Republicans Play Softball with Scandal (by Eugene Robinson for Truthdig)

[marmar]

Republicans Play Softball with Scandal


Posted on May 25, 2007
By Eugene Robinson

WASHINGTON—Still think the U.S. attorneys scandal is just partisan froth whipped up by disingenuous Democrats? Still think Alberto Gonzales is in any way, shape or form qualified to serve as attorney general? Still think the name Monica brings to mind a stain (so to speak) on the Democratic Party but suggests nothing about Republican malfeasance and hubris? Then you must be a Republican member of the House of Representatives.

Everyone else who was listening Wednesday had to be flabbergasted as Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee—apparently having been struck deaf and blind—lobbed softball after softball at witness Monica Goodling. This was after Goodling had already fessed up to applying a political litmus test for career Justice employees. I repeat: career employees, not political appointees. Only loyal Republicans should bother to apply.

The deaf and blind Republicans on the committee apparently missed that part of her opening statement. They also missed the part when she accused Gonzales’ former deputy, Paul McNulty, of telling untruths to Congress—and, in the process, hanging Goodling out to dry. Those dogged GOP interrogators did, however, manage to elicit from Goodling the startling disclosure that she believes she is a good person, and also the revelation that while she might have broken a few laws, she didn’t set out to do anything illegal.

All she did, in the influential Justice position that was inexplicably given her, was what Alberto Gonzales and George W. Bush wanted her to do—place loyalty to the president above all else in decisions on hiring and firing.

...(snip)...

Did all this fly over the heads of the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee? Of course not. But House Republicans evidently have made the cynical political calculation that to acknowledge reality would be to grant the Democrats some sort of victory. This, apparently, must be avoided at all costs.

So Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., asked Goodling: Why all the fuss about the eight U.S. attorneys whose dismissals sparked this entire probe? His probing follow-up: “Isn’t this an exercise of legitimate executive power which practically every president up to including the current one exercises all the time with officials within the executive branch subject to his appointment?”

Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., was equally incisive in his questioning of Goodling: “Analogously, doesn’t a president have a right when he appoints an attorney general to expect him and the people in the Justice Department including civil servants to use the emphases that the president wants—to make the decisions in terms of priorities that the president wants? And isn’t that an appropriate thing, and is that the kind of thing that you did while you were in the department?”

Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., ventured that the whole investigation “seems to be about the attempted criminalization of things that are vital to our constitutional system of government, namely the taking into consideration of politics in the appointment of political officials within the government. ... Is there anything illegal about the president being served at his pleasure by the people he believes would be best?”

The service of justice went unmentioned. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070525_republicans_play_softball_with_scandal/

[BOSSHOG]

1. Lets see Mike Pence, (embarrassment of Indiana) making a judgement??

Pence, the same motherfucker who thinks there is no difference between a vegetable stand in Indiana and one in Baghdad? Pence, thinking george bush knows who might be qualified for any job in the government? The only qualification for bush is blind and dumb and dangerous loyalty. And garbage like Pence wonders why veterans like me hate the grand old party so intensely.

[L. Coyote]

2. WORSE still. This was the DOG wagging the whole KENNEL with scripted

and rehearsed lines. Miss Goodling (or her cut-out attorneys) had to be in on this 100% for such a rehearsed and scripted performance. To some questions she had seemingly perfect speeches prepared.

I would go a step further. There were Congressmen revealing their complicity!