I guess I can’t let this go without mentioning it. The disgraced Alberto Gonzales has been named Lawyer of the Year by the ABA Journal. Paul Kiel explains.
Eric Kleefeld rounds up this afternoon’s GOP presidential debate in Iowa.
Going through the Golden Duke Award nominations, I’m struck again by how much the U.S. Attorneys purge scandal brought together so many of the venalities of the Bush Administration.
Many of those corrupt tendencies had already been on display for some time, but there was at least one largely unseen aspect of the Bush modus operandi that was revealed by that scandal, and it shows up in the nominations we’ve received so far: the presence of young Bush flunkies throughout the government, and at some of its highest levels, whose inexperience was not a hindrance to their appointments but the very reason for it, willing pawns in the GOP’s politicization of the executive branch.
And so it is that many of our Golden Duke nominees come from this coterie of fresh-scrubbed cynics, including one of my favorites:
Iâd like to nominate Rachel Paulose in the Best Scandal Local Venue Category.
We have no royalty in the United States of America, but that didnât stop former United States Attorney Rachel Paulose from throwing herself a coronation at taxpayer expense, complete with a processional, a professional photographer, a color guard and a choir.
The circumstances of her hiring are still murky at best, Tom Heffelfinger was on the list to be fired, then he wasnât, but resigned anyway. Rachel was meant to be a USA PATRIOT Act appointment but received the support of local senator Norm Coleman and benefited from her friendship with Monica Goodling.
Shortly after, her top four assistants demoted themselves due to her overbearing, overly religious management style. Later there were formal complaints filed about how she treated employees, including allegations of bigotry that, along with mishandling classified information, resulted in a formal investigation by the Department of Justice. She was finally removed, less than two years into her âreignâ when a new crop of top assistants were threatening to resign.
The kicker for her nomination, though, has to be the defenders who claimed that she was forced from office because she was too aggressive pursuing human trafficking cases.
No doubt that the heretofore-unknown pro-human trafficking clique within the Justice Department was one of the great straw men of the year.
Who’s your favorite? Let us know. The deadline for nominations is Friday.
Think CIA interrogators will allow themselves to be made into the Lynndie Englands of the Black Sites? Think again.
Last week over at TPMmuckraker, Paul Kiel told you about Hank Asher, the confessed drug smuggler turned multimillionaire database guru who hooked up with Rudy Giuliani on a couple of different business ventures. Very mucky looking stuff, especially after Asher’s name popped up in the public corruption indictment of the Orange County sheriff.
Now Time has a big new story out on the deal Rudy’s firm had with one of Asher’s database companies, Seisint. Turns out Giuliani Partners pulled down $30 million in one year on the Seisint contract.
And how exactly did Rudy’s firm earn this money? Take a look:
In the first year, GP earned $6.5 million, Seisint records show, in part for what Brauser and Seisint’s in-house lobbyist, Dan Latham, say were commissions for state and federal contracts. . . .
But the Seisint deal wasn’t as perfect as it seemed. One problem: the payment of percentages or commissions to “solicit or secure” government contracts is prohibited by federal law and laws of some states. . . . A GP official who refused to be named insists that the firm never received “commissions” from Seisint â despite what Brauser and Latham remember and despite the fact that payments to GP are labeled “commissions” in both the minutes of a Seisint board meeting and a key financial statement. Instead, says the official, GP earned “special bonuses” based on the achievement of corporate “milestones.”
Funny, Rudy never registered as a lobbyist because even though he and his clients were using his name to advance their interests with the federal and state governments, he claimed he never actually lobbied. And now the commissions he got for securing government contracts through his savvy “not lobbying” aren’t really commissions but “special bonuses.”
Nice work if you can get it. Unless it all turns out to be illegal.
Someone has posted a devastating video about Mike Huckabee’s role in the release of murder-rapist Wayne Dumond that includes footage of the mother of the woman Dumond killed in Missouri after his release.
It’s a very professionally done piece of video, posted at a recently created site called HuckabeeFacts.com.
We’re trying to figure out who’s behind this. Can you help? Greg Sargent has the details.
Senate Judiciary Committee votes to hold presidential Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove in contempt for their refusal to testify in the U.S. Attorney purge scandal.
The deadline for submitting Golden Duke award nominations fast approaches. At stake, a chance to have your nomination reviewed by our panel of distinguished judges and, if your nomination wins, a chance to show off Golden Duke contest swag–mug, T-shirt, whatever else we come up with–emblazoned with the prized Golden Duke trophy, seen at left. Do your friends and family proud. Send in your nomination today.
Here’s an example of a nomination in the Testimonial Trainwreck category, so you get a feel for what this is all about:
I’d like to nominate Sara Taylor for this dubious honor. This video of Taylor being chastised by Senator Leahy for her failure to recall the oath of office she took and to what or who she owes her loyalty may be brief but, what better metaphor could you have for the Bush years? Here you have in technicolor what went wrong from the beginning. These Bushies gave their loyalty to a man and not the country.
A very strong candidate for a Dukey. Taylor started the day with what seemed a certain brashness, picked up perhaps from her then-boss Karl Rove, but as the day wore on and she wore down, she had the look of someone who knew they’d been beaten and just wanted the flogging to end.
Remember: Nomination deadline is Friday.
That didn’t take long. The producer of that Huckabee attack video I mentioned earlier has come forward, according to the Arkansas Times blog. He’s a Republican politico from Arkansas named Keith Emis.