Eight US attorneys were fired out of the blue. All of these attorneys were Republicans. The initial explanation was that they were fired for performance reasons. Several reporters were able to obtain performance evaluations on several of these attorneys and they were excellent. The next explanation was that some of the attorneys did not prosecute enough immigration cases. This explanation did not hold up to investigation either. Finally, Alberto Gonzales, the US Attorney General, stated that these US attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president. Therefore, the president can fire them at any time for any reason. Well, this is sort of true. It is true that the president has the power to hire and fire US attorneys. But, and this is important, the President cannot fire at a US attorney to influence a particular case or to halt a particular investigation or for political reasons. [Read more →]

Tags: Newsletter, US Attorneys by ecthompson md
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Here are some things that I have been reading about and I think need more discussion:

• Remember the U.S. Attorney scandal? Former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias testified before Congress  that he got a call from Senator Pete Domenici. During the call Domenici asked about whether or not Iglesias was going to file an indictment against some New Mexico Democrats right before the 2006 mid-term election. Domenici got a slap on the wrist from the Senate Ethics Committee for the “appearance of impropriety.” In my opinion, I think this is terribly mild.
• Abstinence-only education doesn’t work. There have been numerous studies to show this. Florida has passed legislation that Florida schools teach sex education. Some teens believe that drinking Mountain Dew or smoking marijuana can prevent pregnancy. I took care of a teenager who injected herself with turpentine in order to prevent herself from becoming pregnant. Representative John Duncan, a Tennessee Republican, said that it seems “rather elitist” that people with academic degrees in health think they know better than parents what type of sex education is appropriate. “I don’t think it’s something we should abandon,” he said of abstinence-only funding. Education– we truly need our children to be educated. (and we need to vote John Duncan out of office!)
• Did you see that the Veteran’s Administration is being sued in a class-action? In spite of the official rhetoric out of the Bush administration, a recent RAND report found that “300,000 U.S. troops — about 20 percent of those deployed — are suffering from depression or post-traumatic stress from serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.” They fight for us and we can’t at least give them decent health care when they get back. We have to do better.
• Finally, did you see where a government contractor supplied these flash-band grenades that never worked. After the $15 million contract, the Department of Defense found a flaw in the law enforcement weapon and ordered it to be fixed. Pyrotechnic Specialties, Inc. figured out it was cheaper to just print new labels. Three FBI agents have been injured. Company officials were indicted but there was this nugget: Company officials bribed a federal official and paid for a visit to a strip club.

Tags: Corporate Wrongs, Military, US Attorneys by ecthompson md
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Keith Olbermann’s Bushed segment reminds all of us of the many, many, many scandals of the Bush Administration. There seems to be a new one every week.

CIA torture tapes – seems another CIA detainee states that he was taped

Jose Padilla – the dirty bomber. The Bush Administration wanted life. They didn’t get anywhere close. I don’t know if Padilla desired to get life or not. I do know that the judge that sentenced him to 17 years criticized the government’s handling of the case.  I was kinda surprised that Glenn Greenwald didn’t have something on this.  I’m sure that he will today.
Gonzo-Gate – Alberto Gonzales is the gift that keeps on giving. The House and Senate ethics committees are looking into whether congressional republicans tampered with witnesses who were preparing to testify before Congress.

Bushed - CIA recordings, jose padilla and Gonzo [ 1:25 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: Countdown, National Intelligence, US Attorneys by ecthompson md
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For some reason, many liberal blogs haven’t picked up this story.  They should.  On the other hand, maybe they are so deflated after the Scooter Libby thing.  Maybe they are trying to do what it appears the Democratic Congress is doing, waiting until after the November election to fix everything.

We need to continue to try to do the right thing.  We need to continue to support the constitution.  We need to continue to hold hearings.  We need to continue to investigate.  Democrats have to be against torture and for human rights while at the same time be against terrorists.

I posted a lot about the Justice Department investigating Alberto Gonzales a couple of days ago.

Countdown - Gonzo investigation [ 5:09 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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For months the Democrats have been asking or begging for documents about various items – US Attorney firings, Wire Tapping, Valerie Plame case to name a few.  The White house has universally given Congress the finger.  Representative John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has asked for all documents pertaining to political prosecutions in the US Attorney’s office.  The Department of Justice has selectively released some documents.  Representative Conyers is mad and red in the face.

So what is he going to do?  Continue to stop his foot?  Continue to hold his breath?  Or is he going to finally issue some subpoenas?  When they refuse the subpoenas, then what?  This is like in the great movie the Untouchables.  (If he sends one of yours to the Hospital, you send one of his to the morgue.  That’s the Chicago way.)  What is he, Conyers,  prepared to do?  Is he prepared to have a constitutional showdown?  Because if he isn’t, he’s already lost.  The White House is prepared to take this as far as it can.  The Supreme Court is the end game unless the White House backs down and I don’t see that happening.

Tags: Congress, US Attorneys by ecthompson md
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Talking Points Memo has put together the 10 greatest Alberto moments.

TPM - Alberto's 10 greatest [ 8:42 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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No one has been able to get me a good explanation of why Alberto Gonzales has resigned.  Why did Bush accept it?

Gonzo out [ 3:15 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Alberto Gonzales the man that was at the center of so much badness in the Bush Administration is/has stepped down. President Bush has spoken in support of Alberto since the beginning of the various scandals. Glenn Greenwald, who is coming to Asheville on September the 13th, has a great post on him. Glenn rightly states that the Democrats have an opportunity to say that they are not going to accept neocon, yes men from Bush any more.

Michael Vick who really has nothing to do with Alberto Gonzales threw himself on the mercy of the American people in his first press conference since the dogfighting allegations surfaced. He stated that he was immature and that he was sorry. Immature doesn’t really cover it but at least it is a start.

I’ll more on these stories later.

Update: Video added for Vick. You know I was sort of with Michael during this speech. His excuse for not being able to say what he wants to say was that he has been a football player. What? He made enough money to hire his personal speech coach but it wasn’t a priority. And, I’m sorry, but the worst part of the cliche was that he has turned over his life to God. These athletes always seem to find God once they are in the soup up to their eyeballs. The worst part of the sappiest speech of all-time was the children. Yep, he hated that he let down the children. Oh, please. He hated that he got caught. I know that the speech had to be done. It was just nauseating.

Vick Speaks and he is sorry [ 4:28 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: Sports, Torture, US Attorneys by ecthompson md
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I’m out of town.  Jennifer is back in the studio.  I call in and we discuss Ann Coulter.  Why?  Because I believe that she can’t be ignored.  The only reason that she has sold so many books is because progressives have not spoken out against her hate speech.  I interview Cynthia Brown, expert on education, from the Center for American Progress.   We tackle No child Left Behind and other issues in the classroom.  I then chat with Glenn Greenwald, lawyer and blogger at Salon.com, about the US Attorney scandal.  Jennifer wraps up the show with a scary journey through several recent Supreme Court decisions.

Rough cut.

The Errington Thompson Show 6-30-07 [ 53:42 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Feingold takes no mess in his opening statement in the Gonzales hearing part 5.  I have said it before and I’ll say it again, Russ Feingold has been pulling the Democratic Party, kicking and screaming, to the light.  He was the first to say the Domestic Spying Program was wrong.  He was the first to call for censuring the President.

Feingold scolds Gonzo [ 6:41 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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There is a ton of stuff going on today. The House Judiciary committee votes for contempt charges. Gonzo seems not to be as slick as he thinks he is. He might have been caught lying. New documents seem to contradict the Attorney General.

I’ll have more soon. Promise. Got beaten at work today.

Tags: Bush Administration, US Attorneys by ecthompson md
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This should be familiar to everyone who has followed these hearings. Between what she didn’t remember and what she claimed was executive privilege nothing of substance was said.

Great rundown on contempt of Congress – here.

———-

From WaPo:

“I did not speak to the president about removing U.S. attorneys,” Taylor said. “I did not attend any meetings with the president where that matter was discussed.”

The remarks came during several hours of reluctant testimony from Taylor, who sought to respond to a subpoena from the Senate panel while also abiding by a request from Bush not to provide details about the firings. Bush and his aides assert that such internal deliberations are protected by an executive privilege, and thus do not have to be divulged to Congress. (more…)

Taylor testifies, sort of [ 2:03 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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