Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Gonzo Watch! Day Three!

It's Wednesday! Hump day!

Gonzo not gonzo. Yet.

gonzo_muppet.jpg gonzo_clasp.jpg

Coming up this hour: Christy Harvey of the Center for American Progress. Her site, Mic Check Radio, has a timeline and "fast facts" breakdown of the U.S. attorney firings.

A must-stop on your journey through the Gonzo story

Mortgage delinquency isn't just for high-risk borrowers anymore...

No Child Left Behind to leave children behind?

"There is a zero percent chance that we will ever reach a 100 percent target," said Robert L. Linn, co-director of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing at UCLA. "But because the title of the law is so rhetorically brilliant, politicians are afraid to change this completely unrealistic standard. They don't want to be accused of leaving some children behind."

213 comments:

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Anonymous said...

Unfortunately, he'll probably end up getting a Medal of Freedom.

bibimimi said...

Guess I was out of the room when that happened.

March 14, 2007 10:35 AM

the troll is hallucinating. sam doesn't lose his cool or hurt epithets

GBC said...

...if somebody disagrees with him and starts to win the debate.

//

Uh-huh. Dewey couldn't win a debate with a corpse.

Anonymous said...

Should we also use the power of our minds to make our country get on track and bring our troops home and stop global warming etc etc etc and imagine peace. and of course use action to obtain postitive change(that's a given!). Hey there's more of us than them anyways! Lets use our power people!

Alice said...

Red Light, Green Light, The Democrats and Iran

You could close your eyes and pretend it isn't happening.

Pretend that the new Democratic Congress -- after four years of torture, mass murder and war crimes against the people of Iraq -- didn't just promise the War-Criminal-In-Chief that they would do nothing to stop a new and even more dangerous war against Iran.

Pretend that these same Democrats -- who have sold you out so many times and at the cost of so many lives -- didn't just promise to give the president more money than he even asked for to fight his current wars!

Pretend that somehow history -- and the people of the Middle East -- will forgive you for meeting this news with passivity, silence or at best "protest as usual."

Or you could open your eyes and confront the nightmares engulfing millions of people in the Middle East and endangering people around the world that only people living in this country can bring to a halt.

You can get on a bus, hop on a train, purchase an airline ticket, or pile into a van and get your butt to Washington DC on March 17t to march across the bridge and encircle the Pentagon, on March 17th before the eyes of the world!
...

Alice said...

JOIN AMY GOODMAN, GIULIANA SGRENA AND VINCE WARREN:

FRIENDLY FIRE
An Independent Journalist's Story of Being Abducted in Iraq, Rescued, and Shot by U.S. Forces

Wednesday, March 14
7 pm
Judson Church
55 Washington Square South
New York, NY
http://www.judson.org/

Anonymous said...

Power to the people right on! Gotta kill em with kindness/love to make them see the light and get them out of their darkness/hording of power. Gotta be strong gotta tell them what's wrong and we will not tolerate abuses of power that we are not subhuman. that we want our democracy with pursuits of happiness and liberty.

Full Metal Alchemist said...

How about this for the news letter

The Sammy Gazette!!!!

pk said...

WAS FITZ PRESSURED TO PUT ICE ON A GRAND JURY INDICTMENT OF ROVE?

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/

March 14, 2007 -- Last May, WMR reported that presidential counselor Karl Rove and the White House pressured special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to put on ice a grand jury indictment of Rove. "Legal experts" claimed that there was no way that either Rove, the White House, or Attorney General Alberto Gonzales could pressure Fitzgerald. As we now know from recent news from the Justice Department, these "experts" were woefully wrong.

On May 20, 2006, we reported, "Rather than keep Rove out of the public eye, the White House put him out in front of the neocon American Enterprise Institute on Monday, had him arm twisting GOP members of Congress during the week, and had him fly to Lake County, Illinois Friday night for a GOP fundraiser and pep talk. Washington insiders report that if the White House were confident that Rove would soon be indicted, they would refrain from having him out among GOP ranks taking part in future embarrassing photo ops. Which brings us back to yesterday's item about the power of the Special Counsel as opposed to that of an Independent Special Counsel. Even Watergate independent counsel Archibald Cox was not immune enough to prevent him from being fired by Richard Nixon. (Although the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General refused to fire Cox and resigned, the dirty work was carried out by the Solicitor General, Robert Bork). Fitzgerald is merely protected by a series of Justice Department administrative directives and not by anything even close to an Independent Counsel Statute. In taking on the most powerful and unconstitutional administration in the history of the United States, Fitzgerald's brief is certainly vulnerable to pressure from the White House."

We now know that Gonzales, Rove, and ex-White House counsel Harriet Miers conspired to fire a number of U.S. attorneys for political reasons. Those fired include H. E. "Bud" Cummins, U.S. Attorney for eastern Arkansas, who was dismissed to make way for Tim Griffin, a political aide to Karl Rove. John McKay, former U.S. Attorney for western Washington, was fired for not indicting Democrats for fraud in the close 2004 Washington gubernatorial race. There was no evidence of any fraud, yet the White House wanted to engage the Justice Department in a political witch hunt. Former U.S. Attorney Carol Lam of San Diego was fired over her aggressive pursuit of ex-GOP Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, now in prison for accepting bribes. Lam was fired as her investigation expanded to include California Republican congressmen Jerry Lewis and Ken Calvert. Others fired included New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, whose firing was prompted by political pressure from New Mexico Republican Senator Pete Domenici and Representative Heather Wilson (they felt that he should have prosecuted Democrats in voter fraud, much like the pressure exacted on McKay in Washington); Nevada U.S. Attorney David Bogden; U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan of San Francisco; and Arizona U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton, who was investigating Arizona Republican Representative Rick Renzi; and Margaret Chiara, U.S. Attorney for Western Michigan and the Upper Peninsula. The most egregious firing was that of interim U.S. Attorney for Guam and the Northern Marianas Frederick Black, dismissed because of his investigation of now jailed GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff and human trafficking from Asia to sweatshops in Saipan. Although the media is reporting that eight U.S. Attorneys were fired by the White House -- identified from the Justice Department-White House e-mail exchanges -- the earlier 2002 firing of Black makes that number at least nine.

Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson, who resigned on Monday, sent a March 2005 e-mail to the White House listing all 93 U.S. Attorneys in three categories: "Bold = Recommend retaining; strong U.S. attorneys who have managed well, and exhibited loyalty to the president and attorney general. Strikeout = Recommend removing; weak U.S. attorneys who have been ineffectual managers and prosecutors, chafed against administration initiatives, etc. Nothing = No recommendation; have not distinguished themselves either positively or negatively."



Fitzgerald: Was there a strikeout on his name?

One of those U.S. Attorneys would have been the U.S. Attorney for northern Illinois, Patrick J. Fitzgerald. It will be interesting to see what grade he was assigned by the Justice Department. The U.S. Attorney "scorecard" document released to the House Judiciary Committee has been redacted with tape (the serrations can be clearly seen next to the Illinois/Northern and other U.S. Attorney offices. A strikeout on his name will constitute proof of the White House's interference in the Plame leak case through the back door. A bold rating might also indicate White House interference. Rove has said that the U.S Attorney firing controversy amounts to nothing. If it turns out that Fitzgerald was either on the chopping block to lose his Chicago base of operations, forcing him to become a weakened special prosecutor, or given a wink and a nod "bold" rating, Rove, who fancies himself a political "artful dodger," may still face a judicial vise grip.



Why is Fitzgerald's fate redacted in what Justice gave to House Judiciary Committee?

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MrK said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dr. Zimmerman Robert said...

"Resignation Calls are a Pointless Diversion"

It seems to me that our opposition to "the marriage of government and corporate
power " ought to come in actions that originate in democratic thought and
argument in the USA.

Yet day after day the presses and the "new media" are caught in the whirlwind of
government and corporate marketing departments. “Resignation Calls” will not
bring about a middle class wage for all workers nor will it bring about free
universal education and healthcare. It is my belief that more and more people
will see the benefit of democratically collective actions when we daily argue
and work for free universal education and healthcare, middle class wages for
all and clean, healthy housing and food for all.

Anonymous said...

Us Attorney fired for political reasons not professional ineptitude.

US Attorney Black, in Guam fired to protect Abramoff/Delay by
Rove/Gonzales

Link

..

Washington state US Attorney,

Link

...

More details of rove/gonzales political dirty work - firing attorneys.

Link

..

Documents and e-mails subpoenaed from the White House by a Congressional Hearing/Committee.

Link

Anonymous said...

I say Gonzo goes on Good Friday. Christy had the right idea but things are gonna get way too hot before May. It's the standard operating procedure of the regime to do things likethis late on a friday. Even better if it's before a holiday! Then on Easter sunday he can resurrect himself as a legal anaylist on Fox.

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