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Not All the DOJ Missing Emails Are Missing
Hylas sends us to Democracy Now for a newscast on the missing emails, an interview with investigative journalist Greg Palast. Here's Palast talking about the fired US attorney from New Mexico, David Iglesias: "Iglesias believes the real reasons for the firings are in what are called the missing emails, emails sent by the [White House political advisor Karl] Rove team using Republican Party campaign computers, which Rove claims can't be retrieved. But not all the missing emails are missing. We have 500 of them. Apparently the Rove team misaddressed their emails, and late one night they all ended up in our inboxes in our offices in New York City." This story has had zero play in the US media; it's been being carried on the BBC.
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
A bit of history on Greg Palast; he's the guy who, on the BBC, broke the story about election irregularities in Florida before the 2000 election. Admittedly, a few days before, but it's still a bit of a scoop.
Does no one else find it not only weird, but downright scary how this just seems to disappear from the American political media, even though it is happening IN AMERICA, and largely effects AMERICANS? I mean jeeze guys, do not care what happens to your country? Rise up! Revolt! Hell, have Civil Rights march, cuz God knows you need it...
Mr. Palast claims to have 500 "misaddressed" e-mails from Mr. Rove? And Mr. Palast happens to be pitching a book?
Excuse my naiveté, but wouldn't leaking one or two of these supposed e-mails do more to boost Mr. Palast's credibility than just claiming he has them?
Is he the new sysadmin?
OK, so if all the emails were lost it stands to reason that they were all stored in one place either the same storage system, or in the same facility. So where are those backups, on-site and off-site.
And what about archives? Wouldn't they run an archive at least once a year for safekeeping?
Where are the sysadmins and what are they saying about the incident?
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
This story has had zero play in the US media;
This can only be the work of the so-called "liberal media" in the US that we hear so much about. Look at those leftist, socialist Commie bastards protecting the interests of their right-wing Republican friends. Oh, wait...
Can we SEE these emails?
You know, you'd think that if someone was going to do something sneaky that they shouldn't be doing, they'd at least double check who they're sending this stuff to. Doing something like this is basically the equivalent of writing a fellow co-worker bashing your boss and then carbon copying that email to ... your boss.
I can always trust Amy Goodman and the Democracy Now crew for unbiased news reporting... Hell, Even Clinton lit into her for distorting the truth several years ago.
A pound of salt and I still wouldn't listen to anything she had to say...
This story has had zero play in the US media; it's been being carried on the BBC
Democracy Now airs in the US on quite a few small local stations (I listen to it on my ride home from work every day) as well as a few satellite channels.
Of course, everyone seems to completely ignore it, even though so far they have a pretty much spot-on record regarding the evils of the current administration... They broke the "secret prisons" story about two years before the mainstream media caught on; Regularly discussed Abu Ghraib and detainee torture at least six months before we all started "Doing the Lyndie"; Private jet chartering for illegal renditions to have prisoners tortured by third-party countries, 18 months before anyone cared (and still, even now that everyone stopped caring despite the practice continuing).
But then, ya just can't trust them tinfoil hat types, right?
Mod me troll, but that article is horribly written. That, or I'm still not awake. Please proof this stuff....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Same old, same old. Politicians to not understand how technology can come back to haunt them. In the internet age things are rarely gone for good.
3 8210).
o use-finds-someone_b_46344.html
In the past politicians have released word doc press releases where journalists have been able to check the history and see what was originally typed, and I have lost count of the number of PDFs with redacted text that can be easily recovered (http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/22/1
When will politicians learn?
What I don't understand - perhaps an american can explain this to me - is how the White House was in a position to be able to delete emails? Surely a better system would be to require (by law) a neutral party to oversee, backup and archive all political information. After all in a hundred years it will be a valuable part of your national history and heritage - instead its just an embarrassment.
And as for blaming it on a dead woman who cannot defend herself, thats just wrong. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/toby-barlow/white-h
Greg Palast is one of the few good reporters out there still willing to probe further and deeper. An interesting book of his, detailing the election, war, and oil machinations is "Armed Madhouse": http://www.gregpalast.com/madhouse/index.php/about /. For a quick summary, see this talk he gave in Portland: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-680222806 2297352475.
There is a link at the top of the page to listen to (or watch) the interview. You still might not like the style or production quality but they really do have to differ from written news.
i recall that yesterday the banter on the microsoft patents was all "show me the patents" and "without seeing what they're talking about it's just so much fud" but here not seeing the supposed missing e-mails is considered credible?
come on guys, the hypocrisy really needs to end somewhere.
For example?
This story strains credibility
In what way? That it suggests that Karl Rove would lie? How is that straining anything?
The entire scenario is more than a little far fetched
Politicians do this sort of thing all the time.
unless you're automatically predisposed to hate Karl Rove.
You don't have to be predisposed to hating Karl Rove, he's such a cunt that it's impossible not to; but that's not really anything to do with the believability of this story of everyday political shenanigans.
I'll wait for a better, more credible source.
Like what? One that agrees with your strangely innocent view of politics?
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Its the President's right to fire any of them at any time for any reason? His real mistake was not firing them all when he came into office.
Seems slashdot likes to get political only when it involves those evil, nasty Republicans. It's embarassing how partisan this place is.
See the 'Yes Minister' episode 'The Skeleton in the Cupboard' about the Official Secrets act for a full explanation
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
Wired posted this story last week ( http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/05/gonzales_ hides_.html ) after someone spotted this story: http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/070510nj1 .htm.
u poenas_.html) all e-mails between the Justice Department and the White House over the attorney firings. Yet our nation's top lawman refuses to obey the law of the land. And continues to be our nation's top lawman.
The blogger had this to say: Put simply, this stinks. Earlier this months, Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vermont) subpoenaed (http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/05/leahy_s
The Bush administration continues to openly flaunt their complete contempt for the laws of this country. Bring respect back to the White House my ass.
Dear CmdTaco,
Thanks for the money. I will now jump up and down like a monkey for your pleasure.
Sincerly,
StrongBad
------------------------
Seriously, you have to take the actual boxes to a trusted neutral party and have them analyzed. Having emails "show up" somewhere is just one step of evidence gathering.
And which "even handed" "reliable" news source told you that? The same one that breathed a sigh of relief yesterday when Gonzalez was finally able to admit that it was all his just-resigned assistant's fault?
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
This story has had zero play in the US media; it's been being carried on the BBC. It is not playing in the US media because no law was broken when those attorneys were fired. The Democrats were trying to score political points by attempting to make a scandal out of it. When the American people understood that the firings were legal, then the scandal issue fizzled.
Things you have to buy to believe this guy:
.org instead of .com , for those of us who type in domain names constantly this may be feasible since our brains are probably a few words ahead and .org is in the muscular memory of our typing fingers just as much as .com , but these are bureaucrats and politicians who we're being told aren't all that savvy...
a) They "typoed"
b) They manually typed in the addresses. Just this point doesn't make sense. How many addresses do you manually type in? Not click from an address book, not type in the first couple letters and hit TAB to auto-complete... If anything the less savvy user would lean on crutches like mailing lists and auto-completion far more than manually typing in long addresses.
c) If he's really REALLY so interested in the right thing happening, and all that, why hasn't he forwarded these to the congressmen who are looking into these matters instead of announcing them on the radio?
d) How hard, exactly, is it to fake an SMTP message again? What kind of authenticity can he lend to this? How does he know that someone didn't fake the mail and send it to that domain? Heaven knows it couldn't have been spoofed, right?
Oh yeah, and he happens to be on the publicity trail for a new book now is he? hurm...
The reason this isn't getting much media hype is probably that most of the MSM have strong enough doubts as to the credibility of the evidence as to make it non viable to bring up.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
"The Bush administration continues to openly flaunt their complete contempt for the laws of this country."
Maybe, but since no laws were broken by this incident, I don't know why you're mentioning it here.
Oh YES I DO, You're one of those ignorant slashtrolls who thinks every time Bush does something you don't like, that it must be illegal.
Well it wasn't. It wasn't even unusual.
Shut up now.
The United States Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President and can be fired for no reason at any time by the President. Just ask Bill Clinton. He fired all 93 Attorney Generals in one fell swoop when he took office in '93. SO what is the big deal. Heck even I can be fired at any time for any reason by my boss. Maybe even for posting to slashdot.
You are being lied to and used. And you deserve it for refusing to open your eyes even a little.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
i don't think it counts if only their spam mails for enlarged pen15 pills count as what people wanted to hear about finding some emails
Someone understands, wow! All this grandstanding by the Congresscritters is just that. They have no say in the matter and what they think is not real important. Remember, Clinton fired 92 of them in 93. The only one not fired? Chertoff, current head of Homeland Security. If any Dem gets the Presidency in 08 plan on all 93 getting canned within a week of Jan. 20 2009. They are political appointees and that's the way it works.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
It is much better than this!p alast+2000&search=Searchp alast&search=Search
He investigated the contract Jeb Bush gave to a company to filter out from the voter rolls the people who had no right to vote. He got their listings printed, and found out that they had prevented tens of thousands of african-americans from voting for no legal reason! As everyone knows african-americans almost always (95%) vote for the democrats. That is how the 2000 election really was stolen, and all US corporate media boycotted what he found, which only aired on the BBC.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=greg+
For more great videos by Palast about the 2004 election and more:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=greg+
Also do a serch on emule for other exclusive materials.
some found lost emails: search Caging-1.xls already scooped here.. Karl Rove's caging guy, Tim Griffin, replaced of one of the fired U.S. Attorneys.. it's gonna be a painful 600 days for the Republicans.. the Dems are smart not to impeach, even though that's what the country (and world) really needs..
If Karl Rove emailed his mama and said he wanted to fire all you useless socialist democrats it still wouldn't matter. The President can and does- every freaking term- say "Fire them". And again, democrats provide no proof of wrong doing. Just saying the Karl Rove guy doesn't know where every email went does not make him guilty of killing 700 million people in your beloved communist shitholes across the world. Bush lied People died! You fucking cockroaches have no memory. Every country including ours said they were packing. I'm no fan of Republicans either, but you democrats are some serious pussified pieces of shit. When the revolution comes, and you cowering bitches are hiding in metro areas- You'll be the first to eat it.
I don't the BBC's reputation has ever been higher. Time and time again they've been proved right.
t ain-iglesias-obstruction-of-justice-and-the-theft- of-2008/
This Greg Palast article for example, the evidence is taken straight from the Judiciary record with Monica Goodling handwriting on it (she's pleaded the 5th).
http://www.gregpalast.com/an-army-of-rove-botscap
A lot of people in the lower ranks will face a lot of jail time over Rove & his shenanigans. Naturally nobody higher up will, it's how this works.
It brings out all the closet ignorant right wing assholes who should stay hidden and not let anyone else see what 20 year old morons they are.
I know I am a Master of the Obvious here, but the fact that the US attorneys being fired is only part of the situation. It is why they are being fired that is the key. Look at that and you see why the Bush Administration is problematic to say the least.
Deep in the ocean are treasures beyond compare; but if you seek safety, it is on the shore.
Yes this may indeed be a problem to some. But it is not a crime, and definitely not something our congress men and women should be wasting time on.
Is there any proof at all that Karl Rove authored these emails? We should all know how easy it is to forge email headers.
4. Bush stupidly left many Clinton holdovers in power, he should have fired them all also.
Cite an example please. IIRC Bush fired every one of Clintons back in 2001
I find the following a little too convenient:
I'd like at least a clue of how such a gigantic "oops" could have happened. Is there a similarity with their e-mail address and someone else's? Perhaps a disgruntled GOP member didn't so much misaddress the e-mails?That said, if you take this at face value, there's a plus and a minus here for Republicans. Plus: there are honest, ethical Republicans out there such as David Iglesias. Minus: They're not the ones currently running the show.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Your arguments sound suspiciously exactly like the standard White House comments, repeated ad nauseam on Fox News, "explaining" the firings. Of course, they and you neglect to address the crux of the issue - it's not normal to fire US attorneys in the middle of a president's term, there is evidence that the administration wanted to replace several of the U.S. Attorneys with people more "in line with" the administration's political agendas and as personal favors to some conservatives, while the White House denies these charges, saying the firings were for "job performance" reasons. It's now considered likely that the "missing" e-mails contain evidence that would show these claims by the White House to be bald-faced lies, so add cover-up to the already existing issue of the atypical dismissals.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
The article reads like a tongue-in-cheek joke with no facts. After reading that particular quote, with no text supporting it, I'm of the assumption that it was a joke. No national media is picking up on it just like no national media is picking up on the latest Doonesbury comic. Seriously, read the article. Does anyone else think that a mock play between Kevin Bacon and Tom Cruise can be considered a reputable source of news?
This article was written as a joke, and it appears that someone pulled out a choice quote and submitted it as news. What's next, The Onion?
Dekker Dreyer
Greg Palast and RFK Jr. in NYC- MayDay 2007:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=du9QWpCWbbY
Well, duh. (It had to be said because you know those emails can't be missing. If they really are gone, then someone must have gone to a good deal of trouble to remove them from all clients, servers, and backups. I doubt they're really gone though. It's easier to just lie.)
I mean seriously, if a Clinton had done even a 1/10th of what these assholes have done we'd see an army of redneck militiamen driving truckbombs into the white house. So they can pull all this shit and the little (r) after their name gives 'em a free pass? I don't think so.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
It's a civil rights issue. That is a crime under current law. The issue also involves the politicization of the Justice Department and is a civic issue as well. Any questions?
Deep in the ocean are treasures beyond compare; but if you seek safety, it is on the shore.
The reason cited for Iglesias being fired was "too many days away from office".
But apparently in TA those days off were spent serving active duty in the Navy, something workers are legally protected from being fired for. Supposedly.
I suppose GWB should have picked a better reason.
The BBC hasn't been known as of late for being....uhm....reliable
Phhht. I stopped listening to you right there, since you're either trolling or deluded. That's an extraordinary claim. Where's the proof?
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
They wound up Greg Palast's office - at least if I'm reading that correctly. It would actually be easier to believe if it did show up at David Iglesias's office, since at least he used to be considered a "good Republican" (until he proved himself to be more good than Republican).
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Well, that all media lie, just like the politicians, and that it's already a sign of democracy and freedom if they tell different lies, ok.
But why is there no "lie" from the other side? Why is there only one side reporting.
That's when you should start wondering. Usually, when something happens, I tend to read two local newspapers, one traditionally "left", one pretty much "right". Then draw my conclusions of the lies I just read and try to decypher the truth out of it.
But when only one side reports while the other side shrouds itself in complete silence, one has to wonder...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
from the article:
We went through the 500, and what we found were this massive plan to deny the right to vote -- I mean, extraordinarily targeting African American soldiers sent overseas. They'd send them a letter to their home address. The letter would come back. They say, "Gee, they don't live there. They shouldn't be allowed to vote."
This rings false to me -- the military supports the republicans in a MUCH higher percentage than the average citizen. I doubt very much that there was a master plan to stop soldiers from voting by the party who would benefit from them the most. Two words: Colin Powell. Also, I doubt very much that soldiers are incapable of answering snail mail or fulfilling their duties by taking care of business, and doing what they need to do to legally vote while stationed overseas.
Secondly, I have no problems with anyone challenging the residency of voter -- honestly, I'd like a little MORE confirmation of who is voting (but not how). We've heard the "voting from the grave" stories, and other crazy things -- and there is no doubt in my mind that both parties would do ANYTHING to win -- and I really mean anything. If one of the thing that reduces voter fraud is the checks and balance of one side making sure the other is honest -- fine. Did the republicans only challenge likely democrats? Well DUH! They're not going to challenge people who are likely to vote for them. Same thing for EITHER party. I don't see this as indications of fraud either.
Third -- I also disagree with the analysis of Mr. Iglesias. The fact that Tom Cruise played him in a movie is so incredibly irrelevant that I can't believe it was mentioned. He was the US Attorney!!! He should have set up a sting operation the MINUTE he suspected there was a conspiracy to commit voter fraud! Edmund Burke said all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Here was a man, whose job was to uphold the Constitution, and he sat on his ASS when presented with a major conspiracy against the public? Assuming his words are true, his inactions show him to unqualified to hold his office, and although IANAL I believe his inaction as a member of the bar when presented with impending crime is actually criminal himself. Lawyers are sworn to uphold the law (please don't snicker). A lawyer is an officer of the court. Perhaps a lawyer could comment on that? Here is a man who we were COUNTING on to uphold the rule of LAW. If what he was said was true he was essentially called up and told "we are planning evil against your constituents." Inexcusable
Finally -- I DO believe that these firings were improper. I know I've criticized the article, but thats because I believe CRITICAL REVIEW MAKES THINGS BETTER. I actually want to see justice here BUT NOT FOR PARTISAN REASONS!!! I just happen to love Justice. And what we need is for more people who love Justice to fight against the people on both sides of the aisle who don't.
I also believe that it's complete bullshit that the emails do not exist ANYWHERE. But enough chit-chat about it -- let's get some search warrants and go find them! Make the people who committed this sabotage of our government pay, because they are more of a threat to us than any terrorist. Government should WELCOME this kind of scrutiny, not try to prevent auditing! I know it doesn't, and I know I'm living a pipe dream. I just keep thinking that someday we'll start voting for people who will actually serve with honor.
Or maybe we have been?
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
That is at least plausible. I'm currently only half-way through the FA. It would be nice if they included that near the top, because I've been reading the article with an extremely large grain of salt as opposed to the more moderately sized grain of salt I'd use if I had been given a plausible mechanism up front for the accidental sending of 500 e-mails.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
The BBC is BRITISH, for godsake!!
These are the oppressors who taxed us unfairly and raped our women when we complained. Haven't you seen 'The Patriot'?
The Queen of England has always been plotting to invade America and put us back under their yoke. She has obviously ordered her propaganda ministers to malign our free political system until the Land of the Free collapses, and we all have to take afternoon tea and play cricket.
Why won't anyone listen to me!!!!
The Attorney General (Alberto Gonzalez) serves as an appointee of the President. You've got that much right. However, the Attorneys General that were replaced are appointed by the US Attorney General whose office is charged with serving the interests of the Judicial branch of the US government, not the Executive branch. While the US AG may serve at the pleasure of the President, he is not expected be beholden to the partisan interests of the President. The US AG is supposed to facilitate the enforcement of that the Legislative branch's checks (i.e. laws), not to place attorneys who kowtow to the will of one party or the other.
I am an American.
blog
I just need to voice my thoughts out loud. Feel free to correct me on anything.
.gov addresses (but instead were illegally sent from and to websites set up by Donatelli Group, the same organization that set up both the 2004 Bush re-election site, the Republican national Committee site, AND the Swift Boat 'independent' sites) certainly constitutes that. But this isn't my point. Although having emails like this one (that have the Trifecta of Jack Abramoff, using government facilities illegally for partisan reasons, and asking people to direct official emails illegally to a non-governmental email address for government business because "there could be lawsuits etc.") are certainly fun bedtime reading. If only because it makes you wonder what lawsuits Bush-Cheney were avoiding by leaving the email servers clean of incriminating evidence.
.000 in all major issues that have come to a head (sorry for that analogy ... for those non North American Scum, let's use a cricket analogy and say the reporter has hit six sixes in an inning against opponents that were all out for a duck when they were at bat). And the emails didn't just arrive in dribs and drabs, but landed like manna from heaven, all late one night as offices in Washington were dark, just as the story was starting to cool because of the lack of emails.
Title 18 (18 USC), Chapter 73 has a lot to say about what penalties someone will face for deleting anything that may be evidence in any Governmental department investigation (section 1519 makes for particularly good reading), and the 'deleting' of emails that were meant to be sent from
And the talking points now seems to be fogging the issue isn't my point either. Even though it's true that Gonzales could have said "I let 'em go because I can, end of story", and that would have been OK. But he didn't... under oath, he said all eight were fired for poor performance, and records later showed the fired people had (for the vast majority of them) excellent performance reviews. Not just 'meets expectations', but 'exceeds expectations'. It was just that one of them had managed to get people like Duke Cunningham convicted and palms were sweating, for example.
No, the fascinating thing for me is the scale, the person, and the timing of it all. Not just one email, but five-hundred. Not sent to an email address that bounced the emails back to sender as undelivered, but sent to a person that has so far batted 1.000 on his investigations of an Admin that has batted
Sounds to me like we have a Deep Throat type of leak at the White House. In years to come, the books written by people on the inside will talk of the air of paranoia in the Halls of Power as the top-feeders demanded to know who was where at the time the emails were sent.
That's the big story right now. I bet the air of paranoia setting in the Halls of Power right now has been cranked up to 11. That's the angle I want covered. In years to come, when someone writes the book on what happened, I want to know how much shouting there was (I'm guessing "a lot").
The article made repeated references to the movie because it was based on a true story about one of the fired US attorneys, Iglesias.
The Cruise/Bacon dialogue was there because it's a TV transcript. Obviously the BBC thought the viewer would be more "captivated" if they included shots of Tom Cruise playing one of the US attorneys who was fired.
So the movie dialogue is there because of sensational TV editing.
If you read the article right through you'd find the official stats on 2004 election showed 3 million "challenged" (and over one million invalidated) votes. Not sure if that's the typical number under other governments, but it sure does sound like a huge number - using the government's own numbers.
It is still legal...even if it is not normal. What happens if it is discovered that the allegations that these guys were fired with people who were more "in line with" the President's political agenda are true? He's allowed to do that. It may be that we would prefer he didn't. It may be that he fired them because they were investigating someone he didn't want them to. The bottom line is that he is allowed to. If someone thinks that they were fired because they were investigating someone the President didn't want investigated, instead of investigating the firing, they should be investigating the person that was the target of the US Attorney that the Attorney was fired to protect. If you can show that the US Attorney was fired to protect someone who had ACTUALLY committed a crime (not just been accused) that would be a story. The current story isn't.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I believe Benjamin Franklin said it best when he wrote, Those who would sacrifice their freedom for temporary security are on to a damn good thing and should never be questioned. Things are improving somewhat since the clusterf*** that is Iraq got so bad as to be undeniable. Compared to around 2002 when just about anything could be passed in the name of security and even the opposition party was scared to speak out lest they be accused of helping the terrorists win, things have got a lot better.
Even so, a lot of people are living with the guilty knowledge that they jumped on the "Do you want the terrorists to win?" bandwagon back then. Admitting you screwed up is seriously painful. Whilst they won't actively support what's happening anymore, they sure as hell don't want to have to look too closely at what the people they did support have done.
The media is a business. They sell advertising and, to get people to watch it, they show whatever will get the viewers. Often that's sensationalist drivel (Anna Nicole Smith). In this case, making people feel guilty about the people they voted for, even if they do regret it now, is a sure way to get them to turn off - a sure way to lose the advertisers.
The reality is there are countless corrupt things this administration has done: Karl Rove undeniably leaked Valerie Plame's identity and his aide has been found guilty of obstructing the investigation. The CIA was pretty much told to falsify intelligence to justify the war. Al Queda didn't exist in Iraq and there weren't chemical weapons there - now we've "liberated them", Al Queda is in Iraq and they even have chemical weapons now. Torture was openly condoned, albeit with hazy wording, right up until someone had to take the blame and then it was a few rogue troops. Torture is still routinely outsourced via "extraordinary rendition". Illegal wiretaps were performed on the bulk of the U.S. population. The list goes on...
So, you have audiences that don't want to be reminded of how badly they screwed up by supporting these people. If broadcasters are going to report something that makes their viewers uncomfortable, it had damn well better be something sensational. In the scheme of things, that emails exist to prove something relatively trivial (serious in its own right, trivial compared to the above), that the Whitehouse will weasel out of yet again anyway (Rove is blatantly guilty of the Plame leak and yet is still there), is it any wonder the news networks rank it pretty low?
Don't get me wrong: For what America is supposed to represent, it's essential these things come to light. The sad truth is, however, the media's a business selling what people want to buy and people who already feel guilty don't want to buy yet another, not very sexy story, in a long list of reasons why they made a terrible choice.
It is the reason why I try to read other countries papers. I have found numerous stories about us on english.Aljazeera.net, as much as 1 month before they make our press.
I have talked to a reporter about this (clear channel), and he explained that since 9/11, many radio owners have set up private censors over what is going on the air( I would assume that it is true for the written press as well). In particular, any report that is critical of this admin must be proven to be true. Apparently, the white house has made it clear that if any body breaks a story that they do not like, then they will not be allowed in on future press releases.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
U.S. Attorneys are usually all replaced at the beginning of an administration. They are not supposed to be replaced in the middle of a term in order to obstruct justice.
While they are political appointees they do not occupy political positions. Supreme Court judges are political appointees too. They can't simply be yanked off the court by the president if he or one of his friends loses a court decision.
To get on the Supreme Court, a nominee has to be approved by Congress. Ordinarily that applies to U.S. Attorney nominees as well. (Even though they serve "at the pleasure of the president".) Specter's little Patriot Act amendment put an end to that. So now the president can simply fire a prosecutor if he or one of his friends get prosecuted, replace him with whomever he likes, and nobody can say a thing.
Now we have people in the president's own party demanding that his prosecutors bring bogus charges against their political opponents, rushed in time for elections. (Historically prosecutors have usually waited until after elections to avoid tainting them.) We have people in the president's own party having the prosecutors investigating them fired. We have prosecutors being replaced by guys who compile lists of registered voters in minority districts for mass voter challenges. We have prosecutors being replaced for investigating real crimes instead of wasting their time harassing voters with imaginary "voter fraud" cases. We have a Department of Justice that launches more than six corruption investigations of local Democratic politicians for every single investigation of a Republican. If you think this is a "non-story" you're out of your mind.
... nobody is willing to give any of them a blowjob.
> It is not playing in the US media because no law was broken when those attorneys were fired.
h tml?ex=1331956800&en=dfab854c91a51b4b&ei=5088&part ner=rssnyt&emc=rsst -greg-palast-reports-on-the-firing-of-new-mexico-a ttorney-david-iglesias/l l-of-pete-domenici_b_43006.html0 03699882_webmckayforum09m.html?syndication=rss/
1. pete domenici (r-nm) tried to force attorney generals to indict democrats for voter-fraud
2. alberto gonzales (ag) almost certainly lied under oath
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/19/opinion/19mon4.
http://www.gregpalast.com/investigative-journalis
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002677.php
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-kleiman/the-fa
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2
The underlying issue that were are hoping cracks some senior official heads (Gonzo and Rove would be a nice start) is voter fraud. The 8 who got fired, yeah, it's a bummer, but as you mentioned, not illegal. But, the ones who DIDN'T get fired, that is the problem. I live in Wisconsin, where one of the selected for replacement attorneys wound up keeping his job. He had a lowly admin official locked up for 4 months on trumped up corruption charges. And you can bet we got hammered by the "Doyle's aids are in prison due to corruption" adds in the build up the the election. Doyle still won the election, but it was much closer than it would have been otherwise. Fast forward to the actual court case for the accused, it lasted like 5 minutes, the Judge cleared her of any wrong doing, apologized to her, and admonished the attorney.
That case and many more like it, are the real issues. The things that will send people to jail. The hearings over the 8 that were fired have two goals: 1) a Perjury trap for Gonzo (who has done a remarkable job of avoiding them at the cost of all of his credibility) and 2) grounds to pull up more internal documentation (the missing emails). The theory being that the hearings over the purge is the crack in the Cadberry egg that will let us get to the gooey caramel middle.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
If the attorneys were fired as a way to interfere in ongoing corruption investigations -- as has been alleged though admittedly not proven -- then I'm pretty sure it is illegal. Even if it isn't illegal, it's "improper enough" that it does justify the time and effort expended by Congress. People have a right and a need to know if the justice system is being politicized to that extent.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Except he fired a life long republican because they didn't jump when Republican senator Senator Pete Domenici, asked him to file charges against a democrats for a non existent voter crimes.
t ain-iglesias-obstruction-of-justice-and-the-theft- of-2008/
http://www.gregpalast.com/an-army-of-rove-botscap
He did his job and resisted the political pressure.
The official reason given was 'absent from job' because he was 40 days away from his post. He's been called up to active duty, since he is a Navy reserve, and it's a crime to fire an reserve just because they've been called up to active duty.
So it's stinky. Very stinky, in Soviet Russia they arrest opposition politicians too for no good reason.
You can not fire a prosecutor to end an investigation. This is obstruction of justice and it could be what happened in California. Even pomoting a prosecutor http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/ a/2006/01/27/MNGCNGU1J01.DTL can look suspicious.
c utors.html.
You'll notice that some Republicans are taking this issue seriously:
''It is hard to see how the Department of Justice can function and perform its important duties with Mr. Gonzales remaining where he is,'' said Specter, R-Pa. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Fired-Prose
Republicans may be empty headed stooges, but they know your talking points are incorrect.
Again, you're ignoring the actual issue - the fact that it wasn't normal to fire these guys triggered the initial interest and scrutiny, and the executive branch chose a cover-up method rather than just coming out and saying, "Hey, here's why we fired these guys - we were doing favors for political allies that helped us win the last election, and we fired guys taht didn't do enough for us in the last election." They didn't do that - they said "Poor job performance", a claim which was immediately debunked, and which the White House has since backed off from. Add the deleted e-mails and constant "I don't recall, Senator" mantra, and you see why the American public wants to know what the hell is going on that's so bad that the White House felt like a cover-up was necessary in the first place. It has little to do with the initial firings, but that's what defenders of George Bush keep falling back on - "The firings were legal!" Fine, then why not be honest about the reasons? That's all we're asking. And quite frankly, what supporters of Bush should be asking as well.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
The only accusations I read, were "firings for political reasons". D'oh!.. A political appointee fired for a political reason... Can you show a link detailing the accusation you bring up?
I'm not, actually... Doesn't look good — and that's the motivation for the political theater the Democrats are happy to engage in — but unlikely to be illegal. The explanation is simple: there are many crimes, unfortunately, and not all of them can be prosecuted. It is the Executive's prerogative to set the priorities and to decide, if there is a crime more important than corruption.
We may disagree, but neither of us are the President...
Not sure about the right. The need is indisputable, but the only right is to elect someone else come next elections...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Except that the American public doesn't "want to know". The majority of Americans aren't paying attention, that is why stories like the base of this aren't in the American media, because not enough people are paying attention.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
That would result in Democrats being in charge of both chambers of Congress and the Presidency and, eventually, the Supreme Court. There are two reasons the Republicans have managed to rise to such heights of corruption: (1) Previous corruptions ("If I have seen further, it's because I have stood on the shoulders of [demons]") and (2) Complete control of all branches of government. We can't eliminate #1 (but we can somewhat mitigate it by not tolerating "b-b-but Bush" comments in the future), but we can and should avoid #2.
Granted, the Bush administration has brought a special form of evil to our government, but I do not believe that this is necessarily indicative of Republicans. There are good Republicans - e.g., David Iglesias!
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
For one: You might as well have linked to any DailyKOS page saying the Jews did WTC. Seriously. Democracy Now thinks so also.
Secondly: I expect much better from my "geek news site". This article is flat out crap. Are the editors paying attention or did they just let their personal biases get the better of them to the detriment of the website?
Firing them because they had a different idealology is fine, their job is to work for the president. As an extenuation the firing because they "wern't propper Bushies" could be fine depending on what it means. But firing them for investigating people is interfering with those investigations. We need to know if that was happening, and people should pay (forced resignation and public humiliation is a form of payment).
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Oh? For the enlightenment of all present would you care to state exactly what law was broken. No one else has been able to yet. For one very important reason. None have.
The illegality (if there was any) was in the claim that US Attorneys were asked to break the law, and then fired for not doing so. If there is a WHIFF of illegality, especially in the election process, government should welcome the scrutiny. I'd rather hear Rove and others say "I cannot find the emails, but I will do all in my power to help others recover them."
If there was, as Mr. Iglesias claims, an attempt to coerce him into breaking the law, and it's now coming to light because of his firing, it's worthy of investigation. I do wish he had stood up and counted when it was more relevant and easier to prove, and the fact that he didn't makes me REALLY doubt his story. And in the absence of proof, I believe Gonzales should be completely exonerated. But rather than stonewalling, welcome the investigation. If a (former) US Attorney says that he was approached to be part of a conspiracy to commit a crime, that should be enough to get a search warrant (because conspiracy to commit a felony is also a felony). I take it all with a grain of salt -- this is a disgruntled ex-employee who was fired -- to me the allegation is still serious enough to warrant (pun intended) further investigation
Off topic, the flower thongs you sell cracked me up! I hope they're moving well.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
The political pressure placed on US attorneys before they were fired for resisting the pressure.
Blar.
No one may challenge my vote because I chucked a letter with the return address of a political party in the trash. This is not a sufficient basis for a challenge. A viable challenge has to show actual ineligibility rather than this kind of sham. The standards for a challenge have been set much to low. That the person made the effort to vote is strong evidence for their good faith.
Many articles have indeed addressed this issue. What you believe is irrelevant. Until the PATRIOT ACT, their appointment needed to be approved by Congress.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
When I graduated as an engineer, I took an oath. I swore to protect people and not let the devices I design and build be used for evil. I have so far kept to my word.
I can't imagine how journalists, whose code of conduct obliges them to inform the people and to seek out the truth no matter how dark it is, feel when they are coerced into hiding their findings or not investigating some subjects.
Theirs is a job of the utmost importance to the defense of democracy and freedom and we rely on them to do their jobs.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
'two blokes jailed for leaking a memo where Bush tells Blair that he wants to bomb the Al-Jazeera'
This is ironic considering that Blair is not above leaking when trying to distract from some unpleasantness, sometimes even against his against his own people. Or when some bad news has to be got out it's best to do it over the weekend or in the middle of a terrorist alert. His current elder statesman act is equally ironic considering that it was Mo Molan who delivered the Northern Ireland peace and was then forced out of office by creative leaks organized out of No. 10 questioning her mental facilities.
'The leaks occurred a day after the arrest of Lord Levy and a day before No 10 admitted that Tony Blair had been interviewed by police for a second time in the cash for honours affair' Re:Hmmm
davecb5620@gmail.com
The private corporations that run the mass media in the US have become conglomerates that are attached to major defense contractors (and prison and security services) at the hip. There is no more independent fourth estate.
What we have now is a Corporatist system that (surprise) did everything they could to get their favorite corporate candidate (Bush was a CEO, no less) and the rest of his corporate pals into office.
What Al Gore offered (Corporatist-lite) was treated with contempt. The media heaped on ridiculous amounts of scorn and hyperventilating over details like not remembering the correct person who accompanied him on a visit to a Texas disaster site, and then kept repeating the label of "liar" for it.
Incidentally... expect Gonzales to get more favorable treatment in the media now that he is introducing bills with draconian punishments against "Intellectual Property" infractions.
Can you show a link detailing the accusation you bring up?
The one attached to the article makes numerous such claims.
"GREG PALAST: Captain Iglesias, the US prosecutor, knew something was very wrong when, just a week before the 2006 midterm elections, he received a strange and threatening call to his home. It was his state's senior senator, the powerful Republican leader Pete Domenici on the line, pushing Iglesias to file criminal charges against a Democrat before the election.
DAVID IGLESIAS: I'm sitting in my bedroom, and here's the killer point, Greg. He says, "Are these going to get filed before November?" And I said I didn't think so. And the line goes dead. In other words, our senior senator hung up on me. A terribly inappropriate call.
GREG PALAST: Inappropriate, certainly. Obstruction of justice, possibly.
DAVID IGLESIAS: He basically wanted to know: are you going to file these cases that can help Heather out? That was the subtext. I felt terrible after that phone call. "
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
That was beautiful. It brought a tear to my eye.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
This would be a non-issue only if the attorneys in question were fired for incompetence. If they were fired for not being "loyal bushies", it is in clear violation of the Hatch Act, and you and every other American should be demanding explanations and repercussions. If you let this president get away with it, the next one will also get away with it, and pretty soon will have a full-out fascism on our hands.
There are limits to partisan actions for a reason. It is not beneficial to the public when the "drones" become aligned to a single party. If federal employees were allowed to be hired based on political beliefs, you'd have to fire the entire government staff for every flippin' election!
Not after Iraq. Not after warrantless wiretapping. Not after Gitmo. Not after Katrina. Not after the DOJ torture memo. Not after the billions of dollars spent in Iraq reconstruction that have never been properly accounted for (millions in cash), and the no bid contracts for a company the VP hold stock options in. Not after the Valeri Plame leaks. Not after scientific findings have to be submitted for alteration by an administration zampolit.
I'm sick of this "there's no difference between the Democrats and Republicans" business. Maybe there should be more difference, but there is one undeniable difference: the Republicans have brought us the most incompetent and corrupt administration in American history, aided by a congress almost to match it. The only modern parallel for incompetence, criminality, cronyism and rashness would be the Palestinian authority under Arafat, and I'm not sure that counts because it wasn't officially a nation.
I'm not saying the Democrats are angels, or that they have the best policies for America. But they've never delivered a government that was so poorly, criminally, or tyrannically run as that of the modern "Republicans". I put "Republicans" in quotes because I don't think they deserve the name of the party of Goldwater.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The real issue isn't that they were fired, its why they were fired...
These people were basically fired for not turning the American justice system into another election and retribution tool.
Having our highest tier legal professionals engaged in political revenge is troubling since they fired those that chose to do their job instead of be obedient party hacks. Also, sending US Attorney's on witch hunts simply with the intent of affecting national elections is probably illegal.
Shouldn't the justice system be there to investigate and prosecute all crime, regardless of political affiliation or origin? Or is this country so far divided now its ok to abuse authority and use the government to seek personal political agendas? I mean, I understand this kind of stuff has always gone on behind closed doors...but in plain view? It's so mafioso...'You do what mister B wants or you'll end up like Johnny, capiche.'
"the headlines should have read, "Political appointees replaced by the party that appointed them." In other words, a non-event."
but this is why it is so troubling...it is unprecedented for a president to take his own appointees and replace them. And remember, those that were replaced were replaced by unconfirmed individuals because of a small provision that was inserted into the Patriot act which allowed the president to circumvent the Senate confirmation process. So, people that were appointed by the President, and confirmed by the Senate (ie BOTH PARTIES), were fired and replaced by unconfirmed lackeys whose sole mission would be to smear the side who had just lost their voice.
Yeah, no problem here eh?
US Attorney firings is a non-story
And you wonder why the American government is such a mess?
The AG is serving the Administration's political ends first, the laws of the U.S. second. The law was supposed to guide this country, not the Executive Branch. The consequences of allowing this behavior are permanently altering the fundamental idea of balance of powers in this country.
That is hard to compress into media that sells, especially when citizens don't understand HOW their government is supposed to work! That includes you...
You and the numb skulls who modded you insightful would do well to review the term "Separation of Powers" and our Constitution.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I asked for allegations of corruption investigations being suppressed by the Administration.
Instead, you are posting evidence of a corruption investigation being hastened (properly or improperly) by a lawmaker.
Two wrongs out of two... Care to try again?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
here here!
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
> If you read the article right through you'd find the official stats on 2004 election showed 3 million "challenged" (and over one million invalidated) votes. Not sure if that's the typical number under other governments, but it sure does sound like a huge number - using the government's own numbers. ... and that still has very little to do with the headline or the summary. What company received the emails?
Dekker Dreyer
I'll send you a coupon the next time I get one...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Legally, he appointed them (all the ones he fired he'd previously appointed), and so can fire them. But there are a couple of other problems here. First, the inconsistent and implausible stories they've been giving as to why they fired them show that they've obviously been trying to cover something up here. Congress has the legal right to an explanation about why people who they previously approved in their jobs were fired, and lying to Congress is a crime. (I seem to remember Republicans and the "liberal media" being really focused on this point back in the late 1990s...) Second, and more importantly, there's now a fair amount of evidence that many of the prosecutors were fired because they wouldn't bring politically motivated indictments (ie, trumped up "voter fraud" cases against Democrats before an election), or did prosecute Republicans (ie, Duke Cunningham). Even worse, there's some evidence that other prosecutors did bring marginal vote fraud cases against Democrats for political reasons - one in Milwaukee was just thrown out by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, which basically (and highly unusually) said there was no basis whatsoever for the prosecution. This is a perversion of justice that you expect in third world dictatorships, but is pretty much unprecedented in US history. Even Nixon's crimes were not this bad. It's basically a subversion of democracy and of the US Constitution, which Shrub and his gang of thugs swore to uphold. But then, it appears that 30% of the population believes that a blow job is a bigger threat to the republic than trying to put people in jail for supporting the Democrats.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I asked for allegations of corruption investigations being suppressed by the Administration.
Where? I looked at your past postings on the subject, and don't see anything that matches that claim. I do see what I was responding to:
gilroy: If the attorneys were fired as a way to interfere in ongoing corruption investigations
mi: The only accusations I read, were "firings for political reasons". D'oh!.. A political appointee fired for a political reason...
mi: Can you show a link detailing the accusation you bring up?
A senator pushing for charges to be brought is interfering in investigations. The article goes on further to claim Rove's involvement in the firings, which ties things to the Administration.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Yes, right now Obama looks like the white knight that will save America. But it's early in the presidential politics:
1. In order to get the BIG presidential campaign donations, he's got to give up all of these white knight traits.
2. The history of presidential politics is littered with well-intentioned white knights. Possibly the most ethical president in a long time, Jimmy Carter couldn't make it into a second term.
You would do well to stop anthropomorphizing Obama and begin to comprehend the extent to which the fundamental nature of the balance of powers in this country have been altered in the last 6 years.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
"A working man voting Republican is like a chicken voting for Col. Sanders."
I'm not 100% sure, but I'm reasonably certain that in none of those cases was the Supreme Court primarily composed of Democratic appointments. 7 out of 9 of the Supreme Court Justices (even before Bush took office) were appointed by Republicans. Granted, several of these Republican appointments have disappointed other Republicans. Many of them had to be reasonably moderate because Congress was controlled by Democrats at the time of their appointment.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Greg Palast, an American working for BBC news, is of the miniscule number of investigative journalists working to open up the can of worms the last six years. He's literally a man in exile because he can't get play here in the US. He's blow open so many crimes that it's tiring to list them. I am quite sure his work finding the emails will be complete ignored.
case of voter fraud.
FreeSpeech.org
There are legitimate reasons for keeping some emails on a separate server and getting rid of them. You don't want a clever stratagy that you might use again to be provided to the opponents for example. This is akin to trade secrets. There are also illegitimate reasons, such as attempting to cover up criminal activity. This would be criminal conspiracy. What this story seems to show is that civil rights violations may have taken place, and that prosecutors may have been let go for illegal reasons because there is a train of motive. At this point, reconstructing as much of the email as possible should be a priority. Even finding out that hard drives of recipients of the known emails were wiped within a certain time frame would be valuable information.
From the NYT,
"In 5-Year Effort, Scant Evidence of Voter Fraud"
By ERIC LIPTON and IAN URBINA
Published: April 12, 2007
excerpt:
"Federal prosecutors in Kansas and Missouri successfully prosecuted four people
for multiple voting. Several claimed residency in each state and voted twice.
United States attorney's offices in four other states did turn up instances of
fraudulent voting in mostly rural areas. They were in the hard-to-extinguish
tradition of vote buying, where local politicians offered $5 to $100 for
individuals' support.
Aside from those cases, nearly all the remaining 26 convictions from 2002 to and
2005 -- the Justice Department will not release details about 2006 cases except
to say they had 30 more convictions-- were won against individuals acting
independently, voter records and court documents show."
In other words, Democrats did not have an organized campaign to skew the elections like certain other parties....
Your thinking on the matter concerns me:
n zales/ I don't know anything about the site, but it's a nice summary and should have been the story the media told following the hearing that day. It gets to why this matters in a hurry, because it's not about hiring/firing.
The reason this _should_ be an issue is the principal of separation of powers has been sodomized by the current administration.
During the Clinton administration, there were just four people in the White House -- the President, the Vice President, the White House Counsel, and the Deputy White House Counsel -- who could participate in discussions with the Justice Department "regarding pending criminal investigations and criminal cases." There were just three Justice Department officials authorized to talk with the White House. This arrangement was intended restrict political interference in the administration of justice.
Yesterday in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said that it was important that the Justice Department "be independent from" the White House. But as Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) pointed out, the firewalls that had existed during the Clinton administration have been ripped down. In the Bush administration, the rules have been rewritten so that 417 White House officials and 30 Justice Department officials are eligible to have discussions about criminal cases.
I copied this whole-cloth from http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/20/whitehouse-go
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think it more likely that someone thought ahead and had the emails purposely copied and redirected so that a future "deletion" of the emails could be recovered in order to hit a corrupt Republican administration where it hurts. Kudos!!!
And I agree with your original sentiment. I just like pointing out that 7/9ths of the "activist" Supreme Court were appointed by Republican Presidents. Historically, the Supreme Court has been very much above politics. I think this will mostly continue, although it has been corrupted a little bit recently.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
The issue, as far as I can gather, is that an attorney charged with protecting the electoral system against fraud, was actually working for an office which itself is challenging and invalidating millions of otherwise legal votes.
The E-mails gave specificity as to how this was done. I'm under the impression the sheer scale of vote invalidation should be setting off alarm bells, but maybe it's a normal number. Regardless, IIRC they have 70,000 names on the "caged" list. I suppose it could be an elaborate hoax to frame the Republicans - which seems to be what you are suggesting could be a possibility?
The company that received the E-mails erroneously is some anti-republican group, clearly - georgewbush.org is dripping with sarcasm.
There appear to be a lot of very high-profile people visibly upset at these E-mails. I haven't heard any suggestions that imply they could be fakes.
Either way - the sheer number of votes challenged, along with the rest of the circumstantial stuff (like, the president of the USA's entire E-mail system losing every E-mail the subpoena was interested in) makes me think the ball is more in the Republican's court to explain and defend their actions.
NB: I'm not from the USA. And I don't like the sounds of the democrats either, not that I'm an expert at having an opinion on US politics. Just sharing my view so far from what I can see.
Oh, so trying to speed something up means "interfering", I see. Nice word-play — I'll be claiming, my boss "interferes" with my work all the time from now on... No, dear, when one says "interfering" in this context, the implication is loud and clear — it means "impeding".
Having a corrupt official re-elected is bad. You seem to imply, a DA can not be bothered to speed-up an investigation — but I can't see anything wrong with it. And no one else would — unless they are already convinced, that any and all pressure on him was undue...
The most "improper" thing in Iglesias' opinion in the quoted excerpt is, apparently, the fact, the lawmaker hung up on him... "Possible obstruction of justice" comes from Pagast's own sensationalism — but even he inserts the "possible" in there...
Hot theatrics with no substance.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
That'll probably change once it has a go on Countdown, since, quite in spite of the desires of Billo et al, a plethora of folks watch that show.
My question is this ? Why did the Duke Lacross case get MONTHS of airtime , and yet the Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom doube rape and murder hasnt been mentions on national TV. This poor Girl was forced to watch 5 Gangbangers rape her boyfriend, cut off his sexual orgins, then they raped him in bedding, set him on fire, shot him to death and dumped his body in a ditch. She wasnt as lucky as he was. She was gang raped for several days, and after forced oral sex she was forced to drink cleaning fluid to destoy the evidence. When they were done raping her, they cut both of her breasts off while she was still alive then took turns pissing on her. when the police finally found her she was in the kitchen in 5 seperate garbage bags. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channon_Christian_and _Christopher_Newsom_murder
This happened in Knoxville TN in Jan but there has been NOTHING about it on CNN CBS ect NADA
Ive even writen Nancy Grace several emails about this and NADA
The US Media Doesnt give a damn about anything BUT RATINGS and KISSING BIG GOVT ASS
Then read about how Carol Lam's investigations that grew out
from that case to high ranking CIA officials and other Republican
politicians was interrupted by her firing.
I won't see the fire yet, but the smoke is awefully thick here.
PS. "but the only right is to elect someone else come next elections"
is very misguided. We can always sue or impeach elected officials
when there are good reasons.
I will not comment on the politics of the story, but to all of those people out there who quite rightly state that it's a simple matter to fake SMTP headers and build an authentic-looking email trail that never took place and therefore call into doubt the authenticity of the captured correspondence, I say look to your spam filters.
Creating a Markov chain (or a set of di- and trigram frequencies, or a naive Bayesian comparison function, or a latent semantic indexing matrix, or a list of commonly used words and phrases - hell, even gzip works (http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/cond-mat/0108530) for simple analyses) from a known corpus of messages (say, for example, those messages written by the people in question and saved on official email servers) and comparing the computed probabilities against the text in question is a doddle - a few lines of code and a few seconds of CPU time - and can provide hard numbers about the probability of the messages in question being fake or not.
By the way, anonymously posting text of any significant length is a useless exercise if there is any known corpus of your work to check against - say, a list of Slashdot comments, or a weblog. Welcome to thirty years ago.
The real question here is, let's say the messages check out as having very similar probabilities - what then is the likelihood that they were created by someone using a technique of writing out messages and then running them through a language model to massage them into text statistically similar to that of the person being impersonated (cf. our own beloved CmdrTaco's entry in this space: http://cmdrtaco.net/poemgen.cgi)?
Interesting times.
Oh, so trying to speed something up means "interfering", I see.
No, trying to speed things up to try and influence the results of an election is interfering.
Oh, so trying to speed something up means "interfering", I see.
If your boss wants you to check in your barely functional code so he can get a bigger performance bonus, then yes, he's interfering.
Having a corrupt official re-elected is bad.
While not stated definitively, my reading of the article is that the charges were not against a candidate in the election.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I can't find anything regarding this issue on the BBC website. Could somebody flash a link to the story?
Thanks
This is slashdot, so we should be addressing the technical question first and foremost.
I'm a biologist who does mathematical methods stuff - so this is not my area. But what we (you) *should* be discussing is: how can we prove that the e-mails are (or are not) genuine?
Presumably, whitehouse.org has saved all of the routing information for the e-mails they kept. Can we use that information - along with whatever still lives in the logs of the intermediary routers, to at least verify that the e-mail was sent from the addresses claimed in the headers? That doesn't absolutely prove that whitehouse.org didn't mess with the content - but it'd be enough to satisfy me, at least.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
There's a mix of problems - and part of the problem is Congress passing unconstitutional laws. That seems more common recently than the Supreme Court making bad calls.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
"Nice troll. Too bad it's not correct."
We're talking about your post right?
"Bush, however, not only did not do that, he waited until two years into his second term to fire eight attorneys which he had previously appointed!"
Which is perfectly legal. I love the stupid exclamation point though, nice touch. I guess when the facts are against you, stuff like that is SOP.
"Further, as is now becoming clear, the firings were not for performance reasons, but political reasons."
Which is perfectly legal. How about you get to the part where GP was "not correct"?
"In another case, Iglesias, he was specificaly told his firing was not for performance reasons but political yet the White House and Gonzales kept saying, and still say to this day, that the firing was for performance issues."
First, this is wrong. Second, what if it's BOTH? Holy crap, you completely ignored that possibility. Regardless, this too, while somewhat sleazy, is ALSO PERFECTLY LEGAL.
"As Iglesias said on Fox Noise, and as the transcript above shows, he asked for and was given permission to use the DOJ as a reference. If he was fired for performance reasons, why bother to give him a recommendation?"
A REFERENCE is NOT a RECOMMENDATION. More importantly, it is illegal to give details of a previous employees performance, positive, negative, or neutral. You may only verify previous employment, with some very specific exceptions. So not only are you profoundly ignorant, you're basing your point on that ignorance. Why do I suspect that's not an aberration for you?
"So what we have is an Attorney General who has been lying under oath about an incident..."
No, we don't. What we have here is a group of individuals who think someone may have lied under oath, about doing something perfectly legal (which makes all kinds of sense, as he's only a highly visible attorney and would do something that stupid...). You have no way of knowing who he spoke to, how he discussed the case, or what he said. You're basing your assumptions on nothing but partisan speculation and rhetoric, in addition to your previously proven ignorance.
There's nothing worse than people like you, who find it necessary to crow the loudest, while flatly refusing to admit they're ignorant of the facts, or completely disregarding them. Here's a fact for you, NOT ONE OF THE THINGS IN YOUR POST THAT WE CAN DEFINITELY ATTRIBUTE TO GONZALEZ IS ILLEGAL.
So ask yourself why you're polluting the discourse with your ignorance, and why you continue to allow yourself to remain ignorant in the face of FACTS, as opposed to partisan speculation.
It may or not constitute interfering with the elections (not auotmatically a bad thing), but hastening an investigation is not automatically a bad thing either. Impeding is.
No, he is just trying to speed me up. By your original word-play, he is "interfering"...
And, after all, he is my boss — if the code is commit-ready in his opinion, I should be committing it (possibly having expressed my reservations in the commit message and/or elsewhere).
Interesting, that you do not know this definitively. But that's not too relevant. If the charges could affect the voters' opinion of the candidate, it would be most prudent to try to make them known before the elections.
As someone else said in this thread, the voters have "the right and the need to know", don't we?.. We do have the need, and any efforts to address it are welcome.
So, to recap, Attorney General is being pressured to resign by lawmakers about doing his job... The most important reason? Pressure by a lawmaker on a District Attorney about doing his job...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
"Apples and oranges."
You're only saying that because you don't like the party in power. Fundamentally, there is no difference. No one can competently argue the firings were illegal.
If you want to argue about "lying under oath" you can, but I can see a very easy out, claiming that the "poor performance" was the fired attorney's failure to prosecute politically important cases. Performance has many metrics, with that one being as viable as any other.
In other words, this is a nothing story, seemingly motivated by political opportunism. It saddens me that you've allowed yourself to be duped so easily.
It IS his right to fire them at will. Under normal circumstances, all US Attorneys are fired when a new administration comes in. The unusual thing about these particular firings is that the US Attorneys in question were fired for not conducting politically motivated prosecutions. That's why there's a scandal.
No, this is not flamebait. The Bush Administration has committed treason against this country. We've executed people for less. If nothing else, they should be removed from office in disgrace.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Interesting, that you do not know this definitively.
But you claimed it definitively. read up before you start making any more bogus claims, I don't have the time to correct your inaccuracies.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I'd be with you that there is some kind of difference, but is it a big difference? Democrats voted for the war, the patriot act, more war, more patriot act and so on. It was a democrat who could have ordered a full evacuation, then provided transportation to those who didn't have any when Katrina was coming. I'm not saying, and I don't think anyone has, that there is no difference, it is just that the two parties head down the wrong road together so often, that the difference is not very important.
There are core ideas from both parties that are very important for the country, but both parties largely ignore their founding principles in the interest of expediency. Campaign funding has a huge role in this because it preselects candidates ready to ignore principle so that the real strengths of the parties are drained away before we even vote. If you send sheep to Congress, you just get a flock. Doesn't make any difference what color wool they have.
you don't decide "Republicans do A, Democrats do B, if we crack down on A we should crack down on B to be fair" that's wrong - you crack down on A and B because they are illegal no matter who did them, you don't enforce the law to push a particular political agenda, especially this one - this is one you enforce to protect democracy Remember one of the reasons they were fired was because they wouldn't investigate bogus claims about Democrats ('bogus' because the looked into them and decided they were bogus)
You can't have it both ways. So which is it?
I'll tell you. You're pulling a "Choicepoint" by omitting things from the story. Yes, Ethel Baxter (D) created the felon list (and since you claim felons vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, she must have been thinking about her sworn election office duty instead of her party), but a very important change was made by the Republicans: the decision to allow false positives. Under Baxter's rules, doubt over the status of a voter removed them from the list. With the new Republican guidance, you could now stack the list. (Wikipedia has more.)
This isn't a partisan issue: either you're for fair elections, or you're not. We should attack every instance of fraud, regardless of who is skewing the system.
And when you're "debunking" the BBC of all sources, you should provide some of your own of similar stature.
Lies about crimes
Here's the deal: yes, the US Attorneys serve at the discretion of the president. Yes, they can be fired at will.
Here's the problem: firing US Attorneys because they don't toe the line of the party in power will damage the idea that the judiciary is independent of the executive and legislative branch.
Nobody had an issue with 8 US Attorneys being fired. The shit only hit the fan once it came to light that the firings might have been motivated by political considerations - what's worse, that they might have been motivated by the attorneys not breaking the law to help certain republicans.
One of the greatest strength of the US is the system of independent branches. This, and a host of other things, attempts to break the independence. It's my sincere opinion that any attack on the independence of the three branches is an attack worse than any bombings.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
"Would you believe that we want fair elections, and that we don't give a shit whether its the Democrats or the Republicans fucking it up, we want it to stop?"
No.
I've yet to see any airplay (let alone on Slashkos) about the voting shenanigans in Seattle or Arizona where the Democrats stole the elections.
Oh, I'm sure they were all legitimate "mistakes" too...
Obstruction of justice is a crime. Congress does have oversight of the hiring and firing of US Attorneys. Bush is not king, and Fox News repeatedly saying he is doesn't make it so.
Once again, if he canned prosecutors for not filing false charges of voter fraud against Democrats in close races weeks before the November election, that is fraud in and of itself. The prosecutors involved say the tit for tat was understood: kill the Democrats and live, or fail to charge and be gone. Those who chose integrity were canned.
And: knowing full well after the landslide Democratic victory that investigations were coming and US Attorneys would be filing charges should it be necessary against Bush and his people -- and he seems to know that it was a certainty, given the news the last few days about the power struggle between the Bushies and the DOJ -- he was intentionally larding up the USA's ranks with absolutely faithful Republicans known for their loyalty to Bush and his cause. This is obstruction of justice with a bullet.
When you keep voting the current party out because they are crap at it, even if it is a two-horse race, means that the bribes aren't all that effective.
How long does it take to get some big bill through? A couple of years. But the first year is taken up undoing anything from the last administration. So you only have one years' worth of lawmaking for four years worth of lobbying. When the next party comes back in, you need to start again.
The politicians want the power and if they only have one year out of four to exercise that power, it isn't all that satisfying.
So keep power-cycling. After a while, one party will work properly, find that they are getting more done and stay. When they get comfortable and corruption sets in, they go out again, removing the influence. Seeing that corruption means you get kicked out will help more from the new residents party decide to play straight.
Churn
Filing false charges is, for an AG, a felony. Conspiracy to commit a felony (telling someone to commit a crime and/or covering up the attempt to do so) is a felony. A criminal charge.
You asked... will you listen?
When I was first voting in Chicago, my older brother attended college in Rock Island.
They wouldn't let him have an absentee Chicago ballot because he lived most of the year in a dorm in Rock Island.
Well, when I finished voting in my Chicago precinct, I noticed the list of registered voters, and he was still on it!
So I guess he voted twice that year, once in Rock Island, and once, unbeknownst to him, in Chicago.
Replacing them all at the beginning of your term and telling them to focus on prosecuting specific types of cases (e.g. illegal immigration) are both standard operating procedure. Telling them to go after political rivals is not, nor is firing them for refusing to do so.
(IANAL)
Under Clinton, the top marginal tax bracket went from 31% @ $86,500, to 39.6 @ $288,350. Bush subsequently adjusted the top rate to 35% @ 311,950.
By comparison the top tax brack for most of the years of the "Reagan Boom" was 50% at around $170K or so, dropping to 28% at $32K under Bush.
These figures are not adjusted for inflation by the way.
The MEDIAN household taxation rates during
the Reagan budgets (1982-1989): 17.9,17.5,18.0,18.1,18.0,17.6,17.9,17.9
Bush HW (1990 - 1994): 17.9, 17.6, 17.4, 17.3,17.3
Clinton (1994-2001): 17.3, 17.3, 17.3, 17.4, 16.8, 16.9 16.6,15.3
Bush (2002-2003): 14.8, 13.8, 13.9
Note that each president's first year in office is under the prior president's budget.
Overall taxation rates dropped slightly during the Clinton years while the median taxation rate went down consistently and the top quintile rose significantly. Under the Bush administratio, there has been a substantial drop in effective taxation at the median income, but curiously only a slight drop is seen in the top quintile. The big tax breaks go to a tiny, tiny sliver of the top quintile.
This basically paints Clinton as overall a slight tax cutter who shifted the burden to the top quintile. Bush is a dramatic tax cutter who cut median and ultra-high income tax rates.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
"In other words, Democrats did not have an organized campaign to skew the elections like certain other parties...."
So the criteria for Democratic party wrongdoing is Justice Department convictions? That doesn't seem to be your criteria for Republican party wrongdoing. Or were you talking about some other party when you said "an organized campaign to skew the elections like certain other parties" (emphasis mine)? I'm not saying that there is or isn't some sort of larger conspiracy in either party's voting schemes but Justice Department doesn't seem to have much on either party.
Why is it so hard for you to understand that obstruction of justice and lying to Congress is a felony, no matter what the original act was? Crimes HAVE been committed (in 2007), irrespective of who fired whom when, for what reason. Officials lied to the investigators, and that IS a crime.
The reason I submitted this story is that "our" Media won't report the NEWS [north, east, west, south].
I'm from a [former] Newspaper family and have a "dog in this hunt".
If our information systems are compromised/co-opted we'll become instruments of mis/dis-information and a tool of our New Overlord, which, of course, we would then welcome.
Hard evidence of this is slowly revealing itself, and in turn being suppressed by the very power intrusted to serve the people.
It's the definition of "news" that has been jeopardized, along with the right to know.
~hylas
He did fire all of them when he came into office. These are people he appointed, who he has now fired because they weren't sufficiently corrupted.
Discussing what happened to the WTC is against the rules at Kos, and will get your "diary" troll-rated, and possibly get you banned.
Nice try troll.
-- Not a DKos reader
The last part may be a bit flamebaitish, but the correction of the GP is good enough reason.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Your point would be well taken except that the DOJ is run by Bush Appointees.
Consider this from a Paul Krugman column dated, 3/9/2007:
"Donald Shields and John Cragan, two professors of communication, have compiled a database of investigations and/or indictments of candidates and elected officials by U.S. attorneys since the Bush administration came to power. Of the 375 cases they identified, 10 involved independents, 67 involved Republicans, and 298 involved Democrats. The main source of this partisan tilt was a huge disparity in investigations of local politicians, in which Democrats were seven times as likely as Republicans to face Justice Department scrutiny."
Then consider that with such intense scrutiny by Attoney Generals who "played ball" and didn't get fired, there was found only a handful of 'vote fraud' cases.
Except at this point the Justice Dept seems to have become more or less an arm of the Republican party. Any analysis of investigations of political corruption at the local level shows that they prosecute Democrats at a much higher rate than Republican (something like seven times the rate but I don't have the report here in front of me). So its not really surprising that they have nothing on the Repubs; I doubt they are even looking.
Ok, a moderate-inensity flamewar and a number of "troll" moderations later, what we have is that no crime is being credibly alleged here. The most allegation there is, is by the reporter himself putting "Possible obstruction of justice" into the mouth of a (sympathetic) interviewee.
Lost emails, found emails — whatever... Lots of hot air, no substance.
Wake me up, when the Attorney General is found in Contempt of Congress, maybe, or something of similar significance happens.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I haven't read beyond the headline but this is just screaming "HOAX!".
Being a critical thinker means approaching what others say with a skeptical eye, even if what they're saying aligns with your political beliefs.
Consider this: 1) Someone creates false correspondence and intentionally sends it to whitehouse.org. The evidence is damning to the Bush administration. 2) Whitehouse.org passes it on to Palast 3) Palast publishes the damning e-mails. 4) Someone points out how something is not kosher in the e-mails. For example, some headers are obviously faked. 5) Now whitehouse.org is discredited, Palast is discredited, and the truth is blurred. It worked nicely when Dan Rather thought he had a scoop on Bush being AWOL from the National Guard and he ran with the story and was later discredited.
Not sure how many this represents, but google found this for me:
x .asp
http://2004.georgewbush.org/deadletteroffice/inde
Ashcroft always struck me as an honest person trying to do the right thing. I may have disagreed with him about some things, but I never felt that he was willing to screw America over to benefit himself.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Firing them because they had a different idealology is fine, their job is to work for the president.
Oh, man; you really put it out there. That's about the most corrupt statement I've seen in a long time.
People in the Justice Department should not be working for the president, or any other politician. That's about the worst setup you could possibly imagine. It totally eliminates any meaning to the word "Justice".
I'd ask for an apology for such a remark, but I expect that someone who would say such a thing is beyond salvation.
Granted, a lot of people think such things. But they usually have the good sense not to announce such thoughts in public.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
The Queen of England has always been plotting to invade America and put us back under their yoke.
I hear Lou Dobbs is digging through www.dastardlylimeys.net right now, looking for a map entitled "El Plan de Teatime."
Geez Louise!@!!! I can't believe there are still clowns out there who still refuse to GET IT - or are still living in the delusional neocon bizarro world:
If a US Attorney is fired in the middle of an ongoing criminal investigation - and that effectively shuts down said investigation - which occurred in a number of the US Attorney firings - then that is interference with a criminal investigation and obstruction of justice, both federal crimes.
And Gonzales, especially after former Deputy Attorney General James Comey's testimony before Congress, along with everything else Gonzales is been found to be derelict (and that ongoing investigation in Texas with regard to Juvenile Prison child molesting and rapes which may very well have involved collusion on the part of this A.G.), it is not only unlikely Gonzales will be not be exonerated of anything, but just how much they decide to convict that rat bastard of.....
Say there, fishdan, I'm betting you aren't in the symbolic analysis (IT, programming, etc.) bizz nor in any of the hard sciences?????
Yes, I read the transcript Did you? It doesn't seem like you paid attention.
n ation/stories/030107dnnatattorney.398bb40.html
The show includes sound-bites from A Few Good Men because Greg Palast is saying that David Iglesias was the real-life lawyer in a real-life military trial on which the role of Tom Cruise in the story of A Few Good Men was based.
The Dallas Morning News (via Wikipedia) concurs:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/
"Mr. Iglesias, 49, is a Navy Reserve commander whose role as a defense lawyer in a famous military hazing case was the basis for the Tom Cruise character in the movie A Few Good Men."
Would like to know more about that case...
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
I think we're all missing an important issue here and that is, politicians no matter where they live are still politicians. Lying, cheating, scum of the world.
the phrase "liberal media" refers to the sub-group of the media that is liberal, not a statement that all media is liberal.
Obstruction of Justice.p alast&search=Search
... here is what I posted before;
Murder of two prosecutors.
Stolen elections; http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=greg+
An IRS man stabbed to death 35 times and the FBI called it suicide.
Weapons contractors and Abramoff.
The DC Madam and Cheney which is connected to the Hookergate and the CIA.
What do all these things have to do with each other?
Yeah, the precedent is to change hats at the beginning of a term.
Bush, however, got everyone to fill out their resignations, and just kept them.
The ones fired, were prosecuting Republican election fraud, or failing to persue Democratic voter fraud -- of which I think there is perhaps one legitimate case in the entire country (ironically, this could just be Anne Coulter--oops!). They've been trying to make a case like someone is able to rig an election by busing voters here and there, to commit a felony, only to change the vote by a bus load of people. Ain't going to work. The vast majority (OK -- ALL) legendary voter fraud comes down to people registering in one place, and failing to un-register when they move elsewhere. Innocent, and normal stuff. While disenfranchising voters, and throwing out legitimate votes, is somehow not a federal crime and happens all the time.
>> But the Prosecutor firings are even a bigger deal than this.
From the Daily Kos;
McClatchy:
In an e-mail dated May 11, 2006, Sampson urged the White House counsel's office to call him regarding "the real problem we have right now with Carol Lam," who then the U.S. attorney for southern California. Earlier that morning, the Los Angeles Times reported that Lam's corruption investigation of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., had expanded to include another California Republican, Rep Jerry Lewis.
Perhaps what is lost in all this confusion over who said what when and which prosecutors were bushies and which were not is just how significant Lam's investigation was. This paragraph from an August 2006 article in Vanity Fair will instruct:
Tens of thousands of pages of congressional documents going as far back as 1997 have been demanded by the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Diego. The C.I.A., Pentagon, I.R.S., and F.B.I. are conducting investigations, and at least three congressional committees are cooperating in hopelessly tardy fashion. "We are scrubbing" is how a staffer on the intelligence committee puts it. Washington is unraveling.
>> So it was all about stopping the Carol Lam investigation. It leads back to Abramoff, arms contractors, and two murdered prosecutors
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Enjoy your massive liberal circlejerk, you fucking pinko commies. If you're going to practically destroy the nation simply to get the candidate that *you* want elected, why don't you fucking move to Canada like you were all threatening to in 2004? God knows they're fucked up enough as it is. You'd like it there.
No, the number of invalidated voters in Florida was 10 times the number from the election 4 years prior. It was about 8,000 in 1996.
ChoicePoint got a really huge government contract for $10 Million that year-- to basically get 96% of thier invalidated voters completely wrong --and this is giving them the benefit of the doubt for the other 6%.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Well, I'm starting to enjoy things.
I just need to get some cheese, so I can dine on it while reading your WHINE one more time. Man, seeing a NeoCon meltdown is, I don't know, making me enjoy shadenfraude like a NeoCon.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Now our only backup for US credibility is gone bye bye?
I guess, nobody outside of Fox News can speak the truth.
But, I'm guessing France will be palatable soon, now that a NeoCon has stolen the elections there.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
c) If he's really REALLY so interested in the right thing happening, and all that, why hasn't he forwarded these to the congressmen who are looking into these matters instead of announcing them on the radio?
My thoughts exactly. You've got the emails? You didn't break any laws getting them? PUT THEM ON THE WEB!!!
I sincerely hope that this man has the emails he claims... but I will not for one second believe him until he proves it.
- DaftShadow
And, after all, he is my boss -- if the code is commit-ready in his opinion, I should be committing it (possibly having expressed my reservations in the commit message and/or elsewhere).
No, the better analogy would be a technical PM - he hasn't got the authority to tell you to check anything in. Likewise, the Senator hasn't got the authority to make you investigate a candidate, and telling you to do it before election day would tend to affect the election - looks like interference to me.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
first let me state my occupation: I do metadata extraction and decryption of e-mails and decypher raw server dumps of corporate e-mail servers for clients involved in civil litigation as well as accounting and creating databases of the e-mails and native files from custodians' personal computers. A bit of forensics and a bit of litigation work. Being familiar with this- so long as the e-mails were using an exchange server (I have seen examples they were outlook e-mails) it is impossible for any of these e-mails to go missing unless their server had no backup system or the backup system was DOD compliant wiped (3X assembly overwrite) regularly which would be really stupid since just to clean the backups the backup system would have to go down for days at a time to DOD wipe them, in fact it is pretty standard for most e-mail systems to have incrimental backups to either tape or removable storage in case of a server crash. If the ppl in the gov't weren't so techno-dumb they would know this- or even if they have read the federal standards on electronic discovery they would know that in ANY court case you can request all non-privileged electronic materials (they would go to a company like ours for third party review to remove confidentiality and establish custody) for the case- they cannot refuse these.
The vast majority (OK -- ALL) legendary voter fraud comes down to people registering in one place, and failing to un-register when they move elsewhere. Innocent, and normal stuff.
Wait, What?!?
Wow, check out the Nixon/Kennedy election with special emphasis on Chicago "where even the dead vote early and often". I'm not dead, so I only vote here once. Who knows what crazy shit I'll vote for once I'm gone.
There's no denying that the current crop of Republicans are the worst group of corrupt, cowardly, treasonous, murderous thugs and liars in the history of our nation but when you delude yourself into believing that the Democrats haven't done their best at it and just not been good enough at being evil you make yourself look really fucking stupid.
I really don't think it is corrupt statement to say that a "tough on crime" president should have "tough on crime" prosecuters.
They are a key part to the enforcement of things, and as the chosen leader of enforcement by the peoplethe president is there boss.
As long as the prosecuters are fair in their application of idealology (as these people who were fired were), justice can be served.
I will point out I am very liberal.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Say there, fishdan, I'm betting you aren't in the symbolic analysis (IT, programming, etc.) bizz nor in any of the hard sciences????? I don't get what you're implying, but you can read my blog or my /. journal and decide for yourself.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
But have we had enough Rights, yet?
Or to put it another way, do we have any rights left?
So, you're allowed to lie under oath if it's not relevant? That doesn't seem like a good policy to me. Where are you getting your information from?
Don't get me wrong, I don't obsess about the whole BJ thing. However, I do like to get my facts straight, so if you've got some good evidence, I'm willing to listen.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
3. Clinton Fired all of them to get his guys in.
And it's completely irrelevant, since every USA is fired with the chaning of every adminstration. This is about targetting specific USAs that refused to use their positions of partisian purposes. Seriously. Do you know anything about the Iglassias firing? That's the most damning one of all.
5. No mater what any breathless, emptyheaded DNC staffer or MSM stooge says, their cannot be a crime here. Period, over and out.
Wrong. Gonazles. Lying to congress.
Why hasn't anyone else connected them with respect to Monica & Bill? (That first link didn't actually directly address the perjury question - or if it did, I missed it.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Assume, for sake of argument, that Iglesias was fired for exactly those reasons. What evidence would you expect to find? I'm not arguing that one can be criminally prosecuted for circumstantial evidence (IANAL), but one can sure as hell be fired for it - especially when it's as damning as the evidence encountered so far against Alberto Gonzales.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?