Politicizing the Justice System
- From: trudogg <trudogg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2007 07:04:28 -0400
[...another view of the going's on in the DOJ. Don't shoot the
messenger over the message, but considering how the current
administration has run their campaigns in the past this explanation
makes a lot of sense...]
PurgeGate has really started to bring out some extremely worrying
facts about the state of our legal system. The Justice Department
under Bush's pet Attorney General has been riddled with partisan and
ultra-conservative US Attorneys who have no respect for our
constitution. A classic example of the trouble is one that TPM's David
Kurtz posted on today concerning Rachel Paulose who was appointed (and
confirmed by the lame-duck Senate in December 2006) the US Attorney
for Minnesota.
http://judiciary.house.gov/media/pdfs/DOJdocsPt1070313.pdf
First, note that Kyle Sampson's email describing the problem of firing
all the US Attorney's and what might be workable was written on
January 1, 2006. Here's what he said again (pdf: page 20, emphasis
mine):
There are practical obstacles to removing and replacing U.S.
Attorneys. First, wholesale removal of U.S. Attorneys would cause
significant disruption to the work of the Department of Justice.
Second, individual U.S. Attorneys often were originally recommended
for appointment by a home-state Senator who may be opposed to the
President's determination to remove the U.S. Attorney. Third, a
suitable replacement must be found in consultation with the home-state
Senator, the difficulty of which would vary from state to state.
Fourth, a background investigation must be completed on the
replacement -- a task often complicated if the outgoing U.S. Attorney
stays in office. Fifth, after nomination, the Senate must confirm the
replacement.
None of the above obstacles are insuperable. First, a limited
number of U.S. Attorneys could be targeted for removal and
replacement, mitigating the shock to the system that would result from
an across-the-board firing. Second, the Department of Justice's
Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys (EOUSA) could work quietly with
targeted U.S. Attorneys to encourage them to leave government service
voluntarily; this would allow targeted U.S. Attorneys to make
arrangements for work in the private sector and "save face" regarding
the reason for leaving office, both in the Department of Justice
community and in their local legal communities. Third, after targeted
U.S. Attorneys have left office or indicated publicly their intention
to leave office, then the Office of the Counsel to the President can
work with home-state Senators and/or other political leaders in the
state to secure recommendations for a replacement U.S. Attorney.
Finally, after background investigations are complete and the
replacement candidate is nominated, the Attorney General can appoint
the nominee to serve as interim U.S. Attorney pending confirmation,
thereby reducing the time during which the leadership of the office is
uncertain.
Notice how nicely the little provision added to the Patriot Act helped
smooth out some of the problems he noted?
And in light of that plan, here are some more things to consider:
* Paulose's predecessor, Thomas B. Heffelfinger, surprised
everyone in February 2006 when he resigned making way for Ms. Paulose
to be appointed interim US Attorney. What caused him to resign? Was it
the same reason that Debra Wang Yang (U.S. Attorney for LA) resigned
-- supposedly a better paying job in the private sector that suddenly
cropped up just in time to clear out the ranks for more partisan
players? And was he one of the people referred to in Kyle Sampson's
email of April 14, 2006 (pdf: page 22) where he noted that two of the
people originally on the short list for being pushed out had left?
http://judiciary.house.gov/media/pdfs/DOJdocsPt1070313.pdf
* Ms. Paulose was nominated by President Bush in August 2006
(after that sticky background check was done under her watch?), but
almost didn't get approved because the DOJ didn't get her home state
Senators' backing. Somehow after that oversight, Senator Norm Coleman
reconsidered and now the story is she was his choice.
* She was Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty's senior counsel
for all of two months before this position suddenly opened up and
while this scheme was being hatched.
* She is a member of the Federalist society and as such, has an
inordinate sense of her own specialness as you can see in the
coronation that she had planned for herself. (But as she said, she had
lots of family coming from out-of-state that wanted to be there so she
really needed to have a big, big affair.)
* ePluribus Media notes that 14 districts still do not have Senate
confirmed U.S. Attorneys.
* One of those states is Alaska, where Nelson Cohen was appointed
on August 22 by the AG under the provision in the Patriot Act over the
objections of Senator Ted Stevens.
From McClatchy's article yesterday, Rove named 11 states in his speechbefore the Republican National Lawyers Association, and in 9 of them,
a new U.S. Attorney has been named since January 2006.
Last April, while the Justice Department and the White House were
planning the firings, Rove gave a speech in Washington to the
Republican National Lawyers Association. He ticked off 11 states that
he said could be pivotal in the 2008 elections. Bush has appointed new
U.S. attorneys in nine of them since 2005: Florida, Colorado,
Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Arkansas, Michigan, Nevada and New Mexico.
U.S. attorneys in the latter four were among those fired.
Every US Attorney appointed this year must be carefully checked out.
How many are members of the Federalist Society? We know Ms. Paulose
is. And Carol Lam's successor is too. It's becoming very clear that
they've been appointed to steal the election in 2008 and to politicize
the Justice system to damage Democrats and protect Republican
lawlessness. And they must be assumed to be more loyal to the
conservative ideology than the rule of law, because, frankly, being
appointed under this AG should be considered a stain on their
reputations.
Mary Ratcliff
.
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