|
Sometimes I find myself wondering if Attorney General Michael Mukasey is Alberto Gonzales with a funny haircut and silly glasses—---the same old song but without the Latin beat. The Bush administration pretended that they were bringing a new guy in to clean up the mess that W.’s buddy from Texas made, but they made monkeys out of all of us.
Someone at the DOJ is continuing the political work that Karl Rove began.
I. The War on Black Folks aka the New Southern Strategy Today Mukasey announced that he does not want federal judges to follow the new reduced sentencing guidelines that were introduced for crack cocaine in an attempt to eliminate racial disparity from the federal criminal justice system—at least not when they are considering possible sentencing reductions of those currently in prison. Why not?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/06/AR2008020603822.html
In a statement prepared for his scheduled appearance before the House Judiciary Committee today, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said that unless Congress acts, "1,600 convicted crack dealers, many of them violent gang members, will be eligible for immediate release into communities nationwide" under a decision by the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
"Retroactive application of these new lower guidelines will pose significant public safety risks . . ." Mukasey said in the statement. "Many of these offenders are among the most serious and violent offenders in the federal system and their early release . . . would produce tragic, but predictable results."
Lock up your White women!
Remember Willie Horton? I can already predict the first big GOP political story for the fall season. It will be the first (African-American) released under reduced crack cocaine sentencing guidelines who commits a violent crime (against a European-American). Mukasey just set it up. I wonder if he needed a memo from Karl Rove or if he figured it all out on his lonesome. He strikes me as a self starter.
Note in the same article that Hillary and Obama could see this one coming from a mile away, and they deftly avoided stepping into it in the debates. That will not stop the Republicans using it as a general “law and order” issue.
Give the Washington Post another gold star for doing its usual bang up job in printing all the White House propaganda whether it is fit to print or not.
II. Political Prosecutions of Democrats in Election Years Remember Georgia Thompson? The woman who was thrown into jail and persecuted ( you can not call what federal attorney Biskupic did a prosecution —why even conservative radio host Jessica McBride said that he had “put the screws on a lower level player” “to see if she would flip on those really responsible”, see my artistic rendering at my cartoon website:
http://www.grandtheftelectionohio.com/070412.htm )
Here are the details of the Georgia Thompson travesty of justice here:
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/4/10/02412/1436
Well, Mukasey is following in the grand old tradition of the Gonzales Department of Injustice.He has lined up another politically motivated federal prosecution in Alabama, a state that Karl Rove would just love to see get a Republican state legislature. In order to do this, he has arranged for federal prosecutors to arrest an Alabama Democratic politician.
And today we see the typical pincer movement involving the Alabama G.O.P. election campaign’s third arm, the U.S. Attorney’s office. Specifically, Alice Martin, the sometime U.S. Attorney, sometime G.O.P. candidate for elective office. Martin fully understands the benefit to the party and its election efforts of criminal prosecutions being commenced that target elected Democrats, are geared carefully to the election cycle, and are hyped extensively to the party media apparatus. And yesterday, as Sue Schmitz was dramatically dragged from her home in Toney, Alice Martin went before the press with an announcement which will feature prominently in Republican campaign literature for the coming years.
The target this time is another woman, 63 year old Sue Schimdt. The charge? This teacher used her clout as an elected representative to get a teaching job. And she did not always show up at her teaching job. For this, the Mukasey Justice Department pulled her out of the shower and did the perp walk after a many month investigation.
You know, most states are desperately looking for teachers, especially those with experience. And just maybe she had places to be sometimes, like in the state capital, passing laws.
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/02/hbc-90002293
I can imagine Mukasey’s real interview, the one with Karl Rove.
KR: We have some ongoing investigations down in Alabama and in a few other states. Involving Democrats. You aren’t gonna be difficult about those, are you?
MM: No, I do not foresee any difficulty with ongoing investigations.
III. The War on Civil Liberties
Oh, hell, we knew this one was coming. When he would not say that water boarding was torture, it was not because he thought that it was and he was afraid that W. would withdraw his nomination if he tipped his hand before he was confirmed.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22904392/
WASHINGTON - Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Tuesday he will refuse to publicly say whether the interrogation tactic known as waterboarding is illegal, digging in against critics who want the Bush administration to define it as torture.
Snip
“I understand that you and some other members of the (Judiciary) Committee may feel that I should go further in my review, and answer questions concerning the legality of waterboarding under current law,” Mukasey wrote in his three-page letter to Leahy, D-Vt. “I understand the strong interest in this question, but I do not think it would be responsible for me, as attorney general, to provide an answer.”
At least he is consistent. Makes you wonder, though who is the federal government can responsibly rule on the legality of waterboarding. The janitor? The guy who runs the elevator?
Wonder why Schumer is disappointed. Repeating the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the sign of something, isn’t it?
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/01/30/schumer-to-mukasey-im-disappointed/
Mukasey does not hedge when it comes to illegal search and seizure. He is all for it. He likes whipping the American public into a state of terror, too. Wonder why he hasn't issued any terror warnings yet?:
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/news-desk/2008/1/25/mukasey-pushes-for-electronic-surveillance.html
Attorney General Michael Mukasey said today that he was hopeful that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act will move through Congress by as early as next week.
Snip
Asked whether he was concerned about the continued threat by terrorist groups such as al Qaeda, Mukasey responded, "How concerned am I on a scale of 1 to 10? 11." He said that since taking the helm of the Justice Department, he begins each day with a national security briefing that is "sobering."
You got that? On a scale of 1-10 it’s an 11. Just like in Spinal Tap Radical, dude.
IV. The War on the Press
If you are a member of the press, you would be better off not writing anything about the Bush administration until it is long over, because Mukasey will be just as happy as Gonzo to toss your ass in jail---in order to find out which government employee or ex-government employee had the balls to try to blow a whistle on King George II.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/washington/01inquire.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
A federal grand jury has issued a subpoena to a reporter of The New York Times, apparently to try to force him to reveal his confidential sources for a 2006 book on the Central Intelligence Agency, one of the reporter’s lawyers said Thursday.
The subpoena was delivered last week to the New York law firm that is representing the reporter, James Risen, and ordered him to appear before a grand jury in Alexandria, Va., on Feb. 7.
Mr. Risen’s lawyer, David N. Kelley, who was the United States attorney in Manhattan early in the Bush administration, said in an interview that the subpoena sought the source of information for a specific chapter of the book “State of War.”
The chapter asserted that the C.I.A. had unsuccessfully tried, beginning in the Clinton administration, to infiltrate Iran’s nuclear program. None of the material in that chapter appeared in The New York Times.
V. Vote Suppression
Mukasey is a bullshitter, just like Gonzales. He swore that he would protect voting rights, but only if it didn’t give the appearance of looking like it would benefit a specific voting group or political party.
Say what?
http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/2008/01/post-4.html
Mukasey said he is drafting a memo to prosecutors nationwide "indicating to them that their sensitivities in a time of election have to be heightened" to potential violations of voting rights. He will also instruct prosecutors, Mukasey said, to be sensitive to "the dangers posed by bringing prosecutions that can be perceived as somehow affecting the outcome of elections."
snip
" I want us to make sure there is no perception that any prosecution or withholding of prosecution is done for the purpose of affecting the outcome of an election and that any investigations are carried forward only based on what the facts show and what the law shows and whether a case is ready to go or not, and not based on whether it would or would not be appropriate timing for any political party or group. "
Perception being the key word. Make it look good for the suckers.
Want to know what I perceive? The Bush administration is throwing its legal weight behind the defense of a voter ID law which is being a challenged because it was shown conclusively to disenfranchise an elderly woman who had been voting for years in the same precinct.
After Ms. Williams grabbed her cane that day and walked into the polling station in the lobby of her retirement home to vote, as she has done in at least the last two elections, she was barred from doing so.
The election officials at the polling place, whom she had known for years, told her she could not cast a regular ballot. They said the forms of identification she had always used — a telephone bill, a Social Security letter with her address on it and an expired Indiana driver’s license — were no longer valid under the voter ID law, which required a current state-issued photo identification card.
“Of course I threw a fit,” said Ms. Williams, 61, who was made to cast a provisional ballot instead, which, according to voting records, was never counted. Ms. Williams — who has difficulty walking — said she was not able to get a ride to the voting office to prove her identity within 10 days as required under the law, and her ballot was discarded.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/07/us/07identity.html
Can’t let scary people like that corrupt our democratic process. Those "gray panthers" might get hopped up on metamucil and decide to vote for the party that is going to save Social Security rather than the one that is going to win the war on terra. If the Bush administration wins this one, voter ID laws all across the country will be allowed the stand this fall---and they can disenfranchise anywhere for a few to over 10% of the population---most of them poor, elderly or minority. Luckily for Mukasey, the public does not "perceive" these cases as being biased.
This plus the political prosecutions of Democratic lawmakers in battleground states and the attempts to portray Democrats as the champions of scary Black men and Republicans as the protectors of White women and the continuing erosion of civil liberties in the name of the War on Terra add up to just one thing. Karl Rove’s The Math , his classic election strategy of Democratic voter suppression combined with Republican base mobilization via scary issues like crime, terra, racial politics is alive and well at the Mukasey Department of Justice.
Why? Because George W. Bush and Dick Cheney can not issue last minute pardons to themselves for all the laws that they have broken during their reign over this country, so they are counting upon a Republican president---any Republican president, hell, Huckabee would do just fine for their purposes---to turn a blind eye and seal their presidential papers.
I can not help wondering, if we had impeached Alberto Gonzales the way he deserved to be impeached, would Michael Mukasey be so eager to walk in his footsteps?
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
