Unparalleled Hubris
From McClatchy:
It's as if they had grown so accustomed to the low-gravity environment of Republican congressional control that their political instincts had atrophied and left them unable to function in a universe where Congress and the media actually do what they are supposed to do: ask questions when things don't smell right.
Even more troubling, though, is the very real possibility that the Bush administration intended this firing to look exactly how it looked, at least to a certain audience. While the administration may have expected that Congress and the media would ignore the story, those responsible for the firings may well have hoped that the other U.S. Attorneys around the country--who all knew who Carol Lam was and what cases she was pursuing--would draw the obvious inference.
The conventional wisdom seems to be that this was a poorly-disguised act of political retribution. I don't think that's right. I don't think it was meant to be disguised. I think the Bush administration was trying to send a message here and they just didn't think anyone but the intended recipients--the remaining U.S. Attorneys--would be paying any attention.
Fired San Diego U.S. attorney Carol Lam notified the Justice Department that she intended to execute search warrants on a high-ranking CIA official as part of a corruption probe the day before a Justice Department official sent an e-mail that said Lam needed to be fired, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Sunday. . . .We may never know for certain whether Carol Lam was fired because she chose to prosecute Duke Cunningham, Dusty Foggo, and other high-ranking Republicans (though that's certainly a reasonable inference at this point). No matter what the real reason was, however, we can be absolutely certain that her firing was an act of unparalleled hubris on the part of the Bush administration. As Josh Marshall put it last week:
Feinstein said Lam notified the Justice Department on May 10, 2006, that she planned to serve search warrants on Kyle Dustin "Dusty" Foggo, who'd resigned two days earlier as the No. 3 official at the CIA.
On May 11, 2006, Kyle Sampson, then Gonzales' chief of staff, sent an e-mail to deputy White House counsel William Kelley, asking Kelley to call to discuss "the real problem we have right now with Carol Lam that leads me to conclude that we should have someone ready to be nominated on 11/18, the day her 4-year term expires."
The e-mail did not spell out what the "real problem" was, and it was unclear whether Kelley and Sampson talked later.
What people tend to overlook is that for most White Houses, a US attorney involved in such a politically charged and ground-breaking corruption probe would have been untouchable, even if she'd run her office like a madhouse and was offering free twinkies to every illegal who made it across the border.The fact that the Bush administration thought it could fire Carol Lam without suffering any significant political blowback is just astounding, and it's a testament to how anemic Congressional and media oversight has been over the last six years. Again, regardless of the real reasons for Lam's dismissal, the White House and Attorney General's office clearly thought that they could replace a prosecutor who had initiated a number of high-profile investigations into Republican politicians without drawing any real scrutiny from the media or Congress.
It's as if they had grown so accustomed to the low-gravity environment of Republican congressional control that their political instincts had atrophied and left them unable to function in a universe where Congress and the media actually do what they are supposed to do: ask questions when things don't smell right.
Even more troubling, though, is the very real possibility that the Bush administration intended this firing to look exactly how it looked, at least to a certain audience. While the administration may have expected that Congress and the media would ignore the story, those responsible for the firings may well have hoped that the other U.S. Attorneys around the country--who all knew who Carol Lam was and what cases she was pursuing--would draw the obvious inference.
The conventional wisdom seems to be that this was a poorly-disguised act of political retribution. I don't think that's right. I don't think it was meant to be disguised. I think the Bush administration was trying to send a message here and they just didn't think anyone but the intended recipients--the remaining U.S. Attorneys--would be paying any attention.
posted by A.L. at 10:15 PM
4 Comments:
i'm willing to buy a brand new rope...
A.L.,
You think it's more than just hubris? That is, do you think they just don't care who's looking anymore? They have to realize there's now more intense scrutiny -- perhaps they just don't give a sh!t? We're doing (insert malfeasance/crime here)... deal with it, bitches.
"Those whom the gods would destroy they first make bat-shit crazy" has never seemed more apropos.
Personally, I think that this whole USAttorney business was delegated to underlings while the big guys concentrated on the Surge, on covering up their violations of law, and on things that we'll probably find out about over the next several months.
The irony of this is that I just don't think it was that important to them; it was just business as usual, trashing the rule of law for political gain -- I don't think they realized how badly it would appear.
And of course, it only appears bad to those who have less than complete trust in the motives and methods of the Bush WH -- and anybody like that has been purged from the Bush WH, so there was nobody to warn them.
Er…..maybe Tony was a little drunk when he told that guy to "Zip it!". Look the guy has inordinate amounts of pressure applied to his various physical and rhetorical/oratorical naughty bits whilst having to hold this inherited five pound bag with ten pounds of shit for it seems like an eternity. But my numerous years in this hyper-dimensional energy shell avail me this one maxim: Try and wax existential, it’s all kind of pointless in a way. Don’t deprive the world of much needed exquisite cynicism! Cynicism? It’s a derby! Can cheese hats be far behind? Greet the world, such as it is (Hey! It wasn’t my idea!), with bodacious élan and righteous maelstrom! Remember the three R’s: Repetition, repetition, repetition…….. It could always be worse. You could be working at the 7UP bottling company!
As you know, rampant hydraulic auditing occurs as local implanted Neo-con agents gambol with gay abandon. And even though it’s a disaster on all levels and I pleaded to no avail, I now stand here smiling that Iowa tourist flat-line smile, not a care in the world. Heedless to my ministrations, Councilman Bret Broff voted for new Japanese Maples for the parkway leading up to the gazebo. But, as it stands, I do have an option. That is, vulcanization or public floggings. For my part, I've always taken the Catholic view. "Deny. Kick 'em in the grill, they'll never get up." Father Pustulant interjected his canonical two cents. "En nostra de genitilia, en nomenos philopian flagelation." He's such a screw up and part-time philatelist that all the women in attendance were patted down for excessive pudenda. I'm sorry you weren't there. In honor of the present administration I have saved all my viral sputum in my mother’s Bell jar. The neck spasms and migraine-like, vomit inducing headaches were amenable to China White. So I spoke to the sawbones Jones, and she, the nurse-practitioner, gave me a shot in the Coulter and a bag full of pills and I pulled my pants down. It was spiritual, a trailer-park, seedy kind of spirituality. A spiritual house with areola the size of Buick hub caps and nipples as hard as a linoleum kitchen counter top.
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