Mukasey Confirmed

In a victory for something un-American, the Senate confirmed Michael Mukasey as AG, 53-40. Go torture! Blah!

Mukasey Mullings

Froomkin sums it up (as usual) in one pithy (no, not PISSY!) sentence:

So it's come to this: A promise to enforce the law (in most cases) is enough to get an attorney general nominee confirmed by a Democratic-controlled Senate.

Gonzales Resigning?

CNN has breaking news that Gonzales has offered his resignation to Dumbfuck and it's been accepted. There was some rumoring yesterday that this would happen and Chertoff would be the nominee to replace him. This will be fun, no matter what. Stay tuned!

No!

I've been quiet recently, but the idea that there is even a remote possibility that Congress will cave in and grant to the AG's office, let alone to that piece of human excrement currently occupying it, the authority (or even SOME of the authority) of the FISA court is such an abominable idea that I had to rise from my torpor.

Get off your asses and write/phone/email your Congresspeople and demand that this not happen. NOW! GO!

Update: Digby shouts too!

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.

Inside DOJ's Civil Rights Dept's Descent into Oblivion

Bob Kengle, who spoke with TPM last week, has an indepth post this week. It's searing in its look inside the politicization that has gutted the DOJ, and in particular, the Civil Rights division.

Times Weighs in on Renzi

From the NYT:

Congressman Rick Renzi, an Arizona Republican, was locked in a close re-election battle last fall when the local United States attorney, Paul Charlton, was investigating him for corruption. The investigation appears to have been slowed before Election Day, Mr. Renzi retained his seat, and Mr. Charlton ended up out of a job — one of eight prosecutors purged by the White House and the Justice Department.

The Arizona case adds a disturbing new chapter to that scandal. Congress needs to determine whether Mr. Charlton was fired for any reason other than threatening the Republican Party’s hold on a Congressional seat.

Mr. Renzi was fighting for his political life when the local press reported that he was facing indictment for a suspect land deal. According to The Wall Street Journal, federal investigators met unexpected resistance from the Justice Department in getting approval to proceed and, perhaps as a result, the investigation was pushed past the election.

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.

Gonzo Pushed Back

Apparently due to the VT shooting, AG Gonzales' testimony has been pushed back to Thursday. More time to polish his lies......

Recap-ish

Not much going on today, that I've seen so far (been out of pocket...) The big news is the story in the Albuquerque Journal that Bush prompted the Iglesias firing. Probably in response to a call from Domenici.

UPDATE: TPM has mega coverage on this.

Inside DOJ

TPM has a link to an excellent interview with a recently retired DOJ senior employee with a view inside the DOJ. Worth the read.

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.