Republican Ethics Woes, Some people never learn.

#1
OrangeEmpire

OrangeEmpire

The White Debonair
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Nov 28, 2005
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#1
WASHINGTON - Republicans could face ethics investigations for contacting U.S. attorneys about pending cases, a jarring political development only four months after ethical lapses helped cost the GOP control of Congress.

Two veteran Republican lawmakers and a top GOP leadership aide contacted prosecutors who later were fired.

The fired prosecutor from New Mexico, David Iglesias, told senators he had a brief telephone conversation with Domenici in late October 2006 that ended when Domenici abruptly hung up. Iglesias said he had just told the senator that indictments in a corruption case against Democrats would not be handed down before the November elections.
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Evidently, before the midterm elections, some Republicans tried to force Prosecutors to create some election year fodder for them, and, when they refused to politicize pending cases, they were fired in retaliation.

Luckily, we have a Democratic Congress now, so it won't be swept under the rug this time.:whistling:

Story

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Rove was asked to fire U.S. attorney

Will Rove escape again?

Democrats call for resignation of Gonzales - Republican senator adds that ‘there have been lots of problems’

Will Alberto be forced to resign?

Find out next week in another exciting edition of The Decider!

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Thoughts?
 
#3
#3
Clinton had all 93 fired to cover up the firing of the one prosecuting rostenkowski.

if the firing of these 8 had occurred late 04 or early 05, nothing would have been said, since US attorneys serve 4 year terms at the leisure of the POTUS.

the timing here isn't great, but it isn't like the investigations being pursued won't be continued under the replacements.
 
#4
#4
Oh brother...here goes the Clinton did it too defense. Clinton wiped the slate clean at the beginning of his term in office which is not beyond the norm. These guys were wiped out for purely political reasons while investigating serious crimes in their districts. Since a few Senators didn't think crimes of THEIR importance were being prosecuted, they had them removed.

Good standard to have seeing politics determine what cases to prosecute. Now prosecutors have to focus on going after the partisan cases the top wants looked into rather than going after cases they deem important.

The ironnic thing here is that these prosecutors were appointed by a Republican. So the whole "wiping the slate clean" line that is typically used is tossed out the window.
 
#5
#5
Power Line: About those fired U.S. Attorneys

It's not implausible to think that out of 93 U.S. Attorneys, eight might be good candidates for replacement. But let's take a quick look at some of the specifics. According to the Post, three of them had low ratings -- Margaret Chiara in Michigan, Carol Lam in San Diego, and Bud Cummins in Little Rock. Cummins was replaced by Tim Griffin, whose career Karl Rove apparently wanted to advance. There's nothing novel in appointing a rising star with good connections to the job of U.S. Attorney. I've seen no evidence that Griffin was unqualified and, as noted, Cummins had received a poor rating.

Two of the fired prosecutors -- Kevin Ryan in San Francisco and David Iglesias in Albuquerque -- received strong evaluations. But according to the Post, Ryan's firing "has generated few complaints because of widespread managment and morale problems in his office."

The focus instead is on Iglesias because, in addition to the strong evaluation, he was not on the original list of prosecutors recommended for removal by Gonzales' aide Kyle Sampson. Rather, he apparently was added as a candidate for removal in response to complaints from New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici and other New Mexico Republicans that he was not prosecuting enough voter-fraud cases.

Is the firing of Iglesias a genuine scandal? As David Frum notes, it depends on the facts: was there a serious problem of voter fraud in the state, was Iglesias sluggish in dealing with it, and did the administration act even-handedly by insisting that its U.S. Attorneys adequately deal with serious allegations of voter fraud lodged by both political parties?
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ok, it's shoot the messenger time. but before you do, check out the qualifications of Powerline's authors. they aren't hacks, flacks or apologists.
 
#6
#6
Still does not take away from the truth. The whole AR appointment of Rove's staffer is the icing on the cake.

Let's see. Someone gets fired over few complaints of management and morale problems? Then clean out 1600 Penn Ave if that is a legit reason.

Point in all of this is Gonzalez handled this incomeptently. Knowing this would create a firestorm, either DON'T do it or do it with a better strategy. And for Pete's sake don't drop a Rove flunkie in there.

Add this to Al's running list of bobbles, I'd say he's really mucked it up big time. But in a pattern of deny or divert, this will pass with some lower level mail clerks getting fired.
 
#7
#7
It was handled poorly - a hallmark of this administration but I don't see why there is a such an outrage about the firings themselves. My rule of thumb is that the louder Schumer complains about something, the less of a big deal it probably is.

To add to the "Clinton did it" approach - Reagan did it too. One area where Clinton did it that should have raised more eyebrows was replacing the Ark. U.S. Attornery looking into Whitewater issues with one of his (Clinton's) former law students (Paula Casey?).

I wish Congress would do something important as opposed to playing gotcha grab-ass with each other (goes for both sides).
 
#8
#8
Casey came in with the other 92 attorneys. The previous attorney actually REFUSED to look into the Whitewater matters for two reasons - because he did not want his boss GHWB to appear vindictive in a campaign and at that time there was nothing in the evidence that implied wrong-doing.

I'm not sure how that equates to what was just done. The fact that a political operative managed to get his own staffer in the AR office and others were removed without reasonable merit in the middle of intense investigations for partisan reasons lends credence that this particular action was shady and adds to some very concerning actions going on at the DoJ.
 
#9
#9
The shady part of the Clinton action was the choice of someone he knew would be sympathetic to him in a legal matter that involved him and his friends.

I'm not trying to excuse the current action. Just suggesting that there is some selective outrage going on (nothing new in politics).
 
#12
#12
John McKay is one of the 8 who has been fired. Here's some more information that isn't being widely reported.

Power Line: A word from Stefan Sharkansky

I thought you might be interested in another side of the story on John McKay. The national media have transmitted without challenge McKay's story that he investigated allegations of vote fraud in Washington's 2004 gubernatorial race but saw "zero evidence" of fraud. Now he's being portrayed (see Friday's NYT editorial) as the victim/hero of partisan Republicans who are punishing him for refusing to launch a groundless, politically-motivated investigation.

There's much more to this than has been widely reported. A lot more credible evidence of election violations from the 2004 governor's race has been shown to McKay than he's been willing to acknowledge, let alone investigate.

It's taken me two years and some litigation to get the King County Elections office to release enough of the appropriate records, but I've compiled evidence of hundreds of illegal votes (nearly 4 times the official 129-vote "margin of victory"). These are not just random errors, but incidents of systemic mishandling of ballots by the elections office, most of which occurred just before the election was certified when the Democrat appeared to be trailing. At the very least it's official negligence that may well have changed the outcome of the governor's race. Was it all run-of-the-mill "good enough for government work" negligence? Or was it willful? Does it meet the legal standard of "fraud"? We don't know, as there's never been an investigation into any of this.

McKay has cited the election contest trial where the judge ruled: "No testimony has been placed before the Court to suggest fraud or intentional misconduct." But all of the hundreds of illegal votes that I'm referring to were not known during the trial -- largely because King County evaded their discovery obligations and because the timeline was so compressed the litigants didn't have time to pursue every lead. This stuff was uncovered only months after the trial and long after the local mainstream press moved on to other things.

A summary of the findings is here. Some of this was presented to the local FBI in December 2005 and copied to McKay. See this letter (redacted to remove personal contact information). There's no indication that the DoJ or FBI ever followed up on this report or on other similar reports.

Why would McKay ignore the legitimate suggestions of election violations and fight back so aggressively now? Western Washington is overwhelmingly Democrat, especially Seattle. The dominant voices in the political establishment and the mainstream media were only too happy to put the embarrassing, if not incriminating, 2004 election behind them. It would be politically (and socially) risky for McKay (as a Republican appointee, no less) to be the first official to start turning over the rocks in county government. Much safer to stick with the in-crowd, call it a close but clean election and keep looking the other way. And now that McKay's in a public pissing match with Bush, who is extremely unpopular in Seattle? He's the darling of the local establishment. If he aspires to a career in state politics, this is his ticket.
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seems to me that McKay was fired for incompetence and not political reasons.
 
#14
#14
OWB said:
Don't act like that's the only reason..:crazy:
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Maybe it is; maybe it isn't. But history tells us that's just the way it is. Nixon had Watergate. Reagan had Iran-Contra. Clinton had Monica/Whitewater/Rose Law Firm and the Starr investigation. Opposition majorities are never nice to lame duck Presidents.
 
#15
#15
GAVol said:
Maybe it is; maybe it isn't. But history tells us that's just the way it is. Nixon had Watergate. Reagan had Iran-Contra. Clinton had Monica/Whitewater/Rose Law Firm and the Starr investigation. Opposition majorities are never nice to lame duck Presidents.
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None of them were cranking out a new one every week though.
 
#16
#16
OWB said:
None of them were cranking out a new one every week though.
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You've got to be kidding. I'm not trying to excuse anything that may have happened under Bush, but were you awake during the Clinton years?
 
#17
#17
GAVol said:
You've got to be kidding. I'm not trying to excuse anything that may have happened under Bush, but were you awake during the Clinton years?
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No, That was during my heavy drinking years, I don't remember much. :sleep:
 
#18
#18
However, I don't think that you can compare a blowjob to some of the stuff the current administration is doing.
 
#19
#19
I was talking more about Ron Brown, some of Janet Reno 's decisions and stuff of that ilk.
 
#20
#20
When you have a turnover in the Congress to the opposite side it just exacerbates the situation.

There will be hearings and investigations from here on out.
 
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