Nancy Pelosi, Where are you?
The Democrats promised in the 2006 election campaign to PUT SOME LIMITS on the Bush administration's secretive, illegal doings; the Dems pledged to more aggressively curtail Republican corruption, and above all the Democrats promised NOT to expand the war - not to give a "blank check" to Mr. Bush and his Vice President, Dick Cheney, who engineered the Iraq invasion and occuption over the vocal and steadfast opposition of those in the military and defense establishment.(But, unfortunately, not enough of those in Congress, including many Democrats who were swept up in war fever.)
Well, to cut to the chase, it is now the middle of June, six whole months into the Democratic majority in Congress, and Mr. Bush's Attorney General has all but told the Democratic senate to go "F- yourselves!" The president himself in is full "expanded war powers" mode, pushing for a US missile intercept system on the very border of Russia with no debate with anyone besides our Czech and Polish allies, who can easily be bribed by America's vast military budget. The Vice President is getting his old enabler, Senator Joe Lieberman, to bang the drums for war vs Iran - with neo-cons everywhere lusting over the urge to use "tactical nuclear warheads" on underground Iranian targets, which weapons the FAS has determined will kill 250,000 people within years from radioactive fallout. And finally, the Democrats GROVEL before the HOLY OF HOLIES - the name that must not be spoken by Democrats under any circumstance, ever, Mr. Bush's own personal elections enforcer, Karl Rove.
As in, KARL ROVE, nemesis of Democratic campaigns for well over a decade. Make no mistake: Mr. Rove is no election genius. Despite Al Gore's wishy-washy campaign of 2000, the Bush-Cheney campaign did not win the majority of national voters, and did not even win the popular vote in Florida, had all legal voters had their votes counted accurately. Even with the tremendous Bush White House's control of the entire federal budget (courtesy Republican House and Senate majorities), and despite being a war-time re-election, the Bush-Cheney-Rove campaign still had to engage in illegal shenanigans to win Ohio (and probably Iowa and New Mexico as well), including the one Republican vote supervisor in a critical district declaring that the FBI had issued a "terrorist threat emergency" and promptly tossed all reporters and observers out of the election counting building. (The FBI stated conclusively that no such FBI alert had been issued.)
And in 2002 Republican efforts to smear Democratic Senators Tom Daschle and Max Cleland had Karl Rove's fingerprints all over them, Daschle's photograph being placed between Ossama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein in Repub. TV ads that stated that Daschle was "weak on terror." Similar TV ads were aimed at Georgia Democratic Senator Max Cleland- despite the fact that Cleland had become a triple-amputee during his infantry service in combat during the Vietnam war! And even then, it still took suspicious vote totals to see Senator Cleland ushered out of the senate, all because of Karl Rove's ride-on-a-rail.
Speaker Pelosi, you now look like the new Tom Daschle. Despite Daschle being the SENATE MAJORITY LEADER (and a Vietnam veteran to boot!), he did virtually nothing to contest and confront Mr. Rove's depiction of him as "soft on terror."
Indeed, Senator Daschle ALLOWED Senator Joe Lieberman to SMOOTHER the Enron investigation which landed in his committee (Sen. Govt. Affairs Committee) in the summer of 2002 - Lieberman REFUSED to run an honest, aggressive, and thorough investigation into ENRON CORRUPTION, thereby #1. selling thousands of Enron Workers, Pensioners, families, and investors down the river; #2. ENABLING Enron to continue with its last-gasp frauds, the attempt to rig California's electicity market by coordinated plant shutdowns and other schemes; #3. and worst of all, by crushing the Enron investigation, Senator Leiberman ROBBED Democratic voters, candidates, and activists of their BEST ISSUE in the 2002 election, the chance to TIE George W. Bush DIRECTLY TO ENRON FRAUD, Ken Lay and Enron had been Bush's biggest backers through 2 Texas gubanatorial campaigns, the 2000 Republican primary and general election, and the 2000 Florida (no-) recount battle.
Madame Speaker, just as TOM DASCHLE and JOE LIBERMAN were the face of Democratic election failures in 2000 and 2002, so to are you now the face of Democratic INACTION in the face of Bush administration wrongdoing - and especially re Mr. Rove's election thuggery.
Which we now know extended directly into the JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, where Mr. Rove PURGED one qualified, competent, successful AND REPUBLICAN US Attorney (in a critical swing state, Arkansas), and sought to replace him with one of his own former assistants, Mr. Tim Griffin - who had NEVER in his entire career conducted a prosecution!
Madam Speaker: your fate is now inextricably tied with those of Tom Daschle, Joe Lieberman, Karl Rove, and Tim Griffin. Two years from now - after election 2008 is over - where will you been seen - as doing NOTHING to PROTECT DEMOCRATIC VOTERS from ILLEGAL REPUBLICAN PURGES, or will you be seen as a quite enabler (as Mr. Daschle was) or an active accomplice (as Mr. Lieberman is) to Republican intimidation and election bullying?
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DOJ Senior Officials rebuked for disclosing Rove's connection to firing of U.S. Attorney
By Margaret Talev and Marisa Taylor
McClatchy Newspapers, Tue, Jun. 12, 2007
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/nation/17360352.htm?source=rss&channel=krwashington_nation
WASHINGTON - The White House's former political director was furious at Justice Department officials for disclosing to Congress that the administration had forced out the U.S. attorney in Little Rock, Ark., to make way for a protege of Karl Rove, President Bush's political adviser, according to documents released late Tuesday.
Then-White House political affairs director Sara Taylor spelled out her frustrations in a Feb. 16 e-mail to Kyle Sampson, then the chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
She sent the message after Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty told the Senate that unlike other federal prosecutors, U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins wasn't fired for performance reasons, but to make way for former Republican political operative Tim Griffin. Griffin, serving as the interim U.S. attorney, then announced that he wouldn't seek confirmation to the Arkansas post, but would remain until the Senate confirmed someone else. Griffin has since resigned.
"Tim was put in a horrible position; hung out to dry w/ no heads up," Taylor lashed out in the e-mail, which was sent from a Republican Party account rather than from her White House e-mail address. "This is not good for his long-term career."
The Taylor e-mail was among 46 pages of documents that the Justice Department turned over to Congress Tuesday as part of the investigation into the firings of at least nine U.S. attorneys.
The Democratic chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees said the documents showed greater White House involvement in the firings than previously known.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the documents "provide further evidence that White House officials like former political director Sara Taylor were deeply involved in the mass firings of well-performing prosecutors."
The White House disputed those characterizations, saying the e-mails deal only with the aftermath of the firings, not what led up to them, and that there was nothing inappropriate about wanting to promote Griffin, whom the administration considered "exceptionally" qualified.
"I know this is becoming terribly frustrating for Democrats, but once again documents show no wrongdoing in the decision to replace U.S. attorneys," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto.
Fratto said some documents also undercut Democrats' assertions that the White House wanted to abuse a change in federal law to keep interim U.S. attorneys in place without Senate confirmation.
In an e-mail exchange from early January, then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers asked Sampson how the department wanted to handle replacement candidates. Sampson replied that "in no case" did he want to use the new law unilaterally to "jam senators" because "that will only result in the Congress taking that authority away from us."
The newly released e-mails also showed that:
-The White House counsel's office thought in January that the ousted prosecutors had "disloyally stirred up the senators" but argued against criticizing them publicly because they hadn't "fired any shots" at the administration.
-Taylor called Cummins "lazy" and said that was "why we got rid of him in the first place." Cummins, reached Tuesday, said, "I don't know how Sara Taylor would have any information about my work ethic."
