The politicalization of the Justice Department's civil rights unit keeps going and going...

By Diane Silver

The news just keeps getting better and better (note sarcasm) about Bradley Schlozman, who briefly served as U.S. Attorney in Kansas City.

During his tenure as head of the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, Schlozman hired and fired based on political affiliation, and apparently just being a Republican wasn't enough. Experience and competence also seem to have meant little.

The Washington Post has the story. Watching Those We Chose follows up. As always the most up-to-date information on the continuing saga of the DOJ is Talking Points Memo.

Who lied & who didn't? A Bradley Schlozman, U.S. attorney scandal roundup

[Updated 2:31 p.m.]

Talking Points Memo now has its video montage of Bradley Schlozman's testimony up. Josh Marshall calls Schlozman's performance "one of the most acrimonious, combustible and frankly mutually-contemptuous testimony I've ever seen."

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[The original post is below.]

Josh Marshall speculates that Bradley Schlozman lied in his testimony before Congress yesterday and promises to post a video compilation of Schlozman's testimony later this morning.

TPMmuckraker mulls conflicting accounts on why people working for a liberal group were indicted for voter fraud just before the November election.

Fine coverage, context and analysis at Watching Those We Chose (where I also blog) of Schlozman's testimony and the media response to it. Thanks corpus juris.

I am sick of anonymous sources.

"I can't recall." Bradley Schlozman edition.

Schlozman and Graves, Compare and Contrast

The bottom line? It looks more and more like the GOP was attempting the throw the Missouri Senate election to their candidate.

In This Moment's earlier take on the situation.

U.S. attorney's departure from Kansas City called "troubling"

The Kansas City Star reports on the concerns of the House Judiciary Committee about the departure of Todd Graves.

Talking Points Memo has more and the full text of the letter detailing the committee members concern.

Meanwhile, it appears that the Congressional testimony of former Kansas City U.S. Attorney Bradley Schlozman won't happen for a while. The controversial Schlozman took over when Graves let and has sense gone back to Washington D.C.

Kansas City's U.S. attorney makes #9 in the scandal

By Diane Silver

Kansas City's Todd Graves was pushed out for being too independent? Seems so. He was pushed out to bring in someone to try to sway the Missouri Senate race? Quite possible.

Talking Points Memo has the latest.

The New York Times editorializes:

Mr. (Brad) Schlozman’s short stint in Missouri — he left after about a year — appears to be another case of the Bush administration’s politicizing federal prosecutors’ offices. Mr. Graves was reportedly on a list to be fired, and clues are emerging about why. He said this week that when he interviewed for the job, he was asked to name one attribute that describes him. “I said independent,” he said. “Apparently, that was the wrong attribute.”

The Kansas City Star reports that concerns in Sen. Kit Bond's office about a controversial fee system may have played a role in Graves departure, but then the same article quotes Bond's office as saying, well no, those concerns had nothing to do with it. And oh yes, there was no wrongdoing, as proven by an investigation.

The Washington Post reports on why Graves firing and its timing is important.

After reviewing all of this, I have to say that my trust in the Department of Justice is certainly at an all-time low.

Breathlessly catching up with the U.S. attorney scandal's reach into Kansas City

By Diane Silver

Good grief! It's impossible to keep up with what's happening in the U.S. attorney scandal, and I'm only talking about the Kansas City portion of it. It now appears that KC's own U.S. attorney, Todd Graves, may have been the 9th attorney fired, and well, there's much more.

Talking Points Memo has the goods on Graves leaving and Missouri Sen. Kit Bond's involvement in both booting him out and trying to get him more time to complete his cases. (Note the original information is hidden behind the KC Star's new outrageously priced paywall. And yes, I know that the whole thing is confusing.)

Watching Those We Chose has:
Graves Pushed out for Performance Reasons.
One of Bond's Staffers Wanted Graves Gone

The Washington Post has Lawmaker's Aide Targeted Prosecutor

The Kansas City Star on why Congress wants Bradley Schlozman to testify. It looks like he will testify on May 15. Schlozman took over for Graves and pursued voting fraud indictments that are now beginning to look fishy.
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Photo: Kit Bond

More on the US attorney scandal, Missouri & questions about Kansas

By Diane Silver

Corpus Juris over at Watching Those We Chose has a good overview today on what is looking more and more like a Republican attempt to undermine the November election in Missouri.

What happened? Think: Voting fraud hysteria that turned out to be a fraud itself and the U.S. attorney scandal.

Missouri may well have been targeted because of the importance of the Senate race in that half red, half blue state.

Attempts to drum up fear over voting fraud has already showed up in the Kansas Legislature. (scroll down. Also see here.) With the fortunes of Kansas Democrats on the rise these days, can the Sunflower State expect to see increasing efforts to muck with our elections?

Stay tuned...
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In the interest of transparency, I also blog periodically at Watching Those We Chose.

Kansas City ACORN voter registration indictments violated policy & more

By Diane Silver

Interesting timing. I just finished my U.S. attorney post and learned that Talking Point Memo's Muckraker.com had just posted about Bradley Schlozman's indictments of four ACORN workers.

The entire Muckraker post is worth reading, but here are the highlights.

• Schlozman's indictments broke with longstanding Justice Department policy to NOT bring election charges just before a vote because it "can intimidate minority voters, affect voter turnout and potentially even influence the result of the election."
• At the time, the indictments were trumpeted as the first of a national investigation of widespread fraud. No charges were ever filed anywhere else against ACORN workers.
• The fraud was likely perpetrated on ACORN and wasn't an effort BY ACORN to sway the election.
  
• One of the indictments targeted the wrong person, perhaps proof of how fast they were rushed to get them into court before the election.
• Only six fraudulent voters were ever registered. Only two people have pleaded guilty. (I originally reported on one.)
  

U.S. attorney scandal reaches into elections & law enforcement in Kansas & Missouri

By Diane Silver

I have to admit there are moments when the screaming fits and scandals of Washington, D.C., seem far removed from life out here on the prairie. This isn't one of those times.

The scandal in the U.S. Department of Justice has now reached into the U.S. attorney's office in Kansas City and possibly into the 2006 election in Missouri. What may be Republican efforts to target core constituencies of the Democratic Party may also have reached into the 2006 election in Kansas and into the 2007 Kansas legislative session.

If those of us out here in the great middle weren't concerned before, it's time to pay attention now.

This post is an attempt to put all of this into perspective and to pose the questions that remain unanswered.

Two issues are paramount.

• The quality of federal law enforcement in the Kansas City region
• The fairness of elections in Kansas and Missouri

When I covered northeastern Kansas and the Kansas Legislature for The Wichita Eagle, I quickly realized that although U.S. attorneys are political appointees, their jobs were and are not political. They are charged with enforcing federal law in their regions.

They take on cases involving drugs, civil rights, corruption and a multitude of other issues. Our safety and the health of our democracy depends on the professionalism and fairness of U.S. attorneys.

The first issue before us is this: Was a U.S. Attorney named Todd Graves forced out in Kansas City for no other reason than the fact that he was, well, fair and professional? Was he forced out because he would not bow to the demands of the Bush Administration that he use his office to unfairly target Democratic constituencies for voting fraud charges?

(The KC Star's Steve Kraske reviews Graves approach to his job.)

Graves resigned in March 2006, a few months after his name was put on a White House target list. Graves told The Kansas City Star that he is thankful that he left because the "current environment at the department can only be described as toxic." Graves also told the reporter that he didn't know his name was on what appears to be a hit list.

So perhaps Graves wasn't forced out. Why would he have quit if he didn't know he was on the hit list?

Look, though, at what happened when he left. Within 13 days of his departure, the White House appointed Brad Schlozman, a justice department official who had already filed a voter fraud case against Missouri.

Thirteen days? If the Department of Justice didn't know Graves was leaving, how did it find a replacement at what amounts to warp speed? But then again, Missouri was a battleground state in November. The victory of Claire McCaskill helped secure the Senate for Democrats. At the time Schlozman was sent to Kansas City, the Missouri Senate race was still neck and neck.

What did Schlozman do when he got to Missouri? A week before the election, he prosecuted ACORN workers for allegedly filing false voter registration forms. This is the only federal case filed against ACORN in the nation. ACORN works in urban areas with key Democratic constituencies.

Meanwhile, Republicans in Kansas pushed hard in the 2007 session for a bill requiring voter identification, a measure Democrats think is aimed at thinning out some of their core voters. Even its supporters say the bill is designed to fix a voting fraud problem that apparently doesn't exist in the Sunflower State.

Also just before the November election, the Wichita Eagle reported that Spanish-speaking voters were facing difficulties in registering to vote. The Kansas election system is run by its secretary of state, an office held by a Republican.

Unanswered Questions

What does it all mean? Do all these events go together, or is this a vast coincidence?

Honestly, I don't know.

The Bushie's choice for the Kansas City U.S. attorney office has a record of putting politics before professionalism. The case Schlozman filed against Missouri before coming to the Kansas City office was dismissed by a federal judge last month. The judge said she found no evidence of major voter fraud in the state.

The voting fraud case Schlozman filed just before the election eventually ended up with one ACORN worker pleading guilty in February to falsely registering one Kansas City woman. According to a Feb. 7, 2007, Kansas City Star story ACORN itself informed authorities in October 2006 of irregularities by three of its workers. (I'm not linking to the story because I found it in a library database open only to registered members of the library.)

Schlozman said at the time that the ACORN charges weren't political. ACORN's own involvement in the case seems to indicate that. However, the fact that the entire case ended in one person pleading guilty to doing something wrong one time indicates that the case may have been overblown. But then again, shouldn't even one crime be prosecuted?

Questions have also been raised regarding Graves.

I don't have good answers to the questions raised by all of this. However, I do know that antics of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and crew have destroyed the credibility of that department.

Never before have I questioned the integrity of a U.S. attorney. I do now. Never before have I questioned the integrity of elections out here on the prairie. Unfortunately, I do now.

More on how the Bushies may be meddling in Kansas elections

By Diane Silver

When the Kansas Legislature goes back into session Wednesday, we may well see how the long arm of the Bush Administration reaches out from Washington, D.C., to meddle in voting in Kansas.

At issue is a proposed Kansas law requiring voters to bring identification to polling places. Such a bill looks sensible at first blush. Unfortunately, the measure is (1) aimed at a problem that doesn't exist in Kansas, and even the bill's supporters admit that, and (2) could potentially limit voting by the poor who don't have easy access to drivers licenses or other IDs.

Muckraker.com does a good job today of showing how the firings of US Attorneys and a long-time Bush Administration attempt to purge voting rolls all fit together.

Has Kansas gotten tangled up in a long-armed attempt to undermine elections by limiting turnout among Democratic constituencies? In October, I wrote about some disturbing voter registration and polling problems in this state. Were these more than just simple goofs?

Bush & Alberto Gonzales: Undermining elections & the Kansas connection

By Diane Silver

Like the Energizer Bunny, the U.S. Attorney scandal keeps going and going. Whether you're a conservative or a liberal, I suspect, it also keeps getting more and more horrifying.

If you're a Bushie, the sight of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in front of Congress probably didn't brighten your day, no matter what the White House claims. The New York Times editorializes this morning:

If Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had gone to the Senate yesterday to convince the world that he ought to be fired, it’s hard to imagine how he could have done a better job, short of simply admitting the obvious: that the firing of eight United States attorneys was a partisan purge.

Mr. Gonzales came across as a dull-witted apparatchik incapable of running one of the most important departments in the executive branch.

Meanwhile, McClatchy Newspapers has uncovered a Bushie campaign to limit voter turnout in what appears to be a bold attempt to undermine elections in favor of the GOP.

For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates.

...

Questions about the administration's campaign against alleged voter fraud have helped fuel the political tempest over the firings last year of eight U.S. attorneys, several of whom were ousted in part because they failed to bring voter fraud cases important to Republican politicians.

The push for Voter ID laws, like the one in Kansas, is also part of this.

Joseph Rich, who left his job as chief of the section in 2005, said these events formed an unmistakable pattern.

"As more information becomes available about the administration's priority on combating alleged, but not well substantiated, voter fraud, the more apparent it is that its actions concerning voter ID laws are part of a partisan strategy to suppress the votes of poor and minority citizens," he said.

The Kansas Connection

The Kansas bill, which would require voters to bring identification to polling places, was narrowly defeated in the House during the regular session. However, it could come up again for a vote in the wrap-up session, which starts on Wednesday.

This bill is up for consideration despite the fact that, as the Lawrence Journal-World reports:

Supporters conceded they had no evidence of illegal immigrants trying to vote in Kansas, or other forms of voter fraud.

Scroll down to find the Voter ID section in this Journal-World capitol briefing.

So here we sit, far from Washington, and it seems clear: Kansas is caught in a nationwide GOP effort to repress voting by minorities and the poor.

Meanwhile, the Bush Administration claims to be exporting democracy to the rest of the world. How can they possibly do that when they don't seem to believe in democracy at home?

Purgegate & the real problem: Trumping up charges of voter fraud

By Diane Silver

I'm a little late on this, but I want to add my small voice to the chorus that's beginning to sing about what's really behind the Bush Administration's purge of certain U.S. attorneys.

It appears that the purge was prompted by what may well be a Republican plan to limit voting by heavily Democratic minorities and the poor. In other words, a GOP administration was desperate to show proof of voter fraud in order to win backing for laws that would hit key Democratic constituencies and make it harder for them to vote.

If true, this is a lot worse than just firing a few prosecutors because they weren't political enough.

Overall, the best reporting I've seen on the entire scandal is at Talking Points Memo.

The Times has a great editorial today, Fantasy Behind the Scandal

Monday Reads: Iraq, the Democratic closet, global warming & blogging against theocracy

By Diane Silver

It's been another busy day here at In This Moment. The good news is that I've not only been slaving over a money job, but I've been researching a series of posts I hope to put up within the next few days.

My goal with those upcoming posts is to come closer to understanding Americans For Prosperity, an anti-tax, anti-spending organization that has been successfully influencing Kansas politics for the past few years. I want to get my facts right, so stay tuned for further developments.

Meanwhile, here are some national items that caught my eye.

Wisconsin civil servant Georgia Thompson may have spent months in prison for no other reason than the fact that she worked for a Democratic governor. At least, that's the claim the New York Times made today in an editorial, which noted that Thompson's case may well be another layer on the politicalization of the U.S. attorneys offices.

The Chicago-based United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit seemed shocked by the injustice of her conviction. It took the extraordinary step of releasing Ms. Thompson from prison immediately after hearing arguments, without waiting to issue a ruling. One of the judges hinted that Ms. Thompson may have been railroaded. “It strikes me that your evidence is beyond thin,” Judge Diane Wood told the lawyer from Mr. Biskupic’s office.

Oh darn... I missed this weekend's blogswarm against theocracy. I would have loved to have participated. Thanks to Talk To Action for pointing it out. I agree with Talk To Action's Frederick Clarkson: Go forth and read!

There's a great article over at Alternet today where Laura Flanders rightfully berates Democrats for hiding from cultural issues like gay marriage. Excerpted from her book Blue Grit, the article notes:

The truth is that Democrats, progressives, and fair-minded Republicans will never be anti-gay or anti choice or anti-racial justice enough to quiet their opponents. The only people left with any doubt about where Democrats stand on cultural issues are those whose lives are at stake. Those inconveniently irreverent and striving real people -- whom pundits dare not mention by name but allude to with the code name "culture" -- those Americans are the Democrats' base, whether the party likes it or not
....

The LGBT movement has a word for a frame that's built around the fear of being honest: a closet. And there's only one exit: coming out. People who are clear about who they are, and who clearly respect themselves and their beliefs, attract respect. Consider Lupe Valdez, a fifty-seven-year-old lesbian Latina who was elected Sheriff of Dallas in 2004. Valdez is the first woman, first gay person, and first Hispanic ever to be Sheriff of Dallas, and the first Democrat to hold the job in twenty-five years. A former prison guard and federal agent, the 5'2" daughter of migrant workers was opposed by the unions representing many of those working in the sheriff's department. She was outspent three-to-one.

At the last minute, her opponent, the favored candidate, raised alarms about her acceptance of campaign contributions from Washington-based Gay and Lesbian Victory fund. How did she win? People in Dallas were ready for a change. Their Republican sheriff, a twenty-year incumbent, had just been indicted on charges of corruption. Valdez cast herself as an agent of change and made her sexuality work for her, rather than against: "I'm not like anybody in here. I'm the element of change. I'm a lesbian" she said. A third of those who voted for her were cross-overs, voters who didn't vote a straight Democratic ticket. Now Valdez is the only woman among 254 sheriffs in Texas.

Salon.com reports that the military is so stretched that injured troops are being shipped back to Iraq. Meanwhile, The New York Times notes that the surge in Iraq has yet to produce much in the way of great results.

The New York Time's Paul Krugman had a great column on Republican's "little lies," and how they can be as effective as the Big Lie, for example, that got us into war in Iraq. Krugman's argument is that the GOP is attempting to slime Speaker Nancy Pelosi with a ton of little lies.This is behind the Time's paywall, so here are some excerpts.

First, there were claims that the speaker of the House had demanded a lavish plane for her trips back to California. One Republican leader denounced her "arrogance of extravagance" -- then, when it became clear that the whole story was bogus, admitted that he had never had any evidence.

Now there's Ms. Pelosi’s fact-finding trip to Syria, which Dick Cheney denounced as "bad behavior" -- unlike the visit to Syria by three Republican congressmen a few days earlier, or Newt Gingrich’s trip to China when he was speaker.

Ms. Pelosi has responded coolly, dismissing the administration's reaction as a “tantrum.” But it’s more than that: the hysterical reaction to her trip is part of a political strategy, aided and abetted by news organizations that give little lies their time in the sun.

Fox News, which is a partisan operation in all but name, plays a crucial role in the Little Lie strategy -- which is why there is growing pressure on Democratic politicians not to do anything, like participating in Fox-hosted debates, that helps Fox impersonate a legitimate news organization.

But Fox has had plenty of help. Even Time's Joe Klein, a media insider if anyone is, wrote of the Pelosi trip that "the media coverage of this on CNN and elsewhere has been abysmal." For example, CNN ran a segment about Ms. Pelosi’s trip titled "Talking to Terrorists."

The G.O.P.'s reversion to the Little Lie technique is a symptom of political weakness, of a party reduced to trivial smears because it has nothing else to offer. But the technique will remain effective — and the U.S. political scene will remain ugly — as long as many people in the news media keep playing along.

And last, but certainly not least, Daniel Gilbert from The Huffington Post figures out how to get folks to take Global Warming seriously. Here's a hint: It involves gay sex and/or folks biting the heads off kittens.

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Photo: Dallas Sheriff Lupe Valdez

Must Reads: Al-Qaeda & Saddam, another U.S. Attorney mess & James Dobson falters

By Diane Silver

[updated 1 pm]

Happy Friday to you! Here are some must reads for today.

If you haven't already, trot on over to The Washington Post and read about a newly declassified report showing that there never were pre-war links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. To make matters worse, it shows that the CIA knew this in 2002.

In many ways, this issue shouldn't still matter. We're already in Iraq. We have to figure out what to do now, yet somehow the Bush Administration can't let go of the Big Lie. On the same day the report was released Vice President Dick Cheney once again told Rush Limbaugh's radio audience that al-Qaeda had been working in Iraq before the war.

Meanwhile, four top managers in the U.S. Attorney's office in Minneapolis are despairing. They've resigned from their positions and taken voluntary demotions one month after an inexperienced, 34-year-old was sworn in as U.S. Attorney.

The Pioneer Press via Talking Points Memo reports:

A source said managers had been unhappy with (new U.S. Attorney Rachel) Paulose and decided to collectively resign.

"They did it jointly because they couldn't stand her anymore," the source said, citing what been described as her "dictatorial management style and general lack of management experience."

[Update]

OK, this is a little old (from March 23), but new for us and still well worth reading and watching. A Minneapolis TV station reports that Paulose's swearing-in ceremony got so elaborate that some folks called it a "coronation." Do read the story, but make certain to click on the video. It's an eye opener.

As a reporter, I never heard of elaborate ceremonies complete with choirs and speeches for U.S. attorneys. Although politically appointed, this is a work-a-day job. As I remember it, U.S. attorneys usually took their oath of office in small ceremonies in a judge's chamber. Honestly, this looks like a church service or campaign rally. Why would anyone need this?

[end up update]

In the world of religion and politics, The Economist declares that fundamentalist leader James Dobson is faltering, along with the entire religious right. I'm not as optomistic as The Economist about the movement's fall, but the piece does make for interesting reading.

The problem is that Mr Dobson is not all that good at politics. He displays all the characteristic weaknesses of evangelical politicos—overreaching hopelessly and then blaming failure on want of political courage. He was the prime force behind both the fight to keep Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube in place and the push for a gay-marriage ban. But a majority of evangelicals disapproved of the first and a large number of his fellow social conservatives warned, rightly, that the second was a waste of effort.

There have been other miscalculations. He wasted political capital supporting Harriet Miers’s doomed nomination to the Supreme Court. He strongly opposed the 2006 Evangelical Climate Initiative. He accused SpongeBob SquarePants of participating in a “pro-homosexual video”. He argued that “The Da Vinci Code” “has all the evidence of something cooked up in the fires of hell” (wouldn’t it have been better written if it had been?). He compared Bill Frist’s call for increased federal funding for stem-cell research to Nazi experiments.

I have to admit to loving the line about the Da Vinci Code.