Alberto Gonzales, Zen Master

[ProSense]

The Hollow Men

Marty Lederman

"The White House has said publicly that it was not involved in adding or deleting people from the list." So sayeth the Attorney General in his testimony today -- repeatedly. (Dahlia Lithwick is a must-read.)

Oh, well, that settles it, then. How could I have missed such an all-important fact? The building at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has spoken -- "publicly" -- and therefore there can't be any need to make inquiries of the actual human beings within that White House who we have been assuming were at the heart of the U.S. Attorney scandal.

And if "the White House" was not involved in putting U.S. Attorneys such as David Iglesias on "the list," who was?

Not Gonzales.

Not McNulty.

Not Comey.

Not Battle.

Not Moschella.

Not Margolis.

Not Sampson.

Not Goodling. (?? This isn't yet confirmed -- could it be that Monica Goodling's is "the consensus view of the senior leadership of the Department"?)

Who knows . . . ?

The Shadow knows.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

From Dahlia Lithwick's article Alberto Gonzales, Zen Master:

Long silence. Pause. "They wouldn't do that," hems Gonzales. "The White House has said publicly that it was not involved in adding or deleting people from the list." Someone needs to tell that to Kyle Sampson. And as for Gonzales, he has made himself immortal by merely willing himself to be so. That must be what accounts for his Zenlike state today. It's an ingenious strategy. Instead of letting the president throw him under the bus to protect Karl Rove, Gonzales just lies down in the road, then giggles as the bus runs over his head.

"evidently this Administration felt that it could not trust the DAG's Office to march in lockstep"

[TayTay]

1. This is excellent!

Gonzo is a Zen Master. Arrrggghhhhh!

[ProSense]

2. Today's Must Read

From TPM Muckraker Today's Must Read:

If at first you don't succeed, investigate again.

That, at least, seems to be Karl Rove's philosophy.

As McClatchy and The Washington Post report this morning, Rove requested last October that the Justice Department investigate allegations of voter fraud in three jurisdictions. Those three were Milwaukee, New Mexico and Philadelphia -- all battleground states.

The White House really put the heat on. McClatchy reports that at least twice in October, Rove or his deputies passed on word of the allegations to Kyle Sampson. In addition, both Rove and President Bush raised the issue with Alberto Gonzales the same month.

Sampson, in turn, passed on the allegations to a Justice Department official named Matthew Friedrich. Friedrich dutifully agreed "to find out whether Justice officials knew of 'rampant' voter fraud or 'lax' enforcement in parts of New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and report back."

Friedrich has told congressional investigators that Sampson also gave him a 30-page report prepared by Wisconsin Republicans about voter fraud in Milwaukee. Sampson apparently expected Friedrich to pass it on to the department's criminal division. Friedrich says he didn't do that because that would "violate strict Justice rules that limit the pursuit of voter-related investigations close to an election." (At least someone in the Justice Department cares about that rule.)

Now, you can see that 30-page report, titled "Fraud in Wisconsin 2004: A Timeline/Summary" here (pdf, see page 10). As the title would indicate, it was nothing but a collection of news clippings related to voter fraud allegations in Milwaukee... in the 2004 election.

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