Rove Sends Threatening Message to GOP Tech Guru

This story should be blasted everywhere--Brad Friedman owns this story because of his passion for exposing corruption and for fair voting rights. The man responsible for creating some of the Republican Party's sophisticated technical infrastructure is a witness in the King Lincoln Bronzwell v. Blackwell federal lawsuit that challenges that there were voting rights violations in the 2004 Presidential Election in Ohio.

Karl Rove has threatened a GOP high-tech guru and his wife, if he does not "'take the fall' for election fraud in Ohio," according to a letter sent this morning to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, by Ohio election attorney Cliff Arnebeck.

The email, posted in full below, details threats against Mike Connell of the Republican firm New Media Communications, which describes itself on its website as "a powerhouse in the field of Republican website development and Internet services" and having "played a strategic role in helping the GOP expand its technological supremacy."

Connell was described in a recent interview with the plaintiff's attorneys in Ohio as a "high IQ Forrest Gump" for his appearance "at the scene of every [GOP] crime" from Florida 2000 to Ohio 2004 to the RNC email system to the installation of the currently-used Congressional computer network firewall.

The threats made by Rove against this tech guru and his wife are, according to Friedman, akin to the threats made against Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband Joe.

"Mr. Rove's e-mails from the White House to the Justice Department, the FBI, the Pentagon, Congress and various federal regulatory agencies are obviously relevant to the factual issues that we intend to address in this case," Arnebeck wrote last week to the Attorney General. "We are concerned about reports that Mr. Rove not only destroyed e-mails, but also took steps to destroy the hard drives from which they had been sent."

In his email to Mukasey today, Arnebeck writes: "We have been confidentially informed by a source we believe to be credible that Karl Rove has threatened Michael Connell, a principal witness we have identified in our King Lincoln case in federal court in Columbus, Ohio, that if he does not agree to 'take the fall' for election fraud in Ohio, his wife Heather will be prosecuted for supposed lobby law violations."

"This appears to be in response to our designation of Rove as the principal perpetrator in the Ohio Corrupt Practices Act/RICO claim with respect to which we issued document hold notices last Thursday to you and to the US Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform," the Ohio attorney writes, before going on to link to The BRAD BLOG's coverage of his press conference last week and requesting "protection for Mr. Connell and his family from this reported attempt to intimidate a witness."

All I can say is, kudos to the Brad Blog. What's it going to take to get Rove? How is it that he's allowed to parade around like he's untouchable? Are we going to have to wait until the power of the pardon is no longer in the hands of a Republican before anything happens?

--WS

Good Luck Selling That Bottle of Snake Oil

Karl Rove just can't help himself...

ABC News' Christianne Klein reports that at a breakfast with Republican insiders at the Capitol Hill Club this morning, former White House senior aide Karl Rove referred to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, as "coolly arrogant."

"Even if you never met him, you know this guy," Rove said, per Christianne Klein. "He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by."

Actually, that kind of reminds me of this guy:



But to call Obama coolly arrogant is to pretty much ignore the entire history of the Bush family and alcohol abuse. Is that really what Rove is channeling here? That doesn't sound like the Obama we've come to know...you know, the guy who can actually wear a cowboy hat:



Something got you running scared, Karl?



Something about this guy got you a little panicked? He sure looks like a hard sell to the American people. He looks like the 2008 version of a Bob Dole meltdown. Because I can guarantee you, the only one standing around in a country club with a hottie on his arm is the snarly looking guy who called his wife a "cunt" in front of people.

Something That Actually Brought Us Together

My first exposure to blogging was when Hurricane Katrina hit the US mainland in August, 2005. Up to that point, I had never commented on a blog, had only read a handful of things, and I was mainly not interested in anything blog related for one simple reason--the people all appeared to be morons. A new book by Paul Alexander, called Machiavelli's Shadow: The Rise and Fall of Karl Rove let's me tell the story of how I came to know Blue Girl.

I am never shocked to find morons commenting or adding content to blogs. I look at many, many blogs and I am always pleased when I find the good ones done by thinking people who know what they're talking about. My initial, visceral reaction to blogs--and to the blog commenters--was "how the hell do I know you know what you're talking about?"

Back when I first noticed this "Blue Girl/Global Citizen" person, she was fired up, angry and full of more operational knowledge and intelligence than virtually every other human being alive. SHE knew what she was talking about. SHE knew what was going on. SHE was a professional who KNEW what the most common trick of dishonest people was--bullshitting their way into a position of moral superiority. And SHE was an expert at puncturing that kind of thing. And she was right from day one on what was happening in New Orleans.

Touring the Superdome on Tuesday night, [Governor Kathleen] Blanco was disturbed by what she witnessed: in short, no federal assistance whatsoever. All she saw was the Louisiana National Guard and the Louisiana State Police -- certainly not enough of a law enforcement presence to be able to maintain order without additional guardsmen and troops.

If Bush had not seen what was taking place by Tuesday, Karl Rove had. The first evidence of Rove's involvement in the Katrina disaster occurred on Tuesday afternoon. "Rove understood what a nightmare this was for the president," Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana says, "so he went into high gear on the spin thing they're so good at in the White House. Rove had David Vitter, the Republican senator from Louisiana. I was at a press conference and David Vitter walked up to the mike and said, 'I just got off the phone with Karl Rove.' I looked at the governor and she looked at me, like, 'Why is David Vitter on the phone with Karl Rove?' I mean, he could have been talking to generals, the president himself, but Rove is just a political hatchet man."

Despite his expertise being politics, the administration had made Rove a central player in the handling of the disaster. "A light switch in the White House didn't get turned on without going through Rove," says Adam Sharp, an aide to Landrieu. "It was clear that Rove was the point person for the White House on this disaster."

So, go read the book. But remember--there were people screaming into the wilderness about these people long before it became popular and long before the hordes of apologists and defenders of this administration were able to scatter to the wind. One does not hear their voices anymore, but in the summer of 2005, people like Blue Girl were out there, and they knew what was going on and they were speaking up, and now we know why--because of this:

Instead of supplying relief to the city, Rove had devised a scheme whereby he could blame the failure of government to take action on someone besides Bush. "They looked around," Landrieu says, "and they found a Democratic governor and an African American Democratic mayor who had never held office before in his life before he was mayor of New Orleans -- someone they knew they could manipulate. Ray Nagin had never held public office and here he was the mayor of New Orleans and it was going underwater."

In short, Rove was going to blame Blanco for the failure of the response in Louisiana, and to do that he was going to use Nagin. He had already set the plan in motion on Tuesday with Nagin, who, even though he was a Democrat, was so close to the Republican Party that some members of the African American community in New Orleans called him "Ray Reagan." In 2000, Nagin had actually contributed $2,000 to Bush's campaign when he ran for president.

Rove knew of Nagin's ties to the Republican Party, so more than likely Nagin could be convinced to level his criticism at Blanco and to support Bush when he could. Here was Rove's strategy: Praise Haley Barbour, the Republican governor of Mississippi; praise Michael Brown and FEMA; blame Blanco, the Democrat. It was not a stretch for Nagin. He and Blanco so disliked each other that in Blanco's last race Nagin had endorsed her opponent.

Rove and Nagin were communicating through e-mail. "I heard Nagin was bragging about being in touch with The Man," Blanco says. "Nagin took the position that they were the people who could help the most to do what he wanted. People get highly complimented when they have contact with the White House." In this case the trade-off for Nagin was his willingness to cooperate with Rove. "I knew Ray Nagin could be easily manipulated," Landrieu says. "I could feel it. We were all working together in a relatively small building. We were in close proximity. But I could see where Rove was going. Blame Blanco. Blame the levee board. Blame the corruption in New Orleans. 'The reason the city is going underwater is because the city is corrupt,' Rove was saying. 'But don't blame the Republicans or George W. Bush or David Vitter. We are the white guys in shining armor, and we are going to come in and save the city from years of corruption.' That was their story and they sold it very well."

Rove sold the story, as he had in the past, through the media. On Wednesday, while Blanco was trying to get help from the White House, her staff began receiving calls from reporters questioning her handling of the disaster, almost all of them citing as their sources unnamed senior White House officials.

"One story," Blanco aide Mann recalls, "would say the governor was so incompetent she had not even gotten around to declaring a state of emergency when she had actually done so three days before the storm. It was obvious to us who was behind this attack based on inaccurate information that was being shoveled to Washington reporters who were identifying their sources as senior Bush administration officials." Blanco adds, "People at Newsweek told me the White House called them to say I had delayed signing the disaster declaration. The assumption was that their source was the political director -- Karl Rove." Not only was the attack on Blanco in print, it was also on television. "All of a sudden," Blanco says, "a whole lot of talking heads showed up on television repeating the misinformation over and over, making it the truth."

On Wednesday afternoon, Blanco called Bush and told him she needed "everything you've got." Since Bush promised to help, Blanco believed that assistance was arriving in the person of Army lieutenant general Russel Honore, who met with the governor. After a long and cordial discussion, Blanco asked Honore how many troops he had brought with him to Louisiana at the order of the president. "Just a handful of staffers," Blanco heard him say, much to her amazement. "I am here in an advisory capacity."

On Thursday, as New Orleans remained underwater, with countless thousands of people stranded in their homes, on their rooftops, or at the Convention Center or Superdome, there was still no federal help. What continued unabated, though, was the assault on Blanco, questioning her handling of the disaster. "We were in life-and-death mode and every minute counted," Blanco says. "I found my staff having to do public relations in the middle of the most disastrous days Louisiana has ever experienced. The talking heads had been turned on. My staff was saying, 'My God, governor, they are crucifying you politically.' I finally pulled all of my staff together and said, 'We are wasting our energy. We do not have a stable of talking heads. We cannot control the national media. We have lifesaving missions to accomplish, so let's do it.' My staff was upset with me."

Had we known all of these things then, we would have screamed louder. But we were already screaming louder, because our hunch turned out to be correct, and this book is vindication for us. Katrina was what brought us together, and we will never forget how we met, why we met, and why we do what we do--so that this kind of thing never happens again.

UPDATE: Blue Girl remembers, too

I remember that time vividly, too. I had started commenting at Political Animal as the Schaivo psychodrama played out. I had been reading blogs for a few years, and participating in discussion boards and forums, but I hadn't really commented on blogs before that moment. It also coincided with me starting a blog. I thought I should probably comment on other people's blogs if I wanted them to comment on mine.

So while I occasionally commented between the Schiavo story and Hurricane Katrina, I wasn't really comfortable in that element yet. Then two things happened simultaneously. The first was the storm. Some of what went wrong was stuff I had first hand experience with. Working all those years in health care, I have participated in a lot of mass casualty drills and a couple of real mass casualties, including the Andover Tornado of 1991. I know first hand that the communications link is always the one that breaks. The second thing that happened was I met my partner, and started wheedling him almost immediately to come aboard. We formed an instant alliance. Having that blog-buddy helped me find my voice in the comments section. I was new to blogging and newer to commenting, and it was a sea-change moment to make that connection with someone half a continent away who had similar experience and frame of reference that could bring out the best in me and help me focus my outrage, and to endourage me to write what I know and not worry about being too technical, if I feel I'm getting too wonky, just make it clear enough that it will be google friendly. He has encouraged me to keep screaming about the communications problems even though it's not even a blip on most folks radar.

I know a thing or two about comms and casualties, and have archives full of rants about the lack of standardization in the emergency response comms systems. The current system really is nuts.

I live in a city where the emergency radios have literally cost the lives of emergency personnel. I've been on the trauma team and had the ambulance show up with a patient that took four to the chest and their radios went dead and we had no warning a level I trauma was on the way.

I took part in one last Mass Casualty Drill a couple of years ago before leaving the hospital, and it was fraught with missteps - because the communications broke down. We were using our private cell phones by the mid-way point because the radios weren't communicating properly. Mass Casualty Drills among emergency response personnel are the equivalent of war games for the military. You mobilize your resources to reveal the weaknesses so you are prepared should the unthinkable happen. It is our job to think of the unthinkable and protect the citizenry not just from the event, but from themselves and panic.

I know first-hand that interoperable communications are screwed up royally. Many FDNY personnel probably lost their lives on September 11, 2001 because they didn't hear warnings to get out of the World Trade Center that the Police radios broadcast; warnings that the buildings were crumbling.

The chaos and tragedy that can be compounded by faulty communications equipment and lack of a standard was illustrated again when Hurricane Katrina and the resulting flooding crippled New Orleans in 2005.

Communications is the link that always breaks. In the event of the real thing, the satellites are going down, and we all know it. Relying on any form of communication that depends on satellites in a drill is a wink & nudge proposal, and we all know that, too.

We are not the only members of the “we-can-shoot-down-satellites” club anymore, either. Hell, you don’t even have to actually blow one up – blow something up in it’s path and create a debris field, and chances are pretty damned good that you can disable your target. The math could be done by a smart high schooler. Definitely by a college sophomore majoring in physics or astronomy.

My point is – their solution to this problem is no solution at all. When the link breaks, for the last decade or so, we have been falling back on our own phones. If we know that a mass casualty is planned, we make sure we have our chargers, because we know electricity isn’t going away in the hospitals – we have generators, so charging our phones does not cheat the rules. Except that if the real deal takes place, either terrorists on the ground will take out relay towers, the satellites will be compromised, or the air will be ionized.

We know damned good and well that those who wish us ill are aware of this problem. A problem that those of us who use the damned system have been aware of and bitching about for years, only to have the politicians who control the pursestrings listen politely, mouth some platitude or another, and then resume ignoring us, and give the contracts to their friends, and it ends up costing the lives of our co-workers.

Every major city in the country has a study on some shelf in city hall or police headquarters that is collecting dust. If Homeland Security wants to do something that would make sense and justify their existence, they should collect those reports and start an analysis, and they should take the steps to mandate a standardized communication system. It’s absolutely stupid that we don’t have that. It’s frankly a no-brainer. This is one of those things that is just too damned important to be left to the vagaries of the free market. But that is exactly what has happened, and it has cost the lives of men and women who serve you first-hand here at home, the people who show up when you call 911.

The party that gets us a working comm. system that won’t crash immediately if something we think about so you don’t have to comes to pass - will have the endorsement of every police, firefighter and nurses union in the country for decades.

And the person who reads a rant like that and encourages more of the same rather than heading for the hills screaming is a natural ally. The circumstances that bought us together sucked royally for millions of people - but at least one good thing came out of it - the partnership that makes this blog kick ass and take names and keep demanding accountability.

Scott McClellan Rolls Over on the Bush Administration

UPDATED 11:57PM: McClellan is just "disgruntled."

The White House blasted former press secretary Scott McClellan Wednesday, claiming that his new book about President Bush and the Iraq war shows McClellan is a "disgruntled" former employee.

"Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House," press secretary Dana Perino said in a statement. "For those of us who fully supported him, before, during and after he was press secretary, we are puzzled. It is sad — this is not the Scott we knew."

Excuse me, but we're ALL "disgruntled." And does anyone really know anyone, though?

-original post-

Hey, welcome back to the reality based community Mr. McClellan. Did you enjoy your sojourn into hell? What does it feel like to have your soul back?

Bush is depicted as an out-of-touch leader, operating in a political bubble, who has stubbornly refused to admit mistakes. McClellan defends the president's intellect -- "Bush is plenty smart enough to be president," he writes -- but casts him as unwilling or unable to be reflective about his job.

"A more self-confident executive would be willing to acknowledge failure, to trust people's ability to forgive those who seek redemption for mistakes and show a readiness to change," he writes.

In another section, McClellan describes Bush as able to convince himself of his own spin and relates a phone call he overheard Bush having during the 2000 campaign, in which he said he could not remember whether he had used cocaine. "I remember thinking to myself, 'How can that be?' " he writes.

How can that be? Only someone who knows that Bush really did use cocaine would dare write that. As I said last night to Blue Girl, how is it that McClellan isn't dead in a car wreck already?

We're not going to pimp the book from Scott McClellan, but we might enjoy making some rather derisive comments as more of these "revelations" come out.

Here is the most obvious comparison we can give you.
[Video below the fold]

Here's Karl Rove, the "architect," pretending there is no public record of what he did and claiming that McClellan sounds like a "left wing blogger:"



Here's David Gregory handing McClellan his ass back to him because Karl Rove is a proven liar:



Here's a little bonus video for your morning fun:



Yes, it was all about treason. And McClellan has gotten us closer to understanding what really went on and why there aren't guilty men at the end of a rope.

Tuesday morning quick hits

Got Propaganda? Media Matters has done that thing they do, and compiled and analyzed the data points on the Pentagon's program of manipulating public opinion using retired military officers as willing propaganda tools to cram Bush's pet war down the throats of the American sheeple. They found that between early 2002 and and the point at which Bob Gates terminated the propaganda efforts in recent days, these retired officers parroted the party line on network and cable news shows over 4500 times. (A spreadsheet listing each of the analysts' appearances documented by Media Matters is available here.)

As we now know, many of these retired officers were employed by defense contractors and granted undue access to Donald Rumsfeld and the procurement process. There are twenty retired officers and twenty wiki pages just screaming for a line to be added: His reputation has suffered since being exposed in a New York Times article on April 20, 2008 as a Pentagon propagandist who was willing to be used by the Bush administration to sell the invasion of Iraq in exchange for access.

Rove still refuses to testify under oath in the Don Siegelman case. He has offered to talk to the members of the House Judiciary Committee "privately and off the record," but that option doesn't establish a clear record as such a meeting would lack a transcript. Rove's refusal to appear before Congress in this matter, which cost a man his freedom for political reasons, is the latest assertion of executive overreach to undercut the congress and establish the presidency as a unitary, all-powerful office.

It doesn't get any better than this...you know how the republicans rolled out their rebranding effort yesterday, with the catchy theme "The Change You Deserve," and you thought that sounded strangely familiar? It's because it is the advertising tagline of Wyeth Pharmaceuticals anti-depressant Effexor. How staggeringly appropriate, given the depressing landscape the republicans face this fall.

Siegelman is Being Beaten In Prison

We want to stress that this is from a Diary at DailyKOS. We have no idea how thoroughly vetted this story is. We hope it is not true, actually, but we relay it because of what we know to be true - that Don Siegelman is a political prisoner. --BG

I'm back, and your initial comments are the same as mine, basically. How do you know for sure? Like you, I'm not certain of the veracity of this information. I found it on a Daily Kos diary that Crooks and Liars was linking to. I've watched the comments at C&L and it's the usual trolling concern over there--people going after Siegelman and the like.

The bottom line is this--it's not whether Siegelman is guilty or not. It's about the dignity of his treatment and did he have a fair trial. If there are indications that he is not being treated with dignity and that he didn't have a fair shake, that's an outrage.

What seals the deal is the image on Crooks and Liars and on the DKOS diary, which is Siegelman forced to write a letter to someone on a printed page like it was being snuck out of the gulag--pretty powerful stuff.

As always, view with skepticism and view with a critical eye towards what could be happening.


Start spreading this around...

DailyKos:

All roads lead to Rove. That was the message scrawled as an afterthought in the lower left-hand corner of the envelope I received in yesterday’s mail. It contained a letter from an old and dear friend of mine. His name is Don Siegelman. He is the former governor of Alabama and he is being held as a political prisoner of the Bush administration in a Federal prison in Louisiana.

They don’t allow Don the luxury of stationary so he must write his letters on whatever he can find. He wrote me on a xeroxed article he wanted me to see. [..]

When I first heard of Don being prosecuted for corruption my heart sank. I didn’t know what to think. It had been years since we’d spoken and the press made it sound awful for Don (what else?). Of course I had no idea what was really going on. Now that I do I am horrified…and furious.

Don is a formidable force in Alabama politics. His friends are loyal and his supporters enthusiastic. They re-elected him Governor in the midst of a bogus corruption trial engineered by the Bush Justice Department at the behest of Karl Rove who takes orders from you-know-who. Don campaigned for re-election throughout the early phases of the trial. On election night he was declared the winner, but Karl Rove’s minions stole the election overnight by manipulating the ballots in Baldwin County. It was classic Rovian/Republican election theft. They did it with computers and electronic voting machines. Don went to bed the re-elected Governor of Alabama, and woke up an unemployed defendant. [..]

Something that has not been reported is that they have been physically beating Don. I don’t know the extent of his injuries or exactly how many times it has happened – but it has been multiple times.

There are no words for the fury I feel. This is an outrage. And it is the most un-American thing I have ever heard. I cry bitter tears of frustration and rage.

Please everyone. We have to help Don, and we have to crush these thugs and put them out of the business of perverting our democracy. We must investigate and prosecute the responsible parties, not for political reasons, but to actually serve the interest of justice. The cause of justice calls upon us to hold these criminals accountable. We must bring them to justice and stop such travesties from ever again happening in our United States of America.

A new review of evidence suggests that an aligned group of Republican interests were pressing for — and seeking to profit financially from — the trial of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman on charges of bribery, according to Sam Stein of HuffPo.

Please contact Rep. John Conyers and Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairmen of their respective Judiciary committees and ask them to appoint an Independent Investigator. You can also donate to Siegelman’s Defense Fund.

Filed Under: Republican Party, Scandals

Have you ever heard of a man so dangerous, he was denied blank sheets of paper in prison?

What is THAT all about???

Don Siegelman
#24775-0001
Satellite Prison Camp
Post Office Box 5010
Oakdale, LA 71463-5019

UPDATE I - Warren Street (adding image from Crooks and Liars/DKos story)

Pretty powerful image, huh? Definitely NOT appearing in the GWB presidential library.

How audacious can this mendacious asshole get?

KKKarl Rove was on Fox News Sunday this morning, whipping a new fear pony in an effort to bolster support for perpetual occupation of Iraq - If we leave, oil prices will skyrocket.

If we were to give up Iraq with the third largest oil reserves in the world to the control of an Al Qaida regime or to the control of Iran, don’t you think $200 a barrel oil would have a cost to the American economy?

Seriously. He said it with a straight face, too. Never mind that he has been stunningly wrong on pretty much everything except the most effective methods of election rigging, we should believe him now!

Of course, he is still peddling the "al Qaeda could take over" meme, too. Even though everyone with two functioning neurons to rub together realizes that the notion is ridiculous. Iraq is 70% Shi'ite, and al Qaeda is a Sunni fundamentalist group. Just as there was no al Qaeda in Iraq before the US invasion, there will be no al Qaeda in Iraq after the US withdraws. They will either be slaughtered by Iraqis or they will flee for their lives.

And besides all that - the American presence in Iraq has had the exact opposite effect on oil prices. Instead of listening to the bullshit he spews, lets take a look at what the numbers say:

Now that Americans are (finally!) catching on to the terrorism fearmongering as a cause for continuing the occupation of Iraq, the GOP has been forced to come up with a new bogeyman to flog in support of perpetual war. It's in our economic interest to stay the course!

Never mind that we undoubtedly could have made great strides toward weening ourselves off the fossil fuels tit if we had spent all those billions on a Manhattan Project type alternative energy development program.

Fortunately, I think the whole "nothing to offer but fear itself" bidness is about played out. People are slowly shaking it off, pulling their No Fear t-shirts out of the bottom drawer, and telling the bastards to piss off.

Someone get a copy of the memo to Karl, because he obviously didn't read it the first time it was issued - Fear doesn't sell any more. No matter how you package it.

Sure I do

Hysterical.

Woman, off camera: "You don't have to do that."

Man, holding sign: "Sure I do."

Is "Premaindered" a word?

Eh. It is now. I had to make it up, because it fits perfectly to describe Karl Rove's forthcoming hagiographic gushing about his man-crush on time spent with George Bush.

Remember, not quite a month ago, he and Robert Barnett started making the rounds to publishers, shopping the notion of his memoirs. HarperCollins took a meeting, then took a pass. Ditto Random House. When the bidding started on December 6th, speculation was that he would get about $3 million.

But interest sputtered early, because the prototype for all "loyal Bushie's" to come isn't going to tell anything - he's going to swoon for 330 pages.

Just the week before he started whoring for a book deal he reminded us all just how pathologically dishonest he is in an interview with Charlie Rose, when he sat there with a straight face and said Daschle wanted the AUMF before the 2002 midterms; claiming Bush didn't want the vote to take place before the balloting because he didn't want to politicize it! He peddled a memoir, but he will deliver fiction.

Besides that, I think that people are starting to figure out that Rove just ain't that good. He did a lot of stupid stuff, and he sparked off baseless investigations that usually went nowhere, in order to win when his candidate was in peril of losing. And who can forget the "thumpin'" he orchestrated in 2006?

With interest waning, and no big publishing houses showing anything more than perfunctory interest, he signed with Mary Matalin's right-wing vanity press, Threshold Editions.

Ashbel Green, a senior editor at Alfred A Knopf said that in spite of interest in any book by Rove, he said Rove's advance might reach the mid-six figures, but not higher - if only because Rove lacks charisma and personality.

Sunday Surrealism

Oh good grief - take one Sunday to venture forth and hit multiple grocery stores and markets, and the entire world tilts on it's axis while you're out!

A new Des Moines Register poll upset the apple cart for both the Democrats and the Republicans. For the first time, Barack Obama has inched ahead in what is still a statistical dead heat. But the real surprise was on the Republican side, where Huckabee is firmly in the lead at 29% - up from 12% in October.

KKKarl Rove continued his stunning rewrite of history on Sunday. You might recall that the Charlie Rose viewing audience last week watched as his nose visibly grew while he said with a straight face that the administration didn't want the AUMF vote to happen when it did, right before the 2002 midterms. He repeated the lies yesterday, with added fabricated detail! Now his delusions have manifested themselves in a false construct of reality that makes that meanie Daschle the warmonger, not the pure goodness that is George aWol Bush! Daschle stopped laughing long enough on Monday to push back on the Bill Press Show. Worth noting: Even loyal Bushies Fleischer and Card threw his moldering carcass under the bus.

And isn't it time that someone took Senator McCain's hand and led him off the stage, settled him comfortably into a chair and fetched him a nice bowl of pudding? McCain is giving Rove a run for his money in the revisionist history area. For a couple of weeks now he has been peddling the line that the political reconciliation didn't happen because "there are no Thomas Jeffersons in Iraq." In some versions, he asserts that Saddam Hussein killed them all. (No, Senator - reconciliation didn't happen because Iraq is a lawless state with deep ethnic divisions and hatreds, and cataclysmic change in that nation was quite literally akin to turning a bull loose in a china shop.)

Then there is a huge financial mess unfolding in Florida, and the taxpayers may end up adding a new verb to the lexicon: Jebbed.

But the most surreal story of all was the one about big business pushing their agenda on the feckless failure, trying to get all manner of goodies bestowed upon them, their shareholders and their coffers - they want reforms to such frivolous and popular things as the Family and Medical Leave Act which protects workers from termination while they are treated for illnesses, and mandates that employees be given time off when a family grows via birth or adoption. In my career, I was a shift supervisor in healthcare and clinical lab settings. I have both accommodated and used FMLA, and on balance, it's a good law. Neither I nor my crew abused it. It does not need to be "fixed." CAFO's (concentrated animal feeding operations) are looking for exemptions for the waste generated by these huge factory farms.

What makes self-serving push so surreal is that for months, Democrats have been the primary benefactors of the campaign largess of big business.

They don't even try to cover up the craven any more, do they? But...doesn't plutocracy much spell the end for all once-great civilizations?

Gerson’s Tour de Farce

Not even a week has passed since KKKarl announced his resignation that will put him back in Texas and out of reach of the Sergeants of Arms of the congressional chambers should charges of Inherent Contempt be filed (we have already been told to piss off, the Justice Department he gutted won’t be doing it’s job for the American people and the Constitution) and already the rewriting of history is underway.

In today’s Washington Post, quintessential Useful Idiot™ Michael Gerson gets down on his knees and commences to….well, you get the idea….

Rove's main influence on the Republican Party has not been a series of tactical innovations but a series of strategic arguments. In this way, Rove is the opposite of a cynical political operator. He is not only a partisan for George W. Bush but the most serious, tireless advocate of Bushism. (emphasis mine)

Rove? The opposite of a cynical political operative? (Yeah - and slavery is freedom, ignorance is strength, and we have always been at war with EastAsia.)

Which Rove would that be, exactly? The Rove who assumed a fake identity to steal letterhead from the opponent in his very first campaign, and used it to make fake fliers promising “beer, food, girls and a good time for nothing” and passes them out at concerts and homeless shelters in an effort to disrupt the opponents campaign? Or the Rove who had a habit of anonymously tipping off the U.S. Attorneys in Texas that his Democratic opponents were committing illegal acts? To that end, investigations would be started that came to naught once the election was over?

Or would it be the Rove that thinks committing treason is just fine and dandy if it is for political reasons he wants to see advanced? It isn't cynical to sacrifice national security to cover up that a war was sold on false intel and blatant lies?

Or the Karl Rove that is way overrated as a “genius” campaign manager? They guy who wanted so badly to flip a blue state that they pissed around the last week of the 2000 election trying to win New Jersey and California, so the popular vote went to Gore, and the selection was made by the Supreme Court?

Or the Rove that lusts after the support of the African-American community, but will turn to race bating in a heartbeat to win an election?

Or the Rove that gutted the DoJ and turned it into the law enforcement arm of the Republican Party?

There are several KKKarl’s to chose from – and every last one of them is a “cynical political operative” so there are only two choices…Either Gerson is a bootlicking fucking shill, or he is under the influence of the Imperius Curse.

Rove Resigns

Lee Atwater 2.0 is stepping down from his official role on August 31. He leaves in his wake a fractured country, a destroyed Republican party, and a shredded Constitution.

He will not be missed.

He leaves a legacy of "no depth is too low to plumb" where politics is concerned. He masterminded turning the Department of Justice into the enforcement arm of the Republican Party; transforming it into the department of "Just Us."

He was the brain trust that came up with the tactic of outing a CIA agent whose diplomat spouse dared tell the truth about the lies told to whip up an unjust and illegal war.

Karl, we aren't done with you yet. You still have a lot of 'splainin' to do, and may you see prison attire, if not the gallows, before it's all said and done. You say you want to spend more time with your family - we want to see you spend some time with the Judiciary Committees.

How Very Soviet of Him

What, in the name of all that is sacred and holy, motivated Karl Rove to turn the Department of Justice into the enforcement arm of the Republican National Committee?

The answer is simple: He only cares about The Party. Principle and Country are obstructions to furthering his own petty political agenda. To his fevered, partisan brain, the Department of Justice was his to do with as he pleased. Screw you, screw me, screw the election process, screw the Constitution; and the hell with Justice being just. That sort of thing is for chumps and Democrats, and apparently Rove thinks the terms are synonymous. I can not wait for his come-uppance.

The wonderful Dan Froomkin has a terrific piece on the Washington Post website that pulls together information from different sources and paints a disturbing picture of the unprincipled, dishonorable and frankly un-American purely partisan political hack Rove.

Dan Eggen and Amy Goldstein write in today's Washington Post: "Nearly half the U.S. attorneys slated for removal by the administration last year were targets of Republican complaints that they were lax on voter fraud, including efforts by presidential adviser Karl Rove to encourage more prosecutions of election-law violations, according to new documents and interviews. . .

"It has been clear for months that the administration's eagerness to launch voter-fraud prosecutions played a role in some of the firings, but recent testimony, documents and interviews show the issue was more central than previously known. The new details include the names of additional prosecutors who were targeted and other districts that were of concern, as well as previously unknown information about the White House's role. . . .

"New information also emerged showing the extent to which the White House encouraged investigations of election fraud within weeks of November balloting.

"Rove, in particular, was preoccupied with pressing [Attorney General Alberto] Gonzales and his aides about alleged voting problems in a handful of battleground states, according to testimony and documents.

Long-standing precedent was tossed aside and actual rules were broken as well. At least one woman was incarcerated in a federal prison because she worked for a Democratic governor that a US Attorney wanted to see unseated. (It did not happen.)

I live just a few blocks from ground zero in the attorney firing scandal. I sure as hell care that “some attorneys got fired.” Especially when one of those attorneys that replaced the fired prosecutors was put here to manipulate the electoral process in my own state.

Elections are sacred, and so is Justice. That’s just how it is supposed to be in America, damnit. Subvert that process, like Rove apparently has, and I can see an application of the gallows as appropriate.

Yet More Evidence that All Roads Lead to Rove

Murray Waas of National Journal reports today that the White House conspired to keep emails that expose the level of Karl Rove’s involvement in the scheme to replace U.S. Attorney for Arkansas Bud Cummins with his own minion Tim Griffin.

The withheld records show that D. Kyle Sampson, who was then-chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, consulted with White House officials in drafting two letters to Congress that appear to have misrepresented the circumstances of Griffin's appointment as U.S. attorney and of Rove's role in supporting Griffin.

In one of the letters that Sampson drafted, dated February 23, 2007, the Justice Department told four Senate Democrats it was not aware of any role played by senior White House adviser Rove in attempting to name Griffin to the U.S. attorney post. A month later, the Justice Department apologized in writing to the Senate Democrats for the earlier letter, saying it had been inaccurate in denying that Rove had played a role.

Brad Berenson, an attorney for Sampson, said in an interview that his client did not intend to mislead Congress. Sampson, he said, signed off on the February 23 letter based on representations made by the White House that it was accurate.

The withheld e-mails show that Sampson's draft was forwarded for review to Chris Oprison, an associate White House counsel, who approved the language saying that Justice was not aware of Rove having played any role in supporting Griffin. But an earlier e-mail from Sampson to Oprison that has already been made public indicates that the two men discussed Rove and then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers as being at the forefront of Griffin's nomination.

Several of the e-mails that the Bush administration is withholding from Congress, as well as papers from the White House counsel's office describing other withheld documents, were made available to National Journal by a senior executive branch official, who said that the administration has inappropriately kept many of them from Congress. (italics added).

Predictably, the White House denies that they have withheld information or that any malfeasance has occurred. Of course, they still have a track-record that would lead anyone with a lick of sense to assume that they are, once more, lyin’ through their damned teeth, yet again..

Another Facet to the Justice Department Unraveling

The Attorney General is testifying in front of the House Judiciary Committee today, and it is liable to be ugly for him. You’ll recall that his performance in front of the Senate committee was like watching a baby seal being clubbed. Over 70 times, the AG responded that he was ignorant of the facts (that is what it means when one answers “I don’t know”) or, alternatively, that he “could not remember.” In the three weeks that have passed since that disturbing display, the focus has shifted from the matter of Gonzales incompetence and inability to run his department, to the involvement of the White House in turning the Department of Justice into an arm of the RNC.

From the Kansas City Star:

In the three weeks since Gonzales testified before a Senate committee, the department disclosed that it is investigating whether his former White House liaison, Monica Goodling, weighed the political affiliations of those she considered hiring as entry-level prosecutors. Consideration of such affiliations could be a violation of federal law.

More of the eight fired U.S. attorneys also have told congressional investigators they were warned that if they publicly protested their dismissals, Justice Department officials would publicly criticize their performance. And there have been new allegations that U.S. attorneys were evaluated on their enthusiasm for pursuing voter fraud cases that might benefit Republican candidates.

Gonzales is expected to be asked about those developments Thursday in his first appearance before the House Judiciary Committee since Democrats took control of Congress.

"All of that goes to the larger question," House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., said Wednesday in a telephone interview. He said the bigger question is who put together and approved the list that caused the eight U.S. attorneys to lose their jobs.

Conyers is holding a subpoena for White House political adviser Karl Rove but has not issued it. Meanwhile, the Senate Judiciary Committee last week subpoenaed Gonzales for all e-mails the Justice Department has gathered regarding Rove and the firings.

Gonzales is no-doubt experiencing a memory failure on an epic scale even as I type. He issued a statement earlier in the week, saying it’s time to move on. "Recent events must not deter us from our mission. I ask the committee to join me in that commitment and that rededication," he said, citing what he said were accomplishments in protecting national security and fighting pedophiles.

A fine sentiment. Except it rings hollow given the shelling out of the Department of Justice that has happened under the leadership of Karl Rove, to whom the feckless, simpering and incompetent Alberto Gonzales effectively abdicated all responsibility for the day-to-day operations of his department.

When Justice is not perceived to be just - we have lost America.

UPDATE: The Washington Post reports that it was not so brutal to be the AG in front of the House committee as it was the Senate.

Republicans echoed Gonzales' call to move on, indicating that the embattled attorney general may have weathered the political storm.

"The list of accusations has mushroomed, but the evidence of wrongdoing has not," said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the committee's senior GOP member. "If there are no fish in this lake, we should reel in our lines of questions, dock our empty boat and turn to more pressing issues."

Democrats showed no willingness to quit asking questions about whether White House officials ordered the firings of prosecutors not sufficiently loyal to the Bush administration. Democrats probed whether the Justice Department scuttled more prosecutors than the eight jettisoned over the winter, asking about prosecutor resignations in Los Angeles and Missouri.

"The department's most precious asset _ its reputation for integrity and independence _ has been called into question," said committee chairman John Conyers, D-Mich. "Until we get to the bottom of how this list was created, and why, those doubts will persist."

Touchy, Touchy!

Via Think Progress:

Rove ‘explodes’ at Crow over global warming.

Singer Sheryl Crow, “on a cross-country global warming awareness trip, got into it with Karl Rove” last night at the White House Correspondents Dinner. “Jawing like a baseball manager and an umpire arguing a call, Crow and Rove were disagreeing over global warming, with Crow’s pal, Laurie David, offering support.” David describes the scene:

We asked Mr. Rove if he would consider taking a fresh look at the science of global warming. Much to our dismay, he immediately got combative. And it went downhill from there.

We reminded the senior White House advisor that the US leads the world in global warming pollution and we are doing the least about it. Anger flaring, Mr. Rove immediately regurgitated the official Administration position on global warming which is that the US spends more on researching the causes than any other country. […]

In his attempt to dismiss us, Mr. Rove turned to head toward his table, but as soon as he did so, Sheryl reached out to touch his arm. Karl swung around and spat, “Don’t touch me.” How hardened and removed from reality must a person be to refuse to be touched by Sheryl Crow? Unphased, Sheryl abruptly responded, “You can’t speak to us like that, you work for us.” Karl then quipped, “I don’t work for you, I work for the American people.” To which Sheryl promptly reminded him, “We are the American people.” (emphasis mine.)

I could be wrong here, but I am of the opinion that Karl is stressed. Perhaps the bloom is off the (turd)blossom...

Betting the Farm on Executive Privilege

.
Talk about stones! On Tuesday, while the nation absorbed the shock of what happened in Virginia, the White House used the political cover the tragedy provided to assert (as they had indicated they would) that Executive Privilege extends to the Republican National Committee computer system.

Yep. You read that right . (Can you imagine if Bill Clinton had tried to assert such a thing? There would have been great wailing and howling and gnashing of teeth. A racket would have set up from the Republicans that would have drowned out a Spinal Tap show - and their amps go to 11.)

From the Washington Post:

The RNC deferred yesterday to White House requests that all documents from administration officials who used RNC e-mail accounts first be reviewed by Bush's lawyers. Congress has requested several years' worth of e-mails from top White House advisers, including Karl Rove, as part of its investigation of the prosecutor firings. In letters to the House and Senate Judiciary committees, an RNC lawyer said those documents belong to the White House.

"Recognizing the unique and significant nature of the potential privilege issue raised by the committee's requests, the RNC has agreed to the White House's reasonable request," Robert K. Kelner, an RNC lawyer, wrote to Conyers. Conyers responded that the action was "a clear attempt on the administration's part to delay this process."

House and Senate investigators have focused on e-mails by J. Scott Jennings, the White House's deputy political director, who used RNC e-mail accounts to discuss Rove's interest in appointing a former deputy as the U.S. attorney in Little Rock.

A leading House Democrat said last week that he had been told that as many as four years' worth of Rove's RNC e-mails may be missing. The e-mails are also sought in a congressional investigation of the alleged politicization of the General Services Administration.

The overreaching of the imperial presidency is stunning in scope. It's as if it truly knows no bounds. This stubborn digging in, in the face of overwhelming public disapproval, seems to me like a hail-Mary pass into heavy coverage. There is no precedent and no reason to believe that any court would uphold this imaginary divine right of the worst president ever.

It is a desperate ploy, and it is certain to fail. I honestly believe that they know they have cashed in all their chits and probably bounced a few checks too boot - the political capital account is overdrawn. All they have left is monkeywrenching...An activity that both Conyers and Leahy long since grow tired of.

Reining in a Rogue Elephant

To my (admittedly wonkish) way of thinking, the most exciting RSS feed these days is the one coming from Representative Waxman’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Representative Waxman and the Oversight Committee today (Monday, March 26, 2007) informed both the Republican National Committee and the Chairman of the Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign that they are not to destroy any email records they may be in possession of, in light of the evidence that certain high-ranking public officials (*cough* Karl Rove *cough*) have used non-official email servers to conduct the business of the government and avoid scrutiny and transparency in government affairs, and have most likely acted in ways that violate the Presidential Records Act.

One thing is for certain – the mendacity and hubris of this administration is staggering. If their actions were not so consequential for the rest of us, it would almost be funny – but as that is not the case, they are simply appalling on an epic scale.

All roads lead to Rove: Part II in a continuing series

The Washington Post reports in the Monday edition that Congressman Waxman’s Oversight Committee has summoned GSA (Government Services Administration) Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan to answer questions about some events that transpired on Jan. 26, where she and J. Scott Jennings, a deputy in Karl Rove's political affairs office at the White House joined in a videoconference with top GSA political appointees, and it was discussed how Republican candidates could be assisted.

When Jennings concluded his presentation to the GSA political appointees, Doan allegedly asked them how they could "help 'our candidates' in the next elections," according to a March 6 letter to Doan from Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Waxman said in the letter that one method suggested was using "targeted public events, such as the opening of federal facilities around the country."

On Wednesday, Doan is scheduled to appear before Waxman's committee to answer questions about the videoconference and other issues. The committee is investigating whether remarks made during the videoconference violated the Hatch Act, a federal law that restricts executive-branch employees from using their positions for political purposes. Those found in violation of the act do not face criminal penalties but can be removed from their jobs.

Waxman said in the letter that the remarks made during the videoconference have been confirmed by "multiple sources." Congressional investigators have taken statements from GSA employees and others in recent weeks.

The planned hearing is part of an expanding examination by Waxman's committee of Doan's tumultuous 10-month tenure as administrator of the GSA. The government's leading procurement agency annually handles about $56 billion worth of federal contracts.

Jennings's name has recently surfaced in investigations of the firing of eight U.S. attorneys around the country. He communicated with Justice Department officials concerning the appointment of Tim Griffin, a former Rove aide, as U.S. attorney in Little Rock, according to e-mails released this month. For that exchange, Jennings, although working at the White House, used an e-mail account registered to the Republican National Committee, where Griffin had worked as a political opposition researcher.

Jennings is a longtime political operative from Kentucky. He served as political director for Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in 2002 before joining the White House. After Jennings and Doan spoke during the videoconference, one regional GSA administrator offered the suggestion that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) could be excluded from the opening of an environmentally efficient federal courthouse in San Francisco, which Pelosi represents, according to Waxman's letter. GSA manages the nation's federal courthouses. (emphasis mine)

But it doesn’t stop there…

It also seems apparent that Doan engaged in other impropriety as well. For instance, she spent an inordinate amount of time attempting to give a no-bid contract to a friend of hers who steered her through her confirmation process to assume the directorship of GSA.

Waxman's investigation began in response to a Jan. 19 story in The Washington Post about a no-bid job Doan tried to give to firms run by Edie Fraser, a veteran Washington public relations executive who had served as a paid consultant to Doan. Waxman's investigators concluded that the two women had "a long-standing business relationship" that was not "previously disclosed," according to Waxman's letter.

Between 2003 and 2005, Fraser billed Doan as much as $20,000 a month in consulting fees to "generally promote attributes" of Doan and her company, New Technology Management Inc., according to invoices obtained by The Post. In all, Doan paid at least $417,500 to companies affiliated with Fraser before Doan took over the GSA, according to Waxman's investigators.

Last year, Fraser helped prepare Doan for her GSA confirmation and lined up political support for her, according to interviews and e-mails obtained by The Post.

On July 25, two months after Doan took office, she took the unusual step of personally signing the no-bid arrangement with Diversity Best Practices and Business Women's Network, firms then run by Fraser, to produce a report about GSA's use of businesses owned by minorities or women. The GSA's general counsel at the time, Alan R. Swendiman, told Waxman's investigators he was "alarmed" that the project was not competitively bid.

Last month, in a letter to Waxman's committee, a senior GSA official called the no-bid arrangement a "procedural mistake." Doan told The Post that she submitted a service order for the work through normal GSA contracting channels and did not focus on it afterward.

But Swendiman, now a special assistant to President Bush, told Waxman's investigators that he "immediately and repeatedly" advised Doan to terminate the arrangement. When he was unable to persuade her, Swendiman directed a GSA contracting officer to terminate the arrangement. The investigators found evidence indicating that Doan continued to try to find ways to award the project to her friend.

So it isn’t just the Department of Justice – it’s the General Services Administration as well – the nations checkbook – that has been corrupted by the tentacles of Karl Rove and his political machinations.

There is nothing sacred to these people. Indeed, those of us who hold sacred ideals seem contemptible to these people. Thankfully, their day seems just about done.

.

[Originally posted at Watching Those We Chose]

Got Conspiracy? Damning Evidence Against Rove in the Latest Document Dump

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. --Thomas Jefferson

Another document dump happened last night, and one of Josh Marshall’s astute Citizen Journalists flagged an email exchange that originated with Kyle Sampson to Harriet Meiers. Here is the link to the whole thing. (.pdf alert)

Here is the part I found damning:

Harriet/Bill, please see the attached. Please note (1) the plan, by its terms, would commence this week; (2) I have consulted with the DAG, but not yet informed others who would need to be brought into the loop………(nor have I informed anyone in Karl's shop, another pre-execution necessity I would recommend); and (3) I am concerned that to execute this plan properly we must all be on the same page and be steeled to withstand any political upheaval that might result (see Step 3); if we start caving to complaining U.S. Attorneys or Senators then we shouldn't do it -- it'll be more trouble than it is worth. We'll stand by for a green light from you. Upon the green light, we'll (1) circulate the below plan to the list of folks in Step 3 (and ask that you circulate it to Karl's shop………

Damning evidence that Gonzalez abdicated his responsibility to the Department of Justice to a political hack like Rove.

The American people have the right to feel secure that federal prosecutions are not political in origin.

In fact, we spent money hand-over-fist for five decades because we were locked in an ideological battle against an authoritarian regime that engaged in political persecutions via prosecutions.

I was there for the Cold War. I am the definitive cold war brat – born six weeks after the Cuban Missile Crisis, I married into the Strategic Air Command when I grew up.

I did not give my life over to the side of Democracy in the struggle against authoritarian ideology elsewhere to capitulate to a dogmatic authoritarianism at home. Even if it means the blood of patriots and tyrants must be spilled.

[Cross-posted from Watching Those We Chose]