Category Archives: Politics: The Party of Sleaze

Murray Waas, How the President's claims of executive privilege for the U.S. attorney probe could prove to be cataclysmic for his own party: And why Republian congressional candidates might prefer that Karl Rove testify sooner rather than later

At the Watchdog Blog (asst proprietor, Dan Froomkin), Saul Friedman has a great suggestion: Assign a Police Reporter to the White House.

Remember the US Office of Special Counsel (OSC), the guys supposed to be investigating Karl Rove? As you'll see if you click that link, I was more than a little skeptical given who runs the OSC,

The OSC is headed by a presidential appointee with a five-year term named Scott J. Bloch. That he has been somnolent in this job is beyond dispute. That he has been positively active in sabotaging investigations that might annoy the Bush administration has been repeatedly alleged, and has even led to a formal complaint charging sabotage of investigations and retaliation against those who sought to pursue them.

Well, guess what? NPR says the FBI just raided the OSC, and
secured a separate warrant for Bloch's home.

The FBI's action isn't about the Rove case — it's about other alleged misdeeds — but who will bet that the FBI's actions will not derail whatever little action there was in the Rove area?

The Bush Department of Justice today claimed that it has run out of bits. It seems that it can no longer send press releases to Talking Points Memo (a real thorn in its side due to thorough reporting of DoJ scandals) because — get this — there's no room on the mailing list!

Today's top 10 list: Dahlia Lithwick of Slate's The Bush administration's dumbest legal arguments of the year.

I make it about 387 days to go. Plenty of time for another bumper crop.

Look past the shtick in Scrubbing the Oregon GOP at Jesus' General, and you find the sort of news about my co-nationals that really creeps me.

If the story can be believed, it seems that the Oregon GOP duly passed a plank at its convention that said,

7.5 Inter-jurisdictional agency cooperation shall be improved for more effective joint action against organized crime, drug cartels, terrorist networks and the Oregon Democratic Party.

Yup. Drug dealers, terrorists and Oregon Democrats. All kind of similar in the crackpot view of the Oregon GOP.

But when called on it, someone quickly scrubbed the website. But you can see the old version at the Internet Archive's Way Back Machine.

Perhaps it was someone's idea of a joke inserted on the website? I hope. But in a world of right-wing eliminationist rhetoric (see multiple posts of David Neiwert's on this at Orcinus) there's all too much reason to fear it was for real.