Rank Politicization of the US Department of Justice

Gonzales' Immigration Judges: Little Or No Experience But Strong GOP Ties
The LA Times | Richard B. Schmitt | May 26, 2007 08:07 AM

Over the last two years, U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales has appointed more than two dozen individuals as federal immigration judges.

The new jurists include a former treasurer of the Louisiana Republican Party, who was a legal advisor to the Bush Florida recount team after the 2000 presidential election. There is also a former GOP congressional aide who had tracked voter fraud issues for the Justice Department, and a Texan appointed by then-Gov. George W. Bush to a seat on the state library commission.

One thing missing on many of their resumes: a background in immigration law.

Open Letter to Alberto Gonzales Published in Washington Post (from his '82 Harvard Classmates!)

Dude. When your classmates disown you, you know it's bad. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy in my opinion. Enjoy everyone.

Dear Attorney General Gonzales:

Twenty-five years ago we, like you, graduated from Harvard Law School. While we arrived via many different paths and held many different views, we were united in our deep respect for the Constitution and the rights it guaranteed. As members of the post-Watergate generation who chose careers in law, we understood the strong connection between our liberties as Americans and the adherence of public offi cials to the law of the land. We knew that the choice to abide by the law was even more critical when public officials were tempted to take legal shortcuts. Nowhere were we taught that the ends justified the means, or that freedoms for which Americans had fought and died should be set aside when inconvenient or challenging. To the contrary: our most precious freedoms, we learned, need defending most in times of crisis.

So it has been with dismay that we have watched your cavalier handling of our freedoms time and again. When it has been important that legal boundaries hold unbridled government power in check, you have instead used pretextual rationales and strained readings to justify an ever-expanding executive authority. Witness your White House memos sweeping aside the Geneva Conventions to justify torture, endangering our own servicemen and women; witness your advice to the President effectively reading Habeas Corpus out of our constitutional protections; witness your support of presidential statements claiming inherent power to wiretap American citizens without warrants (and the Administration’s stepped-up wiretapping campaign, taking advantage of those statements, which continues on your watch to this day); and witness your dismissive explanation of the troubling firings of numerous U.S. Attorneys, and their replacement with others more "loyal" to the President’s politics, as merely "an overblown personnel matter." In these and other actions, we see a pattern. As a recent editorial put it, your approach has come to symbolize "disdain for the separation of powers, civil liberties and the rule of law."

As lawyers, and as a matter of principle, we can no longer be silent about this Administration’s consistent disdain for the liberties we hold dear. Your failure to stand for the rule of law, particularly when faced with a President who makes the aggrandized claim of being a unitary executive, takes this country down a dangerous path.

Your country and your President are in dire need of an attorney who will do the tough job of providing independent counsel, especially when the advice runs counter to political expediency. Now more than ever, our country needs a President, and an Attorney General, who remember the apt observation attributed to Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." We call on you and the President to relent from this reckless path, and begin to restore respect for the rule of law we all learned to love many years ago.

THE SIGNATORIES ARE ALL MEMBERS OF THE HARVARD LAW SCHOOL CLASS OF 1982

Hat tip to Ioo from DailyKos for the alert.

Funny: But Too Bad It's True

"On Capitol Hill, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales raised his right hand, swore to tell the truth, and then everybody had a good laugh and went back to what they were doing."
---Jay Leno
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"News has just broke that the administration is seeking a high-powered "war czar" to oversee the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. So there you have it folks---five years into the global war on terror the president believes it is now time for someone to be in charge of it."
---Jon Stewart
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"Rudy Giuliani got in trouble because, y'know that presidential question they ask: "What's the price of a gallon of milk?" He didn’t know. That doesn’t bother me, really, if a president doesn’t know. What I want to know [is], does the president know the price of a war with Iraq?"
---Craig Ferguson
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"Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter has filed papers to run for president. But in his official filing, he misspelled the word 'president.' Political experts say it's all part of Hunter's plan to attract Bush supporters."
---Conan O'Brien
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"It was announced that Hooters would open one of its restaurants in Israel this summer. So much for keeping the meat separate from the dairy."
---Amy Poehler
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"In 200 years, we've gone from "We the people," to "Up With People." From "the best and the brightest" to "dumb and dumber." And where better to find people dumb enough to believe in George Bush than Pat Robertson's law school? The problem here in America isn't that the country is being run by "elites." It's that it's being run by a bunch of hayseeds. And, by the way, the lawyer Monica Goodling just hired to keep her ass out of jail...went to a real law school."
---Bill Maher
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Thank you to Bill in Portland Maine for compiling the snark

Bush Administration: Criminals, each and every one.

Below is a YouTube of today's Congressional hearing and investigation on the leak of covert CIA agent Valarie Plame Wilson's identity.

Some say that very senior Bush Administration officials leaked this classified information to the US mainstream media to retaliate against and discredit Ms. Plame's husband (Ambassador Joe Wilson) having written an Op Ed critical of the "Yellow Cake Uranium" (WMD) excuse the Administration used to justify the US invasion of Iraq.

The below clip is only 7 minutes, but I urge you to listen and watch the entire thing. It is patently unbelieveable what this Administration has done. I consider it treason. Impeachment is too good.

Just watch and tell me if you don't feel the same.



And.... below is what they said BEFORE the Democrats re-took the House and Senate, embarking upon the first credible investigations...