The secrets hidden in the redacted portions of the U.S. Attorneygate docs . . .

[kpete]

The secrets hidden in the redacted portions of the U.S. Attorneygate docs . . .
by Lawyer to Capitalists
Fri Apr 13, 2007 at 08:45:33 PM PDT

I have been closely following the plodding progress of the Congressional committee investigations into the Attorney General's firing of "underperforming" U.S. Attorneys. While there are so many questions one can wonder about in this scandal, here is the one that is bothering me the most tonight: why is the Department of Justice (the name suddenly strikes me as utterly ironic) allowed to redact information about all U.S. Attorneys and USA offices other than those pertaining to the fired individuals?


I make my living as an employment lawyer, and the bread and butter evidence in any case about a person being fired is whether (or not) other employees in similar positions who were performing equally badly were treated the same way. Here, it seems that the holy grail proof would be if other U.S. Attorneys who were performing similarly to the Eight, but who were not indicting Republicans or who were indicting Democrats or were otherwise demonstrating themselves to be "good soldiers" for the Bush Administration, managed to keep their jobs.

Yet, in the newest sets of documents among the 2,000 pages released by the DOJ today (bury the trash in the Friday news cycle, do 'ya?), all information pertaining to U.S. Attorneys other than "The Eight" is redacted. Which means we are looking at this in a vacuum, unable to see how the fired Eight compared to those who were not fired, as it isn't just the names that are redacted--it is all information pertaining to people or offices other than those of the Eight.

Why is the DOJ able to get away with that?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/4/13/23406/5301

[illinoisprogressive]

1. i feel Leahy has a few surprises up his sleeve

[hang a left]

2. Well that is a good night time prayer.

The OP states a legitimate question. Why is it that Justice can pick and choose what documents or portions thereof they "will" provide? Hmmmm. See that is "THE" question.

How ya gonna get em?? Again...hmmmmmm?

Will we have the Sergeant of Arms shooting it out with the Secret Service?

Tis THE "constitutional crisis"

[WiseButAngrySara]

3. DOJ is utterly ironic in this misadministration. k(pete)nr! ....n/t

[hootinholler]

8. They spell it differently than we do...

It all makes sense using the republic spelling: JustUs.

-Hoot

[Pachamama]

10. Department of JustUs....

Hysterical....Thank you Hoot!

PS: I suppose the redacted names are the names of those that did get chosen? Those names would seem to me to be very interesting and revealing indeed....

[hootinholler]

11. Wish I could claim credit, but,

I shamelessly ripped it off from someone.

:hi:

-Hoot

[WiseButAngrySara]

12. ROFL! JustUs! That is a hoot, hoot! ....n/t

[Gabi Hayes]

14. richard pryor album.... ~thirty five years ago

''...you go down there lookin' for justice, that's what you'll find--just US!''



1. Eulogy Listen Listen
2. Shortage Of White People Listen Listen
3. New Niggers Listen Listen
4. Cocaine Listen Listen
5. Just Us Listen Listen
http://www.amazon.com/gp/music/wma-pop-up/B000002KDC001005

6. Mudbone - Intro Listen
7. Mudbone - Little feets Listen
8. When Your Woman Leaves You Listen
9. The Goodnight Kiss Listen
10. Women Are Beautiful Listen
11. Our Text For Today

[WiseButAngrySara]

15. Thanks for the historical context. Interesting that it was

first used by Pryor! I tried to listen to your amazon link but couldn't get the video to play! Not sure why.

[bleever]

4. I miss the days when seeing through this crap made me feel like a genius.

But I'm deeply grateful that Leahy and Conyers are in the right places as all this becomes common knowledge.


:thumbsup:

[buzzard]

5. Are the redacted copies available online, I thought i saw that they could readily be read if you

enhanced the contrast and enlarged the print.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

6. I suspect

that several, no, many honest, DOJ professionals have been getting sick to death of the crap going on inside a formerly professional branch of government - and one tasked with extremely critical responsibilities. Yes, Leahy is getting lots of data, and I bet that his hardest task is how to organize it, confirming it without damaging career pros' lives, and picking the most telling facts out of a multitude of crap.

[Polemicist]

7. Superb observation...

Investigators will need access to the complete records of the evaluation of all US Attorneys in order to be able to judge the bias, insufficiency, or inadequacy of the methodology used to determine that the 8 should be terminated. Looking only at information on the 8 alone, won't provide the entire picture of the Administration's and Justice's actions.

I wonder what the wording was in the request for documents. Was it narrowly worded? Or did Justice narrowly interpret what Congress needed? Or did Justice just ignore the spirit of the request and make their own determination about what to redact. Knowing the Bush dance of intransigence seen thus far, I'm betting on the latter.

Maybe subpoenas will be easier for the Administration to read properly. Countdown showed documents that were entirely redacted with nothing but blacked out writing over the entire page. Sending Congress something like that is just thumbing your nose in their face.

[robinlynne]

9. They already received subpoenas.... Haven't they already declared they are gong to make it go to the

supremes?

[Polemicist]

13. House subpoenaed, but not the Senate...

And the House only subpoenaed documents. I think most of the responses are what Fred Fielding (WH Attorney) is calling "unified" responses, as he provided the same documents to both the House and Senate. I'm not sure what was requested in writing and what was provided and/or how they might have differed.

Both the House and Senate have "authorized" the issuing of subpoenas for testimony. But thus far they haven't actually issued and served anybody with these authorized subpoenas. Seems both sides are dancing around each other, trying to see who blinks, as nobody knows who will win if it goes to the Supremes.

However, I fully believe that the White House will stonewall to the very end. I think they are guilty as sin of so many crimes, that if they freely co-operate with any of these investigations, it's going to be traumatic at best. They are going to try to run out the clock until the Bush Administration ends.

I wonder if the Prez can issue pardons in advance of charges, on the last day of his Presidency? And can he pardon himself?