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We didn't have time this past week to say good-bye to the MSNBC program The Verdict, which will be replaced post-RNC by Rachel Maddow. Dan Abrams signs off on his program with one last Bush League Justice on the completely un-Constitutional signing statement.
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You knew it was going to happen. For all his big talk about being happy to talk to the House Judiciary Committee looking into the conviction and incarceration of Don Siegelman, when push came to shove, you had to know that Karl Rove would never, ever freely respond to the HJC subpoena. CQPolitics:
Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, cited executive privilege as the reason that the former White House adviser would not appear before the Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee on July 10.[..]
"Mr. Rove will respectfully decline to appear before the Subcommittee on July 10 on the grounds that Executive Privilege confers upon him immunity from process to respond to a subpoena directed to this subject," Luskin wrote.
Luskin renewed an offer that would have Rove submit to an off-the-record, untranscribed interview or answer written questions about the Siegelman case, but not the broader issue of the politicization of the Justice Department.
Not even man enough to stand up for his actions. Hear that, Karl? Not even man enough. Dan Abrams brings NYU Law School Professor Michael Waldman and former HJC counsel Julian Epstein to discuss the latest in Bush League (In)Justice:
Abrams: Okay, Michael, let me start with you: it is clear, Karl Rove is not coming. I mean, the House Judiciary Committee can say as much as they want, we're still hoping, we're still encouraging him to come, we're still insisting that he come, he's not coming. So what do they do now?
Waldman: Well, it's really quite remarkable, as you say, you can just say no to a lawful subpoena from Congress. Congress has a bunch of tools they can use. They can, of course, throw him in jail. There's a jail in the basement of the Capitol. That's probably the extreme remedy. There's all kinds of other things. They can cut off funding, they can hold up nominations, they can bring a lawsuit as has been the case in the Miers...the Harriet Miers contempt case. But what Congress has to have when it looks in its toolbox is not any of these tools but some backbone. Congress is a co-equal branch of government and it needs to stand up for its rights in this.
Backbone in Congress? What's that? I'll believe it when I see the perp walk.
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Bill W. already posted about Conyers' statement that he is committed to getting Rove to testify in the Don Siegelman case, even if it means having him arrested. However, this segment from MSNBC's Verdict, where Catherine Crier explains to host Dan Abrams the process and the seriousness of an Inherent Contempt of Congress charge is was too good not to use, so I asked Heather to make the video for me. Besides, it's small and petty of me, but I don't think you can hear "haul Karl Rove to jail" too many times.
Crier: Well here's the way this plays out. If the full House issues the contempt citation then it's supposed to go to the Department of Justice and they're supposed to take it to a Grand Jury. They're supposed to enforce it. Well they've already, the Bush administration says no, uh, there's Executive authority, we're saying privilege. They're not going to enforce it. You might then try the Federal courts. The Federal courts are liable to say it's a political question. But the Constitution gives the Congress the inherent power to issue contempt and then to prosecute on this.
Abrams: On their own.
Crier: They can send the Sergeant at Arms out into the countryside, arrest, haul somebody in and in days gone by used to literally hold them in the basement of Congress in an impromptu jail and then they could have a trial. That is still their power today.
Full transcript (courtesy of Heather) below the fold.
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The problem with pursuing justice with the Bush administration is the utter lack of respect for the rule of law that they exhibit regularly. In the case of the prosecution and incarceration of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman, Karl Rove initially told the House Judiciary Committee that he would only speak to them in private, not under oath and with no transcript. Then he changed his mind and said he'd only respond to their questions in writing.
Well, that's just not good enough for HJC member Rep. Robert Wexler (and frankly, it shouldn't be good enough for anyone. Can you imagine telling a judge that you're not going to come in to testify in a case, but he can ask you questions in writing?) and he told host Dan Abrams and Don Siegelman that no matter what obstacle the White House throws in his way, he'll keep pursuing justice for Siegelman.
We would much prefer Mr. Rove voluntarily agreed to appear before the House Judiciary Committee, as would any other American citizen. But my view is that if he refuses to come voluntarily, we must first subpoena him, and if he refuses to honor the subpoena then the full House of Representatives must hold Mr. Rove in Contempt of Congress. And then we must ask the Attorney General to enforce the Contempt of Congress subpoena or citation. And if the Attorney General refuses to do so, which Mr. Mukasey said previously before the Judiciary Committee that he would, then I believe, reluctantly, we need to literally uphold the checks and balances that this administration has so abused and then we need to go the extraordinary step of issuing an Inherent Contempt of Congress.
The full segment available online at MSNBC.
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If there was truly any justice in this world, Karl Rove would be cooling his heels in some very uncomfortable room in The Hague, Netherlands right now. Instead, he has jumped from the sinking ship of the Bush White House to a cushy job as a pundit on FOXNews. But even as a pundit, on Monday's Verdict, Dan Abrams has noted a peculiar tendency on the part of Bush's Brain to sound exactly like a partisan political propagandist. Case in point: Rove was kind enough to give some "advice" to Barack Obama that read for all the world as a whisper campaign on Obama's perceived weakness.
But inside that Beltway Bubble, Karl Rove finding gainful employment giving his opinion on Democratic candidates hardly raises an eyebrow. In fact, Tucker Carlson loves him some Rovian punditry:
Well, I’ve seen him a couple of times on the tube. I think he’s excellent, actually. He’s better than I thought he would be. He’s got smart and incisive things to say. Look, the thing about Rove is it’s actually a more honest situation than most. I mean, in a lot of cases you’ve got people—most journalists obviously are liberal Democrats—and most sort of try their best to be objective. You kind of have to guess about whether they’re achieving objectivity or not. With Rove, it’s Karl Rove! You know, like you know exactly who he is, you know where he’s coming from. A smart person takes that into account. Even a dumb person takes that into account. And so, everything’s kind of out on the table and you can evaluate what he says and turn on your BS monitor and if some of it sounds like spin, you take that into account. But I’ve been kind of impressed, being in the pundit business myself for a while, by how good the guy is. Watch him, he’s good! Actually.
Uh no, actually. Only Roy Sekoff of the Huffington Post seems to get that someone who is responsible for so much of what is wrong with this country and so many criminal acts does not deserve to continue to get a national platform from which to practice and further his divisive ways. Of course if being "wrong" was the metric to ensure not being on TV, Tucker would have been vanquished off by 1994. Most journalists are liberal Democrats, Tucker? You idiot, Karl Rove is on FOXNews. Are you telling me they're mostly liberal Democrats? That's just stupid and lazy.
Norah McDonnell perpetuates the "Karl Rove is a political genius" meme so intractably popular in Washington DC circles:
I think everybody knows where Karl Rove comes from. And I think the genius of Karl Rove, whether you agree or disagree with him, even the things he’s done inside the Bush administration, is that he is a brilliant political tactician. There’s nobody since I covered the White House who knows the numbers, who knows demographics of congressional districts, who knows the delegate counts better. I mean, really, other than like Chuck Todd, who does the numbers like that, Karl Rove knows this stuff, lives it, breathes it, digs it, and so that’s why he’s a good source in that regard. But there’s no doubt…I mean, he wants the Republican…and he wants McCain to win, even though he tried to destroy McCain in 2000.
Norah, no one knows better than Karl? Can you say 2006 elections? I predicted the outcome more accurately than Rove did. Where's my pundit spot where I can attack the Republicans under the guise of my "political expertise"? And I'm not guilty of orchestrating dirty elections, ramping up a propaganda tsunami to force the country into an illegal war or treasonously outing a CIA covert officer. I think a moral compass would be a refreshing change in the punditry, don't you?
In his "Beat the Press" segment Wednesday night, Dan Abrams awarded all three dishonorable mentions to FOX News, which continues to prove itself as an utter joke.
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"It's not like we tune in to FOX for facts."
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The media-manufactured controversies over Barack Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, aren't going to go away if the media can help it. It's much easier to talk about them than admit to propagandists on your booking lists. Rev. Wright agreed to his first public interview, and will be on Bill Moyer's Journal, which will air this evening on PBS. But advance video has the punditocracy a-twitter with the meme that Wright "throws" Obama under the bus. But the media also has a history of purposefully taking Wright's words out of context.
However, take a closer look at that panel assembled. Joe Watkins (introduced as Rev. Watkins, as he holds a divinity degree), who has worked for the Dan Quayle, Bush 41 and the current president, Kevin Madden, whose last gig was as Mitt Romney's spokesman as well as working on Bush's 2000 campaign and Lawrence O'Donnell, the lone Democrat, who formerly worked for Patrick Moynihan and was the Chief of Staff for the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works before jumping to Hollywood and The West Wing and Big Love. Could the deck be stacked any further against anything Wright says? Watch as Madden and Watkins slam Obama by attributing words that Wright did not say, much to the frustration of O'Donnell.
This is great. He’s not using those words and every pundit on TV talking about this wants to force those words into Rev. Wright’s mouth. He’s not using them so we’re pretending he’s using them.
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Dan Abrams, who has been outstanding about keeping the Don Siegelman story at the forefront of his show, had Siegelman on to speak out about his incarceration and the fight in front of him to get Congress to investigate his prosecution and uncover the corruption and White House tentacles that railroad Democrats but ignore Republicans.
SIEGELMAN: We have got to seek out the truth. And I want to, again, commend you and Bush League Justice for pushing this issue forward. This case and these circumstances will make Watergate look like child`s play if Congress will dig into these things. You brought up something right before the break about two prominent Republicans who were exposed during the course of this investigation but were not pursued.
Remind me again, what was it that Congress forced to do when the details about the Watergate break in started to leak out to the general public?
Transcripts below the fold
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The fallacy of "balance" in the media drives me nuts. Especially when they pair someone like Phil Donohue up with professional contrarian and annoyance Tucker Carlson, who couldn't come up with a compelling viewpoint to get anyone to watch his own show. Why is it necessary to bring on another point of view on when you have a guest like Donahue, who has spent the better part of the last year working on his documentary, Body of War, appearing to discuss the movie and how he perceives the occupation in Iraq to be going, especially when Carlson can bring no special background or knowledge to the discussion? The concept of honest debate of important issues gets lost in stupid semantic nitpicking ("how can you call Cheney a wimp for getting out of going to Vietnam?") that simply wastes airtime and prevents the public from hearing Donahue's perspective (which it should not have to be pointed out, has been right far more consistently than Carlson has). Luckily, host Dan Abrams gave Donahue the last word:
This war is not fair to the American troops. This war is a massive blunder and we still have people like John McCain who want to throw more young people on the sword because “we have to win, my friends.” What…you know, the way he talks, he’s going to find that last terrorist and go [points finger like a gun] bang! [blows on finger] Boy, I’m glad that’s over! That’s the way they’re talking. This is a nightmare. It is a (sic) endless quagmire that is going to cost more and more American blood while the American people are losing this. They have no focus on Iraq any more and our economy is tanking.
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Get the feeling that Dan Abrams reads the blogs? On Tuesday's Verdict, Abrams introduced a new recurring segment: Teflon John, documenting all the ways that Republican presidential candidate John McCain gets a free ride from the mainstream media. First example: McCain's infamous "100 years in Iraq" statement. While Washington Times' Tony Blankley tries to muddy the water, Abrams, with Gen. Wesley Clark and Joan Walsh, point out rightfully that neither of the Democratic candidates would have been able to get away with such a statement.
On his Wednesday show, Dan Abrams looked at various charges and countercharges that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have leveled at each other recently (he found them both equally guilty of misstatements). However, Rachel Maddow of Air America (and MSNBC, give this woman a show, what on earth are you waiting for?) felt much stronger than either Dan Abrams or Peter Beinart of The New Republic about Hillary Clinton's fearmongering strategy to distinguish herself from Barack Obama:
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DA: You really think the “3 am” ad is a cheap shot?
RM: The “3 am” ad is such a cheap shot, it’s actually the first thing that’s made me mad at Hillary Clinton. It almost made me as mad as the thing she said, ‘oh as far as I know he’s not a Muslim.’ Those have been the two worst things that she has done.
The ‘3 am’ ad was wrong because it cedes the argument to the Republicans over the Democrats in terms of whether or not Americans voters ought to be scared into voting for someone .DA: Peter, to me, that just suggests when you’re a Democrat, you can’t talk about national security issues in the primary.
PB: The truth is the Democrats have been scaring Americans about foreign policy for the last 100 years. I mean, I heard Rachel earlier say the Franklin Roosevelt said “freedom from fear.” Franklin Roosevelt spent the entire late 1930s scaring Americans about the Nazi threat, and thank goodness he did. The real debate should be how serious do we think the terrorist threat is. That’s a genuine argument you can have. Rachel may think it’s less serious than John McCain; she may be right. But it’s perfectly reasonable to have the debate.
RM: There’s a difference between talking about the threats that are faced by a country and talking about how to stand up to them and how we as a nation can face them as…with unified…with unity and from a position of strength. It’s another thing to say “Be afraid! Vote for me.” which is what Hillary Clinton is doing, which is George W. Bush politics.
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With any luck, the attention that Dan Abrams has committed to bring to the Don Siegelman case will manifest itself into pressure on the Alabama State Attorney General to move towards examining this miscarriage of justice. On last night's show, Abrams spoke with former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods, who was interviewed for the 60 Minutes piece and is one of the 52 current and former Attorneys General who have signed a letter raising concerns of politicization in this case. Woods again pointed out some of the red flags that have that bipartisan group calling for a special investigation:
I think our main point is there’s a million red flags on this case. And that doesn’t necessarily mean it will all come to something, but it means there’s just too much out there for it not to be investigated. For context, you should remember that the governor, when he ran for re-election, went to bed having been declared by everybody the winner, he was awakened a few hours later and said, “oh, um, you know, there was some…a foul up in a rural county and uh some votes were switched, so now you lost.”
Now we flash forward a few years, he’s going to run to try to get back into office and they bring charges against him and they go to trial. Pretty big deal, charge a former governor who is getting ready to run again. And the prosecutor gives his opening argument and the judge dismisses the case after the opening argument. That just doesn’t happen. That’s how bad that case was, and they still don’t give up. So they go after him again, and have now a different prosecutor, as you mentioned, the wife of one of the people who have been working for years politically against him and then I think Mr. Kilborn has said that they were all assured that nothing was going to come of it, that the charges were no good. All of the sudden there’s a top to bottom review and charges are brought.
If you would like to send Siegelman your support, his address is here. If you'd like to call for an investigation, you can contact the Alabama State Attorney General's office here. Larissa Alexandrovna has much, much more...
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Luckily for us, Dan Abrams isn't letting go of the Don Siegelman story. On Wednesday's show, he brought on Harper's contributer Scott Horton, who has been covering this story from the beginning. They discuss the "mysterious" blacking out of the 60 Minutes piece at WHNT and the various connections that the station owners have with the Republican party and the Bush administration.
Abrams speaks to whistleblower Dana Jill Simpson, of whom the Alabama Republican party (and chief strategist Karl Rove) disavow knowledge.
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Finally, Abrams speaks to Don Siegelman's daughter, Dana, who speaks out on her father's feelings about this new publicity in his case and gives some indication of why the Republican party was interested in getting Siegelman out of the way.
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All the publicity that the Don Siegelman case has brought in the last couple of days has made the rats in the Alabama Republican party scurrying to find the safety of darkness again. Led by chief rat Karl Rove, the modus operandi is to deny, deny, deny. The only problem? You have 52 Attorneys General, Republican and Democrat alike, who say that this case just doesn't pass the smell test.
The case rests on the testimony of Dana Jill Simpson who has come forward to say that Karl Rove asked her to dig up compromising sexual photographs of Siegelman. Classy guy, that Turdblossom. Besides denying that they know Simpson (which as she points out in the clip is a simple matter of explaining away phone records), things took a decidedly more sinister tone, as Larisa Alexandrovna documents:
As 60 Minutes was putting its show together, the White House put pressure on CBS -- the parent company -- to kill the show. Over the last few days, as word got out that the 60 Minutes show would air tonight, Karl Rove's associates began planting defamatory stories about journalists working on this story (see example here) and attacking the whistle-blower who came forward, Dana Jill Simpson. If you recall, Ms. Simpson testified, under oath, to Congress about Karl Rove's involvement in politicizing the DOJ. What you may not know, however, is that her house mysteriously caught fire and she was run off the road in the weeks leading up to her testimony.
What you may also not know is that Governor Siegelman's house was broken into twice during his trial as was his attorney's office.
Yesterday, the attacks on Simpson and journalists increased with a series of emails from the Alabama GOP. See Here.
I'm not trying to be overly dramatic, but as the layers get pulled away in this case, I'm having a harder and harder time believing that this is America and not some third world dictatorship.
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Dan Abrams offers another edition of his series "Bush League Justice" focusing on the latest petulant move on the part of the President, who is holding on to the nominations of 84 positions until Congress confirms Steven Bradbury to the position of Assistant Attorney General, something the Senate is loathe to do. Why? Because Steven Bradbury is the legal mind responsible for writing the opinions stripping detainees of their habeas corpus rights and torturing them was legally permissible as well as immunizing Harriet Miers from complying with a congressional subpoena. But of course, in Bush's mind it's the Democratic-controlled Congress who is the problem. Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley weighs in on the latest "made man" of the Bush Administration.
