Rep. Cannon (R-Time Travel): David Iglesias’s failure to report the corrupt practices behind his firing is itself corrupt. So Iglesias deserved to be fired, even if for actions taken after his firing. So it all comes out in the wash. No harm no foul.
Gonzales comes a tiny bit clean on the McKay firing and reveals that Iglesias was added to the firing list on election day 2006.
A senior Democratic Congressional aide tells us that most conservative House Dems will support the short-term Iraq funding bill being voted on today.
Latest from the hearings: Alberto Gonzales explains that the firing list was assembled by consulting senior DOJ officials — even though those officials apparently weren’t told they were being consulted.
Try to imagine the enormous media outcry that would ensue if a Democrat snubbed an Iowa farmer the way the Rudy campaign now has.
Lots of good fireworks at today’s Gonzales hearing. But here’s another great scoop out from McClatchy which brings us back to what should be one of the two key focuses of the US Attorney Purge investigation: the White House was using the Department of Justice to suppress Democratic voter turnout in pivotal swing-states in order to preserve Republican control of Washington.
Off the McClatchy wire …
Only weeks before last year’s pivotal midterm elections, the White House urged the Justice Department to pursue voter-fraud allegations against Democrats in three battleground states, a high-ranking Justice official has told congressional investigators.
In two instances in October 2006, President Bush’s political adviser, Karl Rove, or his deputies passed the allegations on to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ then-chief of staff, Kyle Sampson.
Sampson tapped Gonzales aide Matthew Friedrich, who’d just left his post as chief of staff of the criminal division. In the first case, Friedrich agreed to find out whether Justice officials knew of “rampant” voter fraud or “lax” enforcement in parts of New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and report back.
But Friedrich declined to pursue a related matter from Wisconsin, he told congressional investigators, because an inquiry so close to an election could inappropriately sway voting results. Friedrich decided not to pass the matter on to the criminal division for investigation, even though Sampson gave him a 30-page report prepared by Republican activists that made claims of voting fraud.
Late Thursday night, a Justice Department spokesman disputed McClatchy’s characterization, saying that the White House asked for an inquiry, but never ordered an investigation to be opened.
The other point that appears to be being forgotten is the firing of Carol Lam. Lots of important stuff in this scandal. But this is pivotal. It’s the big picture that most of the media has never seemed to fully grasp. All the evidence points to the conclusion that she was fired because of the expanded Cunningham investigation. More on that shortly.
Ahhh, the Fort Dix Six may not quite rise to the level of the take-down of the ‘Seeds of David’ non-Muslim jihadist goofball cult in Liberty City, Florida last year. But it may not be far off the mark either.
Writing about these domestic terrorism busts is always a delicate task. Living in Manhattan terrorism is not an abstract issue to me. And so long as they are operating within the bounds of the law, I certainly hope the FBI and CIA have their ears and eyes on the look out for the next terror plotters. But the real jokers they actually bust turn out to be such hopeless goofs that it’s hard to know whether to feel reassured that if Islamic terrorism is catching on in the US that it’s only doing so among the deeply stupid or that these are the only ones our guys can catch.
The Fort Dix Six?
Well, seems they made a jihad training film featuring themselves. But they couldn’t figure out how to burn it to a DVD. So they went to a Circuit City and asked the clerk on duty if he could do it for them.
D’oh!
I guess that means these guys probably needed remedial terrorist training.
There also seems to be more than a hint of entrapment in the role the government informant played in helping arrange the planned attack. Back in November one of the plotters called a Philly police officer and told him that he’d been approached by someone [i.e., the government informant] “who was pressuring him to obtain a map of Fort Dix, and that he feared the incident was terrorist-related.”
Richard Perle lays into George Tenet on Post OpEd page (appropriate venue). Like a cage match between See No Evil and Evil.
Today’s Must Read: More on Karl Rove’s push to have voter fraud investigated just before the last election. Did it matter that the allegations were two years old and had already been investigated?