Yep, this guy was one of Ken Starr’s bully boys. I bet they got a REALLY fair hearing from him.
Valerie Plame’s lawsuit dismissed
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U.S. District Judge John D. Bates dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds and said he would not express an opinion on the constitutional arguments.
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Scum.
Once again, I am compelled to make the repeat the wisest thing that I’ve read this century:
But it does inspire in me the desire for a competition; can anyone, particularly the rather more Bush-friendly recent arrivals to the board, give me one single example of something with the following three characteristics:
1. It is a policy initiative of the current Bush administration
2. It was significant enough in scale that I’d have heard of it (at a pinch, that I should have heard of it)
3. It wasn’t in some important way completely f#$@ed up during the execution.
Seriously. I’ve yet to see anything wiser yet, and I’m using the loose definition of the 21st century which includes the year 2000.
Construction Woes Add to Fears at Embassy in Iraq
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 5, 2007; A01U.S. diplomats in Iraq, increasingly fearful over their personal safety after recent mortar attacks inside the Green Zone, are pointing to new delays and mistakes in the U.S. Embassy construction project in Baghdad as signs that their vulnerability could grow in the months ahead.
A toughly worded cable sent from the embassy to State Department headquarters on May 29 highlights a cascade of building and safety blunders in a new facility to house the security guards protecting the embassy. The guards’ base, which remains unopened today, is just a small part of a $592 million project to build the largest U.S. embassy in the world.
The main builder of the sprawling, 21-building embassy is First Kuwaiti General Trade and Contracting Co., a Middle Eastern firm that is already under Justice Department scrutiny over alleged labor abuses. First Kuwaiti also erected the guard base, prompting some State Department officials in Washington and Baghdad to worry that the problems exposed in the camp suggest trouble lurking ahead for the rest of the embassy complex.
The first signs of trouble, according to the cable, emerged when the kitchen staff tried to cook the inaugural meal in the new guard base on May 15. Some appliances did not work. Workers began to get electric shocks. Then a burning smell enveloped the kitchen as the wiring began to melt.
All the food from the old guard camp — a collection of tents — had been carted to the new facility, in the expectation that the 1,200 guards would begin moving in the next day. But according to the cable, the electrical meltdown was just the first problem in a series of construction mistakes that soon left the base uninhabitable, including wiring problems, fuel leaks and noxious fumes in the sleeping trailers.
“Poor quality construction . . . life safety issues . . . left [the embassy] with no recourse but to shut the camp down, in spite of the blistering heat in Baghdad,” the May 29 cable informed Washington.
Such challenges with construction contracts inside the fortified enclave known as the Green Zone reflect the broader problems that have thwarted reconstruction efforts throughout war-torn Iraq.
The “fairly serious problems” noted in the cable indicate that First Kuwaiti’s work fails to meet basic safety standards, said an administration official who was not authorized to speak to the news media. But the State Department’s Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO), which oversees construction of the new embassy, has kept a “close hold” on the project, making it difficult for anyone else in the government to gauge progress. “We are suspecting we will find the same issues in the new embassy,” resulting in months of delays, the official said.
The embassy cable prompted a stinging response from James L. Golden, OBO’s managing director for the embassy project. In a cable dated June 8, he berated personnel in Baghdad for sending their message over an open embassy system, rather than keeping the complaints in-house. He defended First Kuwaiti and accused the embassy and KBR — a Texas-based company that runs many facilities in Iraq and discovered the wiring problems — of making false claims to deflect attention from their own errors.
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Hmmm….is James L. Golden a political appointee? I quick google can’t confirm one way or the other.
I agree, I just wish that they had used the term “cover up”.
Soft on Crime
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But in this case, Mr. Bush did not sound like a leader making tough decisions about justice. He sounded like a man worried about what a former loyalist might say when actually staring into a prison cell.
Here:
Inevitably, the subject of Marc Rich comes up every time presidential pardons come up. Without going into all of the issues, can we just remind the world that… Marc Rich’s lawyer was Scooter Libby.
As I’ve said before, and will say again, this is why Duncan Black is an A-list blogger, and I am a Z-list blogger.
I heard about Bush Commuting Libby’s sentence on the radio, and I swore in front of my children.
In fact, I said F*&%$#@%K!!!!
Compassion my ass. The Avignon president gets off on people in pain. This is about covering his, and Cheney’s ass.
Impeach them. Impeach them now.
Scooter just got turned down by the appeals court. He’s going to have to go to jail.
Libby, Ex-Cheney Aide, Must Go to Jail During Appeal
July 2 (Bloomberg) — Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, must go to prison while appealing his conviction for obstructing a CIA leak probe, a U.S. appeals court said.Libby may be behind bars within weeks after a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit today denied his request for release. The decision will increase pressure on President George W. Bush to decide soon whether to pardon Libby, 56, as the former White House official’s supporters have urged.
Libby “has not shown that the appeal raises a substantial question” under federal law that would merit letting him remain free, the court said.
Libby was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison last month following his March 6 conviction of lying to investigators probing the 2003 leak of Central Intelligence Agency official Valerie Plame’s identity. U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton refused to let Libby stay out of prison during his appeal — which might take more than a year to resolve — saying that evidence of his guilt was “overwhelming.”
Libby was convicted of obstructing justice, perjury and making false statements. He resigned as Cheney’s top aide upon being indicted in 2005.
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It was a unanimous decision by the appellate panel, so he’s going to be going to jail. No legal question here.
Of course, the Supreme Court could review this, but I don’t think that even Scalia would be so brazen.
Yep, another corrupt Justice Department political appointee leaves.
When a Dem gets in, we need to run all the crooks to ground.
In her case, I think that suborning perjury by Supreme Court nominees is one of her crimes. Roberts and Alito were clearly coached to lie.
Seventh official quits Justice Departmen
Fri Jun 29, 2007 7:29PM EDT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An assistant attorney general at the Justice Department announced her resignation on Friday, becoming the seventh official to quit the department since the Democratic-led Congress launched an investigation in March into the firing of nine federal prosecutors.
Rachel Brand, assistant attorney general for legal policy, said she would step down on July 9. No reason was given.
Brand was nominated to her position on March 29, 2005, and confirmed by the Senate four months later.
She was responsible for preparing Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito for their confirmation hearings and helped in the reauthorization in 2006 of the USA Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism law that Congress approved after the September 11 attacks.
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It seems that every bit of skulduggery, though not every bit of incompetence, has Abu Gonzalez’s fingerprints on it.
Seriously…This guy is the alpha and omega of Bush corruption.
If he gets flipped, we uncover everything.
A New Dick Cheney-Alberto Gonzales Mystery
NewsweekJuly 2-9, 2007 issue – A new battle has erupted over Vice President Dick Cheney’s refusal to submit to an executive order requiring a government review of his handling of classified documents. But the dispute could also raise questions for embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. For the past four years, Cheney’s office has failed to comply with an executive order requiring all federal offices—including those in the White House—to annually report to the National Archives on how they safeguard classified documents. Cheney’s hard-line chief of staff, David Addington, has made the novel argument that the veep doesn’t have to comply on the ground that, because the vice president also serves as president of the Senate, his office is not really part of the executive branch.
Cheney’s position so frustrated J. William Leonard, the chief of the Archives’ Information Security Oversight Office, which enforces the order, that he complained in January to Gonzales. …
Why didn’t Gonzales act on Leonard’s request? His aides assured reporters that Leonard’s letter has been “under review” for the past five months—by Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). But on June 4, an OLC lawyer denied a Freedom of Information Act request about the Cheney dispute asserting that OLC had “no documents” on the matter, according to a copy of the letter obtained by NEWSWEEK.
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El Paso Times – Suit shines spotlight on immigration judgeships
By Louie Gilot / El Paso Times
Article Launched: 06/24/2007 12:00:00 AM MDTGuadalupe Gonzalez is the chief counsel for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in El Paso, a lawyer with more than 20 years of experience in immigration law and a stellar record. In 2002, she made the next logical career move, applying to become an immigration judge.
“I love El Paso. It is my home. I was born and raised here, and it’s important for me personally to contribute in a role that is both vitally important to our country and of particular importance to the El Paso community,” she said.
But the job went to a Anglo male candidate with no reported immigration experience. In 2004, when two other judgeships opened, they went to two other Anglo males, both of them Gonzalez’s subordinates with markedly less expertise in immigration law than Gonzalez.Ê
Gonzalez, 56, sued the U.S. attorney general for discrimination on the basis of gender and national origin, and the suit is pending in a court in Washington, D.C.
In her filings, Gonzalez claimed that since 2001, only two Hispanics were appointed nationwide for 40 immigration judgeships. The four immigration judges in El Paso are all Anglo men.
The case has attracted national attention amid a scandal over the apparent politicization of attorney general positions and judgeships.
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Once again, we see that there is no policy, just politics.
GSA chief accused of Hatch Act violation
By JIM ABRAMS
WASHINGTON — The head of the main federal contracting agency, a longtime GOP supporter, should be “punished to the fullest extent” for violating a ban on political advocacy on government time, a watchdog agency concluded.
The Office of Special Counsel, in a letter to President Bush released late Monday, said General Services Administrator Lurita Doan engaged in “the most pernicious of political activity” banned by the 1939 Hatch Act when she asked, at a meeting of General Services Administration political appointees, how they could help Republican candidates.
“I recommend that Administrator Doan be disciplined to the fullest extent for her serious violation of the Hatch Act and insensitivity to cooperating fully and honestly in the course of our investigation,” wrote Scott Bloch, special counsel for the independent investigative and prosecutorial agency.
Doan’s attorney, in a June 1 response to Bloch also released Monday, rejected the office’s conclusions, saying Doan was only peripherally involved in the January 26 PowerPoint presentation by a senior White House political adviser at GSA headquarters on helping Republicans in coming elections.
Michael J. Nardotti, Jr., of Patton Boggs LLP, criticized the “lack of objectivity and impartiality” by the Office of Special Counsel and said it had “resulted in an extraordinary unfairness to Administrator Doan.” He urged the president to disapprove the report and submit the matter to another entity outside the Office of Special Counsel.
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This is a good thing. Bush won’t let Abu Gonzalez go, because he knows where the bodies are buried, and he is a close personal friend.
We also now have confirmation that the vote means nothing, because Spector votes with the Dems only when it does not matter.
Top Republican to vote against Gonzales – Yahoo! News: “By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 16 minutes ago
WASHINGTON – The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee said Monday he will vote for a no-confidence resolution against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
ADVERTISEMENTSen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., said he’s concerned like others in his party that the resolution, sponsored by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and up for a test vote later in the day, was a Democratic effort to embarrass Bush and push Gonzales to resign.
But Specter has long said that Gonzales has exercised poor leadership on a host of issues, from the firings of eight federal prosecutors to the Justice Department’s handling of wiretapping authority under the USA Patriot Act.
‘If you ask Arlen Specter, do I have confidence in Attorney General Gonzales, the answer is a resounding no,’ Specter said during a news conference in Philadelphia. ‘I’m going to vote that I have no confidence in Attorney General Gonzales.'”
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It should be noted that he is so close to the Bush family that he’s called “Bandar Bush”.
BBC NEWS | Business | Saudi prince ‘received arms cash’: “A Saudi prince who negotiated a £40bn arms deal between Britain and Saudi Arabia received secret payments for over a decade, a BBC probe has found.
The UK’s biggest arms dealer, BAE Systems, paid hundreds of millions of pounds to the ex-Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan.
The payments were made with the full knowledge of the Ministry of Defence.
Prince Bandar would not comment on the investigation and BAE Systems said it acted lawfully at all times.
The MoD said information about the Al Yamamah deal was confidential.
Sir Raymond Lygo, a former chief executive of BAE, told the BBC’s World Business Report that there had been ‘nothing untoward’ about the arms deal.
‘I was the one who won the contract,’ he said. ‘I don’t know anything about him (the prince) at all. I would have remembered that name.’
When asked about the secret payments, Sir Lygo said that it was not going on when the deal was signed.
‘I would have known if it was going on at the time. I was not aware of it, so as far as I am concerned it was not occuring.
‘Yes, we paid agents. Nothing illegal about that. It was absolutely in accordance with the law at the time… there was nothing untoward about the deal whatsoever.”
Private plane
The investigation found that up to £120m a year was sent by BAE Systems from the UK into two Saudi embassy accounts in Washington.
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£120m/year. At current exchange rates, that’s about $240 million.
High priced agent. He’s getting more a year than A-Rod, whose agent gets even less than that.