NYT Editorial: "Why This Scandal Matters" (DOJ - '...hard not to see fingerprints of Karl Rove')

[Hissyspit]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/opinion/21mon1.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/opinion/21mon1.html?hp

Editorial
Why This Scandal Matters

Published: May 21, 2007

As Monica Goodling, a key player in the United States attorney scandal, prepares to testify before Congress on Wednesday, the administration’s strategy is clear. It has offered up implausible excuses, hidden the most damaging evidence and feigned memory lapses, while hoping that the public’s attention moves on. But this scandal is too important for the public or Congress to move on. This story should not end until Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is gone, and the serious damage that has been done to the Justice Department is repaired.

- snip -

The degree of partisanship in the department is shocking. A study by two professors, Donald Shields of the University of Missouri at St. Louis and John Cragan of Illinois State University, found that the Bush Justice Department has investigated Democratic officeholders and office seekers about four times as often as Republican ones.

It is hard not to see the fingerprints of Karl Rove. A disproportionate number of the prosecutors pushed out, or considered for dismissal, were in swing states. The main reason for the purge — apart from hobbling a California investigation that has already put one Republican congressman in jail — appears to have been an attempt to tip states like Missouri and Washington to Republican candidates for House, Senate, governor and president.

Justice Department headquarters has become deeply partisan. Young operatives like Ms. Goodling were apparently allowed to hire and promote based on party membership. Political appointees cleared the way for laws designed to disenfranchise minority voters, and brought litigation to remove Democratic-leaning voters from the rolls.

MORE

[bpcmxr]

1. link please? nt.

[Hissyspit]

2. Try that one. Let me know if it doesn't work. n/t

[pinto]

3. Another snip from the editorial:

"The Justice Department is no ordinary agency. Its 93 United States attorney offices, scattered across the country, prosecute federal crimes ranging from public corruption to terrorism. These prosecutors have enormous power: they can wiretap people’s homes, seize property and put people in jail for life. They can destroy businesses, and affect the outcomes of elections. It has always been understood that although they are appointed by a president, usually from his own party, once in office they must operate in a nonpartisan way, and be insulated from outside pressures.

This understanding has badly broken down. It is now clear that United States attorneys were pressured to act in the interests of the Republican Party, and lost their job if they failed to do so. The firing offenses of the nine prosecutors who were purged last year were that they would not indict Democrats, they investigated important Republicans, or they would not try to suppress the votes of Democratic-leaning groups with baseless election fraud cases."

[senseandsensibility]

4. The link worked fine for me.

Thanks for posting, and I am glad I read the entire article. The NYT really seems to get it.

[tblue]

5. The Times can do a lot to put an end to this crap by keeping the story on Page 1 above the fold!

and not just in the editorial back pages. I don't have access to the hard copy newspapers, so I have no idea if this story has been a headline and, if so, how often. But that is where it belongs. And the hospital visit story, too.

[Hissyspit]

6. It's about stealing elections, pure and simple. It is a major criminal corrupt conspiracy

to use the voter fraud issue for purging voter rolls of Dems or possible Dems in order to steal elections, thus keeping the Rethugs in power. It is a MAJOR scandal. The NYT is being too diplomatic. It is bigger than just the issue of gutting the all-important Department of Justice, as if that weren't enough.

And if it hadn't been for bloggers, it might not have surfaced at all, much less made it to the front pages.

[arendt]

8. There was NOT ONE WORD in the Sunday NYT on this scandal. n/t

[krkaufman]

7. Sadly, the editorial doesn't clearly comment on the most unasked question...

... What did the other 85 prosecutors do to escape Rove's hit-list? The 8 fired prosecutors are literally the tip of the iceberg.

[BlooInBloo]

9. How rich is that? The very scandal that they and the rest of the MSM denied the existence of...

... for weeks to months. The scandal that only took off because of TPM's stick-to-it-ive-ness.

And now THEY deign to tell US why it matters?

Fuck them.

[Wiley50]

11. Now, don't forget Brad Friedman

He's been working his ass off for this for the last 3 years

[BlooInBloo]

12. I had no idea that the fired-attorney story was 3 years old...

... I thought it was due to TPM.

Incidentally, TPM has a new post up, aimed partially at (rightly) elliptically claiming credit:

"The Comey story is extremely important. And it deserves all the attention it's getting. At the same time though it shows the outsized importance granted to stories told as gripping first-person narratives. The point is too rooted in human nature to criticize it. It is what it is. One might as well criticize the rain.

But the point still deserves mentioning: What we've already learned about Gonzales story is just as bad as the Comey story. We already knew more than enough to know he was morally and ethically unfit for the job."

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/014235.php

[Wiley50]

15. Brad, as well as Greg Palast have been telling us for three years

that the republic's main scam was to keep potential dem voters from voting
and one of these ways was using the fake "voter Fraud" claims to cover the
very real "Election Fraud" that they were doing themselves.
It's been a developing story all along and when David Igesias and some other
fired USA's began talking the story broke wide open.

But Brad and Palast have been following this trail for quite a while

Do an archive search over at Bradblog.com for Voter fraud and Election Fraud

[gulliver]

10. Why should it end when Gonzalez is gone?

Do they mean "has gone" as in to jail? The guy was Bush's "lawyer stooge." He's like the legal Anderson to Bush's Enron. Gonzalez used his ethnicity and law degree to give Bush a difficult-to-assail stalking horse for the Constitution itself. I don't think Bush intended to attack the Constitution, by the way. I just think he didn't realize it was between him and unbridled power. That's all lawyer stuff. That's Gonzalez.

[WillyT]

13. K & R, Baby !!!

:bounce::woohoo::bounce:

[Straight Shooter]

14. K&R.

The NYT has a long, long way to go before they are absolved of the heinous crime of aiding and abetting the bush administration in the attack on Iraq under false pretenses.

I appreciate their writeup of the attorney purge, but I will never forgive them for their complicity.

And, with that, good night.

[pacalo]

16. K&R. This story should not end with Goonzo's demise.

Frankly, I hope he stays until the investigators get enough evidence to convict Turdblossom.

[Hissyspit]

17. .