Update on Lying Liars

(That alone could be a fulltime job!)

Apparently, even John Negroponte (BOO!HISS!) thinks Gonzo is a liar.

More Lying Liars

Did Gonzo commit perjury? Did the sun come up in the east? Does the Pope shit in the woods? Is a a bear Catholic? Duh! and More Duh!! and Most Duh!!!

Repugs Save Useless Hunk of Meat

Senate Repugs blocked the no-confidence vote against Abu Gonzales.

No-Con to the NeoCon

Tomorrow, the Senate will consider a no-confidence vote on Atty Gen Gonzales. Let your Senators know that YOU have no confidence in him, and ask them to reflect that in their vote.

No Mo Confidence

The no-confidence vote on Gonzo is approaching in the Senate. If (one or more of) your Senator is a Repug (poor you), pressure him/her to vote against Gonzales. Write, call, fax, whatever them and encourage your friends to do so too. Let's stoke the fires.

Jeebus!

Bush refuses to answer whether he ordered Gonzo and Card to strong arm Ashcroft into signing off on the domestic spying mess while he was sedated in the hospital. Cuz, ya know, it's a national security, double-secret-probation kinda thing, dontcha see?

McKay, Iglesias: Atty Scandal to Grow

TPM has a good post on the Seattle Times article featuring McKay and Iglesias. But the quote from the Times in the post is just devastating:

McKay said he began to have concerns about politics entering the Justice Department in early 2005, when Gonzales addressed all of the country's U.S. attorneys in Scottsdale, Ariz., shortly after he took over as attorney general.

"His first speech to us was a 'you work for the White House' speech," McKay recalled. " 'I work for the White House, you work for the White House.' "

McKay said he thought at the time, "He couldn't have meant that speech," given the traditional independence of U.S. Attorneys. "It turns out he did."

He looked around the meeting room and caught the eyes of his colleagues, who gave him looks of surprise at Gonzales' remarks. "We were stunned at what he was saying."

mcjoan at dKos weighs in....

DOJ Nightmare

TPM has a veritable potpourri of stories relating to the USAttornies firings today. This is getting deeper, and to borrow a phrase from TPMuckraker... muckier.

Bush Loves Gonzo

I'm just going to point to Froomkin on this......

Gonzo Is Toast, Part II

They've got him. He committed perjury. He claims Lam was advised on the immigration enforcement excuse/ruse; multiple instances of other sworn testimony and documents indicate that is false.

TPM has great coverage, including the best line of the day:

From the buzz I'm hearing toay, if Alberto Gonzales were a stock, we'd be at that point when those automatic trading halts kicked in because so many people are trying to sell.

But he makes the key point in the same post:

But let's not get distracted by Alberto Gonzales. He's just a cog. In almost every case, what we're talking about here is Gonzales's willingness to take orders from the White House -- most importantly from Karl Rove and President Bush -- on firing US Attorneys for corrupt purposes and using the Justice Department to suppress Democratic turnout in swing states. Mr. Gonzales is a secondary issue. The real players are in the White House.

Is this Our 18 Minute Gap Moment?

I've been out all day and am still catching up, so I'm gonna just quote Froomkin here, since he seems to have it all summed up:

Countless e-mails to and from many key White House staffers have been deleted -- lost to history and placed out of reach of congressional subpoenas -- due to a brazen violation of internal White House policy that was allowed to continue for more than six years, the White House acknowledged yesterday.

The leading culprit appears to be President Bush's enormously influential political adviser Karl Rove, who reportedly used his Republican National Committee-provided Blackberry and e-mail accounts for most of his electronic communication.

Until 2004, all e-mail on RNC accounts was routinely deleted after 30 days. Since 2004, White House staffers using those accounts have been able to save their e-mail indefinitely -- but have also been able to delete whatever they felt like deleting. By comparison, the White House e-mail system preserves absolutely everything forever, in accordance with the Presidential Records Act.

The White House yesterday said it has no idea how many e-mails have been lost.

In an afternoon conference call with reporters, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel spread the blame all around. "White House policy did not give clear enough guidance," he said. "The oversight of that wasn't aggressive enough." And individual White House staffers "did not do a good enough job of following existing preservation policy -- or seeking guidance."

Said Stanzel: "I guess the bottom line is that our policy at the White House was not clear enough for employees."

But when I asked Stanzel to read out loud the White House e-mail policy, it seemed clear enough to me: "Federal law requires the preservation of electronic communications sent or received by White House staff," says the handbook that all staffers are given and expected to read and comply with.

"As a result, personnel working on behalf of the EOP [Executive Office of the President] are expected to only use government-provided e-mail services for all official communication."

The handbook further explains: "The official EOP e-mail system is designed to automatically comply with records management requirements."

And if that wasn't clear enough, the handbook notes -- as was the case in the Clinton administration -- that "commercial or free e-mail sites and chat rooms are blocked from the EOP network to help staff members ensure compliance and to prevent the circumvention of the records management requirements."

Stanzel refused to publicly release the relevant portions of the White House staff manual and denied my request to make public the transcript of the call, which lasted more than an hour but which -- due to Stanzel's refusal or inability to provide straight answers on many issues -- raised more questions than it answered.

Stanzel said that "some people" may have used their non-government accounts for official business due to "an abundance of caution" in order to avoid violating the Hatch Act, which prohibits the use of government e-mail for overtly political purposes, such as fundraising -- and due to "logistical convenience."

There's a lot more so go read it. Looks like they were skirting the document recording and security regs, got busted, dumped the offending messages, and got busted for that too. One can only presume that being busted for whatever's in the messages would be worse than being busted for dumping.

UPDATE: DailyKos says not only do have our 18 minute gap moment, we've got a BUNCH of em.