Official: Justice Dept. slowed probe into phone jamming
By Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers December 19, 2007

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department delayed prosecuting a key Republican official for jamming the phones of New Hampshire Democrats until after the 2004 election, protecting top GOP officials from the scandal until the voting was over.

An official with detailed knowledge of the investigation into the 2002 Election-Day scheme said the inquiry sputtered for months after a prosecutor sought approval to indict James Tobin, the northeast regional coordinator for the Republican National Committee.

The phone-jamming operation was aimed at preventing New Hampshire Democrats from rounding up voters in the close U.S. Senate race between Republican Rep. John Sununu and Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen. Sununu's 19,000-vote victory helped the GOP regain control of the Senate...

Here's comes the hit on the designated fall-guy - former CIA Director of Operations Jose A. Rodriguez Jr, now in business with the brother of Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence....

C.I.A. Was Urged to Keep Interrogation Videotapes
December 8, 2007 By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 — White House and Justice Department officials, along with senior members of Congress, advised the Central Intelligence Agency in 2003 against a plan to destroy hundreds of hours of videotapes showing the interrogations of two operatives of Al Qaeda, government officials said Friday.

The chief of the agency’s clandestine service nevertheless ordered their destruction in November 2005, taking the step without notifying even the C.I.A.’s own top lawyer, John A. Rizzo, who was angry at the decision, the officials said.

The disclosures provide new details about what Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director, has said was a decision “made within C.I.A. itself” to destroy the videotapes. In interviews, members of Congress and former intelligence officials also questioned some aspects of the account General Hayden provided Thursday about when Congress was notified that the tapes had been destroyed.

Congress Wants Ashcroft's Testimony By Michael Isikoff Friday 01 June 2007
The House and Senate Intelligence Committees have asked the former attorney general to testify about his role in a dramatic showdown over a controversial eavesdropping program. Will he play ball?

The Senate and House Intelligence Committees are asking former attorney general John Ashcroft to testify about a March 2004 hospital-room confrontation during which he refused to sign off on a continuation of President Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program, according to congressional and administration sources...

DOJ Made Immigration Judgeships Political - Internal probe examines whether Monica Goodling and other officials broke law by bypassing hiring procedures By Emma Schwartz and Jason McLure May 28, 2007
Few people in El Paso know more about immigration law than Guadalupe Gonzalez, a lawyer who has prosecuted illegal immigration cases along the Texas border for nearly 25 years. In 2002, after seeing an advertisement, she applied — and was passed over — for an opening on the local bench of one of the nation’s 54 immigration courts. But when two more vacancies arose in 2004, nobody bothered to tell Gonzalez. In fact, the positions were never advertised.

Instead, the Justice Department’s leadership, which oversees the immigration courts, used a little-known power to appoint two lower-level attorneys — both of whom Gonzalez had supervised at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in El Paso — to the $115,000-a-year positions...

Immigration judges lack apt backgrounds - A growing number of the jurists have little or no experience in that area of law. Some have strong Republican resumes By Richard B. Schmitt May 26, 2007
WASHINGTON — Over the last two years, U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales has appointed more than two dozen individuals as federal immigration judges.
The new jurists include a former treasurer of the Louisiana Republican Party, who was a legal advisor to the Bush Florida recount team after the 2000 presidential election. There is also a former GOP congressional aide who had tracked voter fraud issues for the Justice Department, and a Texan appointed by then-Gov. George W. Bush to a seat on the state library commission.

One thing missing on many of their resumes: a background in immigration law...

Action Alert 5/22/07
Illegal, Yes--But Not Newsworthy - Wiretapping testimony hardly covered
The revelations coming from a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week were startling. On May 15, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey testified about the Bush administration's extraordinary efforts in March 2004 to gain legal approval for the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program by visiting Attorney General John Ashcroft's hospital room as he recovered from gall bladder surgery. The story is surprising, at the very least—but has so far attracted little media curiosity....

It's rather bizarre to think Ashcroft wasn't whacked enough for the Bush Pack...

Ashcroft's Complex Tenure At Justice - On Some Issues, He Battled White House By Peter Baker and Susan Schmidt Sunday, May 20, 2007; A01
As attorney general, John D. Ashcroft was the public face of an administration pushing the boundaries of the Constitution to hunt down terrorists, but behind the scenes, according to former aides and White House officials, he at times resisted what he saw as radical overreaching...

It's something millions of people have asked themselves over the six year reign of terror under the Bush Occupation - "How low will they go?" Well, ask no more to what depths of depravity the Bushies will stoop. All you have to do is watch former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee describing how then WH Counsel Alberto Gonzales and former WH Chief-of-Staff Andrew Card went to former AG John Ashcroft's ICU bedside in attempt to coerce him into rubber-stamping the CrippledChimp's illegal NSA and FBI spying programs...

Can You Even Imagine How Bad it Must Have Been? by Marty Lederman
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
I want to put yesterday's incredible Comey testimony in some context, to demonstrate just how otherworldly this story is -- and what an extraordinary tale it tells about the nature of the officials who are running our government....

I'm no fan of Dana Milbank, but his rendition of the Comey testimony is spot on...

Ashcroft and the Night Visitors By Dana Milbank
Wednesday, May 16, 2007; Page A02
As if Attorney General Alberto Gonzales didn't have enough trouble, now comes word that, before coming to the Justice Department, Gonzales preyed on the infirm. In hair-raising testimony before a Senate committee yesterday, Jim Comey, the former No. 2 official at the Justice Department, described what might be called the Wednesday Night Massacre of March 10, 2004. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card staged a bedside ambush of Attorney General John Ashcroft while he lay in intensive care. Comey, serving as acting attorney general during Ashcroft's incapacitation, testified about how, on a tip from Ashcroft's wife, he intercepted the pair in Ashcroft's hospital room...