Gonzales Gets a Friendly Crowd

People seem to forget that the House is more extreme than the Senate. That's changed from the days when Senators were appointed, but it still holds. And wingnuts like Dan Lungren and Elton Gallegly are either patting Abu G on the back or moving on to the illegal immigrant brown menace. Zoe Lofgren had a good line of argument about Todd Graves and Bradley Schlozman, but this House Judiciary hearing will be an alternating good cop/bad cop show.

Meanwhile here's the story out of Seattle.

"I think there will be a criminal case that will come out of this," McKay said during his meeting with Times journalists. "This is going to get worse, not better."...

McKay said he believes obstruction-of-justice charges will be filed if investigators conclude that the dismissal of any of the eight prosecutors was motivated by an attempt to influence ongoing public-corruption or voter-fraud investigations....

McKay said he began to have concerns about politics entering the Justice Department in early 2005, when Gonzales addressed all of the country's U.S. attorneys in Scottsdale, Ariz., shortly after he took over as attorney general.
"His first speech to us was a 'you work for the White House' speech," McKay recalled. " 'I work for the White House, you work for the White House.' "

McKay said he thought at the time, "He couldn't have meant that speech," given the traditional independence of U.S. Attorneys. "It turns out he did."

And here's the story out of Missouri.

Eleven months before seven US Attorneys were fired on December 7th, 2006, former Kansas City US Attorney Todd Graves received a call from an official at the Executive Office for the U.S. Attorney telling him he was fired. Graves announced his resignation less than two months later on March 10.

Justice Department officials would later tell Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) that Graves had been dismissed for "performance" issues, according to Wednesday article in the Kansas City Star. But that's not what Graves was told at the time. According to a source with detailed knowledge of the conversation, Graves was told that his removal was not based on his performance as a prosecutor, but that it was simply time to let someone else have a chance at the job.

This hearing will essentially be a rerun of "I don't remember, I don't recall." It's almost pointless to watch.