The Great Unraveling

The Washington Post's editorial page isn't exactly a hotbed when it comes to calling for thorough investigation of the various (and numerous) scandals that have unfolded in the Bush White House. The Post goes so far as to remind us that this is an "account of Bush administration lawlessness so shocking it would have been unbelievable coming from a less reputable source" right in the opening sentence. Here's the meat of the editorial:

The dramatic details should not obscure the bottom line: the administration’s alarming willingness, championed by, among others, Vice President Cheney and his counsel, David Addington, to ignore its own lawyers. Remember, this was a Justice Department that had embraced an expansive view of the president’s inherent constitutional powers, allowing the administration to dispense with following the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Justice’s conclusions are supposed to be the final word in the executive branch about what is lawful or not, and the administration has emphasized since the warrantless wiretapping story broke that it was being done under the department’s supervision.

Now, it emerges, they were willing to override Justice if need be. That Mr. Gonzales is now in charge of the department he tried to steamroll may be most disturbing of all.

The Post is, of course, reacting to the testimony of James B. Comey, "the straight-as-an-arrow" Deputy Attorney General under Alberto Gonzales.

Think Progress has compiled these high-lights of Comey's testimony:

– The high-speed pursuit that took place when Comey learned that Card and Gonzales were on their way to see Ashcroft at the hospital;

– The hospital meeting, in which the seriously ill Ashcroft “stunned” Comey by lifting “his head off the pillow and in very strong terms” rejecting Card and Gonzales’ effort to have him reauthorize the spying program;

– Comey’s admission that he believed he had “witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man, who did not have the powers of the attorney general because they had been transferred to me”;

– Andrew Card’s subsequent “very upset” call to Comey, in which Card claimed that he and Gonzales had visited Ashcroft “just…to wish him well”;

– The White House’s eventual agreement to suspend the warrantless spying in the face of a threat of mass resignations, including from FBI Director Robert Mueller and Attorney General Ashcroft

The New York Times has a full account.

This scandal is setting up to be a long, drawn out unraveling of the Bush Administration. The fact that Alberto Gonzales was deeply involved in 'unsavory' activity at the White House before being put in charge of the Justice Department means that the subject of his constant testimony before congress will become more far ranging - and more damaging - as time goes on.

One would assume that the Bush White House would 'encourage' Gonzales to resign simply to stop the bleeding. They haven't. It doesn't appear likely that they're going to any time soon.

Why?

If there's one thing (only thing?) that the Bush Administration is good at, it's at playing the political 'game.' You could argue that Bush doesn't want go through the confirmation process for a new Attorney General right now. It's a legitimate reason to hold onto Gonzales but I think the real reason Gonzales is still in the Administration is to protect Rove.

As long as Gonzales is in between Congress and Karl Rove, 'Bush's Brain' feels safe.

The Bush White House has decided that damage of the slow bleed resulting from keeping Gonzales around for the next 18 months is better than what can only be assumed to be catastrophic damage that would result from any sort of investigation getting near Karl Rove.

This tells us a couple of things. First, it tells us that Bush has given up on regaining any kind of positive standing in the polls. There will be no attempt to 'dump' the scandal and move on. That means that the Republicans will go into the 2008 elections burdened with a President whose approval ratings are struggling to stay out of the twenties. If congressional GOPers don't feel like they're going to be getting any help from the White House, they're unlikely to feel any great loyalty to the person that may cost them their seats. As long as Bush's numbers continue to slip away, expect Republican support for his agenda in the congress to slip away as well. Lastly, the fact that Gonzales is still running the Justice Department tells us that things within the Bush Administration must be bad. BAD. The Nixon kind of Bad. No administration would make these kinds of political sacrifices to keep people from seeing inside a clean, even clean-ish, administration.

Alberto Gonzales Karl Rove Bush Administration Attorney-gate Republicans 2008 Elections

The New Southern Problem

Harold Meyerson in the Washington Post:

[In last month's election] The Democrats won control of five state legislatures, all outside the South, and took more than 300 state legislative seats away from Republicans, 93 percent of them outside the South. As for the new Senate Republican caucus that chose Mississippi's Lott over Tennessee's Lamar Alexander to be deputy to Kentucky's Mitch McConnell, 17 of its 49 members come from the Confederacy proper, with another three from the old border states of Kentucky and Missouri, and two more from Oklahoma, which is Southern but with more dust. In all, 45 percent of Republican senators come from the Greater South.

More problematic, so does most of the Republican message. Following the gospel according to Rove (fear not swing voters but pander to and mobilize thy base), George W. Bush and the Republican Congress, together or separately, had already blocked stem cell research, disparaged nonmilitary statecraft, exalted executive wartime power over constitutional niceties, campaigned repeatedly against gay rights, thrown public money at conservative churches and investigated the tax status of liberal ones. In the process, they alienated not just moderates but Western-state libertarians.

The one strategist who fundamentally predicted the new geography of partisan American politics is Tom Schaller, a University of Maryland political scientist whose book "Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South" appeared several months before November's elections. Schaller argued that the Democrats' growth would occur in the Northeast, the industrial Midwest, the Mountain West and the Southwest -- areas where professionals, appalled by Republican Bible Beltery, were trending Democratic and where working-class whites voted their pocketbooks in a way that their Southern counterparts did not. Al Gore carried white voters outside the South, Schaller reminded us; even hapless John Kerry came close.

Yes.

No time to comment. Go read the whole thing!

Trent Lott Doesn't Like Karl Rove

In 2002, Trent Lott, the new Republican Senate Minority Whip, said that if segregationist Strom Thurmond had been elected in 1948, "we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years."

Karl Rove took the opportunity to drive the then Senate Republican Leader out of power - more for being a weak leader than for any ethical reasons.

Now Trent Lott may have his chance at revenge.

From Think Progress has the transcript of a Fox News interview:

WALLACE: Senator, over the last four years, though, you did have some harsh things to say about the White House, and I wonder whether you still stand by them. You said Karl Rove should resign. Still believe that?

LOTT: Look, I've been in sort of a liberated mode. Some people say that they hope in my new leadership position, I won't give that up. I do believe in trying to be honest and respectful. I've had problems with some of the conduct of Karl Rove. But I have a good relationship with the President and most of the people around him. I think Josh Bolten is doing a great job as his chief of staff. You know, the president and I can communicate, and I want to see him succeed, because he is the President. And we have to work with Democrats because they are in the majority.

This meme is a bit of a theme for Mr. Lott. He's called for Rove's resignation before, during the CIA 'Plame-gate' scandal.

At risk of casting Mr. Lott in a positive light, (something I DO NOT want to do) I think having somebody who's actively opposed to the White House is a good thing. Even if the hostility isn't for ideological reasons, it's good to have someone who sees all things Rovian as suspect and treats them with hostility.

And this from the person leading the party that should be most receptive to the President's agenda.

While it appears that the Democrats won't press their advantage, the rubber stamp congress seems to be a thing of the past for BushCo.

Trent Lott Karl Rove

Joe is Rove-alicious

Widely repeated, here's what George Stephanopoulos has to say on the matter:

According to a close Lieberman adviser, the President's political guru, Karl Rove, has reached out to the Lieberman camp with a message straight from the Oval Office: "The boss wants to help. Whatever we can do, we will do."

This'll help confirm that Joe's a 'strong Democrat' right? Oh, wait. WAS a strong Democrat. Now he's a member of the Connecticut for Lieberman party. And what a party it is...

Joe Lieberman Connecticut for Lieberman Karl Rove George Stephanopoulos

Bush Knew.

Murray Waas' article in The National Journal reveals that Bush knew that the intelligence leading to the War in Iraq was flawed.

Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, cautioned other White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush's 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration. Rove expressed his concerns shortly after an informal review of classified government records by then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley determined that Bush had been specifically advised that claims he later made in his 2003 State of the Union address -- that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon -- might not be true, according to government records and interviews.

At lesat we know whether it was a crime or incompetence now.

Hadley was particularly concerned that the public might learn of a classified one-page summary of a National Intelligence Estimate, specifically written for Bush in October 2002. The summary said that although "most agencies judge" that the aluminum tubes were "related to a uranium enrichment effort," the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department's intelligence branch "believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons."

Three months after receiving that assessment, the president stated without qualification in his January 28, 2003, State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."

Well, if Bill Clinton got impeached for saying "I did not have sexual relations with that woman," can we please FUCKING IMPEACH THIS GUY?

Bush Iraq Intelligence