Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Caught In The Buzzsaw

by digby

TPM highlights this interesting profile of our little friend Monica Goodling at Law.com. She is, as Pach at FDL pointed out last night, a protege of recent Libby flack Barbara Comstock, the best GOP oppo character assassin since Don Segretti. Comstock brought Goodling with her into the Justice department after their stint ended as RNC oppo “researchers.”

Comstock is a very special operative, involved in the seamiest of hit jobs over the last decade. That she was allowed anywhere near the federal legal apparatus is shocking in itself:

Comstock…was viewed with suspicion by many career employees as someone more apt to look out for the personal interests of the Attorney General and political interests of the Republican party during her tenure, three Department officials said in interviews.

While at the RNC, Comstock was in charge of the Republican party’s “opposition research.” Prior to that, she was investigative counsel of the House Committee on Government Reform, then chaired by Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.). Burton broke precedent with his predecessors who focused on the workings of government agencies, to instead focus almost exclusively on investigations of then President Clinton.

She was in the middle of the Plame leak when she was a Justice and inside the department was widely considered one of the reasons that Ashcroft had to recuse himself:

Several senior federal law enforcement officials in recent days have spoken privately among themselves of what they believe to be an increasing necessity by Attorney General John Ashcroft to formally recuse himself from any further role in the probe as to who leaked the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame. Their concerns have intensified as investigators have begun to interview a number of personal friends and political associates of Ashcroft.

That belief among the senior law enforcement officials has only intensified in recent days since as many as a half-dozen White House officials have been asked by federal investigators about contacts they had with the Republican National Committee and conservative political activists. Investigators apparently are looking at whether the contacts were aimed at discrediting Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

So, the political operative/Justice Department nexus has been a subject of some consternation for some time in DOJ circles.

Today the Washington Post shows that “Brownies” were baked in to the Justice Department all over the place:

About one-third of the nearly four dozen U.S. attorney’s jobs that have changed hands since President Bush began his second term have been filled by the White House and the Justice Department with trusted administration insiders.

The people chosen as chief federal prosecutors on a temporary or permanent basis since early 2005 include 10 senior aides to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, according to an analysis of government records. Several came from the White House or other government agencies. Some lacked experience as prosecutors or had no connection to the districts in which they were sent to work, the records and biographical information show.

The new U.S. attorneys filled vacancies created through natural turnover in addition to the firings of eight prosecutors last year that have prompted a political uproar and congressional investigations.

No other administration in contemporary times has had such a clear pattern of filling chief prosecutors’ jobs with its own staff members, said experts on U.S. attorney’s offices. Those experts said the emphasis in appointments traditionally has been on local roots and deference to home-state senators, whose support has been crucial to win confirmation of the nominees.

The pattern from Bush’s second term suggests that the dismissals were half of a two-pronged approach: While getting rid of prosecutors who did not adhere closely to administration priorities, such as rigorous pursuit of immigration violations and GOP allegations of voter fraud, White House and Justice officials have seeded federal prosecutors’ offices with people on whom they can depend to carry out the administration’s agenda.

[…]

As Congress pursues its investigation, some Democrats have indicated they want to explore who has been hired, in addition to the firings that have been the focal point of hearings on Capitol Hill — and of calls from both parties for Gonzales to resign.

“If we have eight U.S. attorneys dismissed because they were not ‘loyal Bushies,’ then how many of the remaining U.S. attorneys are?” asked Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), borrowing a phrase that Gonzales’s former chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, used in an internal e-mail to describe criteria by which prosecutors were chosen to be fired.

And that brings us back to Ms Goodling:

Interviews for U.S. Attorney replacements took place with only a handful of people: David Margolis, the department’s top-ranking career official and a 40-plus year veteran; a member of the White House Counsel’s Office; the head of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys; and Goodling.

Charles Miller, whom Gonzales appointed as interim U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia, interviewed with the panel in the fall of 2005. “They asked me what I’d done to support the president,” Miller says. It wasn’t a question Miller expected. He told them he’d voted for Bush.

But a former prosecutor who did not get a U.S. Attorney post was left with a sour feeling after his interview in 2006. “Monica was in charge, in essence, of the interview,” recalls the former supervisory assistant U.S. Attorney. “I walked out of that room and thought, ‘Wow, I’ve just run into a buzz saw.'”

And again, what were the Pat Robertson’ U grad Goodling’s primary qualifications before joining the Department of Justice? She worked with Barbara Comstock and Timothy Griffin (the US Attorney from Arkansas who Rove pushed through under the patriot act) at the Bush Cheney oppo research department in 2000.

It doesn’t automatically make her a criminal, but it sure stinks of unethical politicization of the Justice Department.

I heard Orrin Hatch filibuster for what seemed like hours this morning on Meet the Press about how there wasn’t a “shred of evidence” that there was any wrongdoing. Well, except for the totally unethical phone calls by Domenichi and Iglesias and the US Attorneys’ publicly stated suspicion that they were let go for partisan political reasons, I suppose not. But they need to lay off the tequila if they actually expect to get the benefit of the doubt about their good intentions after they populated the Justice Department with dirty tricksters in extremely sensitive jobs.

Many of us were told to pipe down when we complained that the Justice Department and the NSA had been involved in spying on Americans with no oversight. But now that we know that Barbara Comstock, Monica Goodling and Tim Griffin, Karl Rove’s personal smear artists, were promoted to the highest reaches of the federal police agencies with access to records on their political opponents and every other American, then it’s clear that we weren’t suspicious enough. At this point, I think we have to assume that with these people in charge and having the use of all the new powers of the Patriot Act, there have been no limits at all on the partisan, political use of the government’s investigative powers.

I am no longer confused about why Monica Goodling took the fifth. I have little doubt that there are many crimes that took place and she’s not taking any chances. This is bigger than the US Attorney scandal.

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Socks, Scissors, Paper

by digby

As we listen to Roger Ailes and Brit Hume howl about how Fox is just another news outlet, fair and balanced and unafraid, let’s ponder the fact that in the midst of several dozen unfolding scandals, they have put their unlimited resources toward an exposé of only one. It’s called “Socks, Scissors, Paper: The Sandy Berger Caper”, in which a massive cover-up is alleged. Who did the covering I don’t know, but I’m sure that all the brainwashed ditto-heads will have all the details by tomorrow morning.

Please tell me again why the Democratic party cooperates with these propagandists because I just can’t seem to remember.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

Release Me

By Dennis Hartley

Although the DVD format has been with us now for a good ten years, there is still a surprising amount of “back catalogue” that remains unreleased, for one reason or another.

In many cases, I’m sure lawyers are involved; estate wrangling, music soundtrack publishing issues, etc., but I suspect the biggest problem is the disconnect between the powers that be at the major releasing studios and the true movie buff zeitgeist .

There are some companies that “get it” (Criterion, Anchor Bay, Blue Underground, HVE, Kino, Rhino and New Yorker Video come to mind) but they seem few and far between.

I could easily list 100 titles, but here are my top ten desires on the “wish list”-

“Mickey One” – 1965 film from director Arthur Penn stars Warren Beatty as a stand up comic on the run from the mob. A Kafkaesque, noirish vision filmed in exquisite B&W.

“The Friends of Eddie Coyle” – I’ve discussed this lost 70’s noir gem before; Robert Mitchum at his world-weary best as an aging hood. Great support from Peter Boyle.

“O Lucky Man!” – The late Lindsay Anderson’s masterpiece remains MIA, despite a huge cult fan base. Thankfully, Alan Price’s magnificent soundtrack is available on CD.

“The New Age” – Overlooked yet brilliant mid-90’s social satire from writer-director Michael Tolkin (“The Rapture”). Great performances from Judy Davis and Peter Weller.

“Serial” – Another social satire, targeting a group of self-absorbed California trendies living in Marin county in the late 70’s. Hilarious stuff. With Martin Mull and Tuesday Weld.

“Dreamchild” – Unique 1985 entry blends Jim Henson’s muppetry with the poignant real-life story of the relationship between Lewis Carroll (Ian Holm) and young Alice Liddell.

“Stardust” – 1974 film starring British rocker David Essex in a stunning “rise and fall” portrait of a decadent, self indulgent rock star. (BTW its “prequel”, “That’ll Be The Day”, is in print.)

“Liquid Sky” – Sci-fi/androgynous alien love story/punk rock/ heroin chic/downtown NYC art scene satire has to be seen to be believed! (Was briefly available but went quickly out of print.)

“Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains” – Another cult favorite, starring a very young Diane Lane as the nihilistic leader of a feminist punk rock band. (Beware of the DVD-R bootlegs!)

“The Decline of Western Civilization” – Penelope Spheeris’ vital document of the early 80’s LA punk rock scene remains curiously unavailable. Darby Crash lives!

And now for some Good News: A few gems scheduled to see the light of day in 2007 –

April 3: “Bedazzled” and “Royal Flash”.

April 10: “Brute Force ” (Film noir classic)

April 17: “Thieves Like Us” (Overlooked Altman) and “Bye Bye Brazil”

May 15: “Vengeance Is Mine ” (Classic Japanese crime thriller)

May 22: “Prince of the City ”, “Straight Time” and “Steelyard Blues”

Sometime in June: According to their website, Criterion is releasing Lindsay Anderson’s “If…”, which I hope indicates that “O Lucky Man” (see above) could be in the works!

So what titles are you lusting after? Do tell!

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“Base” Motivation

by digby

So President Bush’s former pollster, Matthew Dowd has publicly repudiated his old boss in an intereview in the New York Times because he is so dissapointed that bush has not been the kind of uniter he thought he would be:

Ex-Aide Details a Loss of Faith in the President

In 1999, Matthew Dowd became a symbol of George W. Bush’s early success at positioning himself as a Republican with Democratic appeal.

A top strategist for the Texas Democrats who was disappointed by the Bill Clinton years, Mr. Dowd was impressed by the pledge of Mr. Bush, then governor of Texas, to bring a spirit of cooperation to Washington. He switched parties, joined Mr. Bush’s political brain trust and dedicated the next six years to getting him to the Oval Office and keeping him there. In 2004, he was appointed the president’s chief campaign strategist.

Looking back, Mr. Dowd now says his faith in Mr. Bush was misplaced.

In a wide-ranging interview here, Mr. Dowd called for a withdrawal from Iraq and expressed his disappointment in Mr. Bush’s leadership.

He criticized the president as failing to call the nation to a shared sense of sacrifice at a time of war, failing to reach across the political divide to build consensus and ignoring the will of the people on Iraq. He said he believed the president had not moved aggressively enough to hold anyone accountable for the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and that Mr. Bush still approached governing with a “my way or the highway” mentality reinforced by a shrinking circle of trusted aides.

Boy, aint it the truth. And where would he have gotten that idea that was a good idea, do you suppose?

A former Democratic consultant, Matthew Dowd was the chief campaign strategist for Bush-Cheney 2004 and director of polling and media planning for Bush-Cheney 2000. Here, he describes how, even as the Florida recount was progressing, he and Karl Rove were already thinking about a re-election campaign in the event that Bush won. Dowd tells FRONTLINE that while most of the resources in the 2000 campaign were devoted to trying to win over independents, his post-election analysis showed that only 6 to 7 percent of the electorate was truly “persuadable.”

This is a transcript of that interview conducted on Jan. 4, 2005.

Let me go back to 2000 for just a minute. … Where did this idea of a base strategy come from? And was it as revolutionary then as it was reported as being when we all look back? When did you first hear about it? Is it your idea?

Well, it’s interesting. Obviously, as you looked at 2000, approached 2000, motivating Republicans was important, but most of our resources [were] put into persuading independents in 2000. One of the first things I looked at after 2000 was what was the real Republican vote and what was the real Democratic vote, not just who said they were Republicans and Democrats, but independents, how they really voted, whether or not they voted straight ticket or not. And I took a look at that in 2000, and then I took a look at it, what it was over the last five elections or six elections.

And what came from that analysis was a graph that I obviously gave Karl, which showed that independents or persuadable voters in the last 20 years had gone from 22 percent of the electorate to 7 percent of the electorate in 2000. And so 93 percent of the electorate in 2000, and what we anticipated, 93 or 94 in 2004, just looking forward and forecasting, was going to be already decided either for us or against us. You obviously had to do fairly well among the 6 or 7 [percent], but you could lose the 6 or 7 percent and win the election, which was fairly revolutionary, because everybody up until that time had said, “Swing voters, swing voters, swing voters, swing voters, swing voters.”

And so when that graph and that first strategic imperative began to drive how we would think about 2004, nobody had ever approached an election that I’ve looked at over the last 50 years, where base motivation was important as swing, which is how we approached it. We didn’t say, “Base motivation is what we’re going to do, and that’s all we’re doing.” We said, “Both are important, but we shouldn’t be putting 80 percent of our resources into persuasion and 20 percent into base motivation,” which is basically what had been happening up until that point, because of — look at this graph. Look at the history. Look what’s happened in this country. And obviously that decision influenced everything that we did. It influenced how we targeted mail, how we targeted phones, how we targeted media, how we traveled, the travel that the president and the vice president did to certain areas, how we did organization, where we had staff. All of that was based off of that, and ultimately, thank goodness, it was the right decision.

That is a huge part of why the “compassionate conservative” turned into a total wingnut. Dowd is very modest these days about his part in that. In fact, he didn’t mention it at all in the NY Times article and the reporter didn’t bother to mention it either. But let’s just say that I’m a little bit skeptical about Matthew Dowd’s sincerity about anything. He went from being a Democrat in 1999 to jump on the Bush train, advised him that he pretty much didn’t need to bother trying to answer to anybody but his rabid wingnut base and now that it’s all fallen apart he’s boo-hooing to the NY Times about he feels betrayed.

He claims to be a believer so maybe he can have a conversation with his priest or pastor about where he might have gone wrong in all this. I don’t think the rest of us can give him absolution.

Update: Julia sends along this little tid-bit from Adam Nagourney in the NY Times, back when Dowd was strutting in 2003:

This shift signals that the 2004 election will have a much greater reliance on identifying supporters and getting them to the polls. That would tip the balance away from the emphasis on developing nuanced messages aimed at swing voters, who make up 10 percent to 20 percent of the electorate, pollsters said.

The change has the potential, several strategists said, of encouraging the presidential candidates to make the kind of unvarnished partisan appeals that they once tried to avoid out of concern of pushing away independent-minded voters. “If both sides are
concerned about motivating their base, the agenda difference between the two is much more dramatic,” Mr. Dowd said. “I actually think it could make for a much more interesting election.”

Oh my yes.

H/T BB
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Piss Donohue

by digby

I’m sorry to have to say this because I am generally pretty tolerant of religion and try to be respectful of others’ beliefs. But until the Catholic Church steps up and says that this screaming nutcase Bill Donohue and his band of freaks don’t speak for them, I’m going to have to assume that the Catholic Church agrees with his lunatic ravings. This is getting completely ridiculous:

A planned Holy Week exhibition of a nude, anatomically correct chocolate sculpture of Jesus Christ was canceled Friday amid a choir of complaining Catholics that included Cardinal Edward Egan.

The “My Sweet Lord” display was shut down by the hotel that houses the Lab Gallery in midtown Manhattan, said Matt Semler, the gallery’s creative director. Semler said he submitted his resignation after officials at the Roger Smith Hotel shut down the show.

The six-foot sculpture was the victim of “a strong-arming from people who haven’t seen the show, seen what we’re doing,” Semler said. “They jumped to conclusions completely contrary to our intentions.”

But word of the confectionary Christ infuriated Catholics, including Egan, who described it as “a sickening display.” Bill Donohue, head of the watchdog Catholic League, said it was “one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever.”

Here is what Donohue actually wrote on his website, via feministe:

Catholic League president Bill Donohue outlined his game plan today:

“The Roger Smith Hotel is located in the heart of New York City, and it boasts on its website that its Lab Gallery ‘is a high traffic, fast paced’ venue. Indeed it is: the gallery is located on street level, easily accessible to the public. But it is sure bet that in the years to come there will be little in the way of high traffic coming from the Christian community.

“As I’ve said many times before, Lent is the season for non-believers to sow seeds of doubt about Jesus. What’s scheduled to go on at the Roger Smith Hotel, however, is of a different genre: this is hate speech. And choosing Holy Week—the display opens on Palm Sunday and ends on Holy Saturday—makes it a direct in-your-face assault on Christians.

“All those involved are lucky that angry Christians don’t react the way extremist Muslims do when they’re offended—otherwise they may have more than their heads cut off. James Knowles, President and CEO of the Roger Smith Hotel (interestingly, he also calls himself Artist-in-Residence), should be especially grateful. And if he tries to spin this as reverential, then he should substitute Muhammad for Jesus and display him during Ramadan.

“I am contacting hundreds of organizations about this assault. Our allied list contains scores of Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu organizations, as well as secular groups, that share our concerns about religious hate speech and the degradation of our culture. The only thing that those who operate the Roger Smith Hotel understand is when they get hit in the pocket book. So that’s exactly where we’ll hit them. The boycott is on.”

The “boycott” was successful:

The hotel and the gallery were overrun Thursday with angry phone calls and e-mails about the exhibit. Semler said the calls included death threats over the work of artist Cosimo Cavallaro, who was described as disappointed by the decision to cancel the display.

“In this situation, the hotel couldn’t continue to be supportive because of a fear for their own safety,” Semler said.

Yes, it’s a good thing these conservative Christians aren’t like those horrible Muslims.

So, what did this horrible example of Catholic hate speech look like?

Oh, wait, that’s not it. That’s from the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican. (Ooops. How embarrassing.)

Here it is:

Oh, heck. Wrong again. That’s the statue of David, the most famous sculpture in the world. My bad.

Here’s the offending sculpture:

Since the Vatican itself is a veritable sausage fest, and its most renowned artist, Michaelangelo, sculpted the most famous nude Biblical figure in history, it simply cannot logically be the nudity that’s the problem for the Catholic League. (Lord knows, the Catholic League is nothing if not logical.)

So it must be the medium. The fact that it is sculpted in chocolate is so offensive to Donohue’s thugs that they are issuing death threats to those who display such alleged blasphemy. I don’t exactly understand why that would be. Chocolate is no more meaningful than clay or bronze or marble. It doesn’t carry any scatalogical meaning nor is it thought of as derisive in any way. Perhaps the Catholic League could distribute its list of approved artist materials so that they won’t run afoul of the rules and cause themselves to be threatened with death and boycott or accused of hate speech.

It’s really too bad the artist didn’t think to do it in cartoon form because the entire right wing would be in a frenzy defending his right to free speech. Indeed, he would have become a martyr for all of western civilization. Unapproved sculpting materials, on the other hand, are so far out that death threats are entirely appropriate.

Why is it that I have such a problem understanding the alleged principles the religious conservatives lives by? And why am I so unimpressed with the leaders of a great religion who allow people to act like cretins in their name and yet cover up much more serious crimes against actual human beings?

I’ll have to think about that some more.

Update: Crooks and Liars has the video of Donohue “debating” the artist on Anderson Cooper’s show. This guy is Joe McCarthy on steroids .

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Christian Soldiers

by digby

The other night I wrote a post about the Bushie Best and Brightest in which I noted that more than 150 Pat Robertson U (Regent university) graduates had been hired by the admnistration. In doing some research on the post below, I once again came across this article from last fall in the New York Review of Books by Gary Wills called “A Country Ruled By Faith” that further illuminates how this came about:

The head of the White House Office of Personnel was Kay Coles James, a former dean of Pat Robertson’s Regent University and a former vice-president of Gary Bauer’s Family Research Council,[2] the conservative Christian lobbying group that had been set up as the Washington branch of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. She knew whom to put where, or knew the religious right people who knew. An evangelical was in charge of placing evangelicals throughout the bureaucracy. The head lobbyist for the Family Research Council boasted that “a lot of FRC people are in place” in the administration.[3] The evangelicals knew which positions could affect their agenda, whom to replace, and whom they wanted appointed. This was true for the Centers for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration, and Health and Human Services—agencies that would rule on or administer matters dear to the evangelical causes.[4]

The White House was alive with piety. Evangelical leaders were in and out on a regular basis. There were Bible study groups in the White House, as in John Ashcroft’s Justice Department. Over half of the White House staff attended the meetings. One of the first things David Frum heard when he went to work there as a speech writer was: “Missed you at the Bible study.”[5] According to Esther Kaplan:

Aside from Rove and Cheney, Bush’s inner circle are all deeply religious. [Condoleezza] Rice is a minister’s daughter, chief of staff Andrew Card is a minister’s husband, Karen Hughes is a church elder, and head speechwriter Michael Gerson is a born-again evangelical, a movement insider.[6]

Other parts of the administration were also pious, with religious services during the lunch hour at the General Services Administration.[7]

Faith-Based Justice

The labyrinthine infiltration of the agencies was invisible to Americans outside the culture of the religious right. But even the high-profile appointments made it clear where Bush was taking the country. One of his first appointments, for the office of attorney general, was of the Pentecostal Christian John Ashcroft, a hero to the evangelicals, many of whom had earlier wanted him to run for president— Pat Robertson had put up money for his campaign. As a senator, Ashcroft had sponsored a bill to protect unborn life “from [the moment of] fertilization.” As soon as he was nominated to be attorney general, the Family Research Council mobilized women to lobby at Senate offices for his confirmation.[8] The evangelicals had long been familiar with Ashcroft’s piety. He told an audience at Bob Jones University that “we have no king but Jesus,” and called the wall of separation between church and state a “wall of religious oppression.”[9]

After his nomination but before his confirmation, Ashcroft promised to put an end to the task force set up by Attorney General Janet Reno to deal with violence against abortion clinics —evangelicals oppose the very idea of hate crimes. The outcry of liberals against Ashcroft’s promise made him back off from it during his confirmation hearings. In 2001, there was a spike in violence against the clinics —790 incidents, as opposed to 209 the year before.[10] That was because the anthrax alarms that year gave abortion opponents the idea of sending threatening powders to the clinics—554 packets were sent. Nonetheless, Ashcroft refused for a long time to send marshals to quell the epidemic.[11]

That was one of many signs that this administration thought of abortion as a sin, not as a right to be protected. The President himself called for an amendment to the Constitution outlawing abortion. He called evangelical leaders around him to celebrate the signing of the bill banning “partial birth abortions.” The signing was not held, as usual, at the White House but in the Ronald Reagan Building, as a salute to the hero of younger evangelicals. Ashcroft moved enforcement of the ban to the Civil Rights Division, a signal that evangelicals appreciated, implying that the fetus is a person with civil rights to be protected.[12] Then, in what was called a step toward enforcement, Ashcroft subpoenaed hospitals for their files on hundreds of women who had undergone abortions —Democrats in Congress called this a major invasion of privacy.[13]

Ashcroft’s use of the Civil Rights Division for religious purposes was broader than his putting partial-birth abortion under its jurisdiction. Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten, two critics of Republican policies, write in One Party Country:

In 2002, the department established within its Civil Rights Division a separate “religious rights” unit that added a significant new constituency to a division that had long focused on racial injustice. When the Salvation Army— which had been receiving millions of dollars in federal funds—was accused in a private lawsuit of violating federal antidiscrimination laws by requiring employees to embrace Jesus Christ to keep their jobs, the Civil Rights Division for the first time took the side of the alleged discriminators.[14]

Little did he know that the Regent brigade were also down and dirty Justice Department party loyalty enforcers. Apparently blind fealty to Bush and the GOP is the way you show your love for Jesus.

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The Daily GOP Crook

by digby

I think I’m going to institute a feature called The Daily GOP Crook. Obviously, it will not be comprehensive because there are so many of them to choose from. But I will struggle to weed through all the news stories about corruption, lying, malfeasance and ineptitude in this admnistration to find one special Bushie to highlight.

My pick today is our old friend Dr. Eric Keroack. Dr. Keroack, you’ll recall, is the freakish rightwing anti-birth control zealot who Bush naturally chose to head the Health and Human Services office of Population Affairs. Both tristero and I wrote about him repeatedly, but you may remember him more for his unusual views about sexual abstinence as illustrated by this little hand-out he used at meetings and seminars:

And this:

Of course Bush would appoint someone like that to head the family planning department at HHS. Unfortunately, something seems to have gone wrong with Keroack’s own practice:

The head of the federal office responsible for providing women with access to contraceptives and counseling to prevent pregnancy resigned unexpectedly yesterday after Medicaid officials took action against him in Massachusetts.

The Health and Human Services Department provided no details about the nature of the Massachusetts action that led to Dr. Eric Keroack’s resignation.

[…]

“Yesterday, Dr. Eric Keroack alerted us to an action taken against him by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ Office of Medicaid. As a result of this action I accepted his resignation,” Dr. John Agwunobi, assistant secretary for health, said in a statement last evening.

Massachusetts Medicaid officials did not return phone calls seeking comment.

[…]

Keroack told his staff in a letter yesterday that he became aware of the action being taken against his private medical practice in Massachusetts. He said he immediately hired a lawyer to initiate an appeal. He did not elaborate on why the action was taken.

How shocking. Another conservative Christian member of the Bush administration seems to have some sort of ethical problem. I have no idea what the details of these alleged ethical problems are except that it is Medicaid related. Kerouack’s practice was described in this Alternet article:

He’s the full-time medical director for A Woman’s Concern, a chain of Boston area crisis pregnancy centers, where he spreads all the usual lies about abortion and uses ultrasound scans as a tool to influence the decisions of women who might be considering abortion.

(You can read all about it, here.)

We can only imagine why Keroack had to resign. But it does bring to mind an earlier scandal with a rightwing Christian doctor and medicaid: Dr Tom Coburn, Senator from Oklahoma:

According to records obtained by Salon, Coburn filed an apparently fraudulent Medicaid claim in 1990, which he admitted in his own testimony in a civil malpractice suit brought against him 14 years ago by a former female patient. The suit alleged that Coburn had sterilized her without her consent. It eventually was dismissed after the plaintiff failed to appear for the trial. In his sworn testimony, Coburn admitted he sterilized the then 20-year-old woman without securing her written consent as required by law. He blamed the omission on a clerical error, but maintained that he had her oral consent for the procedure. (Salon has been unable to contact the woman and is withholding her name out of respect for her privacy.) Coburn also revealed under oath that he had charged the procedure to Medicaid — despite knowing that Medicaid, also known as Title 19, does not cover the cost of sterilization for anyone under age 21.

Coburn was elected in spite of this revelation and I think we know why: good conservative Christians have no problem with sterilizing bad poor women without written permission and charging the taxpayers for it.

Of course, it would be wrong to suggest that Keroack has done that specific thing. But let’s just say that it’s been proven over and over again that good Christian conservative “doctors” have as “flexible” a sense of medical ethics as they do of political ethics. Nothing would surprise me.

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Legal Sweetie

by digby

The Wapo has some insight into our previously obscure young walküre:

When a college intern in the Justice Department whined that all he was doing was filing and answering phones, Monica M. Goodling took him aside. If he wanted to do “substantive work,” she told him, he was going to have to prove himself first.

The intern walked out of the office in a huff, and when he returned an hour later, Goodling took him aside again. “You’re fired,” she said.

“Some people in the office thought: ‘Wow! That was tough,’ ” said Mark Corallo, her former boss in Justice’s Office of Public Affairs, who recalled the incident. “But I thought, ‘Good for her.’ “

[…]

This week, Goodling, 33, became the most prominent federal official to invoke the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying before Congress since Lt. Col. Oliver L. North refused to answer questions — until he received immunity — during the 1986 Iran-contra hearings.

Goodling, now on an indefinite leave, most recently served as senior counsel to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and as Justice’s liaison to the White House. Her name appears on several e-mails about the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are eager to ask her about those dismissals.

Explaining why she invoked her right against self-incrimination, her lawyer, John M. Dowd, called the investigation “hostile” and said that some committee members “have already reached conclusions.”

At yesterday’s Judiciary hearing, senators questioned why she was still employed at Justice. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a former U.S. attorney, noted that the department encourages corporations to fire employees who refuse to cooperate with government investigations.

“I’m a little surprised that she’s still there after taking the Fifth,” he said.

To her supporters, Goodling’s only mistake — if she made one at all — was not anticipating the political peril before the 2006 midterm elections.

“The young conservatives who came off the campaign and were new to town with this administration, they’ve never seen lean times,” said a veteran Republican political appointee who declined to be quoted by name saying anything critical of Goodling. “They had no appreciation for what would happen after the Democrats took control and how tough it would be.”

To her detractors, Goodling was an enforcer of political loyalty who was not squeamish about firings — of interns or of senior officials.

“She forced many very talented, career people out of main Justice so she could replace them with junior people that were either loyal to the administration or would score her some points,” said a former career Justice official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal.

I guess clawing your way up the ladder on the backs of others is an example of those wonderful traditional values that she learned at Pat Robertson U.

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Machiavelli’s Inbred Children

by digby

It seems that every day we hear of another example of the Bush administration politicizing the Justice department. Today we hear from a former career prosecutor in the civil rights division, filling in another piece of the puzzle:

I spent more than 35 years in the department enforcing federal civil rights laws — particularly voting rights. Before leaving in 2005, I worked for attorneys general with dramatically different political philosophies — from John Mitchell to Ed Meese to Janet Reno. Regardless of the administration, the political appointees had respect for the experience and judgment of longtime civil servants.

Under the Bush administration, however, all that changed. Over the last six years, this Justice Department has ignored the advice of its staff and skewed aspects of law enforcement in ways that clearly were intended to influence the outcome of elections.

It has notably shirked its legal responsibility to protect voting rights. From 2001 to 2006, no voting discrimination cases were brought on behalf of African American or Native American voters. U.S. attorneys were told instead to give priority to voter fraud cases, which, when coupled with the strong support for voter ID laws, indicated an intent to depress voter turnout in minority and poor communities.

Here’s another article debunking the “voter fraud” trope.

No surprise there. What is a surprise is how nobody seems to have seen this coming. The rough outlines were available when I wrote about what I saw as an emerging “illegal aliens are voting” theme almost a year ago. I thought they were preparing to use it for last November but I was a premature anti-purger.

But since I first started writing on-line, one of my recurring themes is that the modern Republican party has become fundamentally hostile to democracy.(And we already knew they were crooks.) This was first made obvious to me back in 1994, when Republican leader Dick Armey famously stated “your president is just not that important for us.” They went on to impeach that president against the clear will of the people.

But the biggest clue about what they were up to came in 2000 with the Florida recount. I know it seems like ancient history to go back to that but it is extremely important to remember just how outrageous their tactics were: the Gore campaign used legal tactics and the Bush campaign didn’t. There was the “bourgeois riot” and dirty trickster Roger Stone directing the street theatre from a van. (Here’s a list of what the Village Voice termed the five worst Bush recount outrages.) They used every lever of power they could to count illegally cast overseas ballots. They operated a hypocritical and situational media campaign that the press completely failed to properly analyze until it was too late. And after they did they helpfully told those who objected to “get over it.” And I guess we did.

The Republicans have been remarkably good about keeping their mouths shut about the Florida shennanigans, pretending that Jeb Bush’s electoral apparatus gave them no unusual help. Still, I was surprised to see a former Florida recount icon show up on the Lehrer News Hour last week to argue that the US Attorney firings were completely above board. His name is Michael Carvin and he was the lawyer who argued the Bush case before the Florida Supreme Court. Here’s his picture. I’m sure many of you will remember him:

The Newshour failed to identify him as one of the Florida recount team and instead named him merely as a former Reagan official. But he didn’t fail to carry the Bush water one more time:

MICHAEL CARVIN: I really think this is much ado about very little. I’m not saying that they haven’t mishandled this from a public relations perspective. They clearly have.

But the notion that firing eight U.S. attorneys with White House personnel involved is somehow shocking is like saying you’re shocked to discover there’s gambling in Casablanca. I don’t know where these people have been.

There’s not one member of that Judiciary Committee who hasn’t called the White House or the Justice Department and said, “My cousin or my law school roommate wants to be a U.S. attorney.”

So the notion that these kinds of appointments and removals in Walter’s administration — they fired all 93 in one slot — the notion that is isn’t influenced by the fact that the president needs his team in place, both at the main Justice Department and in the field, is really quite silly and quite counterfactual.

This would be typical Carvin. For instance, here’s something he said after Bush v Gore was decided:

The new deadline for all recounts to be submitted to Katherine Harris was 5 p.m. Sunday, November 26. Now, that Sunday afternoon you could watch any of the television coverage and see that Palm Beach was still counting. And by late afternoon you heard various officials in Palm Beach acknowledging that they were not going to be finished by five. Now, we maintain that was completely illegal, because the law said you had to manually recount all ballots. [See Village Voice top five outrages for why this is such a slimy position for him to take.]

But as five o’clock approached, we heard that the secretary of state was going to accept the Palm Beach partial recount — even though the Palm Beach partial recount was blatantly illegal. We were told that the secretary of state’s view was that unless Palm Beach actually informed her — in writing or otherwise — that the returns were only a partial recount, she could not infer that on her own.

So we made some calls to a few Republicans overseeing the Palm Beach recount. We told them to gently suggest to the canvassing board that it might as well put PARTIAL RETURN on the front of the returns that were to be faxed up in time for the deadline. The reason we gave was clarity — that the words PARTIAL RETURN would distinguish those returns from the full count that would be coming in later that night. I’m not exactly sure what happened, but I think the Palm Beach board did in the end write PARTIAL RECOUNT on the returns. We all know that the Secretary of State, in the end, rejected them. [By rejecting them, he means that she said that a partial return missed the deadline altogether and all the previously uncounted votes that were counted in the partial recount were never added to the tally. This had the effect of never allowing Gore to take the lead.]

I think the board members probably agreed to write the PARTIAL RECOUNT notation for two reasons. First of all, I think they hadn’t slept in 48 hours, so I think they’d sort of do anything. Second of all, I don’t think they or anybody else would have suspected that it would actually make any difference. Who would imagine that without the simple notation of PARTIAL RETURN the partial count would have been accepted as a complete count by the secretary of state? Even while the television showed them still counting?

But I don’t think it was Machiavellian to suggest to the board that it write PARTIAL RECOUNT, because that is what it was. I think it would have been sort of Machiavellian to suggest to pretend they were not partial returns. [Talk Magazine, March 2001, p. 172

I know that virtually nobody cares about this anymore, if they ever did, but this was so full of nonsense that it amazed me that he got away with saying it. And the tale he tells, bad as it is, is still obviously not the whole story.

They were clearly colluding with Katherine Harris’ office throughout and they determined that she could reject all of the Palm Beach county votes they had counted by 5pm with this little gambit. Everything depended on not allowing Al Gore to ever take the lead or their whole PR campaign would start to fall apart.

It’s a small thing, I know, and probably one of thousands of such small acts of illegal and inappropriate collusion between Jeb Bush and the campaign during the recount. But it happened and we knew it happened. And it was done by people like Michael Carvin, former Reagan Justice Department official who now implies that the US Attorney scandal is nothing because everyone knows that the Bush Justice department is an enforcement arm of the Republican Party and that’s perfectly normal.

That is just how these people think. It’s why they hunted Clinton and Reno like dogs for eight years, determined to find evidence of wrongdoing. They either assume everyone does it because they do or they know they can innoculate themselves against accusations of their own bad acts by getting to the punch first. (And harrassing Democrats is rewarding in and of itself.)

I wrote to reporters Don Van Atta and Jake Tapper about this Carvin tid-bit when they were covering the media recount for the NY Times and Salon (and Tapper was writing a book about it.) Tapper was uninterested, but Van Natta called me and I told him where to find the quote. (Talk Magazine is not on lexis-nexis.) Then came 9/11, the recount story was pretty much shelved and the entire country was told we had to gather around the president.

But then, we had been told that from the beginning, hadn’t we? The media were complicit in this, helping the Republicans along every step of the way during the recount with constant rending of garments about a constitutional crisis and fantasies about tanks in the streets if things weren’t settled instantly. (The deadlines! My god, the deadlines!) And when it was all done, they told us repeatedly to get over it.

And here we are, six years later, actually debating whether the Bush White House has been manipulating the electoral system. For god’s sake — of course they have been. This administration was installed through crude manipulation of the rigged levers of power in the Bush family’s political machine and they see such outrageous conduct as perfectly legitimate. Indeed, I’m sure they believe “it’s not Machiavellian” to use the Department of Justice to rig the vote — it would be Machiavellian not to.

Update: Here’s a nice little update from 2005 on the Bourgeois Rioters.

Update II: And lest we forget, Tim Griffin, the houseboy Rove insisted replace the Arkansas US Attorney was on the Florida recount team. So was Kyle Sampson.

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Oh. My. God.

by digby

This one, from TBOGG, is only for bloggity, blog-blog obsessives, but for those of you who are aware of the Ann Althouse oeuvre: just – oh. my. god.

The message is clear. Don’t drink and vlog.

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