blisteringsilence
I'd rather hunt with Cheney than ride with Kennedy
+83|7150|Little Rock, Arkansas

The National Journal wrote:

...An original draft of Gonzales's delegation of authority to Sampson and Goodling was so broad that it did not even require the two aides to obtain the final approval of the attorney general before moving to dismiss other department officials, according to records obtained by National Journal.

The department's Office of Legal Counsel feared that such an unconditional delegation of authority was unconstitutional, the documents show. As a result, the original delegation was rewritten so that in its final form the order required "any proposed appointments or removals of personnel" be "presented to the Attorney General... for approval, and each appointment or removal shall be made in the name of the Attorney General."...
from http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/070430nj1.htm

I'm not normally one for conspiracy theories, but this is a little disturbing to me.

Discuss
GorillaTicTacs
Member
+231|6821|Kyiv, Ukraine
Very simple, legal or not this is Gonzalez' ticket out of the shit storm.  He can now plausibly claim he didn't do it and he didn't know anything about it, and the only thing he can be guilty of is being a total boob.  Worked wonders for Ollie North and Reagan...just watch Rove, Bush, and Cheney plead "temporary retardation with complete memory loss" when their time comes too.

Don't expect a lot of responses here on this though, the attorney scandal isn't really sexy enough for the DST crowd.  No sex, no violence, no Clinton bashing, no fun...must be irrelevant, right?

Last edited by GorillaTicTacs (2007-05-02 14:40:05)

Stingray24
Proud member of the vast right-wing conspiracy
+1,060|6893|The Land of Scott Walker
Meh, if Hillary can have a complete mental block about the Rose Law firm, I'll give Gonzalez permission to plead complete memory loss, too.  Firing of attorneys in those positions happens in nearly every administration for political reasons.
GorillaTicTacs
Member
+231|6821|Kyiv, Ukraine
Somebody didn't do their homework and is repeating empty talking points...

The attorney scandal is far bigger than a $100,000 shady land deal 20 or so years ago, first off.

Second, we aren't talking about Clinton, his impeachment trial is over and done with.

Third "every administration" has not fired attorneys in mid-stream.  Actually, almost never has it happened...the last time under Nixon (Saturday Night Massacre) was the biggie.  It is common practice to fire the lot and appoint new ones when a president takes over, but after that they are considered "apolitical".  Justice should be considered blind, even when they're investigating their own party members.

Fourth, these guys were fired for one of two reasons - not investigating Democrats in politically charged hot-air scandals involving voter fraud that nobody knows where the complaints originated OR investigating real Republican corruption.  They did (or didn't do) these things in highly contested states where Republicans lost seats in Congress in the last election.

The backstories behind these firings go very deep, from Republican gerrymandering of voting districts, to even more Abromoff mischief, to Dick Cheney and Rove calling some shots where they legally aren't allowed.  The Hatch Act protects US Attorneys from political influence while they're doing their jobs.  Getting phone calls or emails from anyone for the benefit of progressing the party is undue influence, and illegal.  Anyone caught doing it goes down hard when it sticks.

It has also been revealed that the precedent of a President and his staff doing things "on the record" for posterity has gone out the window, which was actually made law as well.  Hiding communications on private email servers is illegal, losing official records is illegal, destroying evidence is illegal.

Everything that happens in the Whitehouse (except maybe the Prez whacking off in the toilet) is legally required to be on record.  Phone calls, conversations, emails, and written memos are all covered.  Presidents may immediately release them or keep them locked up for 50 years or more, but they are not allowed to destroy or lose them.  The fact that the Whitehouse staff has circumvented this process for nearly the entire presidency is big news.  What were they hiding?

Clinton turned over to Congress almost 4000 pages of crap per month uncensored for nearly the entire length of his presidency.  The Republican congress kept him under investigation for nearly the entire time, and they finally nailed him on his sexual misadventures.

It took tax evasion to bring down Capone, it took a blowjob to castrate Clinton, if the criminals in power now can be brought down as the result of some politically motivated attorney firings, then I'm all for it.  As Henry Waxman said, "We've barked up a lot of trees, and there's been a cat in every one so far."  Its not as sexy as the Iraq Civil War, or 9/11 coverups, or blowjobs from Condi, but I'll take what I can get.

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