House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers is a stubborn cuss. Seems when he subpoenas someone, he expects for them to appear.
Now that W is out, Conyers has once again subpoenaed Karl Rove regarding the US Attorney firings. As Conyers says, "Change has come to Washington, and I hope Karl Rove is ready for it. After two years of stonewalling, it's time for him to talk."
6 comments:
If change has come to Washington like Obama is trying to do, is pulling out ANOTHER partisan bullshit hearing a step in that direction?
No one cares about this, and even Dems are trying to get past Conyers' hearing..
Truth be told, you aren't going to see big political theater hearings. As much as they are justified (and there's no way they aren't. Every rational person acknowledges that the last administration intentionally misled the public to build support for an unnecessary war, not to mention tortured people and illegally spied on Americans), they will not happen. Obama won't let it. He won't waste his political capital on it.
Hey...I've put money on the fact that there will be no prosecutions. But I refuse not to be amused at someone calling one of these f*ckers out. I personally believe we won't know the damage they did for years. Our political cycle always seems to place Dems in the position of having to be the grown up party. You can't tell me these issues aren't bigger than a blow job.
Be that as it may...there will not be wholesale drama over this. But I'm gonna enjoy what little we get.
I may be a bit naive, but I didn't understand what the problem was then, and I don't understand now. Doesn't the president have the right to fire appointed positions any time he wants, for any reason? I mean, they DO work for him, right?
My sister works for the DOJ and at the time she was unable to give me any reason why this action was wrong.
The problem was these are jobs enforcing the laws of the land and upholding the Constitution and they were politicizing the hell out of them. They were interviewing folks and asking them nothing but political questions instead of legal questions. Like who'd you vote for? What do you think about abortion? They were also hiring a bunch of graduates from Regent University Law School. Nothing against good, old crazy Pat Robertson, Regent ain't exactly top of the line, you know?
They fired at least two extremely qualified and highly regarded USAs because they refused to prosecute election fraud and corruption cases against Democrats, when there were no cases there.
Then again, some were fired because they were looking into the same kind of cases against Republicans.
The problem, as with most cases like this, is the lying bastards couldn't just be honest. Legally speaking, they could fire these guys for purely political reasons. But they did not want to admit that was why they were doing it. Why? Because it would show how little disregard they had for law and order.
In fact, they said the fired attys were let go for performance based reasons. That was their big mistake. A lot of these guys were loyal soldiers who just weren't willing to break their oaths and ethical duties for the administration. But they would not have aired the dirty laundry either. But when the WH said they got canned b/c they sucked...that pissed them off. It also wasn't smart b/c many of them had just received good performance reviews.
You may remember how terrible Gonzales came off in front of Congress. He was either lying or hopelessly clueless about what was going on in his department. The AG's Inspector General office found the firings politically motivated and improper.
Rove is being questioned because does anyone really believe that when this list of attys to can was made that he did not have something to do with it? Well, according to Gonzales, he doesn't really know what happened...but he knows the WH had nothing to do with it. Okay, Fredo.
Long story short, if these attys were fired for partisan reasons concerning their prosecution of election and voter issues, that's a big no-no. Think Nixon using the IRS on his political opponents.
I guess the only thing I would ask is, if you are right then how would this be different from every other administration in our lifetime? Didn't Reno fire (or ask for resignations of) all 93 US attornies?
And to add a second question, does an administration HAVE to have a reason to fire any appointed position? Any philosophical (read: political) reason at all should suffice, shouldn't it?
Not trying to be argumentative, just trying to understand.
Every administration does fire most people when they come in. These firings happened MIDTERM. It was unprecedented. It's what raised red flags and got people looking. Especially Josh Marshall over at TPM. Its one thing to fire people to bring in your own people. But when you fire your own people, because they are refusing to do what you want them to do. And what you want them to do is partisanize prosecutions, that's incredibly unethical. A prosecutor's main goal is supposed to be justice.
Listen, we know it was incredibly wrong, because they tried to hide it. We already know that. Conyers is wanting to keep pulling the thread to see how much of the sweater he can ruin. Obama will cut it before it goes much further.
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