Like This Wasn't Foreseeable When The Senate Confirmed Him

Mukasey Rejects Call for CIA Tape Details and Special Prosecutor

The Washington Post reports:

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey today sharply rebuffed congressional demands for details about the Justice Department's inquiry into the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes, saying that providing such information would make it appear that the department was "subject to political influence."

In letters to the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee and others, Mukasey also reiterated his opposition to appointing a special prosecutor to the tapes investigation, saying he was "aware of no facts at present" that would require such a step.

"At my confirmation hearing, I testified that I would act independently, resist political pressure and ensure that politics plays no role in cases brought by the Department of Justice," Mukasey wrote. "Consistent with that testimony, the facts will be followed wherever they lead in this inquiry, and the relevant law applied."

Wouldn't you have loved to be a fly on Chuck Schumer's wall when he heard about Mukasey's response to the bipartisan inquiry by U.S. senators? And just when you think you've heard every conceivable weasel word and spinned excuse by the Bush administration's appointees for stalling, stonewalling, and not cooperating with Congress's Constitutionally-required role of oversight and investigation.

Senators Dianne Feinstein, Russ Feingold and Chuck Schumer (the senator who suggested that Bush nominate Mukasey for the job) confer during the Senate Judiciary Committee meeting to vote on sending Michael Mukasey's nomination as Attorney General to the floor of the Senate.

One letter was sent to Sens. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Similar correspondence was sent to Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and to House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) and other House Democrats.

The three letters represent an attempt by Mukasey to push back against growing pressure from lawmakers, primarily Democrats, who have showered the Justice Department with demands for investigations or information on topics ranging from the baseball steroids scandal to allegations of rape by a former military contractor employee.

The letters also are an assertive move by the new attorney general, who was confirmed last month with the lowest level of Senate support in the past half century because of his refusal to say whether a form of simulated drowning known as waterboarding amounts to torture under U.S. law.

Mukasey replaced former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales, who left office in September after the furor over his handling of the firings of nine U.S. attorneys and allegations that he misled Congress in sworn testimony.

The CIA disclosed last week that it destroyed videotapes in 2005 depicting interrogation sessions for alleged al-Qaeda operatives Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, commonly known as Abu Zubaida, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Administration officials have said that lawyers at the Justice Department and the White House, including former counsel Harriet E. Miers, advised the CIA against destroying the tapes but that CIA lawyers ruled their preservation was not required.

The Justice Department announced Saturday it had joined the CIA's inspector general in launching a preliminary inquiry into the tape destruction, and prosecutors asked the CIA to preserve any related evidence.

Leahy and Specter asked Mukasey on Dec. 10 for "a complete account of the Justice Department's own knowledge of and involvement with" the tape destruction. The two senators included a list of 16 separate questions, including whether the Justice Department had offered legal advice to the CIA about the tapes or had communicated with the White House about the issue.

Durbin had sent a letter to Mukasey Dec. 7 asking whether an investigation into the tape destruction would be pursued. Conyers and three other House Democrats authored a similar letter on the same day.

Mukasey wrote to the lawmakers that Justice "has a long-standing policy of declining to provide non-public information about pending matters.

"This policy is based in part on our interest in avoiding any perception that our law enforcement decisions are subject to political influence," Mukasey wrote to Conyers and the others. "Accordingly, I will not at this time provide further information in response to your letter, but appreciate the Committee's interests in this matter."

The tape investigation is being led by Kenneth Wainstein, head of the Justice Department's National Security Division. Wainstein held his first substantive meeting on the case Wednesday with staffers at the CIA inspector general's office, according to a law enforcement official.

Several Democrats have raised questions about the propriety of having the inquiry run by the Justice Department, whose lawyers were involved in offering legal advice about the tapes, and the CIA inspector general, whose office reviewed the tapes before they were destroyed.

CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said last week that the inspector general's office examined the tapes in 2003 "as part of its look at the Agency's detention and interrogation practices."

Also yesterday, the beleaguered head of the Justice Department's Voting Rights Section disclosed in a letter to employees that he was being transferred to another job in the agency.

John K. Tanner said he was moving to the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices after nearly 32 years in the Civil Rights Division.

Tanner had come under fire for making a series of racially charged statements earlier this year, including a suggestion that black voters are not hurt as much as whites by voter identification laws because "they die first."

Tanner apologized for the "tone" of his remarks in House testimony, but stuck with his overall argument that demographic differences temper the impact of identification laws on minorities. Tanner also was criticized by Democrats for approving a Georgia voter identification law in 2005 that was struck down by a federal court as discriminatory.

Tanner is the subject of an investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility into his travel records and trips he approved for a subordinate, officials have said.

The move to shift Tanner out of civil rights could be seen as a move by Mukasey to tamp down criticism of the department's recent record. But Justice also filed a friend-of-the-court brief earlier this week siding with an Indiana identification law, which has been criticized by liberal groups and many voting experts.

Meanwhile, John Cook at Radar Online reports:

Behold, the Bush Administration in chart form: Federal spending on paper shredding has increased more than 600 percent since George W. Bush took office. This chart, generated by usaspending.gov, the U.S. government's brand spanking new database of federal expenditures, shows spending on "contracts for paper shredding services" going back to 2000. Click here for the full, heartbreaking breakdown. In 2000, the feds spent $452,807 to make unpleasant truths go away; by 2006, the "Cheney Effect" had bumped that number up to $2.9 million. And by halfway through 2007, the feds almost matched that number, with $2.7 million and counting. Pretty much says it all.

HELL BENT ON DESTRUCTION Shredding contracts during Bush/Cheney

Leahy & Specter Balk at Blanket Telecom Immunity

The Seattle Times reports:

The Senate Judiciary Committee's top Democrat and Republican expressed reluctance Wednesday to granting blanket immunity to telecommunications carriers sued for assisting the government's warrantless-surveillance program.

Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and the ranking Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., had said that before even considering such a proposal, they would need to see the legal documents underpinning the program, which began after the Sept. 11 attacks and were put under court oversight in January.

On Tuesday, the committee was given access to some of the documents. But Leahy said Wednesday that he had a "grave concern" about blanket immunity. The activities seem to be "in violation of the privacy rights of Americans" and of federal domestic-surveillance law, he said.

The immunity provision sought by the White House would wipe out about 40 lawsuits that accuse AT&T, Verizon Communications and Sprint Nextel of invading Americans' privacy and constitutional rights by assisting the government in domestic surveillance without a warrant.

Specter agreed that the "courts ought not to be closed" to such lawsuits.

I'm almost sorry Leahy and Specter telegraphed their concerns before they were given access to all of the documents. It seems unlikely now that the Bush administration would allow them access now, and will probably move into its standard campaign of rhetoric, charging opponents with "playing politics with Americans' security."

White House to Give Senate Panel Surveillance Program Documents

The Washington Post reports:

The White House agreed yesterday to give Senate intelligence committee members and staff access to internal documents related to its domestic surveillance program in a bid to win Democratic lawmakers' support for the administration's version of an intelligence measure.

The move was meant in part to defuse a months-long clash between Congress and the Bush administration over access to legal memoranda and presidential decisions underpinning the Terrorist Surveillance Program, which allowed the government to eavesdrop without court warrants on communications between people in the United States and abroad when one of the parties is a terrorism-related suspect.

Some of the documents had been demanded by Senate Judiciary Committee members as a condition for considering the administration's nomination of former judge Michael B. Mukasey as the nation's 81st attorney general. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the committee's chairman, dropped that condition weeks ago but said yesterday that he still wants to see the documents.

Leahy told reporters after a meeting with Mukasey yesterday that he nonetheless expects Mukasey "to be confirmed" after a nomination hearing today, at which Mukasey is to be escorted into the room by Leahy and the committee's ranking Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.). Mukasey is to be formally introduced by Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Schumer indicated after meeting separately with Mukasey yesterday that he expects the judge to promise to undertake a review of the department's legal justifications for the administration's counterterrorism policies, which are the subject of some of the documents made available to intelligence committee staff and members for review at the White House.

Mukasey has indicated that he strongly supports the administration's counterterrorism effort.

Committee member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who also sits on the Judiciary panel, said however that when one of her staff members reviewed the documents, "he wasn't impressed." She added that she was unsure whether the documents the staff member saw were exactly what Leahy was seeking.

Sen. Christopher S. Bond (Mo.), the intelligence committee's ranking Republican, was more positive. "We're getting the information I think we need."

But House Democrats, who plan to vote today on a bill that would restrict domestic surveillance powers more tightly than the administration wants, complained yesterday that they should have been permitted the same access.

"Although even these materials are far short of the information that Congress has requested for more than a year on this crucial subject, we are extremely disappointed that the available information is being withheld from the House," Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) said in a letter yesterday to White House counsel Fred F. Fielding.

Besides trying to quiet congressional accusations of a coverup, the administration wants in particular to win support for a legal provision providing immunity for telecommunications companies that have been sued for violating privacy rights when they assisted the government's domestic surveillance effort.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said that administration officials "routinely meet with members of Congress and their staffs to provide them with information they need when they are considering and drafting legislation." In this case, he said, members of the Senate intelligence panel "requested access to certain materials to assist their consideration" of relief for the companies.

In addition to seeking documents related to the surveillance program, Leahy has sought internal legal opinions related to torture issues involving terrorism suspects and testimony from White House advisers connected to the firing of nine U.S. attorneys last year.

Leahy said his questioning at the hearing today will be aimed at eliciting statements from Mukasey about the legality of torturing terrorism suspects and threats to the independence of federal prosecutors that impinge on their efforts to pursue cases regardless of political sensitivities. "How are you going to clean up this mess?" Leahy said he probably will ask Mukasey.

Mukasey has already sought to assure lawmakers in private that he will not let politics intrude on the department's decisions. "He will be light-years better than his predecessor," Leahy said, referring to former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales, who resigned in late August after making a series of statements about the attorney firings and surveillance programs that were disputed by his former colleagues and lawmakers from both parties.

Makes You Wanna Go Hmmmm......

Fellow Republicans Denounce Craig's Decision



Well, not all of them.

CQ reports:

Republicans indicated Thursday that they plan to make life in the Senate uncomfortable for Larry E. Craig.

After the Idaho senator announced his determination to remain in office, fellow Republicans raised the possibility of ejecting him from committees and holding public ethics hearings.

“This gets real now,” a Republican aide said. “I think a lot of people waited — gave him the benefit of the doubt until the judge ruled.”

Craig put his colleagues in a political bind Thursday when he did an about-face and said he would stay in office for the rest of the 110th Congress despite a judge’s refusal to allow him to withdraw his guilty plea in a restroom sex sting.

“I will continue my effort to clear my name in the Senate Ethics Committee — something that is not possible if I am not serving in the Senate,” Craig said.

Republican Senate leaders plan to confer during the chamber’s Columbus Day recess about how to cope with Craig’s decision. The consultations could result in his ejection from all of his committee assignments. Craig had already relinquished his status as ranking Republican on one committee and two subcommittees.

GOP leaders had requested an Ethics Committee investigation in August, shortly after learning that Craig had pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct after an undercover police officer interpreted some of Craig’s actions in a restroom as a solicitation for sex. The most extreme option available to that committee is recommending expulsion — something that hasn’t happened in the Senate since the Civil War.

“My guess is there will be” public ethics hearings, said John Ensign, R-Nev., the senator in charge of improving GOP election prospects in 2008. Republicans are defending 22 Senate seats, including several left open by retiring incumbents.

“I think it would be a mistake to put the Senate through an ethics investigation process that could potentially lead to public hearings,” Ensign said. “I think that he should do the right thing and keep his word.”

Last week, Craig backed off his earlier plan to resign as of Sept. 30, saying he wanted to remain “for now” and await the judge’s ruling on his request to retract his misdemeanor guilty plea.

Craig said Thursday he will not run for re-election next year. But having him in the Senate — and featured as the punch line of comedians’ jokes on national television — won’t help Ensign and others at the National Republican Senatorial Committee steer political attention to where they’d prefer it to be.

“This is not just an ordinary misdemeanor charge, and I think we all know that,” Ensign said. “You wouldn’t get this kind of attention here if this was an ordinary misdemeanor charge.”

Norm Coleman, R-Minn., who had been among the first to call for Craig’s resignation, said the Ethics Committee would deal with him now. “I’ll await their findings and recommendations,” said Coleman, who faces a tough re-election battle next year.

“I think most of us have made our views clear in the past that he made the right decision in stepping aside,” said John Thune, R-S.D. “It’s a distraction.”

The one public glimmer of tolerance came from Arlen Specter, R-Pa.

“Disorderly conduct is not moral turpitude, and it’s not a basis for leaving the Senate,” Specter said. “I think he makes a good point when he says he wants to clear his name in an Ethics Committee hearing.”

Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who chairs the Ethics Committee, said the panel will conduct a preliminary inquiry before making any conclusions about a full investigation or possible public hearings.

“We have just begun,” she said.

Stanley M. Brand, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who represents Craig, maintained that it would be unprecedented to punish a senator “for a misdemeanor occurring outside their official duties.”

Craig pleaded guilty in August to a disorderly conduct charge arising from an incident June 11 in a restroom at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. An undercover police officer, Sgt. Dave Karsnia, interpreted some of Craig’s bathroom-stall hand and foot motions as an invitation for sex.

On Sept. 1, with the guilty plea no longer a secret, Craig declared his intention to resign from the Senate as of Sept. 30. But Specter told Craig he had acted too hastily and should have fought the charges.

His initial decision to quit was supported by the Republican leadership.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., arrived at the Senate for a floor vote Thursday ready with a short reply to the inevitable question about the day’s developments. “That whole matter is before the Ethics Committee, so it will be dealt with, I assume, by Sen. Craig and the Ethics Committee,” he said.

The Ruling

In Minnesota, District Court Judge Charles A. Porter Jr. ruled that defendants do not have an absolute right to withdraw guilty pleas because “public policy favors the finality of judgments and courts are not disposed to encourage accused persons to ‘play games’ with the courts by setting aside judgments of conviction based upon pleas made with deliberation and accepted by the court with caution.”

Craig said he decided to plead guilty only to resolve the episode without publicity in his home state. Porter clearly didn’t buy that argument.

Meanwhile..., PennLive.com reports:

The last time U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., caught a ride about Air Force One, Pennsyltucky's senior senator violated two of the cardinal rules of traveling aboard the president's airplane.

He wandered back to talk with the press and criticized then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales during a July presidential visit to Philadelphia, thereby flouting the unwritten rules against hobnobbing with the press and criticizing the president or his team.

Despite his rule violations, Specter will once again be traveling in style Wednesday when he joins President Bush aboard Air Force One for Wednesday's quick flight from Washington, D.C. to Lancaster.

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr., D-Pa., will not be making the flight.

Bush will be addressing about 400 members of the Lancaster Chamber of Business and Industry in a town hall-style meeting about spending disagreements with Congress during an hour-long forum at the new Hempfield Twp. headquarters of the Jay Group Inc.

Though Specter disagrees with the president on many of the spending fights, it's protocol to invite the local lawmakers and senators for the trip. And with his approval rating hovering around 30 percent, the president can use all the friends he can get.

Besides, it's a short trip.

What's in it for Specter besides free plane rides aboard AF1?

Didn't Anybody Read The Goddamned Thing Before They Voted For It?

Yet More Power Shifted To the Executive and Hidden in the 'Small Print' in the Patriot Act

First it was the clause that allowed Gonzales to fill the fired U.S. attorney jobs with Bush loyalists, without having to go through Senate confirmation. Now it's a clause that places the Attorney General, like Mengele greeting the Jews at Auschwitz, deciding who shall live (go to the right, life in Auschwitz) and who shall die (to the left, death in the ovens).

The Washington Post reports:

Two senators have asked the Justice Department to delay new rules that would give Attorney General Alberto Gonzales authority to limit the time death row inmates spend on appeals before being executed.

The bipartisan request, in a letter from two of Gonzales' most vocal Senate critics, questions how strict the federal government will be in deciding whether states ensure that defendants in capital punishment cases have had competent legal help.

That's a task traditionally carried out by federal courts. But a little-noticed change last year in the anti-terrorism USA Patriot Act gives the attorney general the power to decide state requests for speedier appeals that generally run for years.

"States must be required to take meaningful steps to guarantee adequate representation of death row prisoners before certification occurs," said Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Arlen Specter, R-Pa., in their Aug. 2 letter to Gonzales. "This is especially important in light of the accelerated timing and abridged federal court review."

"It is crucial that the legislative changes to this complex and heavily litigated area of the law be successfully and appropriately implemented, especially given the tremendous stake for individual defendants," the senators wrote in the letter, which was obtained Tuesday.

The senators want Gonzales to shelve the rules _ which lay out requirements for states seeking to cut short inmates' time on death row _ until after Oct. 5 at the earliest to make sure they will include clear and specific guidelines. The Justice Department had planned to enact the rules following a public comment period that ends Sept. 24 _ what spokesman Erik Ablin said was already an extension on its original deadline.

The senators' request strikes at the heart of a complicated change in federal law that could affect the estimated 3,350 death row inmates in prisons around the country.

Gonzales formerly served as a state Supreme Court justice in Texas, a state that has aggressively pursued the death penalty in criminal cases. The attorney general also has been criticized for seeking capital punishment in cases in which his federal prosecutors have not sought it.

Until last year's change, Gonzales did not have authority to determine whether states qualified to speed the way death penalty cases are processed in state courts. The Patriot Act gave him new power to approve requests from states seeking mandatory deadlines for capital defendants who appealed their cases to federal courts.

Ablin said the new rules merely outline procedures that states will have to follow to qualify for the faster federal review.

"This has nothing to do with specific cases, and the attorney general has no authority to change the certification requirements, which are determined by statute," he said. Challenges to the attorney general's decision on whether a state qualifies would be reviewed by a federal appeals court in Washington.

At issue now is how much oversight Gonzales will give to states that claim they have gone beyond their constitutional duty, as is required as part of their request, in making sure death row defendants had adequate lawyers. The debate was first reported in Tuesday's editions of the Los Angeles Times.

The law only requires the U.S. attorney general to decide whether a state has a system in place to provide legal counsel to poor defendants appealing their death penalty sentences, the date it was set up, and whether there are any standards for determining the lawyers' competency. "There are no requirements for certification or for application of this chapter other than those expressly stated in this chapter," the law states.

That's not a good enough guarantee for critics of the death penalty or capital punishment defense attorneys.

"All a state has to do is report it has a system," said Kathryn Kase, co-chair of the death penalty committee for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "There seems to be no mechanism that's going to hold them to determining if a system is in fact in place, and if it functions so as to ensure that people are not wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death. That really should concern Americans."

Kase, a Houston attorney, said it takes an average of 11 years for information to become known about death row convicts who are ultimately found innocent. "We really are ensuring that information about innocents isn't coming to the surface. This is a way of burying our mistakes," she said.

The proposed deadlines also are problematic, as they could tie up federal courts already overburdened with growing caseloads. Under the rules, a U.S. District Court would have 15 months to decide on an inmate's appeal to stay an execution; federal appellate courts would have four months to rule on an appeal.

"That's remarkably fast _ most federal civil cases take longer than that," said Rory K. Little, a death penalty expert at Hastings College of Law in San Francisco who worked at the Justice Department during the Clinton administration.

Gonzales' recent battles with the Democratic-led Senate, leading to bipartisan calls for his resignation, could ultimately result in a softer stance toward death row inmates. Little said it was too soon to draw conclusions about the rules, especially since "they're not final yet."

"This attorney general in particular, trying to implement changes in what seems like a damaged Department of Justice is unfortunate," Little said. He added: "It's premature to think this is the end of the story. It's not."

This is a bloodthirsty group that should never have been let anywhere near positions of power over others. The question now remains whether Congress will clip the wings of this administration, or will Congress continue to let them run roughshod over civilization?

John Roberts's Health Never Came Up In Confirmation Hearings

There is no record of any discussion of the 1993 seizure or of Roberts's health in general during his confirmation hearings.

The Washington Post reports:

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was rushed to a hospital here Monday afternoon after suffering a seizure at his summer island home, a Supreme Court spokeswoman said.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who chaired the hearings, told CNN on Monday night that senators were told about the previous episode but did not find it serious enough to ask Roberts about.

Roberts, 52, fell on a dock after having a "benign idiopathic seizure," said Kathleen Landin Arberg, the court's public information officer. She said that Roberts has "fully recovered from the incident" but that he would remain at Penobscot Bay Medical Center here overnight for observation.

Arberg said that the chief justice, who has presided over the court for two terms, received minor scrapes from the fall but that a "thorough neurological evaluation . . . revealed no cause for concern."

She said he experienced a similar event in 1993 but had no recurrence until Monday.

Seizures are any sudden, abnormal electrical activity in the brain. While some are focused in one part of the brain, others can be generalized. Not all seizures involve convulsions. Arberg's description of a benign idiopathic seizure indicates an episode whose origins are unknown.

Newsweek reported in November 2005 that Roberts suffered a seizure in January 1993 while golfing. "It was stunning and out of the blue and inexplicable," Larry Robbins, a Justice Department colleague, told the magazine. Robbins said Roberts was not allowed to drive for several months after the seizure and took the bus to work. The magazine quoted a senior White House aide as describing the episode as an "isolated, idiosyncratic seizure."

There is no record of any discussion of the 1993 seizure or of Roberts's health in general during his confirmation hearings. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who chaired the hearings, told CNN on Monday night that senators were told about the previous episode but did not find it serious enough to ask Roberts about. Roberts has no known history of major illness.

Roberts, the youngest member of the Supreme Court, took office as chief justice in September 2005 after being nominated by President Bush to replace the late William H. Rehnquist.

Roberts's seizure occurred around 2 p.m., Arberg said, when he was stepping off a boat after doing errands near his home on Hupper Island, which is about halfway up the Maine coast.

Hupper Island is part of the village of Port Clyde, which is contained in the town of St. George, according to Town Manager John M. Falla. He said that the island is not connected to the town by bridge, and that Roberts was brought by private boat to the mainland and taken by ambulance to the hospital, about 20 miles away.

St. George Fire Chief Tim Polky told the Associated Press that Roberts was "conscious and alert when they put him in the rescue [vehicle] and took him to Penobscot Bay Medical Center."

The chief justice was admitted by an emergency room doctor and seen by Judd Jensen, a staff neurologist, said Chris Burke, the hospital's director of marketing and communications.

He said Roberts was "aware and alert" when he arrived at the community medical facility, which is nestled among trees on the edge of Rockport, a picturesque Maine village about 90 miles northeast of Portland. He declined to say what the chief justice's full neurological evaluation entailed.

Burke said some of Roberts's aides had visited the hospital more than a year ago, when the chief justice bought the nearby vacation home. "Folks came by and checked out the facilities. That's a normal precaution for anyone in his position," he said.

Burke said he thinks doctors consulted with Roberts's regular physicians in the Washington area during the chief justice's evaluation.

Roberts was resting in a regular patient room on Monday night and had some friends with him, Burke said.

"Most seizures last from 30 seconds to two minutes and do not cause lasting harm," according to background information posted online by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, part of the National Institutes of Health. "However, it is a medical emergency if seizures last longer than 5 minutes or if a person has many seizures and does not wake up between them."

While seizures can be the result of a brain disorder such as epilepsy, the institute notes that they can also be a consequence of fevers, head injuries or even medication side effects.

Roberts and his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, bought the Hupper Island house last summer from Steve Thomas, former host of the PBS home-improvement series "This Old House."

The Bangor Daily News reported last year that the house is about 225 feet from shore, with a right of way to the beach and a water view toward Port Clyde General Store on the mainland. The island has 20 to 30 homes and more than a mile of shoreline.

When Roberts was confirmed by the Senate on Sept. 29, 2005, by a vote of 78 to 22, he became the youngest chief justice in more than 200 years and the third-youngest ever to assume the office.

Since the court adjourned in late June, Roberts has taught at a law school summer program in Europe and attended an international judicial conference in Paris. He was back in Washington last week, and on Friday left work early to attend a party celebrating his daughter's seventh birthday. The Robertses have two young children.

Roberts was originally nominated to succeed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who announced in July 2005 that she was retiring. But upon Rehnquist's death, Bush decided to make Roberts his nominee for chief justice and later nominated Samuel A. Alito Jr. to replace O'Connor.

This is one more example of Democrats' failure, dereliction of duty, in checking the damage that Bush and Republicans have inflicted on the nation. John Roberts's nomination never should have gotten passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Roberts's seizure history would not have, nor should it have, eliminated him from serving on the highest court in the land. But failing to get Roberts on the record about his health history, under oath, demonstrates Democrats' inept efforts to block the Bush administration's agenda. Democrats rolled over for John Roberts' confirmation when there was abundant evidence that he was ideologically unsuited for the court. Patrick Leahy, Russ Feingold, Herb ("I will vote my hopes today and not my fears") Kohl all voted to pass Roberts's name out of committee and on.

For a lifetime seat on the U.S.S.C., Herb, you vote your fears.

As Joe Biden said when he voted against Roberts, "He will have more impact on our lives, in the future of our children's lives, than any of us and all of us combined."

These Democratic Senators voted to confirm Roberts: Max Baucus, Ben Nelson, Mark Pryor, Ken Salazar, Byron Dorgan, Herb Kohl, Patrick Leahy, Patty Murray, Jeff Bingaman, Jay Rockefeller, Bob Byrd, Tom Carper, Bill Nelson, Ben Johnson, Herb Kohl, Kent Conrad, Mary Landrieu, Ron Wyden, Chris Dodd, Blanche Lincoln, Joe Lieberman and Carl Levin.

Democrats consistently fail to convince Americans because Democrats don't even try.

To Bush-Cheney, Republican-Loyalty Is A One-Way Street . . . .

. . . . All Republicans are to bow, scrape and cave-in to the Neo-Cons.

The Bush administration won't oppose rescinding U.S. attorney hiring changes slipped into the Patriot Act Reauthorization bill passed last year, but first the legislation has to reach his desk, and certain Senate Republicans are blocking the way.

On Wednesday's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Alison Stewart talks with George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley about yet another crisis the Bush administration has created in government. Turley had some choice words about the provision that enabled Bush to bypass oversight and our elected officials who let them get away with it:

The AP's report:

The Bush administration, bowing to an uproar over its firing of eight federal prosecutors, won't oppose legislation changing the rules for replacing them, senators said Thursday.

"The administration would not object to the bill," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., referring to legislation to remove the administration's power to fill the vacancies without Senate confirmation. He spoke with reporters after a meeting involving Judiciary Committee senators and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Schumer, Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, the panel's senior Republican, said Gonzales also agreed to let five of his top aides involved in the firings talk with the committee.

The committee was prepared to authorize subpoenas for the officials.
Six of the eight ousted prosecutors told House and Senate committees on Tuesday they were dismissed without explanation. Some said the dismissals followed calls from members of Congress concerning sensitive political corruption investigations.

Others said they feared the Justice Department would retaliate against them for talking with reporters and giving lawmakers information about their dismissals.

The meeting with Gonzales occurred a few hours after Leahy's committee agreed to postpone a vote on subpoenas that would have compelled five of Gonzales' aides who were involved in the firings to testify about the details, publicly and under oath.

Tuesday's eight hours of hearings by the Senate panel and the House Judiciary Committee turned into a display of mudslinging. The fired prosecutors insisted they had stellar records and didn't deserve the Justice Department saying most of them were replaced for poor performance.

At the House hearing, a Justice Department official recited before TV cameras the shortcomings of each of the ousted U.S. attorneys.

Gonzales came under harsh criticism during Thursday's Senate committee meeting, even from senators of his own party. Specter suggested Gonzales might suffer a similar professional fate as the fired prosecutors.

"One day there will be a new attorney general, maybe sooner rather than later," Specter said.

In private, Specter offered Gonzales some stiff advice: Acknowledge that the matter is serious.

"And that he take the next step and realize that there is a significant blemish on the records of these individuals," Specter told reporters, referring to the prosecutors. Further, "That he acknowledge that the problem arose because he failed to state the reasons why these people were asked to resign."

Gonzales refused to comment as he exited the private meeting.

Democrats felt the administration had taken advantage of a change in the Patriot Act that took effect a year ago, which lets the attorney general appoint federal prosecutors indefinitely, without Senate confirmation.

Gonzales has denied that was his intent and said he will submit the names of all appointees to the Senate approval process.

Nonetheless, he told senators at Thursday's meeting that the administration would not try to block legislation designed to reverse the change in the law. Sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the bill would impose a 120-day deadline on attorneys general for the nomination and Senate confirmation of appointees to any of the nation's 94 federal prosecutors' posts. After 120 days, appointment authority would go to federal district courts.

Previously, the administration said 120 was an unreasonably short time.

Apparently, it's not as done a deal as the AP is reporting.

The Washington Post reports:

Under the previous system, the local federal district court would appoint a temporary replacement until a permanent candidate was named and confirmed by the Senate.

Democrats and some Republicans said they were concerned the Justice Department was attempting to use the new provision to appoint political cronies without Senate oversight and that the firings were a means to that end. Gonzales and other Justice officials have argued that the old replacement system was inefficient and unconstitutional.

Democrats have attempted to attach to several pieces of legislation language to remove the provision, but they have been blocked repeatedly by Kyl. Senate aides cautioned that Gonzales's assertion that the administration will stand down did not guarantee passage, as Senate Republicans could still block the measure.

But after their meeting, Leahy said Gonzales assured him Bush will sign the bill if it reaches his desk. "My understanding is the president would," Leahy said.

For the next two years of the Bush administration and the upcoming elections, we can expect all Republicans to fight tooth-and-nail against everything and anything that they think could be perceived as favoring Democrats. Republicans have been successful at getting everything that they've gone after by overreaching and never backing down. By wearing down all opposition, which hasn't been all that much when it's been from the Democrats, who play by Queensbury rules.

Democrats have got to push for the rescission of the entire Patriot Act, and every last anti-populist piece of legislation that Bush and the GOP has gotten passed these last years. Canada has rescinded their version of the Patriot Act, enacted in the days after 9/11/01, but our abominable assault on civil rights and our Constitution remains. Democrats enable Bush and Republicans to remain in power when they allow the fear-mongering that has paralyzed Americans' good sense. Democrats have got to learn 21st century street-fighting, how to stir more than one pot at a time, and start putting in more than 3 days a week working.