Are We Calling This Victory?

You all probably know by now that Karl Rove was deposed in front of House Judiciary Committee staffers the other day, about the US Attorneys scandal and the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. But what you don't know, and what I don't know, and what nobody knows, is why. At some level, I'm glad that Congress was able to assert a modicum of its authority and at least get Rove (and apparently, Harriet Miers back in June) on the record with a set of questions. But to what end? Certainly not one of precedent, and not an investigative one as well, it seems.

The White House's foot-dragging may have inflicted some measure of political damage. But in terms of the legal repercussions, by coming to a deal while the case was still pending in an appeals court, the Bushies have largely succeeded in one of their goals: ensuring that no clear precedent has been established limiting the president's power to claim executive privilege in such cases. And the Obama White House's role in helping to secure the deal for Rove's testimony suggests that's an outcome they wanted too.

As for the underlying issue -- the quest to learn what really happened in the firings and the Siegelman prosecution, things remain murky at best. There are conflicting reports about whether Rove will sit for another day of testimony. It's also unclear when and how the committee will decide which parts of Rove's testimony, if any, can be made public, and in what form the probe's findings will be released.

Siegelman, quoted later in the piece, thinks John Conyers will continue to investigate until he finds the truth. He must be an eternal optimist. This has reached the point where Republicans can demagogue with the words "old news," and that was precisely the Bush White House's goal. Even if House Judiciary eventually cobbles together a report and makes recommendations, the chances of the Justice Department taking whatever recommendations concern accountability measures are, in a word, remote. They haven't even moved to set aside the verdict on Siegelman, though I did notice that the Justice Department whistleblower in the case has been fired. At least someone is held to account, right?

ACTION: Tell Congress To Open Impeachment Inquiry Into Jay Bybee

UPDATE: Ryan Grim of The Huffington Post has the full story of the passage of the resolution at the convention.

Thanks again to all of you who signed petitions and made phone calls and helped push the resolution to open a Congressional inquiry into Torture Judge Jay Bybee, which the California Democratic Party adopted at its convention yesterday. I have been told by the authors of the resolution that the pressure from the outside really aided their efforts.

The passage of the resolution was a beginning, not an ending. I view the impeachment of Jay Bybee from the 9th Circuit Court as a moral and legal imperative, but also an entryway into the larger fight for justice and accountability for those who authorized and directed torture in our name. I agree with Jerrold Nadler that impeachment should not be seen as a compromise measure, a way to satiate those concerned with accountability. "There can't be a compromise -- you have to follow the law ... If the facts say that some former high-ranking official should be prosecuted, the fact people will get angry should be irrelevant ... If we do not investigate the torture that is clear that it occured, and if the evidence is there prosecute, not only are we disobeying the law, not only are we being immoral, but we are inviting torture of our people in the future."

Bybee's impeachment can start us down the path to restoring the rule of law. And now the largest state Democratic Party in the country has spoken. They have said that the myth about torture being a useful tool to extract actionable intelligence from terror suspects is not only irrelevant when it comes to lawbreaking but also entirely false, according to the CIA's own inspector general. They have said that Judge Bybee's appalling judgment and slavish acceptance of John Yoo's flawed legal reasoning represents a greater evil - the evil of thoughtlessness - and a greater responsibility for the actions committed thanks to his off-handed signature. They have said that Bybee's understanding of his own wrongdoing outweighed by his desire to be a federal judge shocks the conscience, and that far from being rewarded for his obedience to his conservative minders, he should bear responsibility for it, to the fullest extent possible.

So what do we do now? Members of the California Democratic Party include 34 members of Congress, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and six men and women who sit on the House Judiciary Committee, where an impeachment inquiry would be remanded. They need to hear that their party just recommended that they open an immediate Congressional inquiry into Judge Bybee, with all appropriate remedies and punishments available. In fact, the entire House Judiciary Committee needs to hear this. Thanks to my friends at Firedoglake, they will. We have put together a contact list for the entire House Judiciary Committee, and you can, with just a few clicks, compose a letter to any member of that Committee telling them of the CDP's action and demanding immediate action on an inquiry.

House Judiciary Committee
John Conyers, Michigan	Howard Berman, California
Rick Boucher, Virginia	Jerrold Nadler, New York
Robert C. Scott, Virginia	Mel Watt, North Carolina
Zoe Lofgren, California	Sheila Jackson-Lee, Texas
Maxine Waters, California	Bill Delahunt, Massachusetts
Robert Wexler, Florida	Steve Cohen, Tennessee
Hank Johnson, Georgia	Pedro Pierluisi, Puerto Rico
Luis Gutierrez, Illinois	Brad Sherman, California
Tammy Baldwin, Wisconsin	Charles Gonzalez, Texas
Anthony Weiner, New York	Adam Schiff, California
Linda Sánchez, California	Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Fl
Dan Maffei, New York	Lamar S. Smith, Texas
Jim Sensenbrenner, Wisconsin	Howard Coble, North Carolina
Elton Gallegly, California	Bob Goodlatte, Virginia
Dan Lungren, California	Darrell Issa, California
Randy Forbes, Virginia	Steve King, Iowa
Trent Franks, Arizona	Louie Gohmert, Texas<
Jim Jordan, Ohio	Ted Poe, Texas
Jason Chaffetz, Utah	Tom Rooney, Florida
Gregg Harper, Mississippi

In addition, you can call your members of Congress and tell them that they must support an immediate inquiry into the actions of Jay Bybee, federal judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The Congressional switchboard at 1-866-220-0044 can connect you to your member of Congress as well. Here are some talking points:

• Jay Bybee signed the August 1, 2002 memo approving certain torture techniques to be used on mentally ill terror suspect Abu Zubaydah.

• The CIA’s Inspector General found that the torture of Abu Zubaydah and others foiled no terror plots and sent intelligence personnel on wild goose chases and false leads around the world. (McClatchy, 4.24.09)

• The California Democratic Party is the largest state party in the country, and they have spoken with one voice to demand hearings on Bybee.

• We are required by the Convention Against Torture to investigate and prosecute to the fullest extent of the law those who authorized and committed acts of torture.

• Judge Bybee's presence on the 9th Circuit disgraces the federal bench and saps at our moral authority in the world. Congress has a duty to step in and impeach him.

We now have this resolution as a tool. Let's use it to pry open the Congress and provide the opening of some accountability for these heinous acts committed in our name.

Rove A No-Show

I had a tip that Karl Rove was going to show up at a House Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday, but I held off on reporting it because I got a qualified "maybe." Turns out I was right to hesitate:

So today was the day that Karl Rove was supposed to appear before the House Judiciary committee to testify about the US Attorney firings. And of course, Rove didn't show.

That wasn't a surprise. After getting the deadline pushed back, Rove had already publicly indicated he didn't plan on being there, citing President Bush's claim of executive privilege. Rove's lawyer had then asked for a second postponement, a request that Judiciary chair John Conyers had declined to grant.

So Rove is in violation of an issued subpoena. Yet the Obama Administration has until March 4 to deliver an Appeals Court brief over what to do with the sought testimony of Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten. Emptywheel wonders about the connection between the two:

Now, I have no reason (besides noting the coincident dates) to believe that there's a connection between the additional week extension on the Appeals Court brief and any response to Rove's latest contempt for an HJC subpoena.

But I do note that if Rove were immediately held in contempt by HJC and if the House were to act with any dispatch to vote on contempt, Rove might well be in contempt by the time Obama briefs the Appeals Court a week from Wednesday. Mind you, things like that don't usually happen so quickly in the House. But it would make the discussion about the Appeal more interesting.

I think the White House is trying to make a deal acceptable to all sides. It would be good for John Conyers and HJC to force their hands. Eventually, we have to have a framework where executive privilege isn't used as a way to evade accountability.

House Judiciary Warns DoJ on Perata Leaks

I've been mulling this around in my head for a few days. Three powerful members of the House Judiciary committee have have sent a letter to the Justice Department calling for an investigation into leaks surrounding the inquiry into State Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata.

No article since November 2004 has explicitly said that any information came from a federal government source. But in a letter to U.S. Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey obtained by The Times on Monday, U.S. Reps. John Conyers Jr., Linda Sanchez and Zoe Lofgren wrote, "We are disturbed and concerned that news story after news story . . . has cited federal law enforcement sources as the basis of information."

The only article specifically mentioned in the July 31 letter was a story in the San Francisco Chronicle. The article cited "sources familiar with the probe," a broad term that could encompass federal agents, defense attorneys and people who have been questioned [...]

On Friday, the day after the congressional letter was sent, a Wall Street Journal article said the investigation into Perata "gained momentum over the past year." The article's details were attributed to anonymous people "close to the defense," who said Perata's longtime political consultant, Sandi Polka, was granted immunity to compel her to answer questions.

(Here's that SF Chron article mentioned in the letter.)

The Perata investigation certainly has dragged on for years, leading to him needing more and more funds to raise in his defense. In particular, the dumping of $250,000 from the California Democratic Party into his legal defense fund raised a lot of eyebrows around these parts. After the initial explanation of "We're the CDP and we can do what we want," a secondary explanation was that the investigation had been politicized and that this was part of the DoJ's efforts to prosecute and delegitimize Democrats. A couple weeks later, out comes this letter, signed by two members of the California delegation. But it's Conyers' participation that makes me believe that this is a real concern. I trust Conyers enough to think that he wouldn't simply badger the DoJ to help out a political problem in California.

Of course, let's look at what the letter is actually alleging. It's not suggesting that the investigation itself is unnecessarily political, but that someone inside the investigation is using the media to disparage Perata. That may well be true, but it doesn't necessarily follow that the whole investigation is a farce.

Let's now look at what this does NOT suggest:

• It in no way excuses the CDP for paying off Perata with $250,000 in the middle of an election year, whether that money was simply laundered through them and earmarked for Perata or not. Based on this SacBee report, it appears Perata is perfectly capable of raising money for himself:

Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata has solicited at least $200,000 this year from political interest groups for a nonprofit foundation that promotes and rallies support for one of his bills.

The arrangement, apparently legal, allows the Senate leader to solicit unlimited funds for his own political agenda without having to detail how the money is spent.

"He may have found a loophole in the Political Reform Act that needs to be closed," said attorney Bob Stern, a co-author of the state's Political Reform Act who now runs the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles.

Which leads me to point 2:

• There is no way that Perata should still be Senate President Pro Tem at this point. While he has done a good job of hammering Republicans for their intransigence on the budget, this image hit, as well as the constant distraction of having to find new ways to raise money for his legal bills, are not what we need at this sensitive time, ESPECIALLY when Darrell Steinberg is waiting in the wings and perfectly capable of performing the same duties without the black cloud of indictment hanging over the head of the Democratic leadership. They haven't even taken a caucus vote on this yet, to my knowledge - it's currently scheduled for August 21, but during these budget negotiations that's doubtful to come off.

It is perfectly consistent to be skeptical of the Justice Department's case against Perata and to ALSO demand that he step down from his leadership position, and to excoriate the CDP for their conduct in either shoveling Perata money or acting as a conduit for that fund transfer.

Contempt

I'm really trying to figure out what the hell these mean anymore.

(Washington, DC)- Today, the House Judiciary Committee approved a report and resolution recommending that the House of Representatives cite former White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, for contempt of Congress for failing to appear before the Committee as required by subpoena. The report and resolution passed by a vote of 20-14.

“Today’s vote was an important statement by this Committee that no person – not even Karl Rove – is above the law.” said Chairman John Conyers, Jr. “This week’s Inspector General report on the pervasive politicization of the Department of Justice particularly underscores the urgent need for Mr. Rove to testify before Congress. Any suggestion that the matters for which Mr. Rove was subpoenaed are not important, or that no Administration misconduct has been revealed, is just inconsistent with the facts. Our investigation has revealed Mr. Rove to be a key figure in the firings of US Attorneys, and the questions about his role in the Siegelman case only continue to mount.”

Okay, and.... these citations have to get a full majority vote in the House. Will that be scheduled in the weeks left in the session? And, you know, what then?

The House's earlier contempt citations against Josh Bolten and Harriet Miers were referred under the statutory contempt procedure to the US Attorney who, at the instruction of the White House and the Department of Justice, declined to prosecute the cases. An ironic situation, given that the contempt citations arose in the context of an investigation into whether or not the DOJ and the White House were improperly directing prosecutorial decisions of the US Attorneys.

The House Judiciary Committee subsequently filed suit in federal court, seeking an order compelling the US Attorney to proceed with the prosecution, and somehow -- magically! -- the case was 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.

I don't know about you, but I'm not really feeling the fear with respect to the statutory contempt thing.

One other possibility: Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC) testified in last Friday's non-impeachment hearing before the Judiciary Committee regarding his legislation that would grant Congress the authority to petition the courts to appoint a special prosecutor in cases where the DOJ refused to take up referrals of contempt of Congress. That bill, H.R. 6508, now sits before the Judiciary Committee awaiting action, albeit with powerful cosponsors including Chairman Conyers, and subcommittee chairs Linda Sanchez and Jerry Nadler.

Probably time to get moving on that.

Kagro is absolutely right. If this gets stacked up in the same flawed process it'll lead down the same road as the Miers/Bolten citations. A special prosecutor is desperately needed. And I'd also keep in mind that this process should absolutely not end in the 110th Congress. Rove isn't connected to the Bush Administration anymore, there's no reason for this investigation to end when their term ends.

I would also add that Rove has been informally advising McCain. Any member of the press going to ask him about that?

Rove If You Want To, Rove Around The World

Well, Karl Rove didn't show up for his Congressional hearing yesterday, defying a subpoena; word is that he left the country on a scheduled trip he never bothered to mention to the House Judiciary Committee. The Democrats are most angry and I think they're going to break out the "stern letter" pen for a round of extremely stern letters.

In today's "hearing" (for which no one showed up to be heard), subcommittee chair Linda Sanchez ruled Rove's assertion of the privilege to be without merit, which could be the first step toward holding him in contempt of Congress. Of course, Josh Bolten and Harriet Miers have both been held in contempt, and we already know what happened there: the Bush "administration" has instructed the US Attorney not to prosecute the case. And this is actually Rove's second subpoena. The Senate Judiciary Committee issued the first one a year ago, but Rove never showed for that one, either. The Committee then voted to hold Rove in contempt in December of last year, but there has never been a vote before the full Senate, which would be required to refer the charges to the same US Attorney who wouldn't prosecute Miers and Bolten.

But Rove's claim could perhaps add another layer of ridiculousness to these proceedings. He claims executive privilege, but the White House says nothing. So who's right? Has he been instructed to assert this newly invented kind of immunity/ privilege or not? Well, let's hold hearings to find out whether the White House told him to do it. Only the White House surely won't testify, no doubt claiming... executive privilege. And Double Secret Immunity, too, no doubt.

So, he did not claim executive privilege, but he said he didn't have to show up because his duties as a Presidential aide were privileged. Which means that his official duties included politicizing the Justice Department and railroading Democrats in invented prosecutions, because that was the subject of the hearing.

It's pretty clear that the Democrats aren't going to do a hell of a lot about this. Even if they knuckled down and offered inherent contempt, they only have until the end of September before adjourning. The only possibility is this legislation that would prevent "future Karl Roves."

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who has primary jurisdiction over the executive branch, is considering legislation to eliminate Karl Rove-type advisers in future administrations.

The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hints broadly that such a bill could ban the use of federal funds to finance such a politically partisan office.

"Why should we be using taxpayer dollars to have a person solely in charge of politics in the White House?" Waxman said in an interview. "Can you imagine the reaction if each member of Congress had a campaign person paid for with taxpayer dollars?"

Sadly, this is as close we can get to accountability. Stopping a future event. That'll show Karl!

Big Picture On Torture

There's quite a remarkable hearing going on today in a House subcommittee. David Addington and John Yoo are voluntarily testifying about the torture practices of the Bush Administration. Thanks to time zones, I didn't get to tune in until the end of the first round of questioning, but I'm getting the feel of it from reports by Spencer Ackerman and at the liveblog on Daily Kos.

It seems like both of them are being evasive but for completely different reasons. Addington ought to be held in contempt of Congress for just plain contemptuousness. As Scott Horton noted on Pacifica's coverage, he clearly believes himself to be smarter than all the Representatives in the room, and he has no problem bullying them around the way he reportedly bullies everyone in the executive branch. He also doesn't mind lying about his role in designing torture tactics after a personal trip to Guantanamo. He essentially said, according to Horton, that the world is very dangerous and the threat is not yet over, implying that Congress had better back down with all the questioning and recognize that absolutely anything can be done in the name of protecting the country. Here's an example:

Addington, naturally, is being legalistic and careful. Can president violate statutes during wartime? "As a general proposition, no, ... but facts matter for a lawyer." Which facts would justify the president violating such a statute? Addington says he won't answer. He's combative, and good. Could self-defense be such a case? "I haven't expressed an opinion... I haven't researched the statute." Says on FISA, "there is a serious constitutional question that Congress might... try to block the president's power."

The President's power, that is, to allow prisoners to be sodomized with a broomstick. The President's power to murder prisoners in US custody. The President's power to hide prisoners from the Red Cross in violation of international law. The President's power, and the power of those around them, to commit war crimes. For your protection. In your name.

"After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes," Taguba wrote. "The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."

Now Yoo, on the other hand, seems afraid for his life and livelihood. He is trying not to answer any question too fully, is stretching out every answer to run out the clock on the questioners, is debating the meaning of words like "implemented," and is consulting with two lawyers on practically every question. He's trying to explain away the Convention Against Torture and generally throw up enough mud to resist any real answer. He's constantly citing Justice Department guidelines that restrict his testimony, too. Over and over he makes the claim that he was simply a lawyer providing legal advice. Of course, at the Nuremberg trials the precedent was set that lawyers whose advice was used to commit war crimes are culpable in those activities. If the policy is to go to the very limit, and the lawyer sets the limit, then he is creating the policy. Yoo can't wiggle off the hook... at least in an international court of law. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 gave some debatable measure of immunity to most of this crowd for their crimes.

The subcommittee is being very thorough and not taking a lot of bullshit. As the facts about physical and psychological abuse slowly come to light, not only at Abu Ghraib but across all US detention sites, and as we learn more about those who directed the policies that led to this torture, abuse and murder, the policymakers have become more unbridled in investigating these crimes. The grilling of William Haynes - almost made a federal judge for life - at the Senate Armed Services Committee last week showed an unusually strident Carl Levin and his compatriots angered by Haynes' activities. After the Supreme Court asserted in Boumediene that prisoners captured at Guantanamo have the ability to challenge their crimes, we've seen the DC appeals court overrule the Administration on their designation of "enemy combatants," where other prisoners have begun to use their habeas rights to challenge their detentions. The Bush-Cheney policies on interrogation and torture have been discredited by the law and by Congress, and the notion of a "few bad apples" has been totally rejected. As Jerrold Nadler said today:

"It does not go too far to say the reputation of our nation as the leading exponent of human rights and human dignity have been besmirched by this administration [...] I know I speak for many of colleagues when I say that the more we find out about what was done and how it was justified, the more appalled we have become."

None of this, of course, matters to Addington and Yoo, who instead value their radical agenda of executive power and aren't too concerned about the courts and the Congress' opinion. In fact, they're already winning this battle where it counts.

A new poll of citizens’ attitudes about torture in 19 nations finds Americans among the most accepting of the practice. Although a slight majority say torture should be universally prohibited, 44 percent think torture of terrorist suspects should be allowed, and more than one in 10 think torture should generally be allowed.

The findings of the WorldPublicOpinion.org poll put the United States alongside countries like Russia, Egypt and the Ukraine and lagging far behind allies like Great Britain, Spain and France in how its citizens view torture.

The poll found 53 percent of Americans believed all torture should be prohibited; the average in all 19 countries polled was 57 percent.

The Jack Bauer-ization of the torture question, the mainstreaming of cruel and unusual punishment, the ability for the right to demagogue this issue for six years, means that so much of this bipartisan condemnation is coming a little too late. It's nice to hear, but Addington's bullying view has ruled the day for so long that I don't know if we can even get back to a sense of normalcy.

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of 200 former government officials, retired generals and religious leaders plans to issue a statement on Wednesday calling for a presidential order to outlaw some interrogation and detention practices used by the Bush administration over the last six years.

The executive order they seek would commit the government to using only interrogation methods that the United States would find acceptable if used by another country against American soldiers or civilians.

It would also outlaw secret detentions, used since 2001 by the Central Intelligence Agency, and prohibit the transfer of prisoners to countries that use torture or cruel treatment. The C.I.A. has allowed terrorism suspects to be taken to such countries.

Among the signers is George P. Shultz, secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan. “It’s a good time to step back, take a deep breath and set a standard,” Mr. Shultz said in an interview.

That would have been a good time in October 2001, before war fever made everybody in Washington a little crazy, and the White House was allowed to take the policies they always wanted to implement off the shelf, using the SERE program designed for our soldiers to resist enemy torture and reverse-engineering it to torture others. We knew in 2001 that torture was ineffective, counter-productive, prone to generating bad intelligence, and would create more terrorists than it would stop terrorist attacks. It's not some grand display of honor to speak out about it now. It's actually more like cowardice.

I appreciate the work of this subcommittee, and after this embarrassment of a President's term ends I would hope that there is a grand inquest into these high crimes. But don't bet on it. And the court of public opinion, the space has already been given to the fearmongers and jingoists to connect torture with saving American lives. The truth, of course, is the opposite.

Impeachment Moves Forward

I agree with Chris Bowers that this should have gotten a full floor vote instead, but Rep. Dennis Kucinich's 35 articles of impeachment against George W. Bush was referred to the House Judiciary Committee today, as per the Ohio Congressman's request. Impeachment is absolutely warranted, though as Bowers says, without a compliant Congress we wouldn't have any need for it (which is also why we'll never see it happen):

My basic feeling on impeaching Bush and Cheney is that if we had a Congress that was capable of impeaching and convicting those two, then we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. A Congress that was willing to impeach and convict Bush and Cheney over Iraq would have already stopped the Iraq war. A Congress that was willing to impeach and convict Bush and Cheney over FISA would not have passed a bad FISA bill last August. A Congress that was willing to impeach Bush and Cheney would never have allowed Bush and Cheney to take office, and would have overturned the 2000 election results. A Congress that was willing to impeach Bush and Cheney over signing statements would have, well, impeached Bush and Cheney a long, long time ago. A Congress that was willing to impeach bush and Cheney would have at least conducted more thorough and effective investigations of administration wrongdoing since the start of 2007.

Indeed. But nevertheless, Congress should be on the record about the crimes of the Administration. Robert Wexler is the first colleague of Kucinich's to co-sponsor the bill, and he's a House Judiciary member, and really I hope they keep pushing (Kucinich has vowed to do so). Having someone stand up in the Congress for progressive principles and values is vital, no matter the outcome. some fights are worth waging.

The most interesting thing about the vote was that 24 Republicans joined all Democrats in voting to refer it. This included the usual suspects like Ron Paul and Wayne Gilchrest, but also a number of threatened Republicans who are in tough re-election fights. In California, David Dreier, he of the House leadership, voted to refer. I guess he doesn't want to be seen as such a Bush rubber-stamp after all.

Subpoena Power, Only Without The Power

The House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Karl Rove today. Which is just dandy. But Rove has been subpoenaed by the Senate Judiciary Committee for over a year, and you know, he didn't testify and nothing happened. And there's still a legal fight over getting the likes of Harriet Miers to testify after delivering a subpoena.

So I don't see Karl Rove strolling into the hearing room anytime soon.

However, the OPR investigation could be promising:

Late Update: The committee is especially interested in Rove's involvement in the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. In conjunction with issuing the subpoena to Rove, the committee released a letter from the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility confirming that it has launched an investigation of "allegations of selective prosecution relating to the prosecutions of Don Siegelman, Georgia Thompson, and Oliver Diaz and Paul Minor."

I don't know how far an investigation under the purview of the Bush Administration would go, but typically investigations like this go for a while. As in, well into the next Presidency. And depending on the new Attorney General, this could mean that the OPR probe would actually gather some momentum next year. I'm looking for accountability wherever I can find it.

Showdown At The House Judiciary Committee

Not only did they vote to subpoena David Addington, Cheney's Cheney, about acts of torture authorized inside the White House, but John Yoo has agreed to testify without a subpoena. Doug Feith will be there too, and John Ashcroft. The whole Torture Team is getting back together for one more round of fun.

Maybe they can track down Sami al-Haj and have Addington and his buddies face him.

AMY GOODMAN: Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj has just been released from Guantanamo Bay. The press freedom group Reporters Without Borders issued a statement Thursday saying Sami al-Haj had been tortured while at Guantanamo and subjected to 200 interrogation sessions. He’s lost forty pounds, is suffering from intestinal problems and bouts of paranoia, according to his lawyer Clive Stafford Smith.

Asim al-Haj, who is Sami al-Haj’s younger brother, told Al Jazeera he doesn’t recognize his thirty-nine-year-old brother, because he now looks like a man in his eighties. We spoke to Asim al-Haj on Thursday night, a few hours before Sami al-Haj landed in Khartoum [...]

SAMI AL-HAJ: [translated] I’m very happy to be in Sudan, but I’m very sad because of the situation of our brothers who remain in Guantanamo. Conditions in Guantanamo are very, very bad, and they get worse by the day. Our human condition, our human dignity was violated, and the American administration went beyond all human values, all moral values, all religious values. In Guantanamo, you have animals that are called iguanas, rats that are treated with more humanity. But we have people from more than fifty countries that are completely deprived of all rights and privileges, and they will not give them the rights that they give to animals.

For more than seven years, I did not get a chance to be brought before a civil court. To defend their just case and to get the freedom that we’re deprived of, they ignored every kind of law, every kind of religion. But thank God. I was lucky, because God allowed that I be released. Although I’m happy, there is part of me that is not, because my brothers remain behind, and they are in the hands of people that claim to be champions of peace and protectors of rights and freedoms.

But the true just peace does not come through military force or threats to use smart or stupid bombs or to threaten with economic sanctions. Justice comes from lifting oppression and guaranteeing rights and freedoms and respecting the will of the people and not to interfere with a country’s internal politics.

If he's not available, maybe Emad al-Janabi can be found.

LOS ANGELES - An Iraqi man sued two U.S. military contractors, claiming he was repeatedly tortured while being held at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison for more than 10 months.

Emad al-Janabi's federal lawsuit, filed Monday in Los Angeles, claims that employees of CACI International Inc. and L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. punched him, slammed him into walls, hung him from a bed frame and kept him naked and handcuffed in his cell beginning in September 2003 [...]

The lawsuit also claims the contractors conspired in a cover-up by destroying documents and other information, hid prisoners during periodic checks by the International Red Cross and misled military and government officials about what was happening at Abu Ghraib.

Al-Janabi was released in July 2004 and wasn't charged with any crime, according to the lawsuit. He also was forced to form a human pyramid in the nude with other prisoners, according to the lawsuit, but his Philadelphia-based attorney Susan Burke said it wasn't known if he was in the infamous photo that became public.

"Most of this conduct was repeated on more than one occasion," Burke said.

There are bound to be dozens of others that the House Judiciary Committee could ring up if these two can't fit the hearing into their busy schedules. It'd be nice for the living consequences of their monstrous policies to be staring this gang in the face.

The California Report

Here are some California-centric notes:

• The California School Employees Association made their endorsements for the June primary. In addition to Migden, they strike of an aversion to go out on a limb. They only endorsed one Congressional candidate in a Republican-held seat (Charlie Brown), and they opted out of a lot of contested primaries in the legislative seats as well. Manuel Perez did get the endorsement in the 80th AD, however (he is a school board member, so not a big shock).

• We don't get into a lot of rural issues on the site, probably because of the bias toward writers here in urban environments. But this salmon fishing ban is a big deal along the Mendocino coast. This actually goes back to the Klamath fish kill in the beginning of the decade and Darth Cheney's efforts to ensure that. I think there are going to be a lot of angry fishermen wanting answers this fall.

• I keep forgetting to write about the State Senate primary in my own backyard of SD-23, between Fran Pavley and Lloyd Levine. Here's some background on the race to succeed Sheila Kuehl. I actually attended an environmental forum with these two last week and found them both to be really solid, with different strengths. While Pavley is an astonishingly effective lawmaker - she probably has her name on more far-reaching climate change legislation than anyone in the entire country - Levine really seems to understand the nature of the fight in Sacramento and how best to bring about sweeping change. I'm not going to be disappointed on June 3, regardless of the winner. We're hoping to get both Pavley and Levine on a future Calitics Radio show.

• Here's a user-created video of our debate protest at ABC last week. We have our own video set for release as well.



• Adam Liptak in The New York Times today: "The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners."

Yet we must remain "tough on crime," even though rises and falls in the crime rate are not correlative to imprisoning people (Canada's rate goes up and down roughly at the same time ours does, without a corresponding increase in the prison population).

• John Yoo won't talk to the House Judiciary Committee but it's really not his fault, you see:

In a letter, Yoo's lawyer told Conyers he was "not authorized" by DOJ to discuss internal deliberations.

"We have been expressly advised by the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice that Professor Yoo is not authorized to discuss before your Committee any specific deliberative communications, including the substance of comments on opinions or policy questions, or the confidential predecisional advice, recommendations or other positions taken by individuals or entities of the Executive Branch," Yoo's lawyer, John C. Millian, wrote in a letter to Conyers.

As we all know, the executive branch can ignore subpoenas and prevent Congressional oversight. Why, Yoo wrote it in a memo! But he can't discuss it. Because the executive branch follows the law. That he wrote.

Round and round we go...

How Do You Take "Sure" Out Of Context?

Funny stuff. So Karl Rove's lawyer, Donald "Gold Bars" Luskin, gave a statement to MSNBC's Dan Abrams saying that his client would be happy to testify in front of Congress as they investigate the imprisonment of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman, which appears to have been politicized. Yesterday members of the House Judiciary Committee took Rove up on the offer, figuring that if he talks to GQ Magazine and Fox News regularly, he can chat with them about Siegelman. Suddenly, that offer dried up.

MSNBC provided Roll Call with an e-mail exchange with Luskin that the network broadcast in which a producer asked, “Will Karl Rove agree to testify if Congress issues a subpoena to him as part of an investigation into the Siegelman case?”

“Sure,” wrote Luskin, according to the e-mail. “Although it seems to me that the question is somewhat offensive. It assumes he has something to hide.”

But in an interview with Roll Call, Luskin said that his MSNBC comments were taken out of context.

“Whether, when and about what a former White House official will testify … is not for me or my client to decide,” but is part of an ongoing negotiation between the White House and Congress over executive privilege issues, Luskin said.

Let's take a look again at what Luskin considers to have been taken out of context.

“Will Karl Rove agree to testify if Congress issues a subpoena to him as part of an investigation into the Siegelman case?”

“Sure. Although it seems to me that the question is somewhat offensive. It assumes he has something to hide.”

Man, we need to have a convention on the English language, because when the word "Sure" now doesn't mean "sure" because of context, clearly the words we use have lost all meaning. It's a Derrida-like universe! Differance!

Meanwhile, Karl Rove has no time to sit down with the HJC, but found a spare moment to write a 2,100 word letter to Dan Abrams accusing him of all sorts of perfidy by daring to suggest that the most nakedly political figure in recent memory might have had a political motive to investigate a Democrat. I especially enjoyed this part:

Did you inquire when and where (Dana Jill Simpson's) supposed 2001 meeting with me took place at which she was asked to follow Siegelman and photograph him? If so, did you make any effort to see if she could document her claim?

And if you were personally convinced by her answers that there was a good likelihood of such a meeting, did you try to figure out if there was any way that I was likely to have been available for such a meeting? Or is it merely enough for her to assert for you to repeat?

Like, did you call me and ask if I would give testimony to you? Did you? I wouldn't have responded, like I won't respond to John Conyers, but still, did you?

The whole letter's like that, by the way. Someone's worried, I'd say.

Shorter Bush

Yeah, we torture, what are you gonna do about it?

President Bush says he knew his top national security advisors discussed and approved specific details about how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to an exclusive interview with ABC News Friday.

"Well, we started to connect the dots, in order to protect the American people." Bush told ABC News White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. "And, yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."

[snip]

In his interview with ABC News, Bush said the ABC report about the Principals' involvement was not so "startling."

As emptywheel notes, this is no different from Fourthbranch Cheney telling Martha Raddatz "So" when she mentioned that 2/3 of Americans disagree with fighting in Iraq. The utter contempt from this Administration, for the opinion of Americans or the law, comes from a belief that they will never be held accountable for their crimes. And it's a well-earned belief, borne from the experience of a lapdog Congress, Republican and Democrat, that has never bothered to so much as lightly challenge the President and his cadre on these issues. It's taken this long for John Conyers to hold a hearing. And in 2006, the Military Commissions Act essentially gave them immunity from US prosecution. Of course that wouldn't affect the international courts.

We're going to have to struggle just to get all the relevant information. The White House will throw up stonewalls and barriers and the media is too busy talking about pizza and orange juice to give a damn. There's a Pentagon review of the FBI's involvement in interrogations that has been delayed because they're too busy redacting all of it.


This is OUR problem. All of us, actually. We enabled this and we consented to this. We thought that we could just win an election and move on. We don't even want to think about this guy occupying the White House. But he's there. And he's a war criminal. An entire branch of the government is populated with them.

This is a spot that won't come out.

Hope For Justice

Activism and relentless focus from progressives have yielded fruit. Don Siegelman is free pending appeal.

Former Gov. Don Siegelman will be released from prison, after the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals granted him an appeal bond, the lead prosecutor in the case said.

Acting U.S. Attorney Louis Franklin said he received a courtesy call from the court today. "He's going to be released," Franklin said.

He said he was disappointed but said, "The 11th Circuit has the discretion to do that and I respect that."

...I just got off the phone with Hiram Eastland, one of Siegelman's lawyers, who said that today the appeals court had issued a "straightforward" four-page order simply finding that there were, indeed, "substantial questions" raised by Siegelman's appeal. The ruling overruled the controversial finding by the district judge in the case, which had sent Siegelman immediately to prison after his conviction.

The House Judiciary Committee was already seeking Siegelman's temporary release to testify before them, and now that he will be released, I expect that hearing will take place.

The Siegelman case is maybe the clearest case of Bush's Justice Department misconduct, and Karl Rove is right in the middle of all of it. Rove had better give Gold Bars Luskin a call - time for some more billable hours.

What's In The Wheaties At The House Commissary?

First they create an independent ethics board, and rely on newest House member Bill Foster to cast the deciding vote in their favor. Then their entire membership of the Judiciary Committee, having reviewed Administration documents on their illegal wiretapping program, completely ruled out telecom immunity and made arrangements to bring their alternative bill to the floor tomorrow. This undercuts the "Mean Democrats aren't letting us vote to protect America, we're all going to die and it's their fault" rhetoric, and their bill is not only pretty strong on civil liberties but pretty ingenious from a tactical standpoint.

With regard to yesterday's FISA bill, more surprising than their defiance is their shrewdness. By including a provision that explicitly authorizes telecoms to submit to the court any exculpatory documents -- notwithstanding the assertion by the administration that those documents are subject to the "state secrets" privilege -- the House bill completely guts, in one fell swoop, the primary argument that, for months, has been made by telecoms and their allies as to why amnesty is necessary.

As Marcy Wheeler documented several months ago, the primary -- really the sole -- excuse given by the Senate Intelligence Committee as to why telecom amnesty was necessary was that the telecoms did nothing wrong but were being blocked by the administration from using the documents they have to prove it.

It's critical to emphasize ... that the telecoms already have immunity under existing statutes, even if they broke the law, as long as they obtained from the Attorney General certifications that the warrantless surveillance requests were legal. If the telecoms really did obtain those certifications -- and it's extremely unlikely that they did -- then all they ever had to do was just show them to the court and they would be immune. Their excuse up until now -- "we can't use the documents we have to defend ourselves because we aren't allowed to show them to the judge" -- is now completely eliminated by the House bill.

The Judiciary Committee statement really is a tour de force, and if we had a press interested in the rule of law instead of The Emperor's Club, it'd be front-page news. But the important thing here is that Administration bullying is coming up empty, House Democrats are making a reasoned and credible alternative course, and they are furthermore clearly trying to eliminate the scenario that has led us to a total national surveillance state:

I mean, when we warn about a "surveillance society," this is what we’re talking about. This is it, this is the ballgame. Mass data from a wide variety of sources – including the private sector – is being collected and scanned by a secretive military spy agency. This represents nothing less than a major change in American life – and unless stopped the consequences of this system for everybody will grow in magnitude along with the rivers of data that are collected about each of us – and that’s more and more every day.

The TIA program, you may recall, was a massive Pentagon plan (run by Admiral John Poindexter of Iran-Contra fame) to tap into as many databases containing personal information about Americans as possible (program materials listed "Financial, Education, Travel, Medical, Veterinary, Country Entry, Place/Event Entry, Transportation, Housing, Critical Resources, Government, Communications"). All that information would then be pulled together and scanned for "suspicious" patterns. Given the density of the "data trails" that we all create in our daily lives today and in the future, it was a recipe for the routine surveillance of Americans and their every move.

TIA was supposed to have been killed off by Congress in 2003 amid widespread objections to its sweeping Orwellian scope. There have been always been hints about a secret annex to the law that permitted some limited aspects of TIA to operate within the Pentagon’s black budget for intelligence and with respect to foreigners only. Now it appears that, like a vampire that can’t be killed except with a stake through its heart, TIA has arisen again from its coffin in full body with its voracious appetite for privacy of Americans and foreigners alike.

Congress needs to really look into the revelations from that Wall Street Journal report more closely. But for the moment, the House is doing the work of the people in rejecting telecom amnesty, which as we know is Bush amnesty, and refusing to give in to fear. There's a long way to go in this fight. The opposition effort could really collapse at any time and it wouldn't surprise a soul. But for now, the good behavior should be rewarded and given due credit.

P.S. If the government was truly, truly concerned about public safety and defeating radical terrorism, on no planet would they be engaged in this:

Be careful who you frag. Having eliminated all terrorism in the real world, the U.S. intelligence community is working to develop software that will detect violent extremists infiltrating World of Warcraft and other massive multiplayer games, according to a data-mining report from the Director of National Intelligence.

The Reynard project will begin by profiling online gaming behavior, then potentially move on to its ultimate goal of "automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world."

This IS a joke, right? Right?

The Noose Tightens on Abu G

As if more documentary evidence is necessary, FBI Director Robert Mueller took notes about the March 2004 bedside "Enzo the Baker" meeting between Andy Card, Abu G and John Ashcroft, notes which will almost certainly reveal that the program in question was the "Terrorist Surveillance Program," in contradiction to what Abu G claimed to Congress under oath.

John Conyers wants the notes.

We already know that Mueller believes that James Comey was talking about "the much discussed surveillance program" when he testified to Congress about the meeting. He also confirms that he had reservations about the program, contrary to Gonzales' testimony:

Watt: Can you confirm that you had some serious reservations about the warrantless wiretapping program that kind of led up to this?

Mueller: Yes.

Spencer Ackerman and Paul Kiel try to put their arms around what Abu G is up to, which appears to be a technicality designed to conceal just how horrible the initial warrantless wiretapping program was:

Alberto Gonzales' testimony that there was "no serious disagreement" within the Bush Administration about the NSA warrantless surveillance program has left senators sputtering and fulminating about the attorney general's apparent prevarications. But a closer examination of Gonzales' testimony and other public statements from the Administration suggest that there may be a method to the madness.

There's a lot of evidence to suggest that Gonzales's careful, repeated phrasing to the Senate that he will only discuss the program that "the president described" was deliberate, part of a concerted administration-wide strategy to conceal from the public the very broad scope of that initial program. When, for the first time, Program X (as we'll call it, for convenience's sake) became known to senior Justice Department officials who were not its original architects, those officials -- James Comey and Jack Goldsmith, principally -- balked at its continuation. They did not back down until the program had undergone as-yet-unspecified but apparently significant revisions. But when President Bush announced what he would call the "Terrorist Surveillance Program' in December 2005, he left the clear impression that the program had always functioned the same way since its 2001 inception.

The administration's consistent refusal to discuss any aspect of the program -- current or former -- aside from what President Bush disclosed in December 2005 appears to be intended, specifically, to gloss over Comey and Goldsmith's objections. If that's the case, it could mean that the public has been presented with an inaccurate picture of the origins and scope of Program X. The Bush administration is currently contesting a Senate Judiciary Committee subpoena for documentation establishing Program X's history -- in essence, trying to ensure that the public never learns more about the program and the internal deliberations over it than what President Bush chooses to reveal.

I actually discussed this the other night at Drinking Liberally with Digby. She consulted a couple lawyers and came to the conclusion that Gonzales is saying that there are two separate programs: what the Administration was doing since 2001, and what was revised after this showdown. He's saying that the program in the showdown, the SAME PROGRAM with revisions, is somehow different. This is designed to conceal what was really so objectionable with the initial program that Comey and others threatened to quit the Justice Department.

What we don't know about this Administration's recklessness between September 11 and the second term could fill several novels. We just learned in the infamous Abu G hearing that Fourthbranch "had been granted authority parallel with the President on intervening in pending matters at the Justice Department." The predations of this Administration are absolutely unbelievable. They have thrown out the Constitution and made up the rules as they went along.

Abu G may go down for this one. But Democrats must see that as a beginning and not an end. If we allow some of these things to congeal into precedent, this will be an utterly different country, and for the worse.

Contemptuous

John Conyers starts the process in motion:

The House Judiciary Committee voted contempt of Congress citations Wednesday against White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and President Bush's former legal counselor, Harriet Miers.

The 22-17 vote — which would sanction for pair for failure to comply with subpoenas on the firings of several federal prosecutors — advanced the citation to the full House.

A senior Democratic official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the House itself likely would take up the citations after Congress' August recess. The official declined to speak on the record because no date had been set for the House vote.

This is the House Judiciary Committee doing what they've been forced to do. The White House is openly thumbing its nose at any kind of normal processes between the branches of government. There's nothing else to do.

Now we see what happens when the US Attorney for DC demurs (at the Justice Department's insistence) to prosecute. Will they cite inherent contempt charges and throw these lawbreakers in the Congressional pokey (there is a jail on the premises)?

Let's Play Some More Hardball

Harriet Miers didn't show up to her scheduled hearing today, the House Judiciary Committee ruled the move out of order, and now contempt proceedings can proceed. The House apparently can call for their own counsel to initiate contempt charges and not just wait for the US Attorney.

I hope they're prepared to go all the way. The right certainly is. (I'm not going to excerpt any of Digby's work, just go over there and rad it because it's a great summation of what I was getting at yesterday when asking if Bush was trying to initiate impeachment proceedings against himself. The Republicans are playing an entirely different game, and the Democrats have to be prepared to do it as well.)

The Next Phase of Congress and the US Attorneys

TPM Muckraker says that this call for subpoenas for Harriet Miers and Sara Taylor is the beginning of a new phase in the US Attorneys scandal.

We noted the subpoenas to Karl Rove's former aide Sara Taylor and former White House counsel Harriet Miers earlier today. You can see the subpoena for Miers here.

Also among the subpoenas issued this morning were subpoenas from the House and Senate judiciary committees to the White House for "all documents in the possession, custody or control of the White House" that relate to the U.S. attorney firings [...]

The documents aren't likely to be any easier to obtain. In both of their letters to White House counsel Fred Fielding today (see below), the chairmen excoriate the White House for stonewalling their investigations for three months. Fiedling has not wavered from his initial offer of interviews with Karl Rove and other aides only in private with no oath or transcript, an offer that also included an offer to turn over external emails -- emails between White House staffers and others outside the White House.

Both chairmen remind Fielding of that earlier offer, but Fielding has said before that the White House won't turn over anything unless it is part of a package deal, which would include Congress agreeing to the closed door, no transcript interviews -- something the chairmen refuse to do.

Once again, there's tension between the instant gratification culture and the deliberative process of laying out a case slowly. CNN reported that Rove was not included in the subpoenas today because of this desire for a slow build. Since, again, you can't expect the culture to change, it's important that the Democrats lay the stonewalling and the dragging out of the investigation at the White House's feet, always saying things like "If the White House gave us everything we've asked for, this could wrap up quickly."

I think that the Democrats have built a compelling case, but haven't shown a killer instinct yet. We'll see how that transpires.

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.