I'm ready... I think

Senator Patrick Leahy:



As long as we can string them up afterwards.....

Dangerous for exactly who?

Last night on The O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly showed a clip of a Fox News producer ambushing Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) to accuse him of political hypocrisy for urging an investigation into Bush crimes after he had opposed the Clinton impeachment. “This Leahy thing — this is beyond the pale,” O’Reilly moaned.

Marc Thiessen, Bush’s former chief speechwriter, agreed. Not only would the investigations be hypocritcal, he said, but worse, they would be “terribly dangerous” because they would expose the “facts” of the U.S.’s interrogation techniques to Osama bin Laden

I don't think they're thinking at all about bin Laden, do you? I think they're afraid of all the shit they've done when they thought no one would ever know. The detainees would die in Gitmo and the lawyers and doctors and torturers would just melt back into society and no one would be the wiser.

But we've wised up and we want to know. Now.

We say yes, but you say no.

Bush signed the OPEN Government Act which made the FOIA stronger, but now he's trying to ignore the law and shift things to the Justice Department. Does that mean he has more loyal Bushies there?:

In August, the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government reported that “current government handling of FOIA requests is deteriorating” and that the Justice Department was “consistently granted the lowest percentage of [FOIA] appeals of any agency.”

On New Years Eve, facing “congressional pushback against the Bush administration’s movement to greater secrecy,” President Bush signed the OPEN Government Act, toughening the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The legislation — unanimously passed by the House and Senate — would push agencies to respond more quickly to records requests.

But now, the White House is doing everything it can to neuter the law. Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT) said yesterday that Bush’s FY2009 “funds for the Office of Government Information Services authorized under the newly enacted OPEN Government Act will be shifted to the Department of Justice” from the National Archives. Congress Daily reports:

“But by shifting the funding to the Justice Department, OMB would effectively eliminate the office, because it appears no similar operation would be created there,” according to an aide to Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT). […]

National Archives officials are relatively independent of political pressure, the staffer explained, “but DOJ is different.” Government transparency advocates consider the department hostile to efforts to improve FOIA responsiveness, in part because it represents agencies sued by FOIA requesters.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), a cosponsor of the OPEN Government legislation said he “does agree with Senator Leahy and would oppose that effort” of the adminstration.

Okay, the first thing the new Democratic president needs to do is fire everyone in the Department of Justice who was hired on after January of 2001, or has had close connection to the Bush administration during these eight long years. The Department of Justice should protect the law not the president's ass. It's about freedom of information not secrecy. It's about justice not cover.

crossposted at SteveAudio.

Abu Gonzales gets an F

Senator Leahy is unimpressed and gives him until the end of the week:

“The Attorney General’s legalistic explanation of his misleading testimony under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week is not what one should expect from the top law enforcement officer of the United States. It is time for full candor to enforce the law and promote justice, rather than word parsing.

“The Attorney General has until the end of this week to correct and supplement his testimony. I hope he will take that opportunity to clarify the many issues on which he appears not to have been forthcoming and to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee and the American people the whole truth.”

What? You gave me an F?! Look at all the work I've done to answer your questions!



Do you know how hard it is not to recall stuff?

Then why did Bush want it signed in blood?

Wonders Sara Taylor when learning that loyalty to the Prez does not trump her oath to uphold the Constitution.

Via Sorghum Crow at Sorghum Crow's General Store, Sara Taylor getting an ethics lesson from Senator Leahy:

This could get really interesting...

Patrick Fitzgerald to be called before the Senate?

Today on CNN’s Late Edition, Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Arlen Specter (R-PA), the committee’s top Republican, announced that they were interested in calling Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to testify about the CIA leak investigation.

The Dog Ate My Homework Administration

Accountability sucks, doesn't it?


No, I don't eat emails. Your socks are a different matter.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) lets them have it:

For years preceding this new Congress, accountability has been lacking in this Administration. Loyalty to the President has been rewarded over all else. That lack of accountability, and lack of the checks and balances that fostered it, must end and, I hope, has ended.

We do not need another commendation for the “heckuva job” done by those who have failed in their essential duties to the American people. True accountability means being forthcoming, and it means there are consequences for improper actions.

The White House continues to stand by the firings of the U.S. attorneys and despite assurances by the President that we would receive cooperation, documents and access to witnesses, the White House has yet to produce a single document or make any witnesses available.

Now we are learning that the “off book” communications they were having about these actions, by using Republican political email addresses, have not been preserved. Like the famous 18-minute gap in the Nixon White House tapes, it appears likely that key documentation has been erased or misplaced. This sounds like the Administration’s version of the dog ate my homework. I am deeply disturbed that just when this Administration is finally subjected to meaningful oversight, it cannot produce the necessary information. This Administration has worn out the benefit of the doubt and undermined whatever credibility it had left. The American people are right that they are entitled to full and honest public testimony of the White House staff responsible for this debacle.

Further comments:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush's aides are lying about White House e-mails sent on a Republican account that might have been lost, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy suggested Thursday, vowing to subpoena those documents if the administration fails to cough them up.

"They say they have not been preserved. I don't believe that!" Leahy shouted from the Senate floor.

"You can't erase e-mails, not today. They've gone through too many servers," said Leahy, D-Vt. "Those e-mails are there, they just don't want to produce them. We'll subpoena them if necessary."

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said there is no effort to purposely keep the e-mails under wraps, and that the counsel's office is doing everything it can to recover any that were lost.

"The purpose of our review is to make every reasonable effort to recover potentially lost e-mails, and that is why we've been in contact with forensic experts," he said.

Leahy scoffed.

"I've got a teenage kid in my neighborhood that can go get 'em for them," he told reporters later.

Exactly. jpadgett at DKos assures us this is true:

So, the White House is asserting they "lost" some email, huh? You've got to be kidding me. Is this a joke?

As an IT guy, I know all too well that most emails are nearly impossible to "lose," especially if one really wants to find them. In fact, if the emails in question really are gone for good it probably means that there was a tremendously expensive, concerted effort to destroy them (and, if so, it should be very easy to prove that they were intentionally destroyed).

Even so, I find it very difficult to believe that copies of these little devils aren't lurking on various electronic devices hither and thither throughout the country (if not the world). Unless a Department of Defense grade hard drive wipe was initiated on every single workstation or device that came in contact with the emails in question, they can be found. And that's not even mentioning the multiple email archives and backup files that doubtless exist.