1. oldtree says:

    I am sure that I am very late on this one, but isn’t it now likely that rover the dog god has become fred â€the bassett†thompson’s roadie? griffin, goodling, and all the other dog worshippers will jump on board.

  2. Sandy says:

    May 24, 2007
    The Goods on Goodling and the Keys to the Kingdom

    Special to BRADBLOG
    by Greg Palast

    This Monica revealed something hotter — much hotter — than a stained blue dress. In her opening testimony yesterday before the House Judiciary Committee, Monica Goodling, the blonde-ling underling to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Department of Justice Liaison to the White House, dropped The Big One….And the Committee members didn’t even know it.

    Goodling testified that Gonzales’ Chief of Staff, Kyle Sampson, perjured himself, lying to the committee in earlier testimony. The lie: Sampson denied Monica had told him about TIM GRIFFIN’S “involvement in ‘caging’ voters†in 2004.

    Huh?? TIM GRIFFIN?? “Caging�??

    The perplexed committee members hadn’t a clue — and asked no substantive questions about it thereafter. Karl Rove is still smiling. If the members had gotten the clue, and asked the right questions, they would have found “the keys to the kingdom,†they thought they were looking for. They dangled right in front of their perplexed faces.

    The keys: the missing emails — and missing link — that could send Griffin and his boss, Rove, to the slammer for a long, long time.

    Kingdom enough for ya?

    But what’s ‘caging’ and why is it such a dreadful secret that lawyer Sampson put his license to practice and his freedom on the line to cover Tim Griffin’s involvement in it? Because it’s a felony. And a big one.

    Our BBC team broke the story at the top of the nightly news everywhere on the planet – except the USA – only because America’s news networks simply refused to cover this evidence of the electoral coup d’etat that chose our President in 2004.

    Here’s how caging worked, and along with Griffin’s thoughtful emails themselves you’ll understand it all in no time.

    The Bush-Cheney operatives sent hundreds of thousands of letters marked “Do not forward†to voters’ homes. Letters returned (â€cagedâ€) were used as evidence to block these voters’ right to cast a ballot on grounds they were registered at phony addresses. Who were the evil fakers? Homeless men, students on vacation and — you got to love this — American soldiers. Oh yeah: most of them are Black voters.

    Why weren’t these African-American voters home when the Republican letters arrived? The homeless men were on park benches, the students were on vacation — and the soldiers were overseas. Go to Baghdad, lose your vote. Mission Accomplished.

    How do I know? I have the caging lists…

    I have them because they are attached to the emails Rove insists can’t be found. I have the emails. 500 of them — sent to our team at BBC after the Rove-bots accidentally sent them to a web domain owned by our friend John Wooden.

    Here’s what you need to know — and the Committee would have discovered, if only they’d asked:

    1. ‘Caging’ voters is a crime, a go-to-jail felony.

    2. Griffin wasn’t “involved†in the caging, Ms. Goodling. Griffin, Rove’s right-hand man (right-hand claw), was directing the illegal purge and challenge campaign. How do I know? It’s in the email I got. Thanks. And it’s posted below.

    3. On December 7, 2006, the ragin’, cagin’ Griffin was named, on Rove’s personal demand, US Attorney for Arkansas. Perpetrator became prosecutor.

    The committee was perplexed about Monica’s panicked admission and accusations about the caging list because the US press never covered it. That’s because, as Griffin wrote to Goodling in yet another email (dated February 6 of this year, and also posted below), their caging operation only made the news on BBC London: busted open, Griffin bitched, by that “British reporter,†Greg Palast.

    There’s no pride in this. Our BBC team broke the story at the top of the nightly news everywhere on the planet — except the USA — only because America’s news networks simply refused to cover this evidence of the electoral coup d’etat that chose our President in 2004.

    And now, not bothering to understand the astonishing revelation in Goodling’s confessional, they are missing the real story behind the firing of the US attorneys. It’s not about removing prosecutors disloyal to Bush, it’s about replacing those who refused to aid the theft of the vote in 2004 with those prepared to burgle it again in 2008.

    Now that they have the keys, let’s see if they can put them in the right door. The clock is ticking ladies and gents…

    ***************
    Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans – Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone WILD

  3. Anonymous says:

    In my crystal ball, I see a future with a lot of YouTube â€Law&Order†parodies… *g*

  4. BlueStateRedhead says:

    EW,
    There is something else a foot, given the speediness of the exit

    Some other possibilities, and perhaps AK readers can help us here if you cannot:

    —Caging indictment (although some feel the Palast evidence is not the key/smoking gun it is said to be)

    —all the issues you raised about the [in] validity of his status when you asked â€does AK had a USA†a few weeks ago and noted its potential use as a challenge for defense attornies in federal cases

    and while on the subject, was the matter of false claims/testimony about Jane Duke’s pregnancy looked into as a violation?
    I quote the AK Times on Griffin resignation, which can be linked to through Talking points

    Jane Duke will become acting U.S. attorney. (This is the assistant in the office who the Justice Department once had said had to be passed over as an interim appointee because of her pregnancy. Since it’s illegal to discriminate on account of pregnancy, Justice had to back off this statement.)

  5. randiego says:

    Sandy – thanks for posting that. Has there been any noise at all about anyone picking up on the Caging issue? I’m wondering if this one is something that Big Hank might want to tackle…

  6. Dismayed says:

    Er… Sandy, we all knew about that, You’re over a week late. Just the link next time, please.

    Also you should go to dailykos and read on the topic a bit more. Very exciting on it’s face, but there is much credible skepticism.

  7. Anonymous says:

    Griffin’s a campign junky… and he may want out of the ATTY job before Palast’s revelations about past caging activities finally come around to bite him in the arse, Not to mention that he’s a well-proven snake in the caging pits… it is no surprise that a bad actor like Thompson would want to hire a â€bad actor†like Griffin to help run his presidential campaign (in this case, its not really a Presidential campaign, it is nothing more than one big ego-trip, a lot like Arnold’s aspirations).

    Bad actors of a feather flock together…

  8. Anonymous says:

    â€some feel the Palast evidence is not the key/smoking gun it is said to be†Only the guilty parties, Rove in particular, are promulgating this question mark. Griffin’s caginf activities whould have been scrutinized when they were first exposed, only a Republican stranglehold an all three branches kept that from occurring. Now, with their plate full of Libbys and Cunninghams and Abramoffs (oh my!), this â€old†crime has been back-burnered, unfortunately. It is really one of the keys to the pernicious influence of â€Karlulu†Rove’s illegal and treasonous campaign tactics.

  9. greenhouse says:

    Really Dismayed? I still think it an appropriate question since no one here has really addressed the issue and since I don’t get access to dKos here at work I was wondering if anybody would like to comment/speculate on the veracity of Palast’s evidence? Thanks Sandy.

  10. Anonymous says:

    I think it pretty clear on the face of Palast’s rather breathless (but largely evidence-free) prose that he is overselling his goods. In other words, it’s not just the guilty parties raising questions. Why is it that we don’t see only a couple of tiny snippets of the supposed â€500 e-mailsâ€? If you have the goods, you spend less time telling us you have the goods and more time showing us. Well, Conyers has asked him for all his evidence, so we’ll get a chance to see if there’s much of a there there.

  11. bill in turkey says:

    ’Only the guilty parties, Rove in particular, are promulgating this question mark.’

    Not really true, that, you know. Not many people have actually seem Palast’s evidence, so to some extent we’ve only got his word for it that it is SG material. One or two people other than KR feel he has a bit of a history of overselling his case. (eg diarist drational at dKos, who has inter alia put a lot of work into making a database of released DoJ emails)

    I’m not sure I’m a Palast skeptic myself. But I don’t think that all those who are are Republican plants. Palast was supposed to meeting Conyers some time recently, I think – so more data may emerge.

    Apologies for being o/t. I guess I’d be interested in hearing
    ews brief take on Palast too. (though I can see why it might seem like a bit of a sideshow. right now)

  12. Anonymous says:

    I think Palast has definitely oversold his goods (not least because he has claimed to have all of Rove’s missing emails as a way to get people reinterestd in his story, which is definitely not the case). That said, I think the caging allegations are real, though perhaps not proveable.

  13. Anonymous says:

    Just a note to commenters above to clear up a potential confusion — AR is the postal abbreviation for Arkansas; AK is Alaska.

    This would normally be too picky a point for me to raise, but there are so many US Atty’s in question in so many states (ones who were on the firing list at one time, ones who never were and have suspect investigations/prosecutions, etc. etc.) that it becomes hard to keep them straight even with the correct state affiliation.

  14. greenhouse says:

    Thanks Sebastian, Bill and EW for your takes on Palast. What a shame. Another case of Leopold?

  15. freepatriot says:

    IANAL, but I do know a lot about election law, so I’ll tackle the palast question (or at least part of it)

    as I see it, palast claims that the r n c targeted certain groups of people, to challenge their votes, in 2004 and (I think) 2006. The r n c sent registered letters to the choosen people knowing that the letters were likely to be returned. The reasons for the letters being returned isn’t clear, but the r n c used the returned letters to mount a challenge to the voters in question

    so far as I can tell, none of this is illegal. The r n c isn’t a government agency, so the rnc doesn’t have to follow the â€Equal Protections†clauses of the Constitution. Challenging voters is a legitimate action, so the only questionable action is the method used to select the names on the list

    unless somebody can find a way to fit the rnc under the â€Equal Protections†clauses, there isn’t an violation of law here. the r n c can challenge any voter, in any way they choose

    the real question is the validity of the challenges. if there were several thousand challenges overturned, then palast might have evidence of a crime

    as it stands, palast just has evidence of a very slimy operation, not evidence of a crime

    so how’d I do ???

  16. pseudonymous in nc says:

    But the RNC was supposedly bound by a consent decree, and had to outsource its caging operations to local campaigns, no?

  17. freepatriot says:

    sorry pseudonymous in nc, I don’t know nuthin bout no consent decree

    I just evaluated what palast said, and decided that palast was a bit confused

    the government has to comply with the â€equal protections†clauses, but most private entities don’t have to. There are some areas where the â€equal protections†are applicable (housing, employment, ect) but this ain’t one of those areas

    political parties are shielded by the first amendment, so unless the consent decree specifically addresses the caging issue, I doubt that there is a violation of law here

    palast didn’t mention the consent decree (or if he did, he didn’t highlight it as the primary lever for legal charges)

  18. William Ockham says:

    I did a quick bit of research on the RNC/DNC consent decree. The consent decree came about because the DNC sued the RNC for exactly the behavior Palast alleges (caging in minority districts). The RNC agreed not to implement any ballot security measures (specifically including the use of returned mail to challenge voters) targeting minority areas without notifying the court and the DNC 20 days in advance.

    Having looked at the emails and spreadsheet that are freely available on the web, I say that they are strong evidence that Tim Griffin knowingly participated in activities prohibited by the consent decree. Go take a look at:

    http://2004.georgewbush.org/de…../index.asp

    Search the page for â€griffin†and take a look at caging-1.xls. It lists the results of a caging direct mail attempt. The addresses are all within areas that are 80% African-American. Palast oversells his case, but there is plenty here to justify an investigation.

  19. randiego says:

    Rove just doesn’t seem the type to put something in writing that could ever be turned into evidence.

    But, if it’s true that Palast has got 500 emails from Rove, that’s a heck of a lot more than anybody else has, no? Who knows where they might lead once they are published…

    Let’s see ’em!

    PS – I hope they are giving Palast a little love just for being sneaky and outwitting the bad guys.

  20. freepatriot says:

    Hey, William Ockham, now THAT would be a crime

    IANAL, but I assume the â€Consent Decree†is administered by the Judge who issued it, right ???

    so we’re looking at a straight case of Contempt of Court

    who’s the Judge ???

    Who’s the USA in charge of this consent decree (and couldn’t THAT be an interesting topic)

    and how the fuck did greg palast miss that ??? (cuz I sure don’t remember seeing THAT in his article)

  21. Taechan says:

    FWIW, Palast references the Voting Rights Act as being the laws broken by the RNC’s targeting of voters of color for the caging:
    http://www.gregpalast.com/voti…..g-cross-2/

    Assuming that to be the case, I do recognize that the two excel spreadsheets from the deadletters site would not be enough to charge anyone with, but would certainly suggest the violation and may provide probable cause to seek records of the rest of the effort.

    Palast claims to have dug up many more caging lists(see one of the response diaries to drational’s at dKos)–though perhaps overhyped(he is trying to sell his book after all) I’m inclined to grant him some benefit of the doubt based upon his past reputation.