Who's On First?

Are you up on the US Attorneys scandal? Purgegate, as it is known in Blogland? Feeling a little confused about the whole thing? Yeah, well, join the club. I love Talking Points Memo, and I respect Josh Micah Marshall's work -- and really, watching him slowly tear this thing open, over the course of months, has been impressive. No TPM, no revelation of the scandal.

Everyone's talking about this, and yet I don't think we're all talking about the same things. To briefly sum up, 8 US Attorneys were fired by the Bushies for not being sufficiently single-minded in their pursuit of trumped up charges against Democrats, or for being excessively single-minded in their pursuit of legitimate charges against genuinely corrupt Republicans. Then, a couple of Justice Dept. officials lied to Congress about the whole thing, saying the attorneys were fired for "performance-related" reasons, which is obviously untrue, and so Gonzales's Chief of Staff resigned, to try to deflect attention from the inevitable embroilment of the White House and the Attorney General in the whole mess.

Ok, but what exactly is the goddamn scandal???? I mean, I know what it is from my point of view -- the naked manipulation of political appointments as a form of ideological blackmail, and the corruption of the justice system for the most cynically partisan ends. But that's not actually illegal, you know. It should be, God knows, and it's not traditionally done, and no, Clinton did NOT do it, no matter what Fox News may tell you -- but it doesn't appear that it's against the law. The Bushies know this, which is why they keep saying "the US Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President." And that's true, so...?

Well, what about the lying to Congress? That is illegal, if you're under oath; but it's not clear yet that the Bushies are ready to admit it's a lie. As we speak, they are putting together dossiers on the 8 attorneys, trying to find a set of job performance issues to hang the firings on. And all of that scurrying -- be glad you're not a Justice Dept. intern right now -- is not because non-job performance related firings are illegal; it's just to cover their backs for the lying to Congress. How insane is this? Their actions, while gross and despicable, were not actually illegal, until the lying. Remind you of any recently convicted aides to a certain vampiric vice-president? Do they never learn?

But even the lying to Congress, if proven, only matters if it was done with the knowledge of the administration. And so we have the tortured logic of the whole thing. The AG may have to resign -- which I'm all for, 'cause that guy is a major problem -- but not at all clear for what. For...not knowing that his staff was lying to Congress? For lying to Congress himself? Even he doesn't seem to know. Witness this recent press conference, and tell me if anyone in the administration has any idea why they're in trouble:

QUESTION: What mistakes were made at the Department of Justice and specifically was there a mistake made in in considering the political performance of U.S. attorneys in evaluating them:

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: Well let me just say that one of the things that we discovered that we do not have, in my judgment, an adequate system of communication with our U.S. Attorneys around the country. When these U.S. Attorneys were advised that changes were going to be made, quite frankly they should have been told why those changes were being made, and I regret that that didn't happen. That should have happened in this particular case.

Yes?

QUESTION: -- Mr. Sampson drew up his list and are you now feeling like maybe they were removed without cause and that maybe it was an unfair removal since you were not aware of -- you're saying now you were not aware of the details of why he drew up this list?

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: I stand by the decision. Again, all political appointees can be removed by the President of the United States for any reason. I stand by the decision and I think it was the right decision. Thank you very much.

"Mistakes were made" he says -- but neither he nor the press seems to know what those mistakes were! Of course, he can't specify because at any moment something worse may come out. Like today, when we all learned about Gonzales' emails discussing a purge while he was still White House Counsel. Oops. He wasn't ignorant, he was complicit. In a non-crime. About which he lied himself into a likely resignation.

My dear God in heaven these people are stupid.