Recess won't halt probe of attorney firings

[maddezmom]

Source: Deseret Morning News

Recess won't halt probe of attorney firings

By Suzanne Struglinski
Deseret Morning News
WASHINGTON — The two-week congressional recess will not stop the ongoing investigation into the Justice Department's firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

The House Judiciary Committee staff started interviewing department employees Friday, and their continued push to get White House liaison Monica Goodling to participate forced her lawyers to advise them to not bother their client anymore, in a letter sent Friday.

The interviews come a day after D. Kyle Sampson — a Utah native who recently resigned as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff — laid out his role in the firings to the Senate Judiciary Committee in a daylong hearing. The committees are working jointly on these interviews to find out even more facts about the process.

Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, is the top Republican on the Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over the matter. Cannon — like most other members of Congress — has returned to the state while Congress is on a two-week spring recess, but Matt Iandoli, Cannon's legislative director and counsel, will be participating in the interviews.


Read more: http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,660207704,00.html

[librechik]

1. Torture Boy's chief demoness is bothered by Congress doing its job?

what a shame! I think she should turn to prayer for relief. And forgiveness.

[EST]

2. I guess the marginalization of congress is pretty well complete.

I think she should be slapped with a contempt of congress citation and sent to jail until she decides to talk.

Furthermore, I was under the impression that, in a civil proceeding, "the taking of the fifth" could, indeed, be allowed as an inference of guilt.

" "The Supreme Court has said over and over that no negative inference may be drawn," Hatch said. "In Griffin v. California, the court held that the Fifth Amendment, quote, 'Forbids either comment by the prosecution on the accused's silence or instructions by the court, and that such silence is evidence of guilt,' unquote." "

Republickers, though criminally sly, are stupid. Hatch is no exception.

[sam sarrha]

3. you cant take the 5th till they ask you a question,she is totally freaked, needs witness protection.

but she knows she is a dead meat, or cold latte as they say in california, whatever she does.

realize she is between a rock and a wet brain alcoholic drug addict Narcissistic meglomaniacal psychopath... poor little pat robinson christian girl..:hide: :rofl: ...:popcorn: :nopity:

she should be in protection, what are the odds the bookies taking she wont live to testify.??

[Igel]

9. She completely insulted the Dem leadership when she

said she was going to plead the 5th.

It's ambiguous between saying she has something to hide and saying that it doesn't matter what she says it'll be taken badly.

[wordpix]

13. are all subpoenaed underlings going to plead the 5th? According to Whorin Hatch,

pleading the 5th means they're all innocent! :rofl:

snip: In addition to Elston, the staff will interview Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty; Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis; Michael Battle, special counsel to the attorney general and White House liaison; William Mercer, U.S. attorney for Montana and acting associate attorney general; and William Moschella, principal associate deputy attorney general, according to a press release.

[truthisfreedom]

4. wow.

[POAS]

6. Marginalized indeed

This quote jumped out at me. "their continued push to get White House liaison Monica Goodling to participate forced her lawyers to advise them to not bother their client anymore, in a letter sent Friday."

Don't bother her??? What next a harassment charge and a restraining order against Congress? These people need to be frog marched for obstruction of a Congressional investigation as well as contempt.

And what other kind of reporting would one expect from the Deseret News. Specifically implying that Goodling's lawyers were "forced" by Congress' pushing for Goodling's testimony to write an essentially cease and desist letter.

[wordpix]

11. my take is Hatch doesn't want something to come out about HIM and HIS involvement

I'm not sure if his involvement has to do with Gonzogate but it appears he's involved in some kind of repuke corruption or election shenanigans b/c he is fighting hard for the truth NOT to come out and is shielding Rove's Monica.

[maddezmom]

15. perhaps it goes back to Manuel Miranda

remember:
Manuel A. Miranda was counsel to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and senior counsel to Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A17164-2004Feb5¬Found=true

~snip~

A policy adviser to Frist, Wichterman took over the judicial nominations work last year after Frist's former top aide on judicial nominees, Manuel Miranda, resigned in the flap over leaked Democratic memos at the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Sean Rushton , executive director of the Committee for Justice, a group established in 2002 to support President Bush's judicial nominees, said Wichterman was "an invaluable conduit of information and strategy advice," adding, "It is difficult to imagine successful effort to end the Democratic judicial filibusters without Bill. Everyone likes him, and more importantly, everyone trusts him."

more:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/21/AR2005092102280.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns

[EST]

17. The democratically controlled house judiciary, alone, has

initiated more than nine hundred actions in the sorting out of vast webs of corruption and conspiracy.
As this continues, I suspect we will be hard pressed to find a single republicker unstained by the thousands of instances of bad acts and indictable corruption.

It's easy to name at least fifty stars in their vast betrayal, not even counting those already convicted. We already know there's not a single one who's innocent but I am betting on high treason for all of them.
Even Chris Shays, whom many mouths considered almost a democrat, has begun to show his true colors, sitting in on hearings and dredging up everything he can twist to impugn and insult dems that the loose house ethics system will allow and even bending those rules.

They are not only piss poor leaders, but strictly bottom of the sewer human beings, lacking in any discernible social value and grace. Nasty, disgusting, despicable specimens, all.

[Joe Chi Minh]

14. Yes. It's a matter of simple logic. The mere possibility of self-incrimination

presupposes guilt. It is an "a priori" truth. No judge in the world can alter that logic, and I think it scandalous that it should ever have been considered otherwise. Many lawyers may be fools, who are all too worldly-wise, but worldly-wise they are, the good and the bad. Very astute indeed in strictly worldly matters. But the whole adversarial principle, in my view, is grotesque. You don't find the inquisitorial system to which Grand Jury Investigatins are subject, making the mockery of justice all too many ordinary court cases do, conducted, as they are, according to our adversarial system.

[izzie]

5. It is all a shame to us and what it has done to us.

Karl got his one man in and had made all the AG and his men look like far right nut lawyers with these 7 maybe not playing the game well enough. It is like the whole thing has back fired on them so on the Am. people. It will be years before any one thinks highly of these people. You can be sure it has hurt the system. Bush seems to be killing off any belief in their govt. . What does work well any more? Pray tell me what will be next?

[Joe Chi Minh]

10. "You can be sure it has hurt the system. Bush seems to be killing off any belief

in their govt?"

Aren't you painting the Democrats with the same brush. It seems to me that their investigations and the way they have been going about them have been admirable by any standards - totally at variance with the subjects of the investigations; who, on all the evidence, do seem to merit the broadest of brushes in terms of condemnation.

[izzie]

16. Sure I am. It is what our minds do. It is hard to keep your self

from not going down that path. Look back to the un-Am. stuff that went on in Congress in the late 50's and see what a mess it made of peoples life and what was done. It does seem to be a human nature sort of thing that one has to fight. Yes on both sides of the fight. When one looks back we see what our 'founders' were trying to do and not give 'royal' appointment to a few men the king liked. How you do your job was to be what counted but it does not always work, does it? I do like loyalty to the constitution over it to a man. I would say Bush and Co. go with the man thing from what I have seen over 6 years. It makes me think of all his men in this line and I have trouble looking at any one he puts in with our that view popping up in my mind now. Right or wrong.

[Joe Chi Minh]

18. You started off your post by again conflating the, at best, ambiguous values

of the Democratic Party in the past, with the endemic malfeasance of the Republican Party today? It was that conflation of disparate and mutually irrelevant elements, at this juncture, that I was criticising.

In the future, it is almost inevitable that, with such a vitiated Republican Party, Democratic complacency and vandal capitalistic corruption will recrudesce, but right at this moment, you have firebrands, people of passionate integrity leading the Democrats in these investigations. Why are you overlooking this and, instead, mourning the venal subservience of Democrats to right-wing Republican priorities in the past and conflating it with this post-Perestroika, Russians-style, Republican kleptocracy? Even the latter is a mismatch.

[izzie]

19. I miss your point and would like you to tell me once more what I

have done?

[rodeodance]

7. we know this came from Bush/Rove-until we hear from them, no

one is really responsible!

[aquart]

8. Don't bother their client?

I want her on television SAYING she takes the Fifth. What flaming brass balls they have.

And ain't she a good Christian.

[wordpix]

12. here's hoping the constituents talk a LOT during this recess---more stuff is sure to turn up

on these asshats, whether it's about elections, fired AGs, corruption, Tortureboy, Plamegate, VA hospitals, lack of troop readiness, secret energy deals, Abramoff or whatever, I am just hoping that the locals spill their guts to their reps and senators. :evilgrin: