I guess it’s my day to be underwhelmed.
I find it really hard to get excited over SJC issuing Rove a subpoena today. That’s partly for tactical reasons. Until we get the Sergeant at Arms to arrest Harriet and hold her in contempt, after all, it doesn’t make sense to subpoena Rove because we don’t have the tactically proven tools to enforce such a subpoena.
But it’s also a question of focus.
As Christy has reported, Senators Schumer, DiFi, Feingold, and Whitehouse have called on Paul Clement to appoint a Special Counsel. I’m underwhelmed with the idea, for several reasons. First, Clement is clerkship spawn of Laurence Silberman and Antonin Scalia, both of whom have well-earned reputations for putting their partisan loyalties (and duck hunting hobbies) above their commitment to independent justice.
I find the list of briefings on the domestic wiretap program as instructive for what it tells us about the program itself (and Bush’s dealings with Congress) as it is as proof that Gonzales is full of shit. In no particular order or structure, here are some thoughts:
Citizens and Voters Need Not Know
This document was declassified on May 17, 2006, before the midterm elections.
I gotta say, this post yesterday from Josh Marshall,
As regular readers of this site know, I’ve always been against themovement to impeach President Bush. I take this position not because hehasn’t done plenty to merit it. My reasons are practical. Minor reasonsare that it’s late in the president’s term and that I think impeachmentitself is toxic to our political system — though it can be less toxicthan the high officials thrown
This is going to be a two part post. In this post, I’m going to show a key discrepancy between Libby’s testimony about the questions he asked Addington on July 8, and Addington’s. Addington’s testimony suggests that (contrary to Libby’s claims), Libby was looking for general details about the paperwork behind Wilson’s trip, which would have exposed Valerie’s role at the CIA, potentially her status, as well as prior trips Joe
It looks like we’re approaching the point where some hack stands up and explains that the claim that any disagreements were not about the domestic wiretap program is no longer operative.
Documents indicate eight congressional leaderswere briefed about the Bush administration’s terrorist surveillanceprogram on the eve of its expiration in 2004, contradicting swornSenate testimony this week by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
[snip]A Gonzales spokesman maintained Wednesday that the attorney general stands by his
Well, that was quick work. Yesterday I suggested that the Gang of Eight who purportedly attended the March 10, 2004 meeting at which Alberto Gonzales claims to have developed consensus that they should ignore James Comey’s concerns and continue to tap American citizens anyway might have some enlightenment to offer about what went on at the meeting.
One more detail about the Ashcroft and Gonzales guidelines on contacts between DOJ and the White House. While the latter explicitly gives Cheney the authority to communicate with DOJ about ongoing cases, I don’t believe it gives Karl Rove–or any of the people who work in Office of Political Affairs save its head–that authority.
In light of the news that Alberto Gonzales granted Cheneypresidential powers to snoop into ongoing investigations in May 2006, I thoughtit was time to update my chronology of the CIFA side of the Cunningham scandal.September 2002, then Deputy Secretary of Defense for Counter-Intelligence Burtt establishes CIFA to oversee counterintelligence units of the armed services; consulting on the new agency was James King, recently retired director of National Imagery and Mapping Agency
