The US Attorney Purge story has gone into a semi-eclipse in the mainstream media. And it will probably stay there until the 17th when Alberto Gonzales goes up to the senate to beg, probably in vain, for his job. Indeed, on this weekend’s Sunday shows, 
a number of guests blithely reassured viewers that there was no evidence of wrongdoing in the whole scandal — see Woodruff and O’Beirne on Meet the Press.
But outside of the media’s view another chapter of the story is unfolding.
We know about the US Attorneys who were purged, i.e., the ones who didn’t get the message and resign and got the call on December 7th telling them to pack their bags.
But there were others.
These are cases in which sitting US Attorneys resigned under quetionable circumstances in late 2005 or early 2006 and then were replaced by young DOJ staffers who Attorney General Gonzales appointed using the Patriot Act provision. The names of at least some of these resigned USA were showing up on a list of potential firees at Main Justice. And there’s also at least some overlap with the states from which GOP officials were sending complaints about ‘voter fraud’ to Karl Rove.
Rove, of course, wanted results. And it’s no accident that almost all of the states in question were key swing states.
The details are murky. And we’re still looking in to several of these cases. But it looks more and more like the 8 Attorney Purge was just a new chapter in a longer running story — and the hold the White House political office had over the Justice Department through President Bush’s footman Alberto Gonzales is and was at the center of every part of the story.
I’m more than a little surprised that no one had sent me this link before. But TPM Reader JL just sent me a link to what certainly appears to be the archived (www.archive.org) personal website of Monica Goodling from her days at Regent University.
Alas, most of it is pretty mundane — a page with links to her favorite political sites ( complete with a quote from John Ashcroft), her resume, some stuff about her friends and family. But you may want to glance at her essay “The Devaluation of Human Life: Neglecting America’s Kids” which examines how America’s children are being destroyed by America’s culture of social permissiveness and individualism run amok. It starts …
America in the nineties is the largest and most dedicated throw-away society in the world. We toss as fast as we can use, fast food wrappers, diapers, plastic plates, napkins, even Yugos. But children? One grimaces at the thought of society discarding children like a Big Mac wrapper, but a look into the reality of America’s children portrays a grisly picture indeed. While rapidly escalating abuse makes the eleven o’clock news regularly, even more insidious is the lack of care, love, and attention that threaten the lives of many more of our youth. For millions of children, neglect is the one constant element in their sad lives. It seems children just are not worth very much anymore.
All across America millions of parents seem to feel that their children are not worth the time it takes to raise them–the time it takes to shower them with love, listen with interest to their thoughts, nurture values of trust, honesty, fairness, joy, and justice. Regretfully, the children do not even know that their experience is abnormal, and that if they had just been born in the beginning of the century instead of at the end, chances are that their lives would have been much different. This paper will examine the devaluation of America’s children and propose solutions to the various components of the problem.
You can read the rest here.
Today’s Must Read: Democrats conspire to have The Wall Street Journal publish stories on Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons (R). Yeah, you read that right.
Jonathan Cohn kicks off this week’s book club making the case for thinking big on health care:
I realize that much of the media elite – and, more broadly, the entire political class – already thinks single-payer is not feasible. But we’re not yet at the point of the debate where those boundaries are fixed. This is the time when educating and organizing – both the public and the political class – can actually broaden the political playing field. By preemptively rejecting single-payer, we narrow that field.
Update: You can follow the book club discussion here.
Just your daily reminder that Gonzales’ Justice Department doesn’t really care about the performance of U.S. attorneys.
The Senate Judiciary Committee gives Gonzales one last chance to turn over all the documents voluntarily.
Hillary weighs in for the first time on the Pelosi-to-Syria flap, defends Speaker from White House attacks.
This is interesting. Dan Eggen’s article in this morning’s Post discusses the growing trend in the Gonzales Justice Department to have sitting US Attorneys have second postings at Main Justice in Washington DC. As Eggen explains, six US Attorneys currently have second postings in DC. So they’re basically absentee US Attorneys.
This isn’t against the law and it’s not unprecedented. But as Eggen explains, “the number of U.S. attorneys pulling double duty in Washington is the focus of growing concern from other prosecutors and from members of the federal bench, according to legal experts and government officials.”
Now, here’s what Eggen doesn’t mention. We know about the provision of the revised USA Patriot that allows for non-senate-confirmed US Attorneys. But TPM’s David Kurtz has just been digging back in to the Patriot Act revision and he’s found that they also got something in about this. The revised Patriot Act gives the Attorney General the power to set aside the US Attorney residency requirements. Here’s the text …
SEC. 501. RESIDENCE OF UNITED STATES ATTORNEYS AND ASSISTANT UNITED STATES ATTORNEYS.
(a) In General- Subsection (a) of section 545 of title 28, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following new sentence: `Pursuant to an order from the Attorney General or his designee, a United States attorney or an assistant United States attorney may be assigned dual or additional responsibilities that exempt such officer from the residency requirement in this subsection for a specific period as established by the order and subject to renewal.’.
(b) Effective Date- The amendment made by subsection (a) shall take effect as of February 1, 2005.
Now, this isn’t as egregious or as clear-cut as the no-confirmation provision. But having US Attorneys actually operating out of Main Justice does fit with the broader Gonzales program of centralization and politicization of the Justice Department. So maybe there’s still more to this story hidden in the Patriot Act renewal from 2005. Maybe someone should actually give it a look?