More on the Purge of US Attorneys

Former House staffer Scott Lilly explains what is going on:



http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/01/court.html/print.html

Attorneys, like judges, need to be independent in order to ensure that justice is a possible motive for their actions.

Neutering the judiciary branch is one of the long-term goals since Nixon was told he had to turn over the damn tapes.

His opinions are logically beautiful. It is obvious from them that the man is very skilled in the rules of formal logic. His reasoning is nearly perfect. In other words, if you accept his premises, you must accept his conclusions.

Of course, I have issue with his premises.

Nevertheless, it is hard to read one of his opinions and not nod along the entire time...at least in regard to his logic.

His premises are uniformly false. He was put in place to make false look true. I tend not to admire that.

I mean, this is aside from committing treason with the Florida 2000 decision.

The conclusions he reaches may suck but the logic connecting the premises to the conclusions is usually spot on.

of worldly intelligence.

However, the fact that you are so impressed, not by the turpitude of his premises, but by the "beauty" of his ineluctable logic, doesn't speak highly for your sense of priorities, never mind your capacity for outrage.

reason why it is so obscene, is precisley because the political right wing, who always of course favour privatisation, constitute the most dangerous and pernicious, criminal sector of mankind: white-collar crime - if only, in the case of the more decent right-wingers, by association.

When I say most evil, it is because, enjoying such an exalted status in the worldly pecking order, they have all the more power over the lives of the more innocent, less worldly people. And among these, are many people who are driven by the economic and social oppression to which they are subjected, to such an extremity that they driven into crime, at the street level, ie. the violence perpetrated throughout the country in the prosecution of crimes of all kinds, which affect everyone in some way, (bar the predators who love in their moated estates, and now pay even less of their always disproportionately low level of income tax, in terms of their incomes).

Although, there are always people at every level of society who are simply evil, the number of convicted (and unconvicted) criminals in our societies is a function of the level of stress imposed on the general public through the wickedness of their far right-wing governments who front for the psychopathic corporatism, in the thrall of which we find ourselves.

So the privatisation of prisons is just another obscenity too far. Prisons and their purposes are a social problem, and it is incumbent on society to deal with them, not the psychopathic big business which has made their magnitude and in some regards their scandalous regimes (even prior to privatisation) an international disgrace of a comparably enormous order.

and dislike his rulings - which tends to be the case.

I'm likewise impressed with the way in which Hitler rose to power. It is a matter of compartmentalizing. I can take a person as a whole or I can take a person as his or her individual characteristics.

For his "logically beautiful" reasoning? I fail to see the beauty in this:

Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
-- Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, First Clinically Insane Member of the Supreme Court

He is a wart on the face of the court, one who will go down as one of the worst justices, ever (just like the "worst president, ever" he ushered into power).

he is working off of the idea that a proper trial (and a proper sentence) takes into account the factual element - which is actually a prominent view in the law. The fact-finder, usually the jury, is given the task of determining the facts. Those facts don't have to be 100% accurate for the court system to accept them. If so, the court system would grind to a halt.

Again, I disagree that that principle should be applied in death sentence cases, but if it is, I can see why he said that.

How can Fat Tony not realize he was put there specifically for his stupidity.

to continue to do this. We all need to hit the streets -- or we deserve our fate.

:wtf: :wtf:

understand this move. I know that Gonzales was asked about this in the investigations yesterday,and he said it was to improve management. What I don't seem to understand is does management trump the law?

see Editorials's posting of this commentary

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x257967

this does not look good...in other words if anyone brings the wrong doers to trial, or investigates, we can expect the investigators to be relieved of their jobs??? hmmmm...America...wake up baby...we need you to see what's going on, right under your nose...
wb

Just google the Koch case.

Within days after he was sworn in, back in 2001, Bush shut down an investigation and prosecution of the Koch Corporation, the largest privately-owned energy company in the United States. Koch was facing criminal charges from Clinton Administration investigations that totalled a potential 100 years in federal prison for Koch executives and nearly half a billion dollars in fines for having not only allowed 91 metric tons of carcinogens to be released into the environment in Texas but, even worse, having fraudulently covered up the crime. The crime occurred in Texas while Bush was Governor. Bush ordered Ashcroft to interrupt the prosecution of the U.S. Attorney and cut a sweatheart deal, reducing the penalties to a slap on the wrist. No one did any time.

Koch was one of Bush's major political campaign contributors and only gives to Republicans. In his first few weeks of interaction with the press, Ari Fleischer did the song and dance and ducked the question as to whether George Bush would return the campaign contribution.

No one seems to remember the Koch case, as by now there have been so many outrages.

Thanks, I didn't have a clue about that one.

Don't be at all surprised if Patrick Fitzgerald doesn't lose his job as the Federal prosecutor in Chicago as well.

I didn't agree with too much of former Illinois Senator Peter Fitzgerald agenda, but when he got Patrick Fitzgerald named as US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, he did the right thing there.

I hope and pray Senator Leahy goes after Gonzo big time about these "resignations".

This is a complete farce and a complete disgrace.

So much for "oversight." You can almost hear the teeth dropping to the floor.

As if they weren't already impotent under "rule by signing statement."

Perhaps this purge will help some LieberDems to wake up and smell the coffee.

Only Impeachment... is a substantive, resistant act.

It IS our positive agenda.

It is our ONLY moral, patriotic option.

--

These bastards feel they are untouchable -- we have let it slide too far already.

But expect the investigate first posts (whatever that means). And I love your post "Only Impeachment". But as far as what's going on in America, it has to stop and has to now and by the means the constitution intended.

These ass clowns are going to jail. There is no doubt in my mind. This time there will be no "pardon for the good of the country." Fuck Ford. For all his good intentions, by putting a band-aid on a melanoma, we now have aggressive lymphoma. Cheney and Rumsfeld and their cronies. These criminals should've gone to jail along with Nixon. This will be our last chance to stop these tin plated despots with delusions of grandeur.

The good news is that by the time Bushco is stopped, everyone will see the light.

Nuclear winter looms in the future if the Thugs are not removed and jailed..

also put the brakes on the Iran war and the space arms race with the Chinese.

oh, wait....

:shrug:

How quickly can congress act? How many weeks would it take for Bush to sweep through the justice department, replacing professionals with his own hacks? The democratically controlled congress probably had in mind cleaning up the Patriot Act piece by piece. But it is such a can of worms that it might be better to repeal the whole thing. This also speaks to the folly of taking impeachment off the table.

Impeach

Prosecutorial discretion is an enormously powerful tool with no check on it whatsoever. The idea of putting this power in the hands of political hacks whose entire career suggests that they will do nothing but abuse the power for political ends is extremely frightening.

Bush has a checkered past himself, filled with episodes of driving while intoxicated, participating in illicit drug use (cocaine), at least one instance of insider trading, failure to report a large stock transaction in accordance to the law, failure to fulfill his National Guard Service duties, etc. His brother Neil has been implicated in a savings and loan scandal, and we don't know the extent of Poppy's illegal actions (Iran Contra, for one).

Dick Cheney has made out like a bandit with his Halliburton no-bid government contracts. This Iraq "war" has proven to be very lucrative for Cheney and the rest of these thugs (mis)leading our country. Even Rummy had a financial stake in the pharmaceutical company that manufactured the bird flu drug.

I never expected anything different from this (mis)administration before they came to power, and nothing they have done has surprised me. It also doesn't surprise me that they are purging anyone with integrity from positions of power, as this has been happening all along. Apparently, many people in many different positions in all levels of government have been fired since Bush took over, from employees in the National Park Service to scientists at NIH to operatives at the CIA. I remember reading about the shakeup at the CIA years ago. Anyone, in any position, in the government who openly disagrees with the Bush political machine has been let go. In fact, from one of Al Franken's books, I learned that all Democrats were fired from FOX "News" (which I also believe secretly receives govt. funding).

Conyers must act forthwith!