Judging The Donald

Donald Trump's racist comments about a federal judges of Hispanic origin not being impartial enough to be involved in cases pending against him are bad enough, but now he's publicly saying anyone of Muslim faith isn't impartial or qualified either.

Presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump said that it was possible that a Muslim judge would be biased against him when asked in an interview aired Sunday for his views after proposing a ban an all Muslims.

Trump reiterated on CBS News' "Face the Nation" that he thought U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over the federal fraud case against Trump University, was biased toward him because he was "very strongly pro-Mexican."

CBS host John Dickerson asked Trump if he thought he wouldn't be able to be treated fairly by a Muslim judge.

"It's possible, yes. Yeah," Trump replied. "That would be possible, absolutely."

"He is a member of a club or society, very strongly pro-Mexican, which is all fine. but I say he's got bias. I want to build a wall," Trump said, referring to the wall he wants to build between the U.S. and Mexico.

This is amazing.  Open bigotry and this guy became the nominee of a major political party for President? Gosh, is anyone still surprised that the Republicans are the party of hate?  Only now are other Republican scrambling to try to distance themselves.

"I couldn't disagree more" with Trump's central argument, McConnell said on NBC's "Meet the Press." McConnell distanced himself from Trump's comments, but dodged three times when asked if they were racist.

"I don't condone the comments," added Sen. Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on ABC's "This Week."

And Newt Gingrich, who became speaker of the House promising to open the GOP more to minorities, delivered the harshest warning of all.

"This is one of the worst mistakes Trump has made. I think it's inexcusable," Gingrich, a former presidential contender, said on "Fox News Sunday."

But of course, not all Republicans are.

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Sunday argued that Donald Trump deserved a fair trial just like any pedophile or rapist.

Speaking to Fox News, Gonzales doubled down on his Washington Post op-ed that defended Trump’s right as a U.S. citizen to question the partiality of U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is hearing a case against Trump University.

Trump has the right to question if you're all racist against white people, I guess.  I know that what I want to see in a President, right?

Nemesis Is Clearly Off Getting A Mani/Pedi

Of the list of people who are not allowed to complain about President Obama’s “executive overreach” in yesterday’s directive involving undocumented students being allowed to apply to work permits, the absolute top of that list consists of two, maybe three people.  One of them is former Dubya legal “ace” John “Of Course We Can Waterboard” Yoo, who promptly calls down the wrath of Nemesis herself upon his doomed soul with this observation over at NRO.

President Obama’s claim that he can refuse to deport 800,000 aliens here in the country illegally illustrates the unprecedented stretching of the Constitution and the rule of law. He is laying claim to presidential power that goes even beyond that claimed by the Bush administration, in which I served. There is a world of difference in refusing to enforce laws that violate the Constitution (Bush) and refusing to enforce laws because of disagreements over policy (Obama).

This is pretty much the equivalent of the Mouth of Sauron proclaiming that Gondor is violating Middle Earth’s OSHA laws by having all those dangerous, pointy swords everywhere, and won’t somebody please think of the children.  I’m hoping dark Nemesis has some pretty sturdy Doc Martens, because certain asses are in dire need of having boots inserted in them and rotation will probably be necessary.  Yoo’s own theories on the plenary executive are phenomenally daft, but claiming that the President has the authority to declare unending bloody war on tens of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan citizens but doesn’t have the authority to direct enforcement procedures of executive branch agencies is so absolutely douchetronic that Yoo probably needs to waterboard himself for a while just to balance the scales of the universe.

And yet, Nemesis is off getting an all-day mani/pedi or something because Yoo continues on without several million Olympian arrows magically appearing in his chest.

Imagine the precedent this claim would create. President Romney could lower tax rates simply by saying he will not use enforcement resources to prosecute anyone who refuses to pay capital-gains tax. He could repeal Obamacare simply by refusing to fine or prosecute anyone who violates it.

The funny part is everyone at NRO who read this sentence said “Shut!  The Front!  Door!   That’s a brilliant idea!  We’ll just refuse to enforce the crap we don’t like!  John Yoo, you’re a genius!”  Because that’s exactly what President Romney would do, simply stop enforcing things.  Hell, it’s what Bush did with Wall Street.  It’s not like the Bush-era Securities and Exchange Commission or the Food and Drug Administration or practically any other government regulatory body in the executive branch actually enforced laws.  They decided their job was not in fact regulation but to help the industries they were supposed to be checks upon get around regulation.  Yoo had no problem with that, or the whole “Hey, Congress Schmongress!” thing with Afghanistan, Iraq, and detainees getting fake drowned and all that jazz either.  Using the executive’s enforcement directives to not deport kids?  That’s worth putting POTUS in the dock, yo.

Yoo’s big finish:

So what we have here is a president who is refusing to carry out federal law simply because he disagrees with Congress’s policy choices. That is an exercise of executive power that even the most stalwart defenders of an energetic executive — not to mention the Framers — cannot support.

How his hands were able to type that sentence without automatically wrapping themselves around his own throat only proves that I need more psionic training.

And then Alberto Gonzales chimes in proving that after getting her nails done, Nemesis is getting sloshed on Caramel Appletinis at Chili's rather than making with the whole justice thing.

“To half through executive order the deportation of some undocumented immigrants looks like a political calculation to win Hispanic votes,” Gonzales told the crowd at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference in Washington, D.C. Saturday, “and subjects him to criticism that he is violating his oath of office by selectively failing to enforce the law.”

These guys are trolling.  Period.

Gonzo Goes Gonzo On The GOP

As much as I think former Bush-era AG Alberto Gonzales should be spending time behind bars rather than penning WaPo op-eds, the jackass actually calls out congressional Republicans for not enacting Bush's immigration plan and scuttling it again under Obama and joins the growing chorus of "knock it off you morons" on the whole 14th Amendment nonsense.

President George W. Bush pushed for comprehensive immigration reform, but Republican members of Congress refused to join him. Although President Obama and the present congressional leadership have used their majority to enact sweeping health-care and financial reform, they seem to lack the will to try to pass comprehensive immigration legislation. Even my apolitical and saintly 78-year-old mother wonders whether the Democrats are keeping this issue on the table for political reasons, hoping that Republicans will propose enforcement measures that alienate Hispanic voters.

Most recently, some politicians and concerned citizens have expressed a desire to amend the 14th Amendment of our Constitution, which says in Section 1, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." Proponents want to discourage undocumented mothers from crossing our borders to give birth to children derogatorily referred to as "anchor babies," who by law are American citizens. Such a change is difficult to carry out, as it should be, requiring a new amendment ratified by three-quarters of the states.

I do not support such an amendment. Based on principles from my tenure as a judge, I think constitutional amendments should be reserved for extraordinary circumstances that we cannot address effectively through legislation or regulation. Because most undocumented workers come here to provide for themselves and their families, a constitutional amendment will not solve our immigration crisis. People will certainly continue to cross our borders to find a better life, irrespective of the possibilities of U.S. citizenship.

As the nation's former chief law enforcement officer and a citizen who believes in the rule of law, I cannot condone anyone coming into this country illegally. However, as a father who wants the best for my own children, I understand why these parents risk coming to America -- especially when there is little fear of prosecution. If we want to stop this practice, we should pass and enforce comprehensive immigration legislation rather than amend our Constitution. 

Which is what Democrats have been saying all along.  It seems the nation's first Hispanic AG, himself the child of immigrants, thinks that scapegoating immigrants in general is a bad long-term strategy for the GOP and for America.  Imagine that.

Two questions:  One, what does Gonzo think of the Muslim-bashing among the GOP's luminaries?  Certainly a "man of the law" like him sees Obama's position as the correct one, yes?

Second, how fast is Gonzo going to get thrown under the bus by the racists in the GOP?  My guess is going to be "before the end of the day" especially with calling out Republicans in Congress for scrapping Bush's immigration legislation.

I'll check back on this later on.

Couldn't Have Happened To A More Deserving Guy

I missed this story on Friday, but I'm glad I found it today.  Seems our old friend Gonzo is in a spot of financial trouble in addition to his ongoing legal problems.

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told Main Justice in an interview yesterday that he's looking for donations to cover his extensive legal bills -- and that he still hasn't found a book publisher.

"We need to do a better effort raising additional money, and so we're going to try to do that as soon as the last investigation [ends]," the ex-attorney general said. "That investigation has been out there going on forever. I'm not sure what's going on there, but we're waiting for that to be completed."

Once it's over, Gonzales said, "that will again raise some interest in raising additional money."
As for the book....

Gonzales -- under whose tenure the Justice Department often appeared to take its orders from the White House political office -- says he's finished about 12 chapters of what he thinks will be a 20-chapter book. He hasn't found a publisher yet. (He also didn't have a publisher when we checked in in December...of 2008).

"Given all the decisions that I was a part of, the decisions I witnessed, and the decisions I made, I think it will be something that will be of interest and I hope it will be a useful contribution to the historic record of the Bush legacy," Gonzales told Main Justice.

Oh I'm sure America is just fascinated in what Gonzo here has to say in his book. So much so that...pretty much nobody wants to publish his book (not even the winger press, apparently.)  He's been shopping his book now for 18 months plus and still nobody wants to touch the guy's story.  In a world where Newtie and Moose Lady get book advances, seems nobody's willing to take a chance on Gonzo's story here.

Given what he helped do to our country as AG, that's just a crying shame, isn't it?

Eric Holder Needs To Go

Really, Obama?  This is pretty amateur, even for your DoJ and its complete refusal to prosecute war crimes in the previous administration.

Bush administration lawyers who wrote memos blessing the waterboarding of terrorism suspects and other harsh interrogation tactics "exercised poor judgment" but will not face discipline for their actions, according to Justice Department correspondence sent to lawmakers late Friday.

The long-awaited conclusion marks a turnaround from recommendations against two of the lawyers by the department's Office of Professional Responsibility. OPR, which conducts ethics investigations of Justice Department attorneys, twice urged that allegations against John C. Yoo and Jay S. Bybee be sent to state legal disciplinary authorities for further action, the correspondence said.

But the decision was overruled by David Margolis, a career lawyer in the Deputy Attorney General's office, on Jan. 5, the letter said. Margolis "declined to adopt OPR's findings of professional misconduct and concluded instead that Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee exercised poor judgment in connection with the drafting of the pertinent memoranda," said the letter from Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich. 

Oh, and it gets worse as the FBI also officially closed the case today on the anthrax attacks.

The FBI sought to close the book on its long, frustrating hunt for the killer behind the 2001 anthrax letters Friday, formally ending its investigation and concluding a mentally unhinged scientist was responsible for killing five people and unnerving Americans nationwide.

After years of false leads, no arrests and public criticism, the FBI and Justice Department said Dr. Bruce Ivins, a government researcher, acted alone.

Ivins killed himself in 2008 as prosecutors prepared to indict him for the attacks. He had denied involvement, and his family and some friends have continued to insist he was innocent. 

I'll tell you what, Obama.  You make it pretty goddamn hard to support you when your FBI and your Department of Justice is even more corrupt than Bush's.   Not that Hillary Clinton or John McCain would have done any better, mind you.  But on this, you are an utter failure.  And I'm calling you and Eric Holder out on it.

It's time to seriously consider dismissing Holder from the position.  He's as bad as Gonzo.  He's letting Yoo and Bybee walk for torturing people in our name, and letting a dead man take the fall for a crime he may have not committed.

You tell me, why does he deserve not to be made to resign again?

Jumping At Shadows

I'm still trying to figure out how Jennifer Rubin arrives at this conclusion where she goes from "Mike Bloomberg doesn't want to pay for the increased security for putting KSM on trial" directly to "AG Eric Holder should be fired."

But something else, I suspect, more fundamental has occurred. The entire premise of the Obama anti-terrorism approach, which entailed  a willful ignorance on the nature of our enemy, a cavalier indifference to the concerns of ordinary Americans (be they 9/11 families or New York tax payers), and a headlong plunge into uncharted legal terrain has evaporated in the wake of the Christmas Day bomber and the general perception that the Obama team has not a clue what they are doing. The public is no longer willing to accept it on faith that the Obami know best. To the contrary, the illusion of competence has been shattered. Elected leaders are now willing to stand up and say what we all knew to be true. As Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University quoted by the Times, observes, “This will be one more stroke for al-Qaeda’s propaganda.” And a nightmare for New York.

The question remains as the White House scramble for Plan B: what is Eric Holder still doing there? It was he, the president tells us, who came up with this scheme. (His Department also implemented the “Mirandize the terrorist” policy.) It appears as though Holder exercised no due diligence (just as there had been none exercised prior to the announcement to close Guantanamo.

Say what?  It seems to me that this proves that we actually have a thoughtful and competent AG, A Justice Department that doesn't try to rule by legal fiat, and a President that practices common sense, unlike the last guy in charge.  It also seems to me that Obama respected the suggestion from Bloomberg, and is still very much holding open the prospect of trying KSM in civilian court.  Plenty of other places to do it.

But Holder being fired over this?  You're taking this decision as a vindication of Ashcroft-Gonzo era stupidity, when as usual you can't see past the nose on your face.

Wishful thinking, madam.  I like how it's perfectly fine to torture people, but actually listening to other people's opinions is a terminal offense for an Attorney General.

Switch to decaf.

What We Stand For

Having read over this morning's Newsweek preview of the CIA Inspector General's report on torture I have to say that America looked into the abyss after 9/11, and the abyss stared back.

According to two sources—one who has read a draft of the paper and one who was briefed on it—the report describes how one detainee, suspected USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was threatened with a gun and a power drill during the course of CIA interrogation. According to the sources, who like others quoted in this article asked not to be named while discussing sensitive information, Nashiri's interrogators brandished the gun in an effort to convince him that he was going to be shot. Interrogators also turned on a power drill and held it near him. "The purpose was to scare him into giving [information] up," said one of the sources. A federal law banning the use of torture expressly forbids threatening a detainee with "imminent death."

The report also says, according to the sources, that a mock execution was staged in a room next to a detainee, during which a gunshot was fired in an effort to make the suspect believe that another prisoner had been killed. The inspector general's report alludes to more than one mock execution.

I have to say, what would Americans say if our soldiers were treated like this? It would be a national outrage. And yes, I'm well aware that much worse has been done to American soliders, contractors, and civilians. But it does not make what we're doing right.

Top Bush CIA officials, including Tenet's successors as CIA director, Porter Goss and Gen. Michael Hayden, strongly lobbied for the IG report to be kept secret from the public. They argued that its release would damage America's reputation around the world, could damage CIA morale, and would tip off terrorists regarding American interrogation tactics. "Justice has had the complete document since 2004, and their career prosecutors have reviewed it carefully for legal accountability," said CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano. "That's already been done."

The inspector general's report is expected to fuel political debates over whether the tough interrogation methods used during the Bush administration actually worked. According to another source who has seen the document, the report says that the agency's interrogation program did produce usable intelligence.

At the same time the administration releases the inspector general's report, it is also expected to release other CIA documents that assert the agency collected valuable intelligence through the interrogation program. For months, former vice president Dick Cheney has called for these documents to be released. However, a person familiar with the contents of the documents says that they contain material that both opponents and supporters of Bush administration tactics can use to bolster their case. The Senate Committee on Intelligence is now conducting what is supposed to be a thorough investigation of the CIA's detention-and-interrogation program. The probe is intended not only to document everything that happened but also to assess whether on balance the program produced major breakthroughs or a deluge of false leads.

So once again, the argument will be "Was it worth it? Did it save lives?" That's a false argument, actually. If it was unequivocally clear that these acts saved lives, the information would have been released well before now. The Bush DoJ has been sitting on this report since 2004. If the information held within it somehow proved that torture worked, why sit on it?

The answer is of course that it didn't. The answer of course is that Bush, Cheney, Gonzo and the crew broke international law time and time again.

It is fast approaching the time that as a people we have to ask ourselves "Who will be accountable for what has been done in our name?"

It's Just A Goddamn Piece Of Paper

President Bush's infamous quote on the Constitution takes on new meaning today due to this story in the NY Times.

Top Bush administration officials in 2002 debated testing the Constitution by sending American troops into the suburbs of Buffalo to arrest a group of men suspected of plotting with Al Qaeda, according to former administration officials.

Some of the advisers to President George W. Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, argued that a president had the power to use the military on domestic soil to sweep up the terrorism suspects, who came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, and declare them enemy combatants.

Mr. Bush ultimately decided against the proposal to use military force.

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 pretty much strictly prohibits the use of the American military for law enforcement duties (ourside of the Coast Guard) Our old friends Dick Cheney and John Yoo had some up with the notion that it was legal to send our troops into Buffalo because we were at war. The Act only mentions the Army and Air Force specifically, but a further regulation in the United States Code prohibits all branches of the military from engaging in "a search, seizure, arrest, or other similar activity unless participation in such activity by such member is otherwise authorized by law." Dickster there figured they had the power to authorize it because it was a national security issue, not law enforcement.

“The president has ample constitutional and statutory authority to deploy the military against international or foreign terrorists operating within the United States,” the memorandum said.

The memorandum — written by the lawyers John C. Yoo and Robert J. Delahunty — was directed to Alberto R. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, who had asked the department about a president’s authority to use the military to combat terrorist activities in the United States.

The memorandum was declassified in March. But the White House debate about the Lackawanna group is the first evidence that top American officials, after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, actually considered using the document to justify deploying the military into an American town to make arrests.

And that's the absolutely scary thing. Dick Cheney and John Yoo wanted to use military troops on U.S. soil to capture "terrorists." Say what you will about the armament of your average big city police department, with SWAT teams and weapons and whatnot, but they don't have tanks and bombers and cruise missiles and helicopter gunships and Predator drones. You see, once you go down that road using the military to enforce laws, who is there to stop them from enforcing anything they want?

Since 2002, we've seen what the Bush administration (and the Obama administration for that matter) is willing to do in order to "target terrorists" in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. They haven't exactly taken great care not to leave tens of thousands dead in collateral damage. Imagine that same standard applied here in your hometown. Hey, the guy down the street is a terrorist. Sorry about your house. Sorry about you car. Sorry about your family. You have our deepest sympathies.

And before we all go "Yay, Bush saved us from this evil" let's remember that Congress and Bush signed into law the ability to declare martial law and take control of the National Guard for use inside the United States. That part of the bill was repealed a year later, but it was clear Bush could have at any point there for a while declared martial law and taken a state's National Guard...or all the states' National Guard...and mobilized them under his command. It would have amounted to the same thing in the end.

Next time anyone accuses Barack Obama of being a fascist, turn them on to that NY Times article. Steve Benen has a great observation:

Why would Cheney oppose sending the FBI to go get the suspected bad guys? Because he feared the evidence may not be compelling enough to justify an arrest and conviction. It was better, he said, to have the military take the Lackawanna Six into custody, declare them enemy combatants, and not worry about due process or meeting legal standards.

Which actually makes the most sense as to why Cheney wanted to do it, plus the climate of fear they were trying to create in 2002 to get every other concession from Congress and the American people would have been well-served by it. Marcy Wheeler adds:

Which to me is just as interesting as the news that Cheney was pushing to do this: Imagine how well it would work to impose military rule just in time for the first anniversary of 9/11, and just as you're rolling out the case for the Iraq War?

Which is also very true. Remember what the goal was in 2002-2003...to terrify us into war with Iraq. We went anyway, of course...but what other concessions would Bush/Cheney have gotten if they had established they were willing to use the military to detain "suspected terrorists" inside the US?

I'll go one step further. What would have stopped them from deploying troops in major Democratic Party urban centers in November 2002, less than two months after the anniversary of 9/11 to "protect our high-value target election precincts from terrorists?" If you were a minority voter in New York or Washington D.C. or L.A. or Chicago, are you really going to go into a platoon of Army soldiers or Marines and security checkpoints and all that just to vote? (Mysteriously, these overtly armed soldiers and security checkpoints would be missing from more rural Red precincts.)

How many fewer urban votes would that have caused in 2002? And of course, the public would demand that kind of safety in 2004 again too...and 2006...and 2008...talk about the ultimate in voter supression.

No, Cheney knew exactly what he was doing. Bush said no at the time, so Cheney relied on other methods to get us into Iraq. It could have been much worse. You see now why we have to fully investigate all the leftover garbage Bush left behind? The Warren Terrah was almost a shooting war on our soil, and the shooting was going to be done against American citizens by the American military.

[UPDATE 10:00 AM] Steven D at the Frog Pond adds:

So, because of the media drumbeat about the dangers of these minor and frankly insignificant members of an upstate New York Yemeni community, Cheney and others tried to bamboozle Bush and the rest of the country into authorizing something that no President had done since the Civil War -- use US soldiers to capture "enemy combatants" on US soil. Lincoln might be forgiven that excess, considering the South was in open rebellion and fielded armies in the field capable of invading the Northern states (which they did on several occasions). Cheney on the other hand saw these inept young men as an excuse to eliminate the Fourth Amendment whenever the President deemed it necessary. Spying on US citizens using the resources of the NSA to sweep up information on our financial, medical and online transactions and communications wasn't enough for this Dick. Truly, this was an attempt at an executive branch power grab of monumental proportions.

Good thing Cheney never sent his CIA "death squads" after Bush. Imagine what a President Cheney would have done had he not been hindered by such a lazy faux cowboy like Dubya?

Indeed. How close did we come back then to a functional coup led by dysfunctional assholes?

[UPDATE 1:11 PM] The Double G weighs in on just how horrific that John Yoo memo was from a legal and Constitutional standpoint.

[I]n 2002, Dick Cheney and David Addington urged that U.S. military troops be used to arrest and detain American citizens, inside the U.S., who were suspected of involvement with Al Qaeda. That was done pursuant to a previously released DOJ memo (.pdf) authored by John Yoo and Robert Delahunty, addressed to Alberto Gonzales, dated October 23, 2001, and chillingly entitled "Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the U.S." That Memo had concluded that the President had authority to deploy the U.S. military against American citizens on U.S. soil. Far worse, it asserted that in exercising that power, the President could not be bound either by Congressional statutes prohibiting such use (such as the Posse Comitatus Act) or even by the Constitution's Fourth Amendment, which -- the Memo concluded -- was "inapplicable" to what it called "domestic military operations."

Though it received very little press attention, it is not hyperbole to observe that this October 23 Memo was one of the most significant events in American politics in the last several decades, because it explicitly declared the U.S. Constitution -- the Bill of Rights -- inoperative inside the U.S., as applied to U.S. citizens. Just read what it said in arguing that neither the Fourth Amendment -- nor even the First Amendment -- can constrain what the President can do when overseeing "domestic military operations" (I wrote about that Memo when it was released last March and excerpted the most revealing and tyrannical portions: here).

It was a bold and frightening step towards military rule of the country, prevented only by an apparent failure of will to stomach proceeding to the logical endpoint of the Memo's assumptions on the plenary executive. Bush wouldn't cooperate, and Cheney wasn't going to go all the way.

I guess he got cold feet. There but for the grace of God goes our Republic...what's left of it, anyway.

Gonzo Goes To School

The Austin American-Statesman is reporting that Alberto Gonzales will be getting a teaching gig at Texas Tech in August.

Gonzales, who was Gov. George W. Bush’s lawyer, Texas secretary of state and then a Texas Supreme Court justice before joining Bush in Washington, will be working as an visiting professor in the political science department, teaching a “special topics” course on contemporary issues in the executive branch, according to Dora Rodriguez, a senior business assistant in the department. The university later said it will be a junior-level course.

In a press release issued hours after I inquired, the university said that as of Aug. 1, Gonzales will join the Texas Tech University System to assist both Texas Tech University and Angelo State University (in San Angelo) with recruiting and retaining first generation and under-represented students.

The university said he will work with Texas Tech’s Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement in the planning of a first generation and minority student leadership training and development program.

Their statement continues that he also will teach a junior-level seminar course, “Contemporary Issues in the Executive Branch” in the Department of Political Science at Texas Tech. As a visiting professor Gonzales will guest lecture to classes across the campus.

Kent Hance, Texas Tech’s chancellor, was quoted saying: “I am excited that Alberto Gonzales is bringing his experience to Texas Tech. His own upbringing in Houston as part of a migrant family with eight children makes him qualified to tell underrepresented Texas students that college is possible. He will help Texas Tech and ASU prepare our students for success and to be future leaders in the state of Texas and beyond.”

Everything really is bigger in the Lone Star State, including the hoops people are jumping through to pretend that Gonzo isn't the most corrupt, political, and incompetent AG the country ever had the misfortune of having. But hey, given the number of Bushies pulling teaching gigs these days, it gives creedence to the old saying "Those who can't do, teach." The fact an ex-AG couldn't land a job for six months should tell you all you need to know about how the private sector views the guy's abilities. As one TPM commenter said:

Please tell me there's at least one Texas Tech political science student with the guts to answer "I do not recall" to every test question. Maybe even "I do not recall remembering."

Or even better, make sure you're involved in student government and then claim "I don't have to answer it because these legal theories do not apply to the Student Government executive."

Ass.

Harman-izing

TPM Muckracker has a timeline up of the Harman/AIPAC case if you're looking for some basics.

Ten Questions

Many questions are raised by the Harman/AIPAC/Wiretapping story, and here's the rundown of the ten questions America should demand answers to, and related questions I've come up with:

1) Who wiretapped Harman's conversation and why? Was it Harman being investigated? Was she being tapped by an abusive Bush NSA, or was it the Israeli being tapped for the AIPAC spy case? Was there another reason?

2) How much influence does AIPAC have over Democrats in Congress? Harman believed that helping AIPAC could pay off with the House Intelligence Committee chair. Is this leak from somebody who wants to see AIPAC hurt?

3) How did Alberto Gonzales decide to use this tap against Harman to blackmail her to support Bush's wiretapping program? Did the NSA clue him in?

4) How many other members of Congress were tapped? How many still are being tapped?

5) Who decided to leak the story? Was it the intel community risking the knowledge that they were wiretapping Harman to gain retribution for Obama's torture memo leak, or did somebody in the Obama administration hang Harman out to dry to play hardball with AIPAC? Or, was it a third party doing their patriotic duty to shine sunlight on this whole rotten thing?

6) What will Obama do at this point if it's clear that Gonzo broke the law? Will he still refuse to prosecute Bush officials? Will Eric Holder call for an investigation?

7) What will Congress do? Will they hold hearings on this issue? Will they call for investigations of Gonzales?

8) What will Jane Harman do? Will she be pressured to resign? Will she be charged? Will the case be reopened by Eric Holder?

9) How will Israel react to this? Will anyone in the Holder DoJ dare risk investigating Israeli spying? Will Bibi Netanyahu start playing fair with Obama or will Israel play hardball back?

10) And finally, just how deep does this rabbit hole go?

Double G has more.

Me AIPAC, You Jane, This War

Congressional Quarterly is reporting something of a major bombshell today, news that California Democrat Jane Harman was heard on an NSA wiretap talking to an Israeli intel officer and offering to intervene on behalf of two AIPAC officials suspected of spying on the US for Israel in exchange for support for Harman to get the chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

In exchange for Harman’s help, the sources said, the suspected Israeli agent pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., then-House minority leader, to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections, which the Democrats were heavily favored to win.

Seemingly wary of what she had just agreed to, according to an official who read the NSA transcript, Harman hung up after saying, “This conversation doesn’t exist.”

Harman declined to discuss the wiretap allegations, instead issuing an angry denial through a spokesman.

“These claims are an outrageous and recycled canard, and have no basis in fact,” Harman said in a prepared statement. “I never engaged in any such activity. Those who are peddling these false accusations should be ashamed of themselves.”

It’s true that allegations of pro-Israel lobbyists trying to help Harman get the chairmanship of the intelligence panel by lobbying and raising money for Pelosi aren’t new.

They were widely reported in 2006, along with allegations that the FBI launched an investigation of Harman that was eventually dropped for a “lack of evidence.”

And while that's bad enough, it gets even worse for Harman:

What is new is that Harman is said to have been picked up on a court-approved NSA tap directed at alleged Israel covert action operations in Washington.

And that, contrary to reports that the Harman investigation was dropped for “lack of evidence,” it was Alberto R. Gonzales, President Bush’s top counsel and then attorney general, who intervened to stop the Harman probe.

Why? Because, according to three top former national security officials, Gonzales wanted Harman to be able to help defend the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was about break in The New York Times and engulf the White House.

Gonzo allegedly dunked the Israeli quid pro quo case against Harman in exchange for complete support for Bush's wiretapping program.

Of course, Harman didn't get the job anyway: she defended the program that apparently wiretapped her own self and trapped her, and on top of all that Pelosi appointed Texas's Silvestre Reyes as chair of the House Intelligence Committee. Still, if these allegations are true, Jane Harman is in a lot of trouble. As BooMan says, it's best to simply replace her in a 2010 primary.

Josh Marshall has more at TPM calling the CQ story "so radioactive it's hard to know which of fifty different directions to go with it" and asks the million-dollar question:

This raises lots and lots of questions -- not least of which is why this is coming out right now. Any particular reason people in the intel community would want to start talking to the press right now?

And the answer of course is Democrats (not Obama, but the Congressional Dems still calling for investigations) just got a message pitch from the intel community, and that message is "You hurt us with any more torture investigations or hearings, we will hurt you right back."

A whole hell of a lot of Democrats signed on to some scummy Bush-era manuevers. The CIA is betting Congress will run out of resolve for torture hearings long before the Bushie holdovers in the intel community run out of Democrats to burn.

It's war, and both sides have a lot to lose. Just how deep does this rabbit hole go? The intel community has just staked out one Dem in the sun to make a point that there will be a price to pay to go digging in the CIA's garden, because there's more than a few people willing to sell maps leading directly to the secrets the Democrats buried over the last eight years.

What will the Democrats do now?

Going Gonzo In Spain

The Daily Beast is reporting that Spain is indeed planning to announce criminal indictments today against six Bush administration officials, but there could be a change in the judge presiding over the case.

The six defendants—in addition to Gonzales, Federal Appeals Court Judge and former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, University of California law professor and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, former Defense Department general counsel and current Chevron lawyer William J. Haynes II, Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff David Addington, and former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith—are accused of having given the green light to the torture and mistreatment of prisoners held in U.S. detention in “the war on terror.” The case arises in the context of a pending proceeding before the court involving terrorism charges against five Spaniards formerly held at Guantánamo. A group of human-rights lawyers originally filed a criminal complaint asking the court to look at the possibility of charges against the six American lawyers. Baltasar Garzón Real, the investigating judge, accepted the complaint and referred it to Spanish prosecutors for a view as to whether they would accept the case and press it forward. “The evidence provided was more than sufficient to justify a more comprehensive investigation,” one of the lawyers associated with the prosecution stated.

But prosecutors will also ask that Judge Garzón, an internationally known figure due to his management of the case against former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and other high-profile cases, step aside. The case originally came to Garzón because he presided over efforts to bring terrorism charges against the five Spaniards previously held at Guantánamo. Spanish prosecutors consider it “awkward” for the same judge to have both the case against former U.S. officials based on the possible torture of the five Spaniards at Guantánamo and the case against those very same Spaniards. A source close to the prosecution also noted that there was concern about the reaction to the case in some parts of the U.S. media, where it had been viewed, incorrectly, as a sort of personal frolic of Judge Garzón. Instead, the prosecutors will ask Garzón to transfer the case to Judge Ismail Moreno, who is currently handling an investigation into kidnapping charges surrounding the CIA’s use of facilities as a safe harbor in connection with the seizure of Khalid el-Masri, a German greengrocer who was seized and held at various CIA blacksites for about half a year as a result of mistaken identity. The decision on the transfer will be up to Judge Garzón in the first instance, and he is expected to make a quick ruling. If he denies the request, it may be appealed.

Spanish federal judicial politics aside, this is deadly serious. Spain cannot go too far down this road without eventually asking the US to extradite the six to Spain to face the trial or after being convicted in absentia. Should the latter happen, that will put Obama in a bind. He's most certainly not going to have Gonzo rounded up and shipped off to Madrid, but the legal opinions and procedures that Obama is currently borrowing from the Bushies will certainly come into play.

Both Washington and Madrid appear determined not to allow the pending criminal investigation to get in the way of improved relations, which both desire, particularly in regard to coordinated economic policy to confront the current financial crisis and a reshaped NATO mandate for action in Afghanistan. With the case now proceeding, that will be more of a challenge. The reaction on American editorial pages is divided—some questioning sharply why the Obama administration is not conducting an investigation, which is implicitly the question raised by the Spanish prosecutors. Publications loyal to the Bush team argue that the Spanish investigation is an “intrusion” into American affairs, even when those affairs involve the torture of five Spaniards on Cuba.

Things could get very, very interesting.

Alberto Gonzales: Professional Victim

Steve Benen nails it.

GONZALES FEELS SORRY FOR HIMSELF.... Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales left office in disgrace 16 months ago, and has kept a low profile since. His reputation has not improved in the interim -- Gonzales has struggled to find a law firm willing to hire him -- but at least he hasn't said or done anything ridiculous since his departure from public life.

Gonzales, however, is apparently interested in some kind of comeback. The former A.G. is writing a book about his tenure in the Bush administration and chatted with the Wall Street Journal about how mean everyone has been to him.

"What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?" he said during an interview Tuesday, offering his most extensive comments since leaving government.

During a lunch meeting two blocks from the White House, where he served under his longtime friend, President George W. Bush, Mr. Gonzales said that "for some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror."

Is Gonzales really that confused about what he did that was "so fundamentally wrong"? I suppose he proved during multiple congressional hearings that his memory is similar to that of someone who's suffered serious head trauma, but Gonzales' list of scandals is hard to forget.

Just off the top of my head, there was the U.S. Attorney purge scandal, Gonzales signing torture memos, his conduct in John Ashcroft's hospital room, his oversight of a Justice Department that was engaged in widespread employment discrimination, and his gutting of the DoJ's Civil Rights Division. Gonzales was even investigated by the department's Inspector General on allegations of perjury and obstruction.

On warrantless-searches, the Military Commissions Act, policy on detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and the Geneva Conventions, Gonzales was a disaster. On managing the Justice Department, he filled his staff with Pat Robertson acolytes, feigned ignorance while structural disasters unfolded, and showed shocking tolerance for corruption and politicization of a department that, for the benefit of the nation and the rule of law, needed to maintain independence.

And I'll add a hearty "screw you" to Gonzo and ask him to stand in the same room with the family of any of our troops or any of the 9/11 families, any Iraqi, Afghan, Pakistani family that got bombed, or the family of any of the millions killed since 9/11 and say to their face that he believes he is a casualty.

More Tortured Logic

Via BooMan, we discover the NY Times Editorial Board has a problem with people who torture.

Most Americans have long known that the horrors of Abu Ghraib were not the work of a few low-ranking sociopaths. All but President Bush’s most unquestioning supporters recognized the chain of unprincipled decisions that led to the abuse, torture and death in prisons run by the American military and intelligence services.

Now, a bipartisan report by the Senate Armed Services Committee has made what amounts to a strong case for bringing criminal charges against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; his legal counsel, William J. Haynes; and potentially other top officials, including the former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff.

That's no joke, folks, when the Gray Lady is calling for criminal charges against cabinet members. The Senate report itself is pretty damning.

"The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own," the report states. "The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees."

The report is the most direct refutation to date of the administration's rationale for using aggressive interrogation tactics -- that inflicting humiliation and pain on detainees was legal and effective, and helped protect the country. The 25-member panel, without one dissent among the 12 Republican members, declared the opposite to be true.

The administration's policies and the resulting controversies, the panel concluded, "damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority."

The panel drew from congressional testimony and official documents, many of which were previously released during a nearly two-year probe. While many of the underlying facts were known, the report represented the most significant attempt by Congress to assess one of the defining controversies of the Bush presidency.

"These policies are wrong and must never be repeated," McCain said in a statement.

Rumsfeld seems to get the most of the criticism and deservedly so. Of course, he denies everything and blames Congress for even daring to investigate this sort of thing.

Rumsfeld, who served as defense secretary from 2001 to 2006, rejected the report's conclusions and said it was the committee, particularly Levin, that had sullied the nation's image.

"It's regrettable that Senator Levin has decided to use the committee's time and taxpayer dollars to make unfounded allegations against those who have served our nation," said Keith Urbahn, an aide to Rumsfeld. He accused Levin of pursuing a politically motivated "false narrative" that is "unencumbered by the preponderance of the facts."

So the real question is will Bush pardon these assholes on the way out the door? I think it's a distinct possibility, because come January 20, the Democrats will have the leverage needed to start some real fireworks.

Besides, I'm thinking Senate Armed Services Committee chair Carl Levin, Michigan's senior Senator, may be looking for a little payback for the GOP at this point.

Obama's AG

Many news outlets are saying this morning that Obama has picked former Clinton Justice Department #2 man Eric Holder as his choice for Attorney General, but there's one rather big blemish on his record:

Holder, 57, has a rich background within the criminal justice system as a former judge and top federal prosecutor in Washington. He is widely known within the city's legal community and for his philanthropic work on behalf of troubled juveniles detained at Washington's Oak Hill facility. If he is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Holder will be the first African American attorney general.

For the past several years, Holder has defended private corporations as a partner at the law firm Covington and Burling. But he took on an active role in the Obama campaign as a friend and adviser to the senator from Illinois after meeting him at a Washington dinner party, and over the summer served on his vice presidential vetting team.

Holder has won praise from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, although his selection is likely to revive questions about his failure to act forcefully to prevent a last-minute pardon of fugitive Marc Rich, who won clemency from President Bill Clinton during his last days in office in early 2001.

The Republicans are already attacking Holder on this, and the wingnuts are gleefully pointing to this as proof that "Clinton's third term" is underway and that Holder is somehow worse than disgraced Bush AG Alberto Gonzales. I leave with you with part of a speech given by Holder in 2004, courtesy of Melissa McEwan at Shakesville:

At the beginning of the 21st century, this nation faces problems that are old and that are new: racial, sexual orientation, and gender inequality all remain. … The solutions are contained within a new, dynamic, progressive movement that has the ability to inspire and motivate the people of this nation in the way that progressives have in the past. That ability exists in this room, and in the law schools, and in the courtrooms, and in the law offices around this country. It is our task to unlock, to unleash the creative energy needed to give life to this renewed movement. It is not enough for us to gather at annual meetings, to participate in panels, and to return to our communities, and be content to observe, or to passively criticize, the now dominant governing philosophy.

Quite simply, it is time to act. It is time to organize. It is time to retake the levers of government and to use them for the common good. It is time, finally, to be true to our ideological heritage. And so my challenge to you tonight is to leave this convention renewed in your convictions, and committed to using your abundant talents for the good of the citizens of this country.

So...yeah. This is one of the guys who will help Obama put the country back together, I hope. I'm far less worried about Eric Holder and Marc Rich than I am his views on the Constitution, torture, executive power and the "plenary executive", the legality and scope of how much power the Warren Terrah grants President Obama, enforcement of civil rights and voting laws, and the politicization of the Justice Department.

Even more than SecState, Obama's appointment to AG is the most important appointment he can make after the "above the law" presidency of Bush, Ashcroft, Gonzo, John Yoo, and Mike Mukasey. It was the Bush legal team (illegal team?) that gave him the cover to do all the horrendous things that he did to America like torture, like suspension of habeas corpus, like wiretapping American citizens, and it was specifically Gonzales who turned Justice into the Cover Preznitman's Ass Department.

Only after Gonzo went too far and fired career US Attorneys based on political reasons was he forced to resign. Meanwhile, current Chief Ass-Coverer Mike Mukasey has done exactly nothing to clean up Justice.

I understand that "Better than Gonzo" is about the lowest bar in the history of Presidential cabinet appointments, but Eric Holder seems like somebody actually dedicated to Rule Of Law and not Rule By President. More than any other cabinet position, it's the AG that has the most work ahead of him, and it's good to see former Consitutional Law professor Barack Obama take this seriously.