SPEAKER PELOSI again AWOL as Bush nominates Justice Dept. Chief TAINTED BY 'PURGEGATE' corruption scandal

PEARLS and WAR-LOBBY DONATIONS for Speaker Pelosi...
Kisses, deference, whitewashes, and CONTINUED blank-check WAR FUNDING and NO OVERSIGHT for the President she was elected to be Speaker TO OPPOSE!

SPEAKER PELOSI is at it again, she _AGAIN_ ILLUSTRATES HER CORRUPTION, and SUBSERVIENCE to the WAR-LOBBY (the heart, core, and soul of the right-wing, anti-democratic Bush-Cheney-Rove-Scalia-Sciafe et al assault on American democracy), by PRETENDING NOT TO NOTICE the ONGOING CORRUPTION of the Department of Justice by Bush nominees to lead that critical branch of the US government.

Speaker Pelosi's apathy and pretend ignorance are a DISGRACE to behold.

It is bad enough that she is a CHAMPION of Mr. Bush's WARS and overtly CORRUPT war spending..... but she is also willing to pretend not to notice THE CORRUPTION of the Department of Justice!

It is just amazing that after the shoot-self-in-foot narcissism of the Clintons in the 1990s; the anemic, tepid campaigns of Al Gore, Tom Daschle, and John Kerry (in 2000, 2002, and 2004 respectively), that when a long train of Republican SCANDALS and CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS _finally_ leads to the Democrats getting a slim majority in Congress.... the Democrats choose to select as their 'leader' a WOMAN WHO GLOSSES OVER the very CRIMES and CONVICTIONS of Republicans that put her in that Speaker's Chair!

===========================================

Justice's criminal division gets a new chief
By Marisa Taylor | McClatchy Newspapers
May 24, 2008
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/38218.html


WASHINGTON — A Justice Department lawyer who became entangled in the scandal over the firings of nine U.S. attorneys last year is being nominated to take over the department's criminal division.

President Bush announced his intention Thursday to nominate Matthew Friedrich to replace Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher, who voluntarily steps down Friday.

Friedrich, 41, will serve as the acting assistant attorney general until he wins Senate confirmation.

Friedrich, a counselor to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, received an award for exceptional service in 2006 as one of the prosecutors who worked on the department's task force that investigated the collapse of the energy giant Enron. Before working in Washington, he was a prosecutor in Virginia and Texas for 10 years.

"Mr. Friedrich is a well-respected career federal prosecutor," White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore said. "The President believes he will do a wonderful job."

Friedrich also is known for his testimony related to the firing of nine U.S. attorneys. In May 2007, he told congressional investigators about a White House request to review a 27-page GOP memo detailing alleged Democratic voter fraud in Wisconsin.

Kyle Sampson, who later resigned as then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff because of his role in the firings, asked Friedrich to look into the allegations.

Sampson testified that he'd received the memo and other voter fraud complaints about New Mexico and Pennsylvania elections from the office of then-presidential adviser Karl Rove.

Democrats and two of the fired Republican-appointed U.S. attorneys accused the administration of trying to pressure Justice Department lawyers to bring voter fraud allegations to help the GOP in swing states.

Friedrich acknowledged discussing voter fraud allegations with a lawyer in the criminal division, shortly after leaving the division to become one of Gonzales' aides. Friedrich, however, said he decided it would be wrong to open a formal inquiry into the allegations so close to the election.

Friedrich, who is married to a former White House associate counsel, also told Congress that New Mexico GOP activists complained to him that then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias was not doing enough to prosecute local Democrats for corruption. By then, administration officials had secretly decided to fire Iglesias. Friedrich's wife, Dabney, exchanged e-mails with Justice Department officials about the decision to fire Iglesias and the other prosecutors.

Sam Buell, one of the former lead prosecutors in the Enron case, said he didn't believe Friedrich would allow himself to be swayed by political interests. Buell said his former colleague had been shaped by "his love for the Justice Department and a ton of ground-level prosecution experience."

"His institutional loyalty comes before his party loyalty," Buell said.

Brian Roehrkasse, a Justice Department spokesman, noted that Friedrich won praise from Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer during a hearing last year on the U.S. attorney firings. Schumer described Friedrich as "very well respected."

Nonetheless, several Justice Department career attorneys, who wouldn't speak publicly because of Friedrich's position at the department, expressed concern about the appointment because of Friedrich's political ties and the sensitive nature of some of the ongoing criminal cases.

Fisher was praised for her management of several high-profile criminal investigations, including the prosecution of super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff. So far, the Justice Department has won 12 convictions, including of a congressman and a former high-ranking Justice Department official.

McClatchy Newspapers 2008

Hillary Clinton invokes... specter of MURDER of her campaign opponent as a GOOD REASON to stay in race!

Here it is, Hillary's "Well, my opponent could be MURDERED like Robert F. Kennedy was during the 1968 campaign.. so I simply don't understand why anyone would suggest I drop out of the race now" comment, in her own words.

This is NOT the first time Senator Clinton has invoked the RFK assassination as a GOOD reason for her to stay in the Democratic presidential primary.

And, just this past week, Arkansas Governor MIKE HUCKABEE used the sound of a chair crashing off-stage during his NRA speech, to INVOKE THE IMAGE of a panicked Barak Obama DUCKING FROM A RIFLEMAN AIMING a gun at him!


Radio talk-show host Big Ed Schultz, a very perceptive "liberal" Democratic commentator of "heartland" America values and the political balance there, told his radio audience that Huckabee would probably sweep the field against his Republican presidential primary opponents. Big Ed would probably have been right (as in "correct") - except that he underestimated Huckabee's boorish, no class, no brains character. Time after time, Huckabee shot himself in foot with stupid, gratuitous comments, ELIMINATING HIMSELF as the corporate/big-biz/establishment GOP favorite. (And doing the impossible in the process - Huckabee's frequent shoot-self-in-foot gaffs, actually made George W. Bush look like an effective and competent campaigner and spokesman in comparison!)

It was Huckabee's ELIMINATING HIMSELF from the race with BLATANTLY racist comments that powered the resurrection-from-the-dead of the John McCain campaign, no great resiliance or endurance on McCain's part. (To repeat, the GOP nomination is secured by the Big Biz/establishment preference for a candidate who has the ability to put a smooth, polished, silk-purse gloss on the pig's ear politics of tax-cuts and consolidation approvals for corporations that ruin the US economy.)

HUCKABEE and HILLARY - two entitled establishment politicians, who both have summoned up identical images of GUNMEN using MURDER to influence the American political process.

Below, Countdown's Keith Olbermann's Special Comment INDICTMENT of Hillary's outrageous and disgusting "assassination as path to nomination" comments... Olbermann cites the previous instances of Senator Clinton using this rational, as well as her other repeated duplicitous comments and "mistatements."

THE BIGGEST STORY IN AMERICA - KARL ROVE faces potential HOUSE SUBPOENA over his role in corruption of Justice Department.....

THE STORY the PAID PROFESSIONAL LIARS of the WASHINGTON POST, NEW YORK TIMES, and "network media" ARE NOT TELLING the American people: The White House is right now in a FULL FRENZY, "steal the election out from Gore and Kerry!" mode, as they try to DERAIL and OBSTRUCT a House Congressional SUBPOENA from being handed down to former White House Political Affairs Director KARL ROVE.

EVERYTHING in the Bush-Cheney White House DEPENDS on their OBSTRUCTING the Rove subpoenas, for if Rove were to appear before Congress, he would be forced to testify about his role in the #1. PURGING of US prosecutors from the Department of Justice; #2. his role in the White House INSTRUCTIONS to those non-purged US Attorneys on how to go after Democratic voters, activists, and candidates; #3. and, particularly, the Rove led and incited SUCCESSFUL PARTISAN, PENURIOUS PROSECUTION of former Alabama Democratic Governor DON SIEGELMAN, ROBBED of his re-election in 2000, and then buried under a tide of Republican prosecutors WITH CLOSE LINKS to KARL ROVE and CLOSE FINANCIAL LINKS to Governor Siegelman's Republican challenger.

THIS IS _THE_ MOST IMPORTANT STORY in Washington and America for the Bush-Cheney White House: They absolutely MUST keep Rove out of testifying, because if he does, their entire house of criminal conduct will come crashing down around them.

========================================

House committee threatens Rove with subpoena
By BEN EVANS
May 2, 2008
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i_LLY8gc6av_Whr8kdxbeuy5EFXwD90D2QA85

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Judiciary Committee threatened Thursday to subpoena former White House adviser Karl Rove if he does not agree by May 12 to testify about former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman's corruption case.

In a letter to Rove's attorney, committee Democrats called it "completely unacceptable" that the Republican political strategist has so far rejected the committee's request for sworn testimony even as he discusses the matter publicly through the media.

"We can see no justification for his refusal to speak on the record to the committee," the letter states. "We urge you and your client to reconsider ... or we will have no choice but to consider the use of compulsory process."

Since last year, Democrats on the committee have been investigating whether Rove and other Republicans influenced Siegelman's prosecution on bribery and other charges. Siegelman, a Democrat, was convicted in 2006 and sentenced to more than seven years in prison last year.

Rove, who frequently worked in Alabama politics before orchestrating President Bush's White House campaigns, has flatly denied that he had anything to do with Siegelman's prosecution.

Citing executive privilege, the White House has consistently refused to let current or former staffers testify.

But as the White House has offered on other matters, Rove recently said he would discuss the Siegelman matter with committee staffers on the condition that his comments not be under oath and not be transcribed.

In their letter, Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., and several other lawmakers rejected the offer, saying such an interview "is an invitation to confusion and will not permit us to obtain a straightforward and clear record."