I had an opportunity to speak with Rep Keith Ellison (D-MN) about the U.S. Attorney scandal, Don Siegelman and Karl Rove. Keith Ellison serves on the House Judiciary Committee.

Dear Attorney General Mukasey:

Your comments the other day to the American Bar Association sicken me as an attorney.  Your comments start out with a plea for sympathy that because attorneys at the DOJ do not make salaries comparable to attorneys in private practice, we should have some level of sympathy for them.

There is a new wrinkle in the ongoing investigation of the DOJ is that the Justice Department probe (joint Inspector General & Office of Professional Responsibility) that has now fingered at least one White House operative, with a trail that leads clearly to Alberto Gonzales, Karl Rove and perhaps others. Are criminal penalties in the offing?

This is distinct from yesterday's story about politicizing the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ, as diaried here. A third element of the investigation is the prejudicial hiring of career DOJ appointees based on political affiliation or leanings, which was announced a few days ago.

In a report released yesterday, the Justice Department concluded that Monica Goodling, the former White House liaison for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, violated federal law and DOJ policy by discriminating against job applicants who weren't faithful Republicans or conservative activists.  As it turns out, 14 months after Goodling admitted to Congress "I believe I crossed the line, but I didn't mean to," the Bush DOJ determined that she did.  More important, the report demolished the knee-jerk "criminalization of politics" defense of her Republican allies.

The first two days of Netroots Nation have already produced a bumper crop of highlights and sound bite moments.  As was widely reported, the DLC's Harold Ford was showered with cries of "Why?" and "Who?" when he told the lunchtime audience, "I have great, great respect and admiration for my former colleagues" at Fox News.  And former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman challenged John McCain to "call on Rove to go and obey the law and to show up before the Judiciary Committee."

But away from the glare of the keynotes, the Netroots Nation break-out sessions and panels produced their own fair share of memorable moments and quotable quips.

This is an amazing story.

This guy has been all over the Siegelman story, and also specifically.. corrupt DOJ prosecutor US attorney Alice Martin.

Two stories listed below, one from Rawstory and another one from the original blogger....

When we last left our heroes, House Judiciary committee Democrats had...

renewed their demand that former White House political adviser Karl Rove testify publicly on the politicization of the Justice Department but suggested they may accept a compromise in which Rove would be interviewed in private without taking an oath to tell the truth.

We were, of course, surprised to learn that Judiciary Dems considered this, "an important step forward," and that they were "encouraged by this suggestion."

Why would they say such a thing? Well, the thinking was that the "important step forward" was that Rove's offer didn't specifically preclude the later enforcement of a subpoena to compel sworn testimony, a key difference from a similar "offer" made on behalf of Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten last year. (Yes, they've been in defiance of their subpoenas for over a year now.)

But was it an important step? Well, clearly not that important, because:

Karl Rove has declined to testify before a House Judiciary subcommittee, despite a subpoena directing him to appear, his attorney told the committee on July 1.

Rove’s attorney, Robert Luskin, cited executive privilege as the reason that the former White House adviser would not appear before the Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee on July 10.

As I sarcastically implied, no surprise. And no important step forward, either. The offer to testify off-the-record without precluding later sworn testimony was not, as it turned out, an important change in the White House's position on compliance with Congressional subpoenas, but rather an additional degree of gamesmanship that lawyering up privately (rather than through the White House) allows you to employ. You have your private attorney float an offer that puts daylight between you and the White House's position, let it be hailed as "an important step forward," and then:

respectfully decline to appear before the Subcommittee on July 10 on the grounds that Executive Privilege confers upon him immunity from process to respond to a subpoena directed to this subject.

Voila! You're back to the White House position, and the House Judiciary Committee has to explain why the "important step forward" is now unacceptable.

It's not inexplicable, mind you. The grounds are these: Rove says he'll answer questions about the Don Siegelman matter only, and will refuse to discuss the broader U.S. Attorneys matter. So technically, it's this that the Committee is rejecting as unacceptable.

And it is unacceptable. Unfortunately, it also means the Rove subpoena ends up in limbo with the Miers and Bolten subpoenas, awaiting the outcome of a federal lawsuit filed by the Committee, begging the judicial branch to please allow the legislative branch to conduct oversight of the executive branch. Just as Rove himself said it would, back in May.

So what's next? Well, there's always what some Members of the Judiciary Committee say is next:

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said that the House Judiciary Committee would be willing to arrest Karl Rove if the former White House official doesn't testify about his role in the firing of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006.

That sure would go a long way toward making people believe in subpoena power. Not to mention the tantalizing suggestion offered and oft-repeated by certain Members of Congress that the new FISA revisions recently passed by the House still preserve the possibility of criminal prosecution of domestic spying abuses.

It's hard to buy into the criminal liability claim when the House has Rove, Miers and Bolten dead to rights, and... seeks civil relief. Don't you think?

You guys might remember Bradley Schlozman as the head of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division-cum-U.S. attorney in Kansas City, and then due to his work at Main Justice. Schlozman's became famous around DKos because he talked of replacing Clinton appointees with "good Americans" and keeping tabs on a lawyer who he had heard, "didn't even vote for Bush" and after his arrival in Kansas City, prosecutors filed charges agaisnt ACORN, which made democrats suspicious. In August 2007 he left justice department.

The Wall Street Journal reported today that lawyers have filed for a grand jury referral, which could lead to criminal charges, in order to investigate Schlozman's involvement in improper prosecutions during his time running the DOJ's civil-rights division in general.

UPDATE: Halperin basically jacks my headline, word for word. Maybe he's a reader?

In a major development in a story sure to be used as a smear-by-association by the RNC against Obama, the defendant Tony Rezko defends Obama by flatly stating that he was totally uninvolved with Barack Obama or Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

However, it seems more likely that this is another case of manipulating prosecutors, a la Siegelman and others, to use the machinery of the state to screw GOP political opponents?

Could the DOJ have done this to smear Senator Obama?? Their track record is certainly suggestive...

In Dan Froomkin's must read post today titled White House Fails Self-Examination, he reports a startling fact:

But according to a new Rove biography by Paul Alexander, it wasn't a time of his choosing. In "Machiavelli's Shadow: The Rise and Fall of Karl Rove," Alexander writes that Rove was fired.

Beyond this, there are interesting reasons given for Bush firing Rove quietly during a visit to the Episcopalian church Rove sometimes visited, strictly for the sake of appearance.

More below the fold.

I haven't seen this posted yet, and I thought you might find it interesting.

According to examiner.com, who cite a new book by former Time reporter Paul Alexander titled Machiavelli's Shadow Bush fired Rove with the words, "‘Karl,’ Bush said, ‘there’s too much heat on you. It’s time for you to go.’” According to the examiner.com piece, he did it in church to avoid an unpleasant scene--you know, like Rove going nucaler.

Back in August of 2007, Rove claimed that leaving the White House because, according to theNew York Times:

White House chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten, recently told senior aides that if they stayed past Labor Day he would expect them to stay through the remaining 17 months of Mr. Bush’s term.

That always seemed like a fishy cover story to me--nobody else left at the same moment. Now, the evidence suggests, it simply wasn't true.

I'm actually getting more than a little sick and tired of being right about this, not that it's at all difficult to predict. I guess what I'm really sick and tired of is people pretending it's a surprise when it happens:

Rove: Courts will have to decide his subpoena

By Hope Yen, Associated Press Writer  |  May 25, 2008

WASHINGTON --President Bush's former chief political adviser denied meddling in the Justice Department's prosecution of Alabama's ex-governor and said Sunday the courts will have to resolve a congressional subpoena for his testimony.

"Congress, the House Judiciary Committee, wants to be able to call presidential aides on its whim up to testify," Karl Rove said. "It's going to be tied up in court and settled in court."

What a shocker. The House Judiciary Committee subpoenas Harriet Miers and Joshua Bolten, and they don't show. Then they vote to hold the two of them in contempt of Congress, and the U.S. Attorney -- whose job it is to prosecute statutory contempt of Congress referrals -- refuses to prosecute. So the Congress is reduced to having to beg the federal courts to enforce their subpoenas. Starting with begging this from a former Whitewater prosecutor with, well, a rather startling record of sustaining Bush "administration" positions.

Yes, the same subpoenas that were touted as the most important reason for winning back the majority in Congress.

Gosh, I wish someone would have pointed out what the limitations of the subpoena power actually were, so that we could have seen the danger of overpromising on it.

Sigh.

Anyway, there's one more observation worth making here. I know the AP is just covering this for the sake of covering it, and we've all long since given up on beat reporters adding any analysis to the event coverage they're assigned, but this part jumped out at me as relatively wanting of background:

Rove also said his lawyers had offered alternative ways to provide the House committee information short of sworn testimony, but that lawmakers had refused. For example, Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, has said Rove could discuss the case on the condition that his comments not be under oath and not be transcribed.

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., and several other lawmakers, however, have said such an interview "will not permit us to obtain a straightforward and clear record."

And so the value of the "subpoena power" is finally reduced by the vestigial media to just another "he said, she said" story.

An AP reporter is told that Rove insists that testifying on the record and under oath before a Congressional investigative committee is, well, you know, just really pretty much the same thing as, well, you know, just really pretty much its exact opposite.

And she has to go to the Judiciary committee for a reaction on that.

Hoo boy.

Worse, what's the reaction she gets? Well, that kind of testimony -- if it really can be considered testimony at all -- "will not permit us to obtain a straightforward and clear record."

Uh, yeah. We get that. I mean, the statement is true and correct, but it lacks a certain something.

Like maybe, "Duh. What Rove suggests is not testifying before Congress. It is its exact opposite. You don't need us to 'clarify' this for you, Hope. It's in the f*$#ing dictionary."

When was the last time anyone heard of a Republican National Committee opposition researcher moving into a job as U.S. Attorney (for the Eastern District of Arkansas -- where you'd never have access to any opposition research on, say, Hillary Clinton, should that have become necessary), and then moving back to the RNC as an opposition researcher (once it was obvious that being perched in Arkansas was no longer of any interest)?

Nothing to see here. Move along. No need to actually enforce that subpoena against Karl Rove. Or, for that matter, this other one that's been laying around for a year.

The good news: Someone's subpoenaed Karl Rove:

(Washington, DC)- Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) issued a subpoena to former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove for testimony about the politicization of the Department of Justice (DOJ), including former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman’s case. Yesterday, Rove’s attorney, Robert Luskin, sent a letter to the Committee expressing that Rove would not agree to testify voluntarily, per the Committee’s previous requests.

The bad news comes in two parts:

1. In case you've forgotten, Karl Rove's already been subpoenaed. A year ago. By the Senate Judiciary Committee. Never testified. Never held in contempt. So how scared do you think he is this time?

2. It was also about a year ago that the House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten. Their testimony was demanded and refused over a series of sliding deadlines over July of last year. A year later, neither one has testified, or even shown up at a hearing in person to say why they refuse to testify.

What ever happened with those subpoenas? Well, the full House voted to hold both Miers and Bolten in contempt of Congress, and referred the charges to the U.S. Attorney for prosecution. The U.S. Attorney told the House to go jump in the lake. The House did the next best thing, voting to authorize the Judiciary Committee to file suit to enforce the subpoenas.

But hey, gosh darn it, wouldn't you know it? The case got assigned to former Whitewater Deputy Independent Counsel John D. Bates, the federal judge who dismissed the Plame lawsuit, dismissed the Cheney Energy Task Force lawsuit, upheld the validity of Bush's signature on an a bill not properly passed in the same form by both houses of Congress, and dismissed the DNC's lawsuit seeking to force the FEC to rule on John McCain's attempt to withdraw from his presidential campaign's public financing commitments.

So, yeah, I'm not really feeling it.

It's what you do before your summer recess, you know? You put the hot stuff out there so you can brag on it while you're at home in your district, or doing appearances on progressive talk radio shows.

I mean, you tell me if you think Karl's sweating it.

Yesterday the FBI raided the office and home of Scott Bloch, Special Counsel in the Office of Special Counsel (OSC).  According to news reports, Bloch's staff was told to log-off computers.  Computers and documents were seized.  While the FBI had no comment, staff at the OSC believe the raid is related to a 2005 investigation of allegations that Bloch retaliated against whistleblowers.  Additionally, the FBI presumably is investigating Bloch's purging of computer files in 2006.

Politico is reporting that President Bush's former homeland security adviser and current intelligence advisory board member Fran Townsend is joining CNN as a contributor.  Joining former White House press secretary Tony Snow as the second Bush sycophant to join the network in the last two weeks, Townsend's addition is apparently designed to help make CNN the "right choice" during its election '08 coverage.

While George W. Bush may be most disliked President in modern American history, his one-time mouthpieces are very popular at CNN indeed.  For a taste of the "fair and balanced" reporting to come, here's a look back at some of the greatest hits of Fran Townsend and Tony Snow.

From the House Judiciary Committee:

Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), as well as committee members Linda Sánchez (D-CA), Artur Davis (D-AL), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), responded to former White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove's letter, sent by his attorney, refusing to testify voluntarily before the Committee. Conyers advises Rove's attorney that he may seek to compel Rove's testimony if he does not agree by May 12 to testify voluntarily. The full text of the letter is linked along with a copy of Rove's attorney's letter.

From Raw Story. See the disgusting details below the fold.