You know how right-wingers are always going on and on about crazy things they think that liberals are up to (“death panels“, etc.) whereas liberals are always going on and on about things that conservatives are actually up to? And how liberals are almost always actually right? Well on that note (h/t DougJ):

The dismissal of New Mexico U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias in December 2006 followed extensive communication among lawyers and political aides in the White House who hashed over complaints about his work on public corruption cases against Democrats, according to newly released e-mails and transcripts of closed-door House testimony by former Bush counsel Harriet Miers and political chief Karl Rove.

A campaign to oust Iglesias intensified after state party officials and GOP members of the congressional delegation apparently concluded he was not pursuing the cases against Democrats in a way that would help then-Rep. Heather Wilson in a tight reelection race in New Mexico, according to interviews and Bush White House e-mails released Tuesday by congressional investigators. The documents place the genesis of Iglesias’s dismissal earlier than previously known.

The disclosures mark the end of a 2 1/2 year investigation by the House Judiciary Committee, which sued to gain access to Bush White House documents in a dispute that struck at the heart of a president’s executive power. House members have reserved the right to hold a public hearing this fall at which Rove, Miers, and other aides could appear.

House Judiciary Chairman John M. Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) on Tuesday characterized the role of Bush White House figures in the firing episode as improper and inappropriate.

Let’s see, what did I write way back when this investigation was first launched in early 2007?

By now, it should be completely obvious to anyone without a political bent that the DOJ was blatantly politicized so as to serve the interests of the Republican Party. I predict with 100% confidence that any further revelations brought about the Congressional investigations will only provide more evidence of that fact.

I’m pretty much willing to put my predictive powers up against those of your typical right-winger just about any day.

UPDATE: This Politico headline makes things a little clearer: “Karl Rove key to New Mexico attorney firing.” It also appears that the only reason we’re hearing about Rove and Harriet Mier’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee is because Rove apparently violated terms of an agreement with the Comm. that would keep his testimony unreleased, by downplaying his role in the firings to the media. Oops.

Congress passed a stopgap funding measure to keep the government running a few more days after Republicans stalled the Senate vote on an omnibus spending bill.

By a 234-191 vote, the House passed and sent on to the Senate a bill that includes a provision to allow bankruptcy judges to modify the terms troubled homeowners’ mortgages. Meanwhile, the US Senate Intelligence Committee said it will conduct a one-year review of the CIA’s handling of suspected terrorists, including interrogation tactics widely seen as torture.

Last, but certainly not lease, Karl Rove and Harriet Miers are finally going to testify by the House Judiciary Committee on the politicization of the Justice Department during the Bush years.

You may recall that Siegelman was ordered released earlier this year by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which found that his appeal raised “substantial issues or law or fact” that justified his release on bond. Certainly it isn’t the law that’s in question, so much as the facts, and Time magazine-thanks to an intrepid whistleblower-delivers some more bombshells in the case that demonstration that the Siegelman prosecution has been playing fast and loose with the truth:

When the House Judiciary Committee looked into the Siegelman affair earlier this year, DoJ issued statements, placed in the Congressional record, maintaining that the case had been handled only by career prosecutors, not political appointees, and that Canary had recused herself in 2002, “before any significant decisions … were made.”

But new documents furnished by DoJ staffer Tamarah T. Grimes tell a different story. A legal aide who worked in the Montgomery office that prosecuted Siegelman, Grimes first submitted her documents to DoJ watchdogs in 2007, and now finds herself in an employment dispute that could result in her dismissal. Grimes’ lawyer had no comment.

The documents — whose authenticity is not in dispute — include e-mails written by Canary, long after her recusal, offering legal advice to subordinates handling the case. At the time Canary wrote the e-mails, her husband — Alabama GOP operative William J. Canary — was a vocal booster of the state’s Republican governor, Bob Riley, who had defeated Siegelman for the office and against whom Siegelman was preparing to run again. Canary also received tens of thousands of dollars in fees from other political opponents of Siegelman.

In one of Leura Canary’s e-mails, dated September 19, 2005, she forwards senior prosecutors on the Siegelman case a three-page political commentary by Siegelman. Canary highlighted a single passage which, she told her subordinates, “Ya’ll need to read, because he refers to a ‘survey’ which allegedly shows that 67% of Alabamans believe the investigation of him to be politically motivated.” Canary then suggests: “Perhaps [this is] grounds not to let [Siegelman] discuss court activities in the media!”

Prosecutors in the case seem to have followed Canary’s advice. A few months later they petitioned the court to prevent Siegelman from arguing that politics had any bearing on the case against him. After trial, they persuaded the judge to use Siegelman’s public statements about political bias — like the one Canary had flagged in her e-mail — as grounds for increasing his prison sentence. The judge’s action is now one target of next month’s appeal.

The judge has his own issues to worry about. But that’s not all:

Grimes last year also gave DoJ additional e-mails detailing previously undisclosed contacts between prosecutors and members of the Siegelman jury. In nine days of deliberation, jurors twice told the judge they were deadlocked and could not reach a decision. After the panel finally delivered a conviction, allegations emerged that jurors had discussed the case in e-mails among themselves and downloaded Internet material — serious breaches which could have invalidated the verdict. But the trial judge ruled that the jurors’ alleged misconduct was harmless.

The DoJ conducted its own inquiry into some of Grimes’ claims, and wrote a report dismissing them as inconsequential. But the report shows that investigators did not question U.S. marshals or jurors who had allegedly been in touch with the prosecution.

A key prosecution e-mail describes how jurors repeatedly contacted the government’s legal team during the trial to express, among other things, one juror’s romantic interest in a member of the prosecution team. “The jurors kept sending out messages” via U.S. marshals, the e-mail says, identifying a particular juror as “very interested” in a person who had sat at the prosecution table in court. The same juror was later described reaching out to members of the prosecution team for personal advice about her career and educational plans. Conyers commented that the “risk of [jury] bias … is obvious”.

That would be an understatement! This is unbelievable, and this prosecution now reeks with the stench of corruption and political manipulation. Scott Horton, who has extensively documented the misdeeds of the prosecution in this case and detailed the flimsy lies that they’ve told to try and protect themselves, says these revelations “suggest certain questions of obstruction of justice” as DOJ officials have known of these issues for a year and said nothing. It’s clear at this point that someone belongs in jail, but that someone ain’t Siegelman.

More damning excerpts from the AG report on the U.S. attorney firings:

The report depicts a steady drumbeat of pressure leading up to the 2006 elections. Republican former state senator Mickey D. Barnett e-mailed Rove in October to complain about the pace of a federal bribery probe that Iglesias’s office was conducting against a Democratic rival. Barnett wrote that he had already complained to Justice Department White House liaison Monica M. Goodling and Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.).

That same month, President Bush and Rove both spoke to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales about rampant voter fraud in three cities, one in New Mexico, Gonzales told investigators.

In November, Domenici’s chief of staff, Steven Bell, e-mailed Rove seething about voting issues in New Mexico and expressing “worry” about Iglesias. Rove advised Bell to have Domenici reach out to the attorney general. Around the same time, Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty received a phone call from Miers, who passed along complaints about Iglesias that she had heard from Rep. Heather A. Wilson (R-N.M.)

At a White House breakfast in mid-November, Wilson approached Rove to tell him that the U.S. attorney was a “waste of breath,” according to her interview with investigators. She said Rove told her: “That decision has already been made. He’s gone.”

Less than three hours later, a Justice Department official forwarded a firing list to the White House Counsel’s Office on which Iglesias’s name appeared, giving rise to questions about how Rove learned about its contents in advance, and whether the department ultimately fired Iglesias for improper political reasons.

I think those questions are essentially answered, at least in substance. What we don’t know yet is who exactly said what to whom and when:

The report is incomplete because a number of persons—members of Congress, their staffers, and particularly figures in the White House—refused to cooperate with the investigation. At the top of this list are Karl Rove and Harriet Miers. The White House and several Republican lawmakers also failed to provide investigators with documents, including documents which all acknowledge are highly relevant and are not privileged in any way. It is a fair inference in such circumstances that these documents would be harmful and that this is the reason why they have been withheld. So the first lesson to be drawn from the report is a simple one: Obstruction continues to be the order of the day.

Similarly, Mukasey’s appointment of a special prosecutor to handle the open threads of the investigation raised widespread criticism on Capitol Hill, with good reason. Mukasey could, using available Justice Department precedent and authority, have drawn upon a special prosecutor with suitable stature and experience to handle the matter. It could have been a retired federal judge or former federal prosecutor known for integrity and independence. However, Mukasey tapped a relatively inexperienced and youthful career prosecutor from Connecticut.

I’m willing to cut Mukasey slightly more slack than Scott Horton is, if only in the fact that my expectations are so low that I’m amazed that a special prosecutor is being appointed at all, even if he is relatively inexperienced and even if his initial conclusions are not due until well after election day. Eight years of criminality and incompetence will do that to you though.

UPDATE: In other DOJ related news, Murray Waas at the Atlantic Monthly is reporting that Gonzales is now telling federal investigators that President Bush personally ordered him to make the now-infamous late night visit to ailing AG John Ashcroft in an effort to obtain re-certification of the NSA surveillance program in 2004. Excerpts from Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman’s new book on Cheney imply that Cheney shielded Bush from the contention in his own administration over the surveillance program, but Gonzales is telling a different story, in all likelihood because he’s trying to save his own ass and make it more difficult for DOJ investigators to get to the bottom of whatever perjury he might have committed while testifying before Congress. Also, incredibly, Gonzales may have written fake notes regarding a meeting between him and Congressional leaders regarding the program, concocting Congressional acquiescence to the re-certification of the program that members of Congress who were at that meeting say they never gave. Gonzales says he was asked to draft the notes by President Bush, but it’s not clear yet whether Bush asked him to draft them before or after the meeting, or after the recertification of the program (which is when Gonzales did finally get to writing them down.) As you can well imagine, the timing of the direction is crucial. Which is harder to believe; that Gonzales would lie to his President about what members of Congress said in the meeting, or that President Bush would ask him to draft some notes that would help justify the recertification, even if they weren’t exactly true? If you can figure out which represents the greater extent of criminal stupidity, you’re smarter than I am.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey announced the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the firings of nine U.S. attorneys, as a scathing report was released by DOJ investigators that found partisan political considerations to be behind the firing of several of the attorneys. As I look over the report I’ll try to post some of the juicier tidbits for your perusal.

A lot of bad news for the White House this past week from Capitol Hill. Most significantly, both chambers of Congress successfully overrode President Bush’s veto of a massive farm bill with new and bigger subsidies for farmers, plus more food stamps for the poor. Enough Republicans in the Senate voted with Democrats to give them a veto-proof margin on the war spending bill with unemployment and veterans’ benefits added on and the House passed a veto-proof defense bill with a cut of over $700 million in missile defense and a move to review the role of foreign subsidies in a $35 billion aerial tanker deal.

Additionally, a pro forma Senate session on Friday prevented President Bush from recess-appointing several controversial nominees. The House passed a veto-proof bill authorizing the federal government to sue OPEC in US courts over alleged price fixing. And the House judiciary committee subpoenaed Karl Rove to testify about the U.S. attorneys scandal.

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered former Governor of Alabama Don Siegelman released pending his appeal, finding in a short 4-page opinion his appeal raised “substantial issues of law or fact likely to result in a reversal or an order for a new trial on all counts on which the imprisonment has been imposed”, thus satisfying the requirements for release on bond pending the appeal. There’s no explanation of what the court means, and this is hardly a guarantee of a new trial or a reversal of his conviction, but it’s a good sign nonetheless. That, combined with the investigation into the Siegelman case that is ramping up in Congress, presages bad times ahead for Siegelman’s prosecutors/persecutors and the DOJ in general.

I just sat down to watch the 60 Minutes segment on the prosecution of Don Siegelman that I recorded earlier tonight. If you haven’t seen it, you should. I’ve followed the Siegelman saga via Scott Horton since early last year, and blogged about it here and there, but nothing that I’ve read or seen elsewhere communicated the absolute and utter stench of corruption surrounding Siegelman prosecution with as much damning power as that segment did tonight. The star of the show was former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods, a Republican and lifelong friend of John McCain, who utterly condemned the prosecution of Siegelman.

The Siegelman story has been documented in incredible detail by Horton and others. But if you want the story in bold, boiled right down the meat of it, then you absolutely must watch this segment (you can watch it at here.) I can promise you it won’t be the last you’ve heard of this story.

UPDATE: Much, much more could be said about this story. But this, from Horton’s post tonight about the show, has to be read to be believed:

I am now hearing from readers all across Northern Alabama—from Decatur to Huntsville and considerably on down—that a mysterious “service interruption” blocked the broadcast of only the Siegelman segment of 60 Minutes this evening. The broadcaster is Channel 19 WHNT, which serves Northern Alabama and Southern Tennessee. This station was noteworthy for its hostility to Siegelman and support for his Republican adversary. The station ran a trailer stating “We apologize that you missed the first segment of 60 Minutes tonight featuring ‘The Prosecution of Don Siegelman.’ It was a techincal problem with CBS out of New York.” I contacted CBS News in New York and was told that “there is no delicate way to put this: the WHNT claim is not true. There were no transmission difficulties. The problems were peculiar to Channel 19, which had the signal and had functioning transmitters.” I was told that the decision to blacken screens across Northern Alabama “could only have been an editorial call.”

Incredible! As if the residents of Alabama won’t have heard about this story already or couldn’t find out about this story some other way! But such is the utter baseness of the corruption surrounding this case, that it drives even those who were not involved in the events to depths of stupidity and incompetence.

Beyond the relentless blogging of Scott Horton, news about developments in the U.S. Attorneys scandal has been slow lately. But via Marty Lederman, we learn that this period may merely be the quiet before the storm:

The federal investigation into the firing of nine U.S. attorneys could jolt the political landscape ahead of the November elections, according to several people close to the inquiry.

Washington’s attention has been diverted from the scandal since the August resignation of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general, and has focused instead on Democrats’ efforts to hold White House officials in contempt for ignoring congressional subpoenas to testify on Capitol Hill about the firings.

But recent behind-the-scenes activity in several investigations suggests that the issue that roiled Congress in 2007 could re-emerge in the heat of the election year. Two inquiries by the House and Senate ethics committees are examining whether several congressional Republicans, including one running for the Senate this year, improperly interfered with investigations.

As potent as the congressional probes might be, they appear to be far narrower than a sprawling inquiry launched by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) and the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR).

Investigators from these offices have been questioning whether senior officials lied to Congress, violated the criminal provisions in the Hatch Act, tampered with witnesses preparing to testify to Congress, obstructed justice, took improper political considerations into account during the hiring and firing of U.S. attorneys and created widespread problems in the department’s Civil Rights Division, according to several people familiar with the investigation.

The internal Justice Department probe cannot bring charges but can refer findings to a U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia or a special prosecutor, who could then pursue a criminal investigation. One source close to the investigation expects the offices to issue a scathing report within the next three months, but they have not announced a timeline for their joint inquiry.

“I think it could be historic,” said David Iglesias, former U.S. attorney in New Mexico, who was one of the nine ordered to resign by the Bush administration. “Arguably it’s the most significant investigation OPR and OIG have done in a generation, or maybe ever.

I can hardly wait for the report.

President Bush vetoed for the second time a re-authorization and expansion of SCHIP. Democrats will likely just fund the program at this year’s levels. In fact, Democrats are likely to cave on Bush’s spending limits for most appropriation bills they have yet to pass because of Bush veto threats. The House accordingly approved another “stopgap” spending measure to avoid a government shutdown.

The House of Representatives and Senate both passed the defense authorization bill that will be signed by President Bush. Stripped out were provisions dealing with Iraq and hate crimes. The House passed yet another version of a bill to continue the TIRA program as well as one addressing the AMT, but both still must be worked out with the Senate. The House also passed a law banning waterboarding as an acceptable interrogation method, but Senate Republicans filibustered it.

The Senate passed an energy bill similar to the House one, but without tax cuts that Republicans filibustered. The White House has said Bush would not veto this version, so it will likely be the one that comes out of conference. It would be the fifth of the Democrats’ “6 for ’06″ election promises to become law. The farm bill, a version of which passed today by the Senate and another earlier in the House, may not fare so well. The Senate also voted to make it easier for thousands of homeowners with ballooning interest rates to refinance into federally insured loans and to let U.S. state and local governments, as well as mutual funds and private pension funds, divest their investments in companies involved in four Sudanese business sectors, including its oil industry.

Lastly, the Senate Judiciary Commitee voted along party-lines to hold White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove in contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate in its probe of fired federal prosecutors. It is now sent to the full Senate, but as always, Republicans will likely block the move. And the Senate confirmed James Peake, a former Army Surgeon General, as the new Veterans Affairs secretary.