#49 PD: Who knew [Valerie Plame] was a CIA operative, then? And how?

#66 MITH: What makes [Carol Lam] left wing - too few prosecutions?

#67 MITH: By the way, you don't really mean to say that you'd see a US Attorney fired over his/her ploitical opinions, do you?

#87 MITH: Uhh... how about lying about those reasons?

#100 Tree: show me where someone accussed you of being unbending because you don't agree with a statement like "The NYT is not liberal"

#101 MITH: Humor me (really). What made her a bad candidate for USA?

I think we should gum this to death. Ask the senators to give Tim a chance, meet with him, give him some time in office to see how he performs, etc. If they ultimately say no, never (and the longer we can forestall that, the better) then we can tell them we'll look for other candidates. Ask them for recommendations, evaluate the recommendations, interview their candidates and otherwise run out the clock. All of this should be done in "good faith" of course. [i just love the quotes around good faith -mith]

The only thing really at risk here is a repeal of the Attorney General's appointment authority. We intend to have DOJ leg affairs people on notice to work hard to preserve this. House members won't care about this. All we really need is for one Senator to object to language being added to legislative vehicles that are moving through. There is some risk that we'll lose the authority. But if we don't ever exercise it, then what's the point of having it. (I'm not 100% sure that Tim was the guy on which to test drive this authority, but know that getting him appointed was important to Harriet, Karl, etc.)

the agency said Congress hasn't given it authority to regulate greenhouse gases, regardless of what the scientific evidence showed....Senator James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who is chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said the EPA correctly concluded that Congress didn't intend to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions through the Clean Air Act.

In the months before the 2004 presidential election, a firm called Sproul & Associates launched voter registration drives in at least eight states, most of them swing states. The group--run by Nathan Sproul, former head of the Arizona Christian Coalition and the Arizona Republican Party--had been hired by the Republican National Committee.

Sproul got into a bit of trouble last fall when, in certain states, it came out that the firm was playing dirty tricks in order to suppress the Democratic vote: concealing their partisan agenda, tricking Democrats into registering as Republicans, surreptitiously re-registering Democrats and Independents as Republicans, and shredding Democratic registration forms.

The scandal got a moderate amount of local coverage in some states--and then the election was over. Now anyone who brought up Nathan Sproul, or any of the other massive crimes and improprieties committed on or prior to Election Day, was shrugged off as a dealer in "conspiracy theory."

It seems that Sproul did quite a lot of work for the Republicans. Exactly how much did he do? More specifically, how much did the RNC pay Sproul & Associates?

If you went online last week to look up how much money Sproul received from the Republicans in 2004, you would have found that, according to the party (whose figures had been posted by the Center for Responsive Politics), the firm was paid $488,957.

In fact, the RNC paid Sproul a great deal more than that. From an independent study of the original data filed by the Republicans with the Federal Election Commission, it is clear that Sproul was paid a staggering $8.3 million for its work against the Democrats.

In post 208 you told us you couldn't decide which of your many links to post about "ACORN and Democrat voter fraud". What did we all know at that time?

In post 233 you told us, "And if a Democrat breaks the law, he should be indicted, A good example of this is ACORN."

Here's a jewel from post 245: "Of the 100s of 1000s voters registered, my guess is the over/under, of those who voted Republican, would be about 8."

Those Missing RNC Emails ...

... Boy, it sure would be easier to defend this White House's innocence if they would quit acting so guilty.

I completely understand the origin of the system of RNC email accounts for selected White House staffers. President Bush entered office wanting to avoid the ethical lapses that had clouded the Clinton years. In particular, his White House was organized to ensure the strict separation of governing and electioneering expenses. I wrote a number of fundraising speeches in 2001-2002, and for those I had a separate printer (ink and paper paid for by the Republican National Committee, not the taxpayer).

The Democratic theory that these RNC email accounts constitute a sinister scheme to escape public oversight does not bear much scrutiny. Congress can subpoena private emails too after all. And "losing" emails only invites suspicions of the worst.

On the other hand, it is true that a certain personality type sooner or later shows up in every administration: the clever-clever-stupid political manipulator so infatuated with his or her own petty schemes that they never stop to consider the full and deep meaning of the ancient rule, "honesty is the best policy."

When that maxim was coined, the word "policy" had the same negative connotations that the word "scheme" does today. The maxim recommends honesty not as an ethical imperative, but as the highest form of cunning - because schemes are always found out, and often found out much sooner than expected.

At this point in the attorney affair, it is difficult to avoid concluding:

1) regardless of the legalities, the White House and DoJ were engaged in activities that they believed would appear discreditable if exposed to full public view;

2) that they have told untruths in their effort to conceal the full truth of the matter;

and 3) that the Gonzales Justice Department was overstocked with inadequate people from the Attorney General himself on down.