The Washington Post editorial page takes a beating from one of WaPo‘s own columnists over its bogus attacks on Pelosi’s Syria trip.
BREAKING: John Edwards pulls out of Fox/Congressional Black Caucus debate.
BREAKING: If it’s Friday, it must be more Attorney Purge news. Goodling resigning from DOJ.
Update: More here.
If I want to understand what’s happening with Iran, I go to Bernie Kerik.
There was a lot of buzz today about a corruption case in Wisconsin from last year. A Bush-appointed US Attorney indicted a government bureaucrat in a case that implicated the state’s Democratic governor. But yesterday a circuit court threw out the conviction saying the evidence against the convicted official was “beyond thin.”
Indeed, the circuit court judges thought the case was so bogus that it’s hard not to ask whether the US Attorney in this case, Steven Biskupic, might not be one of those “loyal Bushies” who kept his job because he knew that one of his jobs was getting Republicans elected. It prompts the question; but it’s certainly too soon to say that’s the case. And yet look at how Biskupic’s number two and spokesperson responded when asked if the prosecution was politically motivated.
In an interview, Michelle Jacobs of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Milwaukee denied that the prosecution was politically motivated.
“I can tell you that from our perspective it was not, but that is as far as I’m going to go,” said Jacobs, a first assistant U.S. attorney.
Is that a strong denial?
Was Monica Goodling another GOPer ‘making the bullets’ in the war against the Democrats?
We put this together before the news this afternoon that Goodling had resigned from the Justice Department. But look what one of our readers saw in the Tim Griffin video we brought you last week.
(ed.note: This won’t make much sense until you see the video. But once you do, you’ll notice that we re-view two scenes right at the end of our segment. In one Griffin calls out “Hey Monica, how we doin'”. Then we show another scene in which the woman who appears to be Goodling walks past Griffin. However, it is important to say that in the scene where Griffin says “Hey Monica” you don’t see the person he’s talking to. Both clips were shot within about a half hour of each other in the same office — the RNC oppo research war room on debate night in 2000. And we think both clips point to the conclusion that Goodling is the one shown in the video. But these are two clips which appear about a minute apart in the documentary.)
DOJ throws a life raft to Paulose. Main Justice is sending John Kelly, Deputy Director of the US Attorney’s executive office in DC, to help run the office in Minneapolis. Also, it appears Paulose was an aide to McNulty rather than Gonzales.
Will these guys never learn?
The U.S. Attorney purge scandal exploded after Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty went to Capitol Hill in February and smeared the professional reputations of the eight fired USAs, who, having gone off quietly into that good night, suddenly reversed course and started defending themselves, which ignited a firestorm that continues to this day.
Which brings us to this morning’s New York Times piece on the mass resignation of the administrators in U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose’s office in Minnesota:
Ms. Pauloseâs defenders at Justice Department headquarters said the criticism of her was unwarranted. They said older lawyers had difficultly dealing with a young, aggressive woman who had tried to put into place policies important to Mr. Gonzales like programs to combat child exploitation.
Got it? The administrators who resigned are a bunch of sexist old men (never mind that one of the four who resigned was a woman) who are soft on child exploitation. We’re not told the identities of Paulose’s defenders at Main Justice, but it’s worth noting that she was briefly an aide to the aforesaid McNulty before her appointment as U.S. Attorney.
Those who fail to learn the lessons of history . . .
The Senate Judiciary Committee will reportedly look into the circumstances of the mass resignation in the office of the U.S. Attorney for Minnesota. [Thanks to TPM Reader MO for the link.]