Nobody To Root For

So what's going on with this FBI raid of the head of the Office of Special Counsel, Scott Bloch? He was looking into investigations over violations of the Hatch Act by executive branch figures, including Karl Rove (although the punishment for violating the Hatch Act is to lose your executive branch job, so I'm not sure why he's investigating) and Condi Rice. However, his hands aren't exactly clean either, having erased all the files on his computer with the help of Geeks on Call instead of the White House email technicians, and has been accused of improper retaliation against employees who disagreed with his policies. I agree with looseheadprop that this feels like a Mafia turf war, but for my money bmaz had the best take.

Bloch appears to be a bit of a nondescript, but deeply religious, party level toady that they pulled out of the mid-west, to serve as Associate Director and then Deputy Director and Counsel to the Task Force for Faith-based and Community Initiatives at the U.S. Department of Justice. (Why exactly is there even such an office in the DOJ at all???). The Bushies then wanted to plug a Regent like theobot toady into the OSC, and decided Bloch fit the bill. Bloch then went about doing his job, which was effectively to do nothing and fill up the ranks with incompetent theobot types, just like they were doing all over the government and, as we know so well, especially the DOJ. But Bloch got a little ham fisted in his efforts to weed his office of teh gay in the process, which caused an amount of scrutiny and heat.

About that time, Bloch's office started being forced into relevance because of all the Hatch Act violations and other things that the Bushies have done to create whistleblowers that are supposed to fall under Bloch's office's parameters. This created a confluence of events for Bloch; he morally/religiously really believes in his purge of teh gay and, just maybe, he actually has some moral convictions on the impropriety of much of the Bushco creed. So, he starts actually doing his job on the Bushco ills, just a little, both because he knew there were ills and to push back and protect himself for what he had done. Picture a John DiIulio and/or David Kuo that, instead of just leaving, stayed and fought.

Because of the Rove, Doan, and then the USA Purgegate scandals, this little internecine battle erupted into the public consciousness, and neither side backed off. Bloch was preparing some stinging reports that would really be a poke in the eye to the Bushies, and they wanted to squelch those. The Bushies determined that it would be necessary to take out Bloch, but they didn't want it to be alleged that they did it to cover and protect Lurita "Cookies" Doan and wanted it to look like they did it for cause against Bloch. So they cooked Doan (she was a pain in the ass anyway by then, so no loss to them) as a preemptory strike in preparation for going after Bloch. Then, they went after Bloch to put the kabosh, as much as they can, on his reports on Bushco. And that is where we are at now.

Read the whole thing. Sometimes really juicy information comes out of turf wars and hurt feelings like this, so while nobody in this mess is praiseworthy there might be a good yield, so it's worth keeping an eye on.

Who Rules Their World?

Funny, so Lurita Doan completely abuses her job, uses the General Services Administration to help out Republican members of Congress in their re-election campaigns, is shown a briefing on how her staff can help Republicans and enthusiastically agrees, stays in her job for about a year, claims she was singled out because she is black when I don't think anyone actually knew she was black, finally gets canned after the media long forgot about her and her incompetence, and Karen Tumulty of Time can only say what took so long, as if she doesn't know that without sustained media pressure EVERYONE in this Administration gets off easy. Then she claims that the Doan story was on the front page of the Washington Post once, so clearly the media did its job. As Atrios says:

It is a mystery, though, isn't it. Some stories land front page of the Washington Post and then just sort of disappear, never to be heard from again. Some light up the Drudge siren, get talked about nonstop on cable news, breathless Politico reports, follow up stories, editorials, coverage in weekly news magazines.

And no one in the press quite understands how this happens. Some stories magically take flight, and some don't. It's all very strange.

I wish we could get to the bottom of who controls that process. It's not like newspapers, magazines and TV news shows have editors who manage what goes in the paper. I just don't kn-

Hold on, DRUDGE ALERT!!!! Rev. Wright found eating arugula without wearing a flag pin!

Sorry, Charlie

A lot of people are talking about this McClatchy story, which details how the Commerce and Treasury Departments were flying around the country giving out grants in crucial swing districts to help Republicans during the 2006 elections. It's complete politicization of the federal government, and it's caused many to openly wonder whether or not Karl Rove would finally be taken down for this clear violation of the Hatch Act, which bans executive branch officials from participating in electoral politics.

Emptywheel caught up to this as well, but Addie Stan had it first: the Hatch Act carries no criminal penalties. The most disruptive thing you can do to a violator of the Hatch Act is fire them from their executive branch job. Rove resigned, so that's out. And the only man with the power to do the firing if he was still in his position would be George W. Bush. This is why the clearly guilty Lurita Doan still runs the General Services Administration.

This doesn't mean Congress can't amend the law, and give it some actual teeth, of course:

Because of a tight deadline during a congressional recess, I was unable to get an answer to the question by press time. However, I got a call yesterday from Phil Schiliro, the committee's majority chief of staff, who told me, "One of the things the committee will be looking at is whether the law works." Does that mean a legislative fix is in the offing? Schiliro couldn't say, but he replied that legislation of that sort is certainly part of the committee's purview.

But that wouldn't be applied retroactively. So Karl Rove won't see any penalty for violating the Hatch Act whatsoever.

Frustratin', ain't it?

Huh What Now?

Did anyone even know that Lurita Doan was black until Congressional Republicans decided to bring it up yesterday?

On a number of occasions, Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA), the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, led his colleagues in accusing their Democratic counterparts of targeting Doan because she was a black woman and a Republican.

“You’re an African-American Republican so you’ve got a big bull’s eye on you,” Davis, the former chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said to Administrator Doan at one stage. […]

Davis wasn’t the only Republican member in the House hearing to make such an allegation. “You’re a Republican, a minority, and a woman, a GOP contributor, and they’ve targeted you, they’re circling you to come after you,” said Rep. John Mica (R-FL), who objected to the hearing at various occasions.

Rep. Chris Shays (R-CT) also said, “I find that when an African-American is a Republican, somehow, she is treated differently by Congress.”

Take a look at Lurita Doan:



She's black? Really? She looks like a 1950s astronaut's wife.

This really hits the bottom of the "how low can you go" meter. Doan violates the Hatch Act by using the General Services Administration to help elect Republican candidates, and the defense is "you're picking on her because she's black." Incredible.

Pass the Republican Memory Loss Act of 2007

People laugh, but I think we have a real epidemic here. Whether from vitamin deficiency, a chromosomal imbalance, or too much time spent arguing that the estate tax affects small farms, Republicans are losing their memories left and right, and we simlpy have to do something about it.

I propose a landmark mental health initiative, offered in the Congress, called the "Republican Memory Loss Act of 2007," which would provide $50 million dollars of federal funding into research and development for the National Institute for Health, to determine just what happens when Republicans are forced to testify before Congress or a grand jury and suddenly lose all recollection of their work.

Poor Hans von Spakovsky, for example, simply can't remember his entire tenure in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.

Another former Justice Department lawyer went before Congress on Wednesday with few answers for his Democratic interrogators and a spotty memory.

Hans von Spakovsky, who's seeking a full six-year term on the Federal Election Commission, deflected questions about whether he undermined voting rights laws, saying, "I was not the decision maker in the front office of the Civil Rights Division."

Time and again during his confirmation hearing, he cited either the attorney-client privilege or a cloudy memory for his purported role in restricting minorities' voting rights.

Von Spakovsky couldn't remember blocking an investigation into complaints that a Minnesota Republican official was discriminating against Native American voters before the 2004 election.

Under oath, he also said he didn't recall seeing data from the state of Georgia that would have undercut a push by senior officials within the Civil Rights Division to approve the state's tough new law requiring photo IDs of all voters. The data showed that 300,000 Georgia voters lacked driver's licenses. A federal judge later threw out the law as unconstitutional.

He just doesn't remember, guys. You wouldn't throw your dear old grandmother in jail just because she doesn't remember anything from her days as a flapper girl in the 1920s. And we shouldn't be doing the same with Republicans. They aren't cynically pretending to forget to wiggle out of their legal troubles. They have a disease.

Like poor Lurita Doan who has searched and searched her memory about a meeting with the GSA exhorting them to use the office to help Republican candidates in 2006, and could only remember that there were cookies at the meeting. Now, if she were Proust, that rememberance of madeleines would have set off a rich tapestry of rememberances of things past. But she's not, she's a Republican afflicted with this scourge of memory loss.

Chairman Waxman: “At our March hearing, you repeatedly claimed you could not recall any information about the January 26, 2007 meeting or the White House political presentation, and you had absolutely no memory of asking GSA employees how they could help Republican candidates in upcoming elections. That’s what you told us. We questioned you over and over again. You remember there were cookies, you remembered you came in late, you remembered that some employees didn’t attend, but beyond that you said you had no further information. Five weeks later you testified before the Office of Special Counsel and suddenly you had a new enriched details about the meeting and your statements. According to your OSC testimony, you said you asked the White House presenter, how can GSA help its cabinet liaison understand that the opening of the San Francisco federal building would be a perfect event for President Bush to attend. Did you say that to the Office of Special Counsel?”

Doan: “Yes, I believe I did.”

Do you see how this kind of memory loss can spread? Sure, Republicans remember things at just the right time, but in the interim they swim in a sea of unconsciousness, just looking for the one trigger that can bring them back to balance. It's not a life, it's a hellscape.

Just ask the FBI.

An internal FBI audit has found that the bureau potentially violated the law or agency rules more than 1,000 times while collecting data about domestic phone calls, e-mails and financial transactions in recent years, far more than was documented in a Justice Department report in March that ignited bipartisan congressional criticism.

You think they KNEW they were violating the law 1,000 times when they did it? Of course not! They were just following the dictates of their Republican executive branch masters, who don't have the brain capacity to know the law. And we simply must do something about that.

Steve Benen gives his medical diagnosis.

What is it with Republicans and their memories? Giuliani can’t remember being briefed on Bernie Kerik, Alberto Gonzales can’t remember anything, neither can Kyle Sampson, Lurita Doan doesn’t remember important meetings, and John McCain doesn’t remember his policy positions, Karl Rove doesn’t remember talking to Matt Cooper about Valerie Plame. Scooter Libby doesn’t remember how he learned about Plame’s status at the CIA. Condoleezza Rice doesn’t remember Iran reaching out for diplomatic negotiations with the U.S. in 2003.

These poor folks can’t seem to remember much, can they? Aren’t there memory tricks and/or mnemonic techniques that could give them a hand?

No Steve, it's a disease. And it requires a massive public effort to properly understand and treat it. We have done great things in the medical field over the decades. We stopped polio. We fought smallpox and malaria (not in Africa, of course, but here it's pretty much under control). We have constantly moved forward in innovative ways to halt afflictions once thought incurable. Surely we can lick this terrible scourge that affects 1 in 2 Republicans in Washington.

Lurita Doan is forgetting tenses. Forgetting tenses! She's not going to know how to use a fork by next week! We have to do something! We must pass the Republican Memory Loss Act of 2007 and ensure that the GOP has control of their mental faculties from this point forward. Otherwise, how can we trust them in any position of government?

(Run with this one, Rahm Emanuel, you're just the asshole to actually put this to a vote on the House floor)

We've Got Another One

Monica Goodling admitting that she accidentally used political affiliation as a factor in hiring at the Justice Department, but she "didn't mean to," might be an alibi that Lurita Doan could use.

“An Office of Special Counsel report has found that General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan violated the Hatch Act, which bars federal officials from partisan political activity while on the job, sources say.”

The report addresses a Jan. 26 lunch meeting at GSA headquarters attended by Doan and about 40 political appointees, some of whom participated by videoconference. During the meeting, Scott Jennings, the White House deputy director of political affairs, gave a PowerPoint presentation that included slides listing Democratic and Republican seats the White House viewed as vulnerable in 2008, a map of contested Senate seats and other information on 2008 election strategy.

According to meeting participants, Doan asked after the call how GSA could help “our candidates.”

By the way, we learned from this report how the Office of Special Counsel works. You might remember that they're supposedly investigating Karl Rove, and that this GSA meeting is part of the investigation. So the OSC writes a report for the President that includes RECOMMENDATIONS on the proper course of action for violating the law, including termination. Then it's up to the President to carry them out.

How do you think that'll go?

And should they just stop the Rove investigation now?

Read this, too, where Doan claims that she doesn't care about polls or politics and then reveals that she contributed a quarter of a million dollars to Republican candidates and organizations.

The Office of Special Counsel

At the end of Bush's press conference this morning, somebody yelled out "Office of Special Counsel" as he walked away, and having not read this story yet I hadn't understood what it meant. But this could be enormous:

Most of the time, an obscure federal investigative unit known as the Office of Special Counsel confines itself to monitoring the activities of relatively low-level government employees, stepping in with reprimands and other routine administrative actions for such offenses as discriminating against military personnel or engaging in prohibited political activities.

But the Office of Special Counsel is preparing to jump into one of the most sensitive and potentially explosive issues in Washington, launching a broad investigation into key elements of the White House political operations that for more than six years have been headed by chief strategist Karl Rove.

I think the DC media will confuse the Office of Special Counsel with special counsels like Ken Starr and Patrick Fitzgerald and give this agency a lot of attention. Somebody already yelled out the name to the President.

So what are they investigating?

The new investigation, which will examine the firing of at least one U.S. attorney, missing White House e-mails, and White House efforts to keep presidential appointees attuned to Republican political priorities, could create a substantial new problem for the Bush White House.

First, the inquiry comes from inside the administration, not from Democrats in Congress. Second, unlike the splintered inquiries being pressed on Capitol Hill, it is expected to be a unified investigation covering many facets of the political operation in which Rove played a leading part.

"We will take the evidence where it leads us," Scott J. Bloch, head of the Office of Special Counsel and a presidential appointee, said in an interview Monday. "We will not leave any stone unturned." [...]

The question of improper political influence over government decision-making is at the heart of the controversy over the firing of U.S. attorneys and the ongoing congressional investigation of the special e-mail system installed in the White House and other government offices by the Republican National Committee.

All administrations are political, but this White House has systematically brought electoral concerns to Cabinet agencies in a way unseen previously.

For example, Rove and his top aides met each year with presidential appointees throughout the government, using PowerPoint presentations to review polling data and describe high-priority congressional and other campaigns around the country.

Some officials have said they understood that they were expected to seek opportunities to help Republicans in these races, through federal grants, policy decisions or in other ways.

I mean, that's an open-and-shut case. That embarrassing hearing Henry Waxman held with Lurita Doan of the General Services Administration proved fairly easily that Karl Rove's shop was holding PowerPoint presentations about 2008 Republican candidates, in violation of the Hatch Act, and that wasn't done just to keep GSA officials abreast of the latest news. It was meant to set priorities for how they could help these candidates. These same briefing happened in the Interior Department and throughout the government. And it was illegal. Executive branch agencies are not an extension of the RNC.

And like the article says, this will be a unified investigation. The US Attorneys scandal appears to reach into the White House, since nobody at the Justice Department can explain how the names of those to be fired got on the list. The RNC is taking the cues from the White House on what emails to release to Waxman's committee, and the very act of government officials using non-governmental emails is a violation of the Presidential Records Act, and designed to circumvent Hatch Act violations.

So what is being investigated by the OSC is nothing less than the entire method of Bush-Rove era governance. I hope that this Scott Bloch guy doesn't start his own car.