Send lawyers, guns and money...The shit has hit the fan

Tonight's title comes from the late Warren Zevon (better known perhaps for "Werewolves of London"), and happens to be the inspiration for one of my favorite blogs, found over to the right side in the blogroll. Also, take a look over there at our two new additions, Mad Poet at the Gate, featuring the poetic stylings of the lawyer most closely related to me, and Elaine's blog, featuring the poetic stylings of of someone who is a very kind and generous soul in spite of the fact she married a lawyer.

There are two important political developments to talk about in the news the past few weeks, which, much to my continued amazement, show Democrats showing good sense and fierce organization (?!?) and Republicans neither whatsoever. The Democrats did a good thing with the passage of today's Iraq War funding bill. Everyone in the world admits it's not perfect, but it does put the President in the awkward position of needing to veto a bill finding the troops in order to avoid having to meet some actual benchmarks for a change. To quote Atrios:

Shorter GWB: The troops need funding which is why I'll veto the bill which would give it to them.

I think the most persuasive statement about the morality of this bill came from Chris Bowers at MyDD, who wrote the following to liberal critics of the bill:

My point is this: don't tell me that I am less principled, moral or ethical than you because I am supporting this measure even though I don't think it goes far enough. I am certainly not going to do the same thing to you, because I don't really see how either of our positions will result in a more ethically acceptable outcome. I arrived at my position because, in my final analysis, I believed the politics of the situation demanded it. You could respond that I should appreciate the ethical values of actions in and of themselves, rather than in the context of their consequences, but if that is your position than ultimately it represents an ideological difference between the two of us that will not be settled either in the discussion of this post, or before the House vote tomorrow. I do not see an ethical high ground in the progressive debate on this vote, and thus political considerations take precedence. Now, I don't think we handled the politics of this vote as well as we could have, but a progressive engineered defeat of this bill would make the political situation even worse. Republicans have to be the ones who hold this bill up, and / or fail to implement it, not Democrats and not progs. If the war will continue either way, then it must be clear that it was their decision to continue it, not ours.

If we must have this war, and given the lack of veto override numbers in Congress, we will certainly have this war, it is time to make sure Republicans own it, so the nation as a whole can let them know the depth of our profound displeasure in 2008. The choice must be as stark as possible, and the House has gone a long way towards accomplishing that task. From a pragmatic point of view, and let's face it, that's all we have for the moment with our bellicose and incompetent leadership running the show, tonight's NYTimes headline says it all: Democrats Show Surprising Unity.

On to Republicans who seem completely disorganized. This isn't just a passing phase, by the way, their incompetence has driven the number of people identifying as Democrats to the highest numbers recorded for decades, and R's to the lowest. Still, the bungling of the Justice department with respect to the US Attorney's firings is staggering, even before the news that Alberto Gonzales apparently blatantly lied to Congress about meetings he attended but claimed he did not. Note in the story how many different stories DoJ officials are still telling: in general, when you have so many diverging and contradictory stories, it is because everyone (perhaps minus one) is lying. At it's heart, the story is exactly what Joshua Micah Marshall of Talking points Memo has been saying for months (he's the blogger/journalist who the media is belatedly recognizing as kicking their asses on this story): Karl Rove and GWB tried to turn the Justice Department into a partisan enforcement arm of the Republican party:

Now we know with crystal clear proof what we really already knew a week ago: that Alberto Gonzales was lying about his role in the US Attorney Purge. So add that to the list of all the other things he's lied about.

But don't get distracted by the lying or even the cover-up.

Right-wing shills want to chalk the blundering administration response to US Attorney Purge scandal to incompetence. But just as we can infer the force of gravity from the descent of the falling apple, the panicked succession of lies and dodges out of the administration implies not incompetence but guilty knowledge of underlying bad acts.

This isn't about the AG's lies. It's not about the attempted cover-up. It's not about executive privilege and investigative process mumbojumbo.

This is about using US Attorneys to damage Democrats and protect Republicans, using the Department of Justice as a partisan cudgel in the war for national political dominance. All the secrecy and lies, the blundering and covering-up stems from this one central fact.

Even though many of the "finest" legal minds on the right, and a number of befuddled centrists fail to see how this is so troubling, let's lay it out, very simply and cleanly.

1. Karl Rove, acting as the President's political advisor, has long wanted to use the DoJ as a partisan operation for permanent Republican dominance, seemingly forgetting that his entire party is vastly incompetent at governing. This is, for instance, how over 80% of local investigations by US Attorneys turn out to be targeting Democrats. Still, some US Attorneys seem to be reputable, so the White House decides to remove them from office.

2. The White House has the power to do this legally, since they got Senator Arlen Specter to allow a provision into law to replace US Attorneys without Senate confirmation. They then pushed out 8 US Attorneys, including many in key swing states who had the gall to investigate criminality by Republicans, or alternately fail to prosecute innocent Democrats on trumped up voter fraud charges. This is not to say the entire process is legal. Senator Pete Domenici, Representative Heather Wilson (both of New Mexico), and Republican party officials in Washington State may have very well obstructed justice by attempting to interfere with ongoing investigations by leaning on prosecutors.

3. Even though the White House actions may have been technically legal, if the details got out they were so blatantly anti-democratic that even our tepid media would have erupted in outrage. Thus, they did what administrations like this always do: they lied to everyone who asked about these issues, claiming no political interference. Lying to the media is one thing, however, lying to Congress another. The latter is criminal, and apparently encompasses a number of the higher-ups at the DoJ, including the AG himself. Remember, lying to Congress is a crime.

4. Some in the media continue to focus on the details of the firings, which, as we just went over, were technically legal. This ignores both the reason behind the firings, which was to turn the DoJ into a partisan enforcement service, something that should worry any rational human being. It also ignores the coverup, which is blatantly illegal. There is an important reason why you cannot legally lie to Congress: they provide the only oversight over the executive branch until November 2008!

Of course, this is the bush administration, so we can be pretty sure that Gonzales also lied about not giving DoJ investigators the right to investigate the warrantless wiretapping program, even though it was his conduct that was going to be investigated. WE can save that for next week, however.