Finally, an answer to why so many different and conflicting accounts of why the U.S. attorneys were fired are coming out of the Justice Department.
It’s complicated.
National House Dem strategists are predicting gains in what they see as a key 2008 battleground: The suburbs. Comes complete with a list of the DCCC’s top 10 targeted GOP-held suburban districts.
Debunking Conservative Myths, the Tax Day Edition.
Not just the US Attorneys, Gonzales and Co. have been purging the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division too.
Go read Paul Kiel’s report above. But I could not help excerpting this one passage. A good bit of the story turns on a Georgia voter ID bill (passed on the evidence contained in a book by John Fund) that the Bush Justice Department insisted on approving against the recommendation of all but one of the career attorneys in the voting section.
Here’s one thing that the Bush political appointees insisted didn’t raise any red flags. The sponsor of the bill, Georgia state Rep. Sue Burmeister told voting section staff that “if there are fewer black voters because of this bill, it will only be because there is less opportunity for fraud,” and that “when black voters in her black precincts are not paid to vote, they do not go to the polls.”
Can’t imagine there was any bad motivations behind this bill.
Over at TPMCafe, we’ve been discussing Jon Cohn’s new book, Sick, a study and indictment of the US health care insurance system. Last week we got a few moments to talk to Jon about the book before a book event at the Strand Bookstore here in lower Manhattan.
Coming up tomorrow … You may have seen Sen. Kerry’s (D-MA) interview on the Colbert Report last night. We got to interview Sen. Kerry before he went on the show. We talked about his new book, This Moment on Earth, and Iraq. There’s even some fun backstage footage at the Colbert Report.
Associated Press channels Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, writes a story about the price of John Edwards’ haircut and labels him “pretty.”
White House to RNC: Don’t give those emails to the Dem Congress!
Sounds like this is why John Conyers wants to talk to Pittsburgh US Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan (from WTAE in Pittsburgh) …
The Justice Department consulted with U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan in Pittsburgh when it was drawing up a list of prosecutors to be fired, a former top aide to the attorney general told investigators, and now a House committee wants to interview her.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, told Senate investigators Sunday that Buchanan was one of the senior officials he consulted about which U.S. attorneys should be asked to resign, according to a Senate Judiciary Committee aide who read a transcript of the interview. The aide requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Bresnahan: Domenici ethics inquiry opens in the senate.