When I started covering the pet food recall … I thought that if this had happened to human food, it would have been taken more seriously.
But no, now we know it IS in the human food chain, and it is NOT being taken seriously. We haven’t even banned grain and other food imports from China until this is sorted out!
The other day I wrote about two domestic terrorism incidents that ere ignored by the media. Orcinus: The other kind of terror has more. Go read.
But remember: The FBI has de-emphasized right-wing extremist crimes and displaced them with an emphasis on “eco terror” as far as its chief domestic-terror concern. This is in no small part because this administration is being run by people who don’t consider bombings and arson against abortion clinics to be terrorism.
[. . .] Of course, acknowledging that this is the case would require a major readjustment of the media’s constructed narrative about the “war on terror.” So it continues to turn a blind eye, and in the process it profoundly misinforms the public.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales can resign or not – so what? The PROBLEM will remain. The PROBLEM is that we have 93 US Attorneys who have already proven – by not being fired – that they will indict innocent Democrats and ignore Republican corruption and criminality. THAT is the problem we have to do something about!
The Republicans learned in the 2006 election that lots of headlines about corruption influences votes. So the plan is to start investigating and indicting lots of Democrats – guilty or not – to provide plenty of 2008 election-time headlines. And the plan is to block as many investigations and indictments of corrupt Republicans as they can. (That brings other benefits to them as well…)
So Gonzales can resign or not – don’t be distracted from thinking about how to stop what is coming.
Watch your backs!
This looks like it might be yet another political prosecution. This time it isn’t a US Attorney engaging in a political prosecution in order to keep the job — instead it involves one of those NEW, Rove-approved US Attorneys who replaced those US Attorneys fired for failing to engage in political prosecutions. This prosecution shows us what to expect from now on. This one is prosecuting a guy entirely for political and not legal reasons, AFTER the courts threw out the case AND after the judge said they should drop the charges.
This case is about medical marijuana. California voters passed an initiative allowing the use of marijuana for AIDS, cancer and other patients because it helps them to eat and reduces symptoms. The Christian Right doesn’t like that so the Bush administration has been prosecuting people for Federal crimes – even though they are legally operating according to state law.
From the article, Prosecutors will retry Ed Rosenthal, known as the `guru of ganja’,
Federal prosecutors said today they would retry marijuana grower Ed Rosenthal on cultivation charges, even after a federal judge urged them to drop the case and chastised the government for lodging charges solely to punish the self-proclaimed “guru of ganja.”
U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer demanded to know who in the Department of Justice made the decision to continue pursuing Rosenthal, who had his original conviction overturned last year.
… Newly appointed U.S. Attorney Scott Schools made the decision, said Assistant U.S. Attorney George Bevan, but he was not sure if Department of Justice officials in Washington were involved. [all emphasis added]
So here we go, another political prosecution from a Rove-connected prosecutor?
Here is how e-mail is typically stored: There are at least three hard drives where an e-mail is located: The sender, the server and the recipient. If there is more than one recipient of an e-mail the other recipient’s hard drives will also have copies. (Webmail is another story…)
Even supposedly-deleted data would still be on each of these hard drive – marked as deleted but still there – unless it has been overwritten. That is not as likely these days with very large-capacity hard drives. A data recovery effort would locate the e-mails or report why not. If the erasure was due to normal file overwriting, this would be apparent. And if it was due to intentional erasure, this would also be apparent.
Daily Kos: The 18-minute gap and the Saturday Night Massacre, all rolled up into one,
Media note: Suggested scandal nickname, DogAte.
It’s the crime and the coverup.
Here we go. Think Progress : White House Claims It Lost RNC Emails.
The background is that the law requirs the White House to preserve all official e-mails. So Rove and others instead used an e-mail server at the Republican Party (RNC) to try to get around this requirement. When Congress learned of this they asked for these e-mails. The White House now claims these were accidentally lost.
Is it just me, or does it seem to you like the media is much more in the tank for Bush and the right since the election?
On another subject, does it seem to you that the US Attorney scandal has faded from the news with nothing being done, leaving in place US Attorneys who let Republicans and corporate criminals off the hook, while investigating or indicting Democrats? My prediction – if these US Attorneys stay in place, the lead-up to the 2008 election will include LOTS of news stories about Democrats being investigated and indicted, and no stories about Republicans being investigated at all.
The Bush administration – again too clever by half.
Clever once: Recently Bush claimed that “executive privilege” prevents staff e-mails from being turned over to Congress. Except in an attempt to keep the e-mails away from legal scrutiny many were illegally routed through the Republican Party, which means they aren’t privileged. Too clever by half.
Clever again: When the Bush administration fired US Attorney Iglesias because he didn’t indict enough Democrats, they tried to explain it with a cover story claiming he was fired because he took too much time away from the office. Well, you see, Iglesias is a captain in the Navy Reserve. And there is a law that says you can’t fire someone because they have to attend Reserve duty.
So Newsweek is reporting that,
Iglesias confirmed to NEWSWEEK that he was recently questioned by lawyers for the Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal watchdog agency, to determine if his dismissal was a violation of the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA), a federal law that prohibits job discrimination against members of the U.S. military.
At the encouragement of Office of Special Counsel director Scott Bloch and his deputies, Iglesias said he is this week filing a formal legal complaint with OSC against the Justice Department over his dismissal on this and other grounds.
I learned about this through TPMmuckraker April 4, 2007 04:56 PM
The US Attorney scandal is not about miscommunication of the reasons for the firings. This is what the US Attorney scandal is about:
Bush fired US Attorneys:
1) To block investigations into Republican corruption.
2) For refusing to launch sham investigations of Democrats who were innocent of any and all accusations.
For example, the prosecutor who indicted Duke Cunningham was fired.
And before THIS round of firings, there was this: Bush picks Abramoff prosecutor for federal judgeship / Democrats wonder about the timing of president’s move,
..Hillman’s departure from the Justice Department creates a vacancy at the top of the Abramoff investigation only three weeks after Abramoff, once one of the city’s most powerful Republican lobbyists and a major fund-raiser for Bush, announced his guilty plea and agreed to testify against others, possibly including members of Congress.
And how many indictments of others, based on Abramoff’s testimony, followed the exit of this prosecutor?
There are serious Republican corruption scandals out there, but now there are no US Attorneys who will investigate them. And here’s the thing – if things do not change, in the months before the 2008 elections the public will be hearing about lots of Democrats being indicted for corruption.
Watch your backs!
The other day I wrote about the “Clinton fired 93 US attorneys” nonsense. It must have “tested well” with an important target group that the right wants to bamboozle, because now you’re hearing it repeated everywhere.
First, in the current scandal Bush fired US Attorneys: (according to the fired US Attys themselves, as well as White House e-mails obtained yesterday)
1) Specifically to block investigations into Republican corruption investigations.
2) For refusing to launch sham investigations of Democrats who were innocent of any and all accusations.
So before you fall for the “Clinton fired 93 US Attorneys” nonsense, take a look at this and note the date:
You’re going to hear a story that “Clinton fired 93 prosecutors” when he took office, while this whole prosecutor scandal is about Bush firing only 11.
The fact is that EVERY President changes the US Attorneys when taking office. Bush also did the same thing when he took office. That is different. This has never happened before. THIS scandal is about Bush using the federal prosecutors to only go after Democrats, and to ignore crimes by Republicans.
And here’s the thing. The ones that were fired were let go because they wouldn’t “play ball.” So the question is, what about the ones who were not fired?
It is one more example of how the entire government has been converted into a Party apparatus – as well as working to further the interests of the K-Street/Abramoff corruption machine. You hear about Interior Department employees ordered not to discuss global warming. You hear about the head of HUD telling underlings not to give contracts to Democrats. You hear over and over about “conected” companies getting huge no-bid contracts with no accountability…
IF Bush gets away with this – if the current prosecutors, Attorney General, Bush, etc. remain in place – come election time 2008 the only news the PUBLIC will be hearing is news about federal indictments of corrupt Democrats. That’s what this is about.
Update – CREW calls for a Special Prosecutor because obviously the Bush Justice Department isn’t going to investigate. But who appoints the special prosecutor?
CREW wants the immediate appointment of a Special Prosecutor to investigate potential criminal violations related to the recent dismissals of eight U.S. Attorneys. Recent revelations indicate that a top-ranking Department of Justice official knew that statements made by top Department officials were not true. Clearly, the Department of Justice cannot investigate itself and prosecute the misconduct of DOJ officials. CREW also asked the Department of Justice’s Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility to investigate the situation.