Appeals court upholds CIA leak lawsuit dismissal
Tue Aug 12, 2008 11:47am EDT
By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON, Aug 12 (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday dismissed former CIA analyst Valerie Plame's lawsuit against Vice President Dick Cheney and several former Bush administration officials for disclosing her identity to the public.

The Court of Appeals in Washington dealt another setback to the former spy, who has said her career was destroyed when officials blew her cover in 2003 to retaliate against her husband, Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson.

Plame's outing led a lengthy criminal investigation, which resulted in the conviction of Cheney's top aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, for perjury and obstruction of justice.

Cafferty: White House Illegally Deleted Over TEN MILLION e-mails
Posted: 05 Dec 2007 08:10 PM CST

What was a serious problem for the White House has now doubled, and Jack Cafferty is all over it:

Cafferty: A government watchdog group now says more than 10 million White House emails are missing. Citizens for the Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) described this massive hole in White House email records last April. At that time they thought the number was 5 million - Now they say it is more than 10 million emails. In one of the great understatements of this here Christmas season, the group says that this revised estimate - quote - highlights that this is a very serious and systematic problem at the White House - unquote. Both CREW and another private group called the National Security archive are suing the Bush administration to try to get information about all these missing emails. The White House email problems first came to light during special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity...

Nah, Nah, Nah, Nah, Hey, Hey, Hey, GOODBYE!

Karl Rove, Adviser to pResident Bush, to Quit By Debbi Wilgoren and Peter Baker Monday, August 13, 2007; 6:26 AM
Karl Rove, chief architect of the Bush presidency and the premier Republican strategist of the last decade, will step down as White House deputy chief of staff Aug. 31.

If this isn't the LAST STRAW, I don't know what is... The rule of law doesn't apply to him... he's above the law, HE IS THE LAW!... The is the CrippledChimp's Nixonian moment - If he does it it can't be illegal!

Broader Privilege Claimed In Firings - White House Says Hill Can't Pursue Contempt Cases - By Dan Eggen and Amy Goldstein Friday, July 20, 2007; A01
Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege...

Plame Suit Dismissed by Controversial GOP Loyalist By Jason Leopold and Matt Renner Thursday 19 July 2007
A federal judge has dismissed the civil lawsuit filed against top Bush administration officials by former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. The judge, John Bates of the US District Court in Washington, DC is a Bush appointee who previously dismissed a lawsuit filed by the federal government against Vice President Dick Cheney. That suit sought access to Cheney's energy task force documents.

Since his tenure on the federal bench began six years ago, Bates's legal opinions and rulings supporting the administration's executive powers stand in stark contrast to his legal work as an assistant US attorney. He worked for Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr prosecuting President Clinton's Whitewater investment deals...

Libby, Cheney, Rove civil suit dismissed - Judge cites jurisdictional grounds, makes no comments on arguments
Updated: 4:06 p.m. ET July 19, 2007
WASHINGTON - A federal judge dismissed former CIA operative Valerie Plame's lawsuit against members of the Bush administration Thursday, eliminating one of the last courtroom remnants of the leak scandal...

Time to MOVE ON? I think not...

Commuting Libby's Sentence 'Fair,' Bush Says - For First Time, President Acknowledges Role of an Administration Official in Leak of CIA Operative By Michael Abramowitz Friday, July 13, 2007
President Bush acknowledged for the first time yesterday that "somebody" in his administration leaked the name of an undercover intelligence officer but declined to say whether he was disappointed in such an action and contended that it is time to move on...

I SWORE AN OATH TO THE pRESIDENT...

TPMtv has all the footage...

Ex-Aide Refuses to Testify on Attorney Firings By Paul Kane and Peter Baker Wednesday 11 July 2007
Former White House aide Sara M. Taylor refused to testify today about White House discussions surrounding the firing of nine U.S. attorneys last year, but, treading carefully around a White House claim of executive privilege, did offer some details about the episode.

The Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Taylor to testify this morning about the dismissals of the nine U.S. attorneys last year and the Bush administration's response to the controversy that followed. Bush this week invoked executive privilege, and White House counsel Fred F. Fielding sent Taylor a letter directing her not to discuss internal communications.

"The president has made the determination that the disclosure of this information would interfere with the operation of the executive branch," Taylor said as the committee hearing opened. "I intend to follow the president's instruction. I do not have the ability independently to assess or question the president's determination."...

Files show talks on 'vote caging' - Discussions with elections chief were prior to '04 election By J. Taylor Rushing, Capital Bureau Chief 7/7/2007
TALLAHASSEE - Internal city memos show the issue of Republican "vote caging" efforts in Jacksonville's African-American neighborhoods was discussed in the weeks before the 2004 election, contradicting recent claims by former Duval County Republican leader Mike Hightower - the Bush-Cheney campaign's local chairman at the time.

"Caging" is a longtime voter suppression practice by which political parties collect undeliverable or unreturned mail and use it to develop "challenge lists" on Election Day....

Curious, very few news story's on this on Google News, only 37 published items out of the countless news outlets on the planet. And NOT ONE of them mentions the GOP "Caging List" emails revealed by Greg Palast that apparently prove criminal election fraud and vote suppression tactics by the Bushies....

Ex-aide to Rove resigns amid U.S. attorney flap June 1, 2007
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The former White House aide whose appointment to a U.S. attorney's post helped fuel the furor over the forced resignations of eight federal prosecutors will resign Friday, according to a news release.

Tim Griffin, 38, said in a Thursday statement that he is leaving his position as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas to pursue "opportunities" in the private sector...

US Attorney Tim Griffin Resigns Following Conyers’ Request for BBC Documents By Greg Palast On June 1, 2007
Tim Griffin, formerly right hand man to Karl Rove, resigned Thursday as US Attorney for Arkansas hours after BBC Television ‘Newsnight’ reported that Congressman John Conyers requested the network’s evidence on Griffin’s involvement in ‘caging voters.’ Greg Palast, reporting for BBC Newsnight, obtained a series of confidential emails from the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign. In these emails, Griffin, then the GOP Deputy Communications Director, transmitted so-called ‘caging lists’ of voters to state party leaders....

Former Rove Aide Seeks Immunity Pact By Scot J. Paltrow Wednesday 23 May 2007
A former top aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove told Congress she will invoke her right against self-incrimination unless granted immunity to answer investigators' questions about lobbyist Jack Abramoff's contacts with administration officials.

It is the first indication that Abramoff-related probes, mainly limited until now to his dealings with lawmakers and federal agency officials, may be advancing into the White House. The former Rove aide, Susan Ralston, previously had served as a top aide to Mr. Abramoff....

If you wanna try and keep score, Slate has an excellent expose' on the various Bushnik and RepubliCon scandals. An amusing interactive flash presentation and a much more thorough text version laying out quite a few (if not most) of the myriad scandals dragging down the CrippledChimp and the moribund GOPers. One scandal that is missing is lying to start a war of aggression... but of course the corporatist media doesn't consider that a scandal...

Bushies Behaving Badly - A guide to GOP scandals By Holly Allen, Christopher Beam, and Torie Bosch Friday, May 11, 2007

Paul Wolfowitz in the World Bank With Nepotism
The World Bank president and "Iraq war architect" allegedly helped his girlfriend get a generous salary package and promotion when she transferred to the State Department. Wolfowitz said an ethics panel approved the deal, but the panel denies it. An investigative committee found that the deal was a conflict of interest. (He apparently helped her career in the past, too.) Wolfowitz critics also allege that he used his position at the bank to promote a conservative agenda on family planning and global warming...

WaPo's Dan Froomkin lays out all the latest WH ties to the US Attorney scandal...

New Signs Point to the White House
Yesterday brought considerably more evidence of direct White House involvement in the overt politicization of the Justice Department -- not only in terms of purging U.S. attorneys who may have been considered insufficiently partisan in their pursuit of criminal cases, but also in terms of filling career positions with attorneys who passed a political litmus test...