Specter: “The Justice Department is too important to the country to have it hanging on the edge of a cliff,”

The title quote comes from Senator Arlen Specter.

 I hate to disagree with him when he's being reasonable, but apparently, with the Bush administration,  nothing is too important that he won't protect the members of his Texas Mafia.

   A New York Times article ostensibly about Gonzales meeting with the federal prosecutors (well the ones who are left after the 12/07/06 massacre anyway) " delivers some interesting data and points along with the Senator Specter's comment above.

• Excerpt: "Beleaguered presidents often seek refuge in foreign travel where they can be seen on a different stage. Mr. Gonzales has been engaged in his own version of that practice in recent days, setting off around the nation to deliver speeches about the department’s efforts to curb child pornography, meet with prosecutors and appear before friendly audiences."

Ha ha.  As soon as I heard (on NPR) that Gonzales was pushing something about child pornography, I knew that Karl Rove's "shop" had focus-grouped up the fluff to send to mainstream and right wing news sources.  I'm sure you did too. You might even remember that years ago another Republican was given the online child predator torch. That was former representative Mark Foley . Maybe we should check out Mr. G's hard disk, but most likely it's just a smoke and mirrors routine to shield Mr. Gonzales from the blowback of corrupting the Department of Justice (even further than his predecessor did).

•  "policy and personnel decisions" have been delayed because of the controversy surrounding the Attorney General according to a Justice Department official. 

• Prosecutors said in a meeting with the A.G. in Chicago, Tuesday, that the firings had caused them to "wonder about their own standing and distracted their employees"

• US Attorneys at the meeting also: "asked Mr. Gonzales about the removal of Daniel C. Bogden, the former United States attorney in Nevada, a respected career prosecutor whose ouster has never been fully explained by the Justice Department."

• Excerpt: "On Wednesday, the Justice Department released more than 200 additional pages of e-mail messages and other documents and sent a letter to lawmakers saying that it had given Congress inaccurate information in an earlier letter that asserted that Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, had played no role in the removals."

• Prosecutors complained that they were sidelined when a major policy decision was made giving corporations a big break when making plea bargains.  Somehow the intelligent, experienced, and resourceful team of US Attorneys thinks that the Bush administration would actually want to use their expertise in an issue that concerned how well they could do their jobs in protecting the American people.  That just goes to show that a person doesn't have to be stupid to be sucked in by the "Bushies".
  

•  The A.G. blew off the concerns expressed by the attorneys in Chicago saying he hadn't heard of those specific complaints before. (Meaning "Let me have Karl focus=group some replies before I even decide if I'll respond.  Remember your job and professional reputation is in my slimy little hands.")

tags: federal prosecutors  us attorneys  gonzales  patrick fitzgerald  karl rove  attorney general  

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati    reddit