Criminal Conspiracy

As that real estate lawyer from Texas crams day and night for his upcoming Senate exam, desperately trying to find just the right concoction of lies and obfuscations that he fantasizes will save his sorry ass, but even too incompetent for that:

But Gonzales kept contradicting himself and "getting his timeline confused," said one participant who asked not to be identified talking about a private meeting. His advisers finally got "exasperated" with him, the source added. "He's not ready," Tasia Scolinos, Gonzales's public-affairs chief, told the A.G.'s top aides after the session was over, said the source.

While the entire U.S. Department of Justice crumbles under the weight of the Bush/Rove/Gonzales racket:

A half-dozen sitting U.S. attorneys also serve as aides to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales or are assigned other Washington postings, performing tasks that take them away from regular duties in their districts for months or even years at a time, according to officials and department records.

Acting Associate Attorney General William W. Mercer, for example, has been effectively absent from his job as U.S. attorney in Montana for nearly two years -- prompting the chief federal judge in Billings to demand his removal and call Mercer's office "a mess."

We're starting to get a picture of the extent of corruption within the department under this Administration. And it seems the dry rot starting to collapse may be the hiring of dozens of Christianist partisans out of Pat Robertson's recently accredited law school -- yes, that Pat Robertson -- and the entire Human Resources effort led by the former former dean of Regent University Robertson School of Government.

Hey, I have nothing against religion. But I have a lot against theocracy. These so-called are lawyers who are more concerned acts of love between same sex couples than they are will actual law enforcement.

They include Gonzales aide Monica Goodling (life is so ironic), Regent Law and Messiah College graduate, who claims she is Taking the Fifth in not testifying to Congress, which means that she has actually done something illegal. Sen. Chuck Schmumer (D-NY) seems to think she might have been extracting loyalty oaths -- to El Presidente George W. Bush -- in hiring attorneys. A job she was way too young and inexperienced for; she got it because she was just another vicious crony.

The most devastating story is from the Boston Globe's Charlie Savage:

Documents show that Goodling, who has asserted her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to avoid testifying before Congress, was one of a handful of officials overseeing the firings. She helped install Timothy Griffin , the Karl Rove aide and her former boss at the Republican National Committee, as a replacement US attorney in Arkansas.

Because Goodling graduated from Regent in 1999 and has scant prosecutorial experience, her qualifications to evaluate the performance of US attorneys have come under fire. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, asked at a hearing: "Should we be concerned with the experience level of the people who are making these highly significant decisions?"

Bush's first Attorney General, John Ashcroft, altered the rules for hiring and then went on to teach at Regent. Revolving door-style. And the part of the Justice Department he most decimated:

Previously, veteran civil servants screened applicants and recommended whom to hire, usually picking top students from elite schools.

In a recent Regent law school newsletter, a 2004 graduate described being interviewed for a job as a trial attorney at the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division in October 2003. Asked to name the Supreme Court decision from the past 20 years with which he most disagreed, he cited Lawrence v. Texas, the ruling striking down a law against sodomy because it violated gay people's civil rights.

"When one of the interviewers agreed and said that decision in Lawrence was 'maddening,' I knew I correctly answered the question," wrote the Regent graduate . The administration hired him for the Civil Rights Division's housing section -- the only employment offer he received after graduation, he said.

Nice. Civil Rights Upside-Down Cake.

This dovetails to the Prosecutor Purge Scandal through Goodling, hatchet girl supreme, and plays out as a criminal conspiracy with Karl Rove at the center of the web.

I say "criminal conspiracy" because only criminals keep two sets of books:

When Karl Rove and his top deputies arrived at the White House in 2001, the Republican National Committee provided them with laptop computers and other communication devices to be used alongside their government-issued equipment.

The back-channel e-mail and paging system, paid for and maintained by the RNC, was designed to avoid charges that had vexed the Clinton White House — that federal resources were being used inappropriately for political campaign purposes.

Why would they be worried about that?

Waxman told the Los Angeles Times in a statement that a separate "e-mail system for high-ranking White House officials would raise serious questions about violations of the Presidential Records Act," which requires the preservation and ultimate disclosure of e-mails about official government business.

Waxman's initial request to the RNC seeks e-mails relating to the presentation of campaign polling and strategy information to Cabinet agency appointees. He is also expected to ask for e-mails relating to Abramoff's activities, which Waxman is also investigating.

and because

In the U.S. attorney case, Rove deputy Jennings used the RNC e-mail system to write to D. Kyle Sampson, then Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff, in August 2006 about replacing Arkansas U.S. Atty. H.E. "Bud" Cummins III with former Rove protege Tim Griffin.

Ah, well. It's not like anything's missing:

Among the missing documents the senators mentioned was a chart cited in a Feb. 12, 2007, e-mail message from Monica Goodling, a former aide to Mr. Gonzales, to other department officials.

Here's the true story that will emerge. Rove/Bush/Cheney used the religious loyalty test to get the most malliable cronies in that they could, in order to subvert America's voting system and steal the 2008 election as well as the last two, just more ambitious means. Subverting our Justice infrastructure to do so. Completely cynical, and if not, delusional.

The coordinated attempt to disenfranchise American voters in pursuit of partisan hegemony is simply a crime. And it is surely a conspiracy, with a mastermind and various underlings, henchmen, fixers and bagmen. From Gonzales to Abramhoff to Ashcroft to Rove. And, isn't anyone wondering, what did the President know and when did he know it?

They may never touch Bush, and I don't know if they'll ever catch Rove. I'm not sure all the most damning emails aren't torched, hard drives and RAID systems expunged, Rove having planned his cyber getaway as surely as Blofeld with a hidden helicopter.

My only hope is that someday this malicious little man gets a mark on him.