by hilzoy
I have now skimmed more of the recently released DoJ documents than I’d care to admit to, and they are a puzzling lot. Boring, for one thing: there are approximately a million trillion versions of the Talking Points on US Attorneys, Paul McNulty’s testimony, a compilation of relevant editorials, etc. I suspect that the document dump reflects a “ha ha, you wanted documents, we’ll drown you in documents!!” approach — it’s hard to see how else to account for the fact that several very tedious email exchanges are printed out, in their entirety, about ten times. (Bear in mind that every single email — even just “sounds great” — quotes the entire previous exchange.)
Still, there are a few striking points. One is the virtual absence of the Attorney General. I seem to recall hearing somewhere (can’t recall where) that he is not a fan of email, so the lack of emails from him is perhaps not surprising. But I’ve read through Part 8 of the documents posted so far — easily over 1,000 pages — and there are no memos from him, and only a very few mentions of him (as in: the Judge wants this, the Attorney General is upset about that, etc.) If I omit things like the million and one copies of the USAttorneys’ resignation letters, which are addressed to Gonzales, and other pro forma things, I think I could count the mentions of him that I encountered on my fingers. And many of those come after the scandal has erupted, not while decisions are being taken.
This is really odd. The people writing the emails and letters are often quite senior people in the DoJ, and yet the man who runs the place is almost never mentioned at all, in a plan that might end up costing him his job. I can think of two reasons for this. First, correspondence in which he plays a more prominent role is being held back; second, he actually doesn’t do much, and the DoJ is run largely without him.
Whether or not the first is true, I can’t see how the second could not be. Even if we were to assume that there are also lots of documents that the DoJ is cleverly concealing, since they reveal Gonzales’ secret perfidy, there are just too many decisions being taken with (apparently) no input from him. For the most part, people don’t even mention needing to run things by him; it’s as though he doesn’t exist.
This doesn’t surprise me much. Gonzales is the ur-Harriet Miers, and if people took the Attorney General’s job as seriously as they take Supreme Court Justices, he would never have been confirmed. Still, it was pretty stunning to see how complete a nonentity he seems to be in the Department he allegedly runs.
Also: you can see Kyle Sampson not just lying, but drafting dishonest letters for his superiors to send to Harry Reid under their own name, in part 3.7 of the documents, pp. 48-9 and 53-5 (pdf). He tells Gonzales that “I am not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the Attorney General’s decision to appoint Griffin”, and puts almost the same statement in his draft of a letter sent to Harry Reid under the signature of Richard Hertling, the Assistant Acting Attorney General. I honestly can’t imagine why anyone would hire him after this, except for political reasons. And if someone does hire him to curry political favor, I can’t imagine they’ll trust him much.
Last bit of news: I see that the Senate has voted to repeal the change in the way US Attorneys are replaced — the one that was snuck into the PATRIOT Act. Good for them.
For those curious, the vote was 94-2, with Bond (R-CO) and Hagel (R-NE) as the only nay votes. Biden, McCain, Mikulski, and the recovering Johnson did not vote.
I do wonder why if Bush wants to bypass the Senate on USA appointments he doesn’t just do his usual recess appointment thing. Maybe he’ll do that for the AG.
Froomkin seems to think this latest dump is a bunch of chaff to distract from the last one.
They could at least offer up a really good distraction, like Cheney resigning for health reasons.
Does the categorical imperative really allow one to write “snuck”?
And WTF was Hagel thinking? I was expecting to see my own Thad Cochran or somesuch.
Hey, what’s wrong with “snuck”? Now, if she’d written “squozen” or “snozen”, you might have something.
Hmm:
Bond (R-CO)
Typo? Bond is from Missouri.
Yes, typo (mine). Thanks.
The White House will allow Rove and Miers to testify about the US Attorney Purge. But they can’t be under oath. It has to be behind closed doors and no transcript can be kept.
In other words “we reserve the right to lie to you and then later dispute our own lies.” Lovely.
TPM says the President will speak at 5:45 on the matter. If Gonzales is resigning I’m going to get whiplash.
it’s hard to see how else to account for the fact that several very tedious email exchanges are printed out, in their entirety, about ten times. (Bear in mind that every single email — even just “sounds great” — quotes the entire previous exchange.)
SOP.
True. That sort of thing can make you lose your mind during discovery — the same email string shows up over and over and over and over. Even better is when there’s something privileged on it, so you need to redact the same text over and over and over and over…
Pooh/LB – yeah, but I can just see the outrage if one of these emails had been missed – “you didn’t include every email from person X’s computer?!!? What else did you not include, counselor?”
Yes, trailing the whole previous conversation off the end of each e-mail message is normal in offices. I can’t believe that academia, even at Hilzoy’s august institution, is entirely populated by conscientious trimmers and top-quoters.
Even better is when there’s something privileged on it, so you need to redact the same text over and over and over and over…
But that’s what paralegals are for. (Says the former paralegal…)
A website I’m involved with exists mainly to allow people to find interesting stuff among literally millions of pages of chaff, so I’m familiar with that feeling (though fortunately I’m dealing with the technical side of things and so don’t have to read the documents that much).
Ick. I feel dirty when I (infrequently) top-post, to respond to my advisor; I don’t know if I could survive in an office environment…
In other words “we reserve the right to lie to you and then later dispute our own lies.” Lovely.
Leahy’s response was, if you read between the lines, “No, you’re doing it our way. Either volunteer or get subpoenaed. It’s all the same to me, but I believe in being polite. You have until Thursday morning to work out that you have no say in the matter.”
I hope Leahy sticks to his guns on this. The 9/11 commission gave in too easily in the testimony from Bush and Cheney. In fact, I really hesitate to use the word testimony.
I’m with you there, John. A commenter at Digby’s was laying out scenarios if the WH resists the subpoenas. He was pretty confident that enforcing them would take a Senate vote, and if that’s subject to a cloture vote, would we be able to get 60…?
I’m expecting the 5:45 Bush thing to be an expression of defiance about subpoena’d testimony, etc., not announcing Gonzales’ resignation. But you never know.
I’m expecting the 5:45 Bush thing to be an expression of defiance about subpoena’d testimony, etc., not announcing Gonzales’ resignation. But you never know.
TPMMuck notes that CNN said he was expected to announce that Gonzales had his full support. Chances he mentions “September the 11th” at some point?
True. That sort of thing can make you lose your mind during discovery — the same email string shows up over and over and over and over. Even better is when there’s something privileged on it, so you need to redact the same text over and over and over and over…
Hey wait, are you In My Offiz Watching My Redakshuns? In other news, the partner I’m working for wrote to say that the Hawaiian vacation is going very well.
Wow, Bush compares congressional hearings to “show trials” while he has people “voluntarily” confessing to lists of crimes in Guantanamo Bay.
Bush compares congressional hearings to “show trials”
Well, they can be show trials – but yes, Bush asserting that while running wholesale show trials in Gittmo is a bit much.
Did he mention “September the 11th”?
hee, Bush:
We will not go along with a partisan fishing expedition aimed at honorable public servants.
Not unless he’s orchestrating it, of course.
Ugh: and all this time I thought our expedition was aimed at Rove, Miers, and Gonzales …
I can think of two reasons for this.
I can think of a third. He was aware that what he was involved with was questionable and possibly illegal, and he didn’t want to leave a paper trail.
Thanks –
oh yeah, I know from repetitive documents. I think they grab every relevant email from everyone’s documents, so if 10 people are on the exchange, you get 10 copies, and if people reply all and don’t delete the rest of the string…fun stuff.
But that’s what paralegals are for. (Says the former paralegal…)
Sadly, true (says the guy still stuck in the paralegal ghetto).
A Mac user ought to let Spotlight index the files and then go trolling for keywords that way.
Er, assuming the pdf’s contain machine-readable text and not bitmap text.
Okay, scratch that, they are images. In that case, someone should send the PDFs through an OCR engine, and into files, and then index *those* with Spotlight.
Unfortunately these are scanned paper documents, so you have to run OCR of some sort to get text to index. Still possibly worth doing, but fewer people have the software.
And I see you realized that as I was writing.
Unfortunately these are scanned paper documents, so you have to run OCR of some sort to get text to index. Still possibly worth doing, but fewer people have the software.
Someone already did it.
Congress says it will issue subpeonas; Bush says he will refuse to obey them. That’s a clear line drawn in the sand.
Congress, if it wants to be able to fulfill its oversight duties, has to press the issue. It has to be ready to find Bush, Gonzales, et al. in contempt.
Bush, if he wants to continue pushing Executive Privilege, will have to defy the contempt order as well as the subpeonas.
Where things get really dicey is, the agent responsible for acting on the subpeonas and the contempt order is… the Justice Department, and the US Attorneys’ Office(s).
Does anyone think Gonzales will honor subpeonas or contempt orders which his own conduct, and his boss’ conduct, necessitated in the first place? He will not. Bet on it.
And what Congress does at that point is… go to the courts, or go for impeachment (of Gonzales, surely; and possibly Bush) because at that point, there’s really nothing else it can do.
This is where the rubber meets the road.
This is where the rubber meets the road.
Perhaps Bush will leave office the way he entered after all, with a decision of the US Supreme Court. Or perhaps he’s done enough to stack the deck in his favor?
CaseyL, unfortunately I don’t think the congressional leadership can do what needs to be done on their own. And there’s no way that enough Republicans will go along — they’ve been content to give away congressional power all through this administration, and I see no reason for them to stop now. Hell, there are probably a fair number of Democrats who won’t go along.
I’d be glad to be proven wrong on that.
Ugh: and all this time I thought our expedition was aimed at Rove, Miers, and Gonzales …
Yes, but ours is not a fishing expedition but a harpooning expedition – which the President, being a vegan, is just not going to go along with.
Well, there are certainly precedents for dragging White House officials and aides in via subpeona to testify before Congress. And I’m not sure how many Republicans would line up with Bush on this one, since he’s no longer an asset to them.
The Committees issue subpeonas, so that depends on how good the leadership of said Committees is. Leahy in the Senate and, I think, Conyers in the House – have both been spoiling for a fight for a long time. I’d be surprised and disappointed if they can’t get subpeonas out of Committee.
A contempt order (for refusing to obey the subpeonas) might be trickier, since I think the whole House and Senate have to pass that.
The only thing that gives me a little hope is that for once our side has the simple argument that witnesses should be under oath, while theirs has to explain the nuances of why it’s important that they say what they have to say in secret, without swearing to tell the truth, and without any records. That should help with public perception of the struggle, especially since the conditions coincidentally happen to be those that minimize any possibility of holding people accountable for what they say.
The argument that it’s not a violation of executive privilege for them to show up, but it would be if they were under oath seems bizarre. But they did get away with it earlier, that time when Bush brought along Cheney to hold his hand.
If bush insists that it happens not under oath, no transcripts, in private, Congress should counter that, in that case, they’ll bring someone in from Gitmo to do the questioning.
“Someone already did it.”
Thanks!
Spotlight makes quick work of searching, even with the split-up version rather than the all-in-one-pdf version.
Doesn’t it depend on what they are asking? For example, whether it is with regard to executive powers? I know that on Legal Fiction we kicked this issue around a few times, and when one branch of government is asking for information from another branch of government, some things are reasonable, and others are not.
Congress gets up in arms when the congresional office of Rep. Jefferson is raided by the FBI after they find $90,000 dollars in his freezer. No one seems to think that Congress could subpeona a USSC justice to see what happened in deliberations. Most people accept that presidents need to have unvarnished opinions offered in order to make decisions, and therefore some level of executive privilege is warranted.
I find it hard to square the Congressional position on the Jefferson investigation violating separation of powers with the idea that Congress can investigate anything.
Well, jrudkis how do you square Clinton allowing his WH aides to testify before Congress on 47 different occasions?
Bush: “And if the staff of the President operated in constant fear of being hauled before various Committees to discuss internal deliberations, the President would not receive candid advice and the American people would be ill served.”
Question: Did you personally have deliberations about the purge?
Anybody with a press pass? Please?
As a mistake and capitulation to another branch of government? Just as Congress cannot cede its Constitutional power to the president and impact a future Congress, one executive cannot reduce the Constitutional power of a future President.
And I think it matters regarding what the probe is about. Congress can probably subpeona a USSC clerk regarding an alleged murder at the court house. But cannot subpeona one regarding inherent powers of the Court. The AG’s work at the pleasure and appointment of the president, as part of the executive. it is an inherent executive power to fire them.
jrudkis: where in the Constitution is executive privilege mentioned?
My only worry is that Republicans in Congress may see the confrontation as an opportunity to rally around their President, something they are not really willing or able to do in respect of the Iraq situation. Other than to block initiatives by the Democrats for which they aren’t yet really paying a price.
Right with the part where USSC deliberations and Congressional offices are privileged.
My point exactly. (Although I seem to recall that Congressional offices have a stronger case.)
Where does the subpeona power of Congress come from? Or even the investigational power? Does the executive need an explicit power to counter an assumed one?
I don’t see where the offices have a stronger case at all. Legislators are protected during attendance and transport during sessions, there is no mention of their offices being protected. And Felony is excepted.
They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.
Kos has a post up claiming that there is a gap of roughly 18 days, from mid November to early December, in the e-mails released by the Department of Justice.
I must admit that I’m finding this story more than a little interesting.
Just as Congress cannot cede its Constitutional power to the president and impact a future Congress, one executive cannot reduce the Constitutional power of a future President.
At some point, though, history and text actually make a difference, or you’re just asserting a right to have the Constitution mean whatever you want it to mean.
Never in the history of the Republic has anyone recognized the principle that Presidential aides can’t be compelled to testify before Congress. Now, of course we haven’t had 220 years of Congressional subpoenas, but still, I’ll put the principle of inter-branch oversight up against your nonhistory any day.
I thought the Congressional position on the Jefferson raid was just as silly as you did, but still, at least they had the legitimate argument that this sort of thing simply hasn’t been done in the past. In fact, one of the historical abuses which concerned the Founding Fathers was that, in England, the King would routinely send his goons to ransack Parliament and harass legislators who weren’t doing his bidding. So at least there was a reasonable argument on paper, even if I still think they were being silly.
Per Glenn Greenwald:
“Most of us want no part of a president who is cynical enough to use the majesty of his office to evade the one thing he is sworn to uphold the rule of law.”—Tony Snow, 3/29/1998
A keeper.
I’m with Andy McCarthy. I would like to see unautorized leaks prosecuted too.
How did the Swift program get leaked?
What about the CIA pilots. How did the information about them get leaked?
I think Jay Rockefeller, Jimmy Carter, John Kerry, Howard Dean violated the Logan Act. The FBI should subpeona them.
And yet, they haven’t. How frustrating. Time to fire some folks at the FBI!
Kos has a post up claiming that there is a gap of roughly 18 days, from mid November to early December, in the e-mails released by the Department of Justice.
Are they trying to remake watergate shot-for-shot like Gus Van Sant and “Psycho?”
Maybe it is time that “The house that Jack built” was updated to the *current* George…
DaveC, don’t you think it’s a little ridiculous to take the instances when the administration changed course at the last minute specifically to avoid judicial scrutiny of its bogus arguments and cite them as evidence of Democratic sympathies in the DOJ? J. Michael Luttig could see what was going on. Is he a closet liberal?
I’ve wondered about the lack of indictment of Jefferson as well. Perhaps the administration is enjoying watching the problems he causes House Democrats, which would go away if they’d indicted him and thus allowed him to be excluded from positions without accusations of inconsistent treatment and racism. Or maybe the charges are bogus — an idea I’d initially dismissed out of hand but have started to consider slightly more thinkable as the time drags on, and with recent revelations.
I’m expecting the 5:45 Bush thing to be an expression of defiance about subpoena’d testimony, etc., not announcing Gonzales’ resignation. But you never know.
In Central Europe noone would risk a political statement with any connection to “5:45”.
It’s on the same level as “Noone has the intention…” 😉
There’s now reams of evidence that the Bush administration really was concerned about Carol Lam’s record on immigration and gun cases. See this post and the first comment.
now that Patterico has throw up his hands in disgust, will his followers do the same ?
s/throw/thrown/g
I have mostly stayed out of this fray, but just one comment. I have no doubt that at least one and maybe a couple of the fired USAs were low performers, and Lam was probably one of those.
And it is easy to muddy the waters by focusing on those few, and Patterico has tended to do so.
On a side point, I have tried to read the Patterico columns to keep an even perspective and he really appears to be a sincere person. However, he tends to display his overall bias and disingenuousness by constantly saying things like “the media and the Democtratic Party, but I repeat myself.”
This tends to make me view anything else he says with a great deal of skepticism.
I think Lam’s record on immigration was right in line with the administration’s policies (guest workers, some sort of amnesty, etc.) – until they turned on a dime in the run up to the 2006 elections and decided they were all about enforcement and fences and suddenly Lam made them look bad.
And what’s with the idea that she wasn’t prosecuting enough gun cases? Does the NRA know the administration’s position on this?
It’s clear that there were legitimate concerns about Lam’s record on enforcement cases. It’s not at all clear that this was the primary reason she was replaced, given that:
1) There’s no evidence to this point that anyone at DOJ ever talked to her about it;
2) As Sen. Feinstein has noted, the very next day after Lam notified the DOJ of pending search warrants in the Wilkes/Foggo investigation, Sampson sent an email to the White House asking to discuss “the real problem that we have right now with Carol Lam” – which is obviously a reference to something other than an ongoing issue involving immigration enforcement;
3) Sampson said the problem “leads me to conclude that we should have someone ready to be nominated on 11/18, the day her 4-year term expires.” Considering they had no problem firing other US Attorneys in the middle of their term, the only reason you’d wait for her term to expire naturally is if, for some reason, it was very important to you that it look like an innocuous end-of-term replacement.
Aunt Harriet and Uncle Karl have been invited to stop by the House to tell some of their wondrous stories. i wonder if Grumpy Grampa George will lock them in the woodshed till fall…
Thanks for actually considering the evidence, Steve.
Here’s why I disagree with your analysis:
1. The mere fact that no one talked to Lam about immigration (if that’s the case) isn’t dispositive here, or even all that relevant. She was in office for a little over four years, and her term was up. When the President can look at a four-year track record that clearly shows a prosecutor’s philosophy and approach, the President has no obligation whatsoever to give her a second chance to completely revamp her office in a second four-year term.
2) As Sen. Feinstein has noted, the very next day after Lam notified the DOJ of pending search warrants in the Wilkes/Foggo investigation, Sampson sent an email to the White House asking to discuss “the real problem that we have right now with Carol Lam” – which is obviously a reference to something other than an ongoing issue involving immigration enforcement;
This isn’t “obviously” a reference to the ongoing searches at all. First, the email in question was sent to Bill Kelley on May 11, 2006, “Per your inquiry yesterday after JSC.” It is unknown whether Bill Kelley’s “inquiry” came before or after the “pending search warrants” — or whether these guys would even have known about the search warrants. We have a large federal government that experiences important legal developments constantly, and DOJ lawyers aren’t omniscient, such that they are constantly up-to-the-minute on everything that happens anywhere in the country.
Second, if you look at the documents compiled at the Patterico link, Kyle Sampson and Bill Mercer, in private emails, talked exclusively about Lam’s record on immigration cases, throughout May and June of 2006. This was all just a smokescreen because they thought that their emails would be publicly disclosed someday? Come on.
3) Sampson said the problem “leads me to conclude that we should have someone ready to be nominated on 11/18, the day her 4-year term expires.” Considering they had no problem firing other US Attorneys in the middle of their term, the only reason you’d wait for her term to expire naturally is if, for some reason, it was very important to you that it look like an innocuous end-of-term replacement.
Be specific here: Who was “fired” in the “middle of their term”? Every other document that I’ve seen discusses the end-date of the four-year term for each of the US Attorneys at issue here (see, e.g., page 20-21 here). The reason that “you’d wait for her term to expire naturally” is because that was the procedure for everyone.
Moreover, what neither you nor any other liberal blogger seems to comprehend is that removing Lam would never have had any effect on any of her ongoing investigations/prosecutions. She had over 100 prosecutors working in her office, and no matter who the replacement is, it’s just not the case that the replacement could ditch a high-profile corruption investigation that several career prosecutors were working on.
As Andy McCarthy said, “In 18 years as a prosecutor I served under six different U.S. attorneys. The cases are investigated and prosecuted by the assistant U.S. attorneys. In all the changes of administrations I experienced, I can’t remember a single time when the transition resulted in a major investigation — especially a corruption investigation — being shut down. . . . New U.S. attorneys just don’t come in and knock over all the furniture — not as a rule.”
Or let me put it like this: All of these US Attorneys were appointed by Bush near the beginning of his first term. Which ones do you think were still “in the middle of their term” at the end of 2006?
Just noticed in the Patterico thread that something is relevant to Hilzoy’s point about Gonzales.
I think I could count the mentions of [Gonzales] that I encountered on my fingers. And many of those come after the scandal has erupted, not while decisions are being taken.
Lo and behold, there’s a June 1, 2006 email that mentions that Gonzales was concerned about Lam’s performance on immigration cases, and was threatening her removal for precisely that reason:
Steve, notice that this email shows that the AG actually was considering the removal of Lam before her four-year term was up.
Without talking about the merits concerning the firing I think that email smells bad.
For me it sounds like “We need to improve our image with certain people (it’s an election year, you know). Concentrate on that!”
In other words to me that looks like just another case of using law enforcement for mainly political means.
That might not be illegal in the strict sense but does nothing to increase my confidence.
Moreover, what neither you nor any other liberal blogger seems to comprehend is that removing Lam would never have had any effect on any of her ongoing investigations/prosecutions.
I think I would have no problem believing this sentence if it ended “under any Administration other than this one.”
John Doe, notice that they didn’t actually do any of the things outlined in the e-mail.
Your sense of smell is too sensitive. Every administration inevitably thinks about the politics of this issue — i.e., whether the administration could be depicted as having let significant crimes slip through the cracks. Pick any Democrats you can think of in the entire country to be President and AG, and they will ask themselves about the political results of prioritizing certain prosecutions over others.
This isn’t “obviously” a reference to the ongoing searches at all.
I didn’t say it was “obviously” a reference to the ongoing searches. I said it was “obviously” a reference to something other than the long-standing immigration issue.
First, the email in question was sent to Bill Kelley on May 11, 2006, “Per your inquiry yesterday after JSC.”
The email clearly discusses two separate things. First, it says “per your inquiry,” here’s a copy of that email I sent last month. Second, it says “please call me to discuss various matters.” There’s no indication that the “inquiry yesterday” had anything to do with Carol Lam.
Be specific here: Who was “fired” in the “middle of their term”?
I think you’re right about this. I withdraw the point.
I’m perfectly open, by the way, to the possibility that the evidence may show Lam’s firing was legit. She seems to present the strongest case for “performance-related” issues, which is probably why many people choose to focus on her and ignore the less favorable cases. However, I think the May 11 email still needs to be addressed.
notice that they didn’t actually do any of the things outlined in the e-mail.
First of all, you don’t know that. Someone might have had a phone call with Lam that isn’t mentioned in one of the documents. Second of all, the administration did follow through with the latter item on the list — removing Lam.
Third of all, your point is irrelevant. Maybe you live in a world where everyone always follows through 100% of the time on every initial thought that is jotted down in an email, and whenever they fail to do so or change their mind, that means that they were lying. In my world, people talk about all kinds of things in emails — and then later they decide to take a different approach, or maybe they don’t get around to something. That doesn’t mean that their underlying goal or concern is a lie.
Close italics
Has anyone called the administration on their executive privilege b.s., especially with respect to their “compromise” offer of “we want to lie and have no record so later we can lie some more”? Specifically, if the point of executive privilege is to let the President receive confidential advice (which I believe the Decider™ referred to yesterday), then it is just as undermined with their compromise offer as it would be in open hearings?
I didn’t say it was “obviously” a reference to the ongoing searches. I said it was “obviously” a reference to something other than the long-standing immigration issue.
Thanks for clarifying the point. I still disagree, however — Sampson and Kelley had obviously had a conversation on the previous day at some sort of meeting. A more likely explanation is that Kelley, who doesn’t seem to have been closely involved in the attorney issue, said something about Lam that indicated that he didn’t understand the issue. Maybe he thought Lam’s removal was just about the issue of gun cases, for example. So Sampson could easily have responded with, “Let me tell you about the real problem,” which would then refer to the same immigration issue that was the subject of just about EVERYTHING that was said about Lam.
So for the Democrats’ (i.e., Hilzoy’s) theory to be true, this is what you have to believe: Over a period of more than a year, everyone is chattering about Lam’s lack of prosecution of immigration cases. All of the California congressmen write a letter about it. Feinstein writes a letter about it. Emails and official memoes fly back and forth analyzing the incredible drop in prosecutions under Lam. The only other issue that anybody mentions is that she also failed to prosecute enough gun cases (i.e., about 12, compared to over 100 in similar jurisdictions elsewhere).
In the midst of all this, Sampson writes all of one email that doesn’t expressly refer to “immigration.” Instead, it vaguely refers to the “real problem” with Lam.
Because this email came out one day after Lam’s office served search warrants in an ongoing investigation, what Sampson really meant is that these search warrants were the “real problem,” meaning that this whole thing was a huge political conspiracy to get rid of the search warrants.
But rather than removing Lam immediately, they wait until about 7 months later, long after the search warrants in question were water under the bridge. What’s more, all of the subsequent communications refer to immigration. The AG, for example, is described as wanting Lam removed if she doesn’t shape up on the immigration issue.
Do you see how baseless this conspiracy theory is? All that your side has is a strained interpretation of one vague phrase in one email. On the other side, we now know that there were dozens of communications both within the Dept. of Justice and from Congress indicating that everyone at all levels was displeased with Lam’s failure to prosecute immigrant smugglers and gun traffickers.
I’m perfectly open, by the way, to the possibility that the evidence may show Lam’s firing was legit.
I wish you get more liberals to share in your open-mindedness as to the evidence here.
She seems to present the strongest case for “performance-related” issues, which is probably why many people choose to focus on her and ignore the less favorable cases.
Fair enough. On the other hand, I just haven’t heard enough about many of the other cases. The Lam case, it seems to me, is being highlighted on this blog and elsewhere as perhaps the chief example of alleged “corruption,” i.e., firing somebody for improper political reasons. And yet even the most cursory examination of the evidence shows that this charge is, at best, almost completely unsubstantiated.
John Doe: “the Democrats’ (i.e., Hilzoy’s) theory ”
Do I have a theory? Please let me know what it is. I do believe that the administration has been unbelievably inept about this (with the 18 day gap being just the latest thing they’ve done that might have been designed to prolong this.) I believe that they have clearly shown that Alberto Gonzales is an incompetent manager, and that Kyle Sampson is pretty much flat-out lying in some of the stuff in the document dump, as noted above.
I also think that firing attorneys in this fashion, not at the beginning of a new President’s term (which I understand to be standard) but in the middle, is highly unusual, and that the administration’s claims of executive privilege requiring no transcripts for Rove et al are silly.
I was not, however, aware of having taken a position on anything else.
The Lam case, it seems to me, is being highlighted on this blog and elsewhere as perhaps the chief example of alleged “corruption,” i.e., firing somebody for improper political reasons.
The chief example? How about David Iglesias, who got calls from two Republican lawmakers asking if he would be indicting any Democrats before the November election, and then got added shortly thereafter to the list of prosecutors to be fired?
How about John McKay, who was constantly the subject of complaints from big Republican donors who were outraged that he wouldn’t go after Democrats in connection with the disputed 2004 governor’s race?
Maybe you’re hearing all about Carol Lam because you’re reading a bunch of blogs that choose to focus on Carol Lam. Iglesias has an op-ed in today’s NYT, so it’s not like his situation is buried in obscurity. His allegations, if true, are absolutely damning.
I was not, however, aware of having taken a position on anything else.
email is slow today. but, be assured, your new positions have been assigned. be prepared to defend them!
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002836.php
Seems to shoot down a number of Doe’s claims wrt to Lam
Seems to shoot down a number of Doe’s claims wrt to Lam
hmmm…is that her politicizing her office?
It’s not politicizing your office to follow instructions as to what your prosecutorial priorities should be. The DOJ, and by extension the President, are entitled to set those broad policies. What they’re not allowed to do, without interfering with the concept of prosecutorial discretion, is to give orders like “prosecute this person” “don’t prosecute this person” and so forth.
But if the US Attorneys were supposed to be completely independent decisionmakers, their positions would be civil service jobs, as opposed to Presidential appointments. They’re still expected to be on board with the administration’s broad priorities, but within those constraints they’re independent.
Steve – I don’t disagree with your point about the USA’s, but I expect the right’s talking point on this email will be “see, she’s politicizing her office herself, so she should have been fired.” (not that anyone could tell from my comment)
Hilzoy,
Direct your attention to this recent post. After quoting two bits about Lam, you agree with Josh Marshall that “this is the big one.” After another quote about Lam, you add, “What this is about is an attempt to subvert the system of justice.”
You were merely attempting to suggest that the firing of Lam was “unusual” and/or “inept”? Really? How is the average reader supposed to glean that from your remarks?
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002836.php Seems to shoot down a number of Doe’s claims wrt to Lam
Not so. The post itself points out that Lam’s willingness to “change course” referred to media strategy, not to prosecutions.
Note that the latest TPM link disproves the speculation that no one ever talked to Lam about the immigration problem.
How is that relevant to this administration (and the recently departed Republican-controlled Congress)? If things never happen that don’t happen “as a rule”, then how many events of the past six years must have been hallucinations?
Note that the latest TPM link disproves the speculation that no one ever talked to Lam about the immigration problem.
Who is it that claimed “no one” ever talked to Lam about immigration? Quite clearly, Rep. Issa was waging an open war against her in the media and elsewhere. The point is, there’s no evidence that anyone from the DOJ ever “woodshedded” her as was proposed, or told her that she needed to focus more resources on immigration. Whether a Congressman publicly complained about her is not on point.
Ugh: Has anyone called the administration on their executive privilege b.s….?
Yes, the press briefing was pretty brutal, I gather. Tony Snow had his column of 1998 quoted back to him by an Agence-France-Press reporter, Olivier Knox (who may have been inspired by today’s Glenn Greenwald column).
He stepped deeper into it, too, undermining the privilege claim further by saying that Bush “does not recall being briefed on the matter” of fired U.S. Attorneys. If that’s true, that Bush was sealed off, then it’s damned hard to see how any of the people who provably did discuss it can gain executive privilege.
If, as Digby and others speculate, they’re fighting these subpoenas in order to set a precedent for other Congressional investigations from which they have even more to fear, then they’re doing a sorry job of it. Fred Fielding may wish he’d chosen a better client.
From what I’ve read, Carol Lam’s immigration cases may have been fewer but she was not targeting the underlings, but rather those further up the food chain, so the investigations in and of themselves were more complex, took longer and the fact that she obtained more significant sentences also should factor into the mix.
and the fact that in May, 2006 the DoJ defended her quite strongly from not only criticism from Issa but also a query letter sent by Feinstein as well if you review the document dump.
Also Hilzoy:
I do believe that the administration has been unbelievably inept about this (with the 18 day gap being just the latest thing they’ve done that might have been designed to prolong this.)
You shouldn’t believe every half-cocked thing that Josh Marshall says. One of his own commenters made this point:
I’d also add that I just looked at Document 7-2 (here, and I found emails from Nov. 20 and Nov. 22 (see pages 35-36). Thus, there are several emails that fall within the supposed gap, and there could be plenty more for all we know. Also, not everybody emails about everything; people could have been discussing this over the phone or in personal meetings. (It’s not unknown for federal officials to have meetings.)
Sorry, JD. The “18-day-gap” is going to stick, no matter if a dozen puny little emails turn up. It’s too powerful a brand, having been seared into the public memory by a previous coverup of Republican criminal corruption.
You may have a point, John Doe, but I was amused by your phrase “one of his own commenters”, as if disagreement from a commenter was somehow unexpected or a statement against interest. After all, you’re one of Hilzoy’s own commenters, but no one pays extra attention or gives extra credence to your criticisms of her posts for that reason.
The point, JD, is during that eighteen-day period the rate of produced email falls precipitously, hence the term “gap.” It’s metaphorical, not literal. When they send out hundreds of emails per day and only three or four for the eighteen days in question – well, your “maybe they were just all going to meetings” suggestion doesn’t quite satisfy common sense.
“One of his own commenters” — it struck me as funny too, but for a different reason. Marshall had no basis whatsoever for claiming that there was an 18-day gap other than the fact that some commenter made that claim in the midst of an extremely lengthy thread. But then another commenter points out that it’s not, you know, true. So how come Marshall isn’t aware of that comment? That’s the point.
The “18-day-gap” is going to stick, no matter if a dozen puny little emails turn up.
I agree with you that most liberals are going to disregard the facts here.
The point, JD, is during that eighteen-day period the rate of produced email falls precipitously, hence the term “gap.” It’s metaphorical, not literal. When they send out hundreds of emails per day and only three or four for the eighteen days in question – well, your “maybe they were just all going to meetings” suggestion doesn’t quite satisfy common sense.
Hundreds of emails? Where are you getting this? I certainly haven’t looked at all the documents, but in the few I’ve seen, there are scattered emails spread out over several months or a year. As Hilzoy has pointed out, a lot emails appear many, many times in the documents, because every response carries with it all of the previous emails in the same chain. What on earth makes you think that there ought to be “hundreds” within a two-week period?
Marshall had no basis whatsoever for claiming that there was an 18-day gap other than the fact that some commenter made that claim in the midst of an extremely lengthy thread. But then another commenter points out that it’s not, you know, true. So how come Marshall isn’t aware of that comment?
Currently at TPM there a post and an update linking to additional emails from the gap – apparently he (or more accurately one of his co-bloggers) is aware.
What on earth makes you think that there ought to be “hundreds” within a two-week period?
Er, the fact that any investigation of a federal agency or the executive branch – and this is technically both – produces hundreds of thousands of documents. Boxes upon boxes upon boxes. Seriously, the U.S. government produces a shitload of documentation, and these days a lot of it is electronic.
What the Bush administration has released isn’t a surfeit to begin with; it’s a paucity, and their trumpeting of “3,000 pages” over and over again isn’t much more than marketing and spin.
Like Mr. Maguire and FDL, I’ve yet to see Mr. Doe on TPM.
So far the only emails they’ve found for the 18-day gap are a few complaining that a couple USAs didn’t prosecute enough obscenity cases. That’s supposed to support the claim that the USAs were fired for not doing their jobs well enough.
Now, I don’t know about you guys, but if I’m evaluating a federal prosecutor, I’d look at the whole portfolio. Of all the federal crimes, ‘obscenity’ would be way down my list of priorities, after murder, kidnapping, organized crime, and corruption. If a USA had a good record on those, I doubt I’d use ‘lack of emphasis on obscenity cases’ as a reason to fire.
And it begs disbelief that there’d only be a handful of emails for the 2+ weeks right as the decisions were made to fire the USAs.
There’s also the issue of WH using non-governmental email. A fair number of emails bearing private addresses have been found, which begs the question of how many other ‘sensitive’ conversations were carried about via undiscovered addresses.
Not just private e-mail addresses, CaseyL — addresses from domains owned by the RNC. In this White House there is no dividing line at all between campaigning and governing. Yet in the 1990s the House took 140 hours of testimony about whether Clinton had misused the White House Christmas card list for political purposes, and people obsessed over what phone Gore had used to make fundraising calls.
Er, the fact that any investigation of a federal agency or the executive branch – and this is technically both – produces hundreds of thousands
And you know this . . . how? I can see that number of documents being at issue if this were the Microsoft antitrust investigation, or even a typical SEC investigation. But we’re just talking about 1) emails and memoes, sent between 2) a handful of top principals, relating to 3) one narrow issue. I don’t think Kyle Sampson could have created “hundreds of thousands” of documents on this issue even if he had done absolutely nothing else for the past three years.
Like Mr. Maguire and FDL, I’ve yet to see Mr. Doe on TPM.
What is this even supposed to mean? That Mr. Maguire and FDL haven’t seen me “on TPM” either? Well, no doubt they haven’t. But what exactly does it mean to be “on TPM”? Is there something that I am supposed to be doing there? What would that . . . oh, never mind — if you can’t even write a single sentence in a non-ambiguous way, what’s the point of asking for clarification.
The “email gap” has made the top story on cnn.com (of course it’s almost 10pm eastern).
CaseyL,
Your priorities aren’t the same as Al’s wrt obscenity.
JayS – Yeah; shades of Ashcroft, who cut anti-terrorist programs in order to focus on porn back in, oh, the summer of 2001.
But, to get back on track, the issue here is legal, not political. It’s clear that USAs were fired, or not fired, on the basis of how well they obstructed investigation into Republican corruption and how well they played along with bogus charges against Democrats. Unless “serving at the pleasure of the President” means “obstructing justice at the pleasure of the President,” those are not legitimate reasons to fire USAs.
I assume you’re paraphrasing Josh Marshall’s words [http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/013159.php]: The president fired US Attorneys to stymie investigations of Republicans and punish US Attorneys who didn’t harass Democrats with bogus voter fraud prosecutions. In the former instance, the evidence remains circumstantial. But in the latter the evidence is clear, overwhelming and undeniable.
At least Marshall is honest enough to admit that the evidence (what little there is) is circumstantial in the first instance. But Marshall goes on to say:
What he does not say — but what we know directly from the accounts of the players involved — is that these were cases in which Republican operatives and activists complained to the White House and Republican members of Congress that certain US Attorneys weren’t convening grand juries or issuing indictments against Democrats, even though these were cases where all the available evidence suggests there was no wrongdoing prosecuted.
All the available evidence indicates no wrongdoing? That’s quite an incredible overstatement.
As the New York Times recently pointed out, there were about 3,000 fraudulent voter registrations that showed up in New Mexico alone, from Democratic activist groups. This is a state that Gore won by a mere 366 votes in 2000. Do you realize how simple it would be to have a handful of activists go around to different precincts and vote dozens of times under the identities provided in false registrations? When the leadership of the free world is at stake, there are certainly some people — on either side — that would be willing to do something like this.
Granted, we don’t know that this happened — but given that ballots are secret and there’s no ID requirement in New Mexico, there’s no way we could ever find out if this happened. All we do know is that someone perfectly set the stage up for some serious voter fraud, in a key swing state.
If it had been Republican activist groups that had submitted thousands of fraudulent registrations, then, far from pretending that it was unethical for a Democratic President to want the situation investigated, you guys would all be screaming for heads to roll.
Also, on another note, several of the Assistant US Attorneys who worked for Iglesias signed a letter attesting to his incompetence:
As the New York Times recently pointed out, there were about 3,000 fraudulent voter registrations that showed up in New Mexico alone, from Democratic activist groups.
The NYT didn’t say there were 3000 fraudulent registrations. One thing that gets annoying in these discussions is when people change a word to something that isn’t true, in order to make their case stronger, and you have to waste time correcting it.
Granted, we don’t know that this happened — but given that ballots are secret and there’s no ID requirement in New Mexico, there’s no way we could ever find out if this happened.
If you think about it, it’s pretty easy to find out whether anyone actually voted under a false registration. Is there a signature in the book next to the name of the fictitious person? Did someone mark off the fictitious person as having voted?
If it had been Republican activist groups that had submitted thousands of fraudulent registrations, then, far from pretending that it was unethical for a Democratic President to want the situation investigated, you guys would all be screaming for heads to roll.
There is nothing unethical about wanting the situation investigated. Could you please show me someone who has said it was unethical to want the situation investigated? The thing is, the situation was investigated, and the prosecutor determined there was no basis to bring charges. What’s improper is to insist, as some Republicans did, that charges be brought regardless of what the official investigation shows.
It’s natural that Republicans always think Democrats are guilty of stuff, and Democrats always think Republicans are guilty of stuff. But in America, no one should ever be prosecuted merely because some partisan politician thinks they should be. That’s why threats against someone’s job for not indicting enough members of the opposing party are so pernicious.
If you read the NY Times article, Iglesias didn’t want to prosecute because the one woman in question hadn’t confessed that she intended to commit fraud. But if that’s the standard, then voter fraud would never get prosecuted.
If you think about it, it’s pretty easy to find out whether anyone actually voted under a false registration. Is there a signature in the book next to the name of the fictitious person? Did someone mark off the fictitious person as having voted?
If those things occurred, Democrats would argue strenuously that this proves the voter registration wasn’t fictitious after all. And how do you prove otherwise? Look for a record of the person’s ID? “Racist!” say the Democrats (really, they do say this). Check the person’s claimed address? “But lots of people move,” say the Democrats. And so on.
If you have any suggestions as to how to prove intent beyond a reasonable doubt in such a case, do let us know.
Your hypothetical generalizations about Democrats are also not appreciated.
80% of the political corruption cases this administration has brought are/were against Democrats. The 7 USAttys who got into trouble were either: a)prosecuting Republicans; or b) refusing to prosecute Democrats where there was no case. In Seattle, where I have practiced law for more than 25 years, the payback will have enormous repercussions with the moderate Republicans. McKay was told by DOJ in August of 2006 that he was good to go for his nomination for US Dist Judge. That went down in flames less than 4 months later. His brother was a chief fundraiser for the Bushes since 1988. I talked with him on Friday and I don’t have to tell you what his opinion of the current administration is: it’s not printable here.
These guys really aren’t even up to the standard of a Mayberry Mafia because they’re so frikkin venal and cruel.
Your hypothetical generalizations about Democrats are also not appreciated.
What hypothetical generalizations about Democrats? Democrats do say that it’s racist to look for voter IDs — that’s virtually the only thing they say when the question of voter ID comes up. If the fact comes up that voters don’t live at their supposed addresses, Democrats do say that people move, (this sort of thing was constantly said in Ohio in 2004 when something like 35,000 voter registration mailing were returned as non-deliverable).
80% of the political corruption cases this administration has brought are/were against Democrats.
Steve — notice that your own side has a serious problem with putting out false memes that never disappear, no matter how many times they are refuted. It’s been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Cragan/Shields study is about as reliable as reading entrails. Look at the pathetically inadequate defense that these professors made of their debunked study; notice that they don’t deny that it was based on Google searches (not on any kind of random sampling); note that, to them, the primary indicator of the study’s reliability is that it appeared in an electronic non-peer-reviewed journal that is an offshoot of the Daily Kos; note that the professors admit that they “can’t even get data” on these questions, but had to rely on searches of news stories. That whole study is just an exercise in intellectual dishonesty, and anyone who cites it is intellectually dishonest as well.
I went to the site that Mr. Doe left a link for and >surprise< there was no evidence of the authors of the study doing a google search to gin up the numbers as Mr. D implies. In fact the authors are well respected academics. "Donald C. Shields, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus, Department of Communication, University of Missouri – St. Louis. John F. Cragan, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus, Department of Communication, Illinois State University. Their interest in transparent government began with the publication of their book, Government Surveillance of U.S. Citizens: Issues and Answers (Minneapolis, MN: Campus Press, 1971)." And here is part of Drs. Shields and Cragan had to say in response to a Swift Boat attack of their study in the Philadelphia Enquirer: "…In a little over a 1,000 words, Mr. Smerconish attacked our integrity and the accuracy of our data. He lamented that the study was not published, while failing to mention that we informed him during a phone interview that the study was going to be published by the electronic media journal, Epluribus Media (http://www.epluribusmedia.org/columns/2007/20070212_political_profiling.html). This article contains the complete raw data tables, naming each of the 375 politicians classified by their states, their political affiliations, the type of investigation, and the day a news story appeared locally describing the event. Because there is no national register of these investigations, it took more than 400 hours to find and organize this data (our results were fact-checked by multiple editors of Epuribus Media before they published it).
…As well, Smerconish failed to report that he knew the study had been presented at a peer-reviewed panel in Boston, MA, in November 2005, and that an earlier report of the data received honors as a top-three peer-reviewed paper at the annual meeting of the Southern States Communication Association, held in Baton Rouge, LA in April 2005….”
It’s been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Cragan/Shields study is about as reliable as reading entrails.
No, it’s been asserted by you, repeatedly, in vitriolic terms, which falls a long way short of “proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Explain to me, if you will, how the methodology of using a Google search could possibly explain a 7:1 discrepancy between Democrats and Republicans? Does the media only write about indictments of Democrats? (That would sure contradict the conventional wisdom from your side.) Is it only investigations of Democrats that get leaked to the media? (That would raise a whole new set of issues.) What, exactly, is your explanation for how this ostensibly neutral method of research yields such skewed results?
It’s hardly enough to say that this methodology doesn’t find every single instance of investigation; of course it doesn’t. The question is, is there any reason whatsoever to believe that the investigations which aren’t picked up by this method are primarily those aimed at Republicans, and in such a degree as to balance out the 7:1 ratio among those investigations that ARE picked up?
Do you want to see a laughably flawed methodology? Take a look at your own link to the “Stubborn Facts” blog. The guy tries to minimize the number of states where a skewed ratio exists by means of a two-step process:
1) First, eliminating any State where the ratio of Republican investigations to Democratic investigations is greater than 1, because obviously there’s no problem there;
2) Second, looking at only the remaining states, eliminating any State where the ratio of R to D investigations is greater than the ratio of Rs to Ds in the state legislature, because one assumes that elected officials SHOULD be investigated in proportion to their numbers in the state legislature.
And having done this, he’s left with 24 states, from which he triumphantly concludes that even using the study’s own data, “fewer than half the states show a propensity toward ‘profiling’ of Democrats for political prosecution by the U.S. Department of Justice.” That’s right – he proclaims the study debunked because, even if there is a systematic bias towards investigations of Democrats, it’s only a problem in 24 of the 50 states!
But putting that aside, can you see the very, very serious problem with the method he uses to get the number down to 24 states – a problem so glaring it makes your citation to this post absolutely laughable? I’ll assign that question as homework.
I went to the site that Mr. Doe left a link for and >surprise< there was no evidence of the authors of the study doing a google search to gin up the numbers as Mr. D implies.
Sorry; I wasn’t aware that you were ignorant of the previous thread on this topic. In that thread, I copied part of the relevant story by Michael Smerconish, who actually called up the study’s authors. This is what he found out:
Don’t even bother disputing that this story is accurate — Cragan and Shields specifically attempted to respond to Smerconish, and they never denied that their methodology consisted of Google searches.
Steve: Explain to me, if you will, how the methodology of using a Google search could possibly explain a 7:1 discrepancy between Democrats and Republicans? Does the media only write about indictments of Democrats? (That would sure contradict the conventional wisdom from your side.) Is it only investigations of Democrats that get leaked to the media? (That would raise a whole new set of issues.) What, exactly, is your explanation for how this ostensibly neutral method of research yields such skewed results?
I’ve already addressed this once, in that earlier thread. For the information of those of you who have never used Google, many newspaper articles never make it to Google, and particularly small-town newspapers. Also, even those articles that do appear online are only there for a few weeks. Good luck trying to find the average newspaper article from 2001 or 2002 still online somewhere.
So what does this mean? If Cragan and Shields go out and do a search on Google, any news story that they find from the 2001-03 timeframe that is still online is probably from one of a few major cities — where, as it happens, local Democrats are usually in charge.
So what does this mean? It means that if you’re just counting up news stories that appear on Google (which is a moronic methodology under any circumstance), the news stories you find are more likely to involve local Democratic officials in those big cities.
So what does this mean? It means that this is the equivalent of cherry-picking the data. It’s the equivalent of measuring global warming by taking the temperature at noon in July and August. It’s complete and utter crap.
Also, Steve, for your information, I wasn’t citing to <>a href=”http://stubbornfacts.us/politics/partisanship/more_debunking_of_the_political_profiling_study#comment-5071″>that Stubborn Facts post itself. I was citing to the specific comment where Cragan and Shields wrote in to “defend” their study in hilariously inadequate terms (i.e., bragging that it got published by an offshoot of Daily Kos; any real academic would consider this a joke).
moe99,
“the Philadelphia Enquirer”
While it’s unlikely it will ever return to its glory days in the 1970’s and early 1980’s, and the current publisher seems determined to turn it into a slightly more respectable version of The Washington Times, please do not conflate the Philadelpha Inquirer with the National Enquirer.
Dantheman: my apologies for the ‘e’ instead of the ‘i.’
Mr. Doe: two words: ‘peer review’
The fact that Drs. Shields and Cragan did not explicitly deny the ‘google search’ accusation, does not ipso facto, mean they have admitted it.
Peer review = meaningless, if the peers are just as biased (or sloppy) as Cragan and Shields are. Also we don’t know what a “refereed panel” at the National Communication Association even consists of. Given that the NCA seems to have about 1200 programs at its national convention, and given that the paper acceptance rate is over 60%, I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that their standards are pretty loose. (As if we didn’t already know that.)
Steve: Here’s a City Pages article that offers a good example of why the Cragan/Shields methodology is crap:
Cragan and Shields are obviously partisan hacks. And unsurprisingly, they were bending over backwards to include as many Democrats as possible on the list, even though that led to spurious results in 3 out of 7 cases that City Pages investigated. Why should I trust that Cragan and Shields also went out of their way to include spurious listings of Republican local officials?
It means that if you’re just counting up news stories that appear on Google (which is a moronic methodology under any circumstance), the news stories you find are more likely to involve local Democratic officials in those big cities.
This appears to me to be an assertion that you could test, but have chosen not to. You could, for example, devise a similar search to determine how many elected officials show up on Google during a particular time frame, period, putting the issue of an investigation aside. If a Google search generally returns 7 times as many references to elected Democratic officials as to elected Republicans, or something close to that ratio, I’d say the debunking would be settled at that point.
A lot of people seem to be invested in debunking this study. Have any of them attempted something like this?
(By the way, the answer to the homework assignement is that if you judge whether Dems are being targeted by referring to the ratio of Ds to Rs in the state legislature, then it makes no sense to start by eliminating every state where more Ds than Rs got investigated. You could have a state which is overwhelmingly controlled by Republicans, but somehow, just as many Democrats as Republicans get investigated; under the so-called methodology of this “debunking,” this would get written off as a state where Dems obviously didn’t get unfairly targeted.)
This appears to me to be an assertion that you could test, but have chosen not to. You could, for example, devise a similar search to determine how many elected officials show up on Google during a particular time frame, period, putting the issue of an investigation aside. If a Google search generally returns 7 times as many references to elected Democratic officials as to elected Republicans, or something close to that ratio, I’d say the debunking would be settled at that point.
That’s ridiculous. There are many millions of stories that turn up on any Google search for the relevant terms (6.6 million results for Democratic city officials, for example). Many of the links are obviously not relevant. Why on earth should I spend thousands of hours combing through these results just in order to produce a definitive disproof of a methodology that is so obviously bogus on its face? (Besides, as we now know for sure, Cragan and Shields were cherry-picking the results, even to the extent of including Democrats who were never investigated at all.)
“Like Mr. Maguire and FDL, I’ve yet to see Mr. Doe on TPM.”
What is this even supposed to mean? That Mr. Maguire and FDL haven’t seen me “on TPM” either? Well, no doubt they haven’t.
It was a different argument. Maguire kept making obviously flawed arguments about a political topic, and people kept refuting him using facts and reasoning they found on the FDL blog. Then they started saying that since FDL had the experts, why wouldn’t he go there and argue with them? Why keep arguing in the bush leagues on that topic? And his answer was basicly that they treated him like a troll there. They didn’t take his arguments seriously so he didn’t want to go back.
Using a similar reasoning, the question is why you keep pestering people here about this topic, harassing us with your quarter-truths and urban legends when you could go to a place where the other side already has their facts together. Why don’t you go to TPM and present your case there?
I thought it was particularly funny that they’d say that, “John Doe”, because they have absolutely no reason to think that you haven’t been doing just that under another assumed name. For all we know you could have a program that switches words around some and reposts the same things all over under different names. You could be posting everywhere your particular urban legends show up, and they wouldn’t know it was you at all.
Here’s a City Pages article that offers a good example of why the Cragan/Shields methodology is crap:
….
Cragan and Shields are obviously partisan hacks.
Interesting. You read this thing and you suppose it means that Cragan and Shields are partisan hacks, when it is just as easy to suppose instead that Mike Mosedale (the author of the City Pages smear) is a partisan hack.
The natural conclusion from that is that you are a partisan hack, and your claims can be ignored on that basis.
The natural conclusion from that is that you are a partisan hack, and your claims can be ignored on that basis.
For doubleplus laughs, this point has already been made to him. Any bets as to whether it will stick this time?
harassing us with your quarter-truths and urban legends
Funny that you can’t demonstrate that anything I’ve said is an urban legend. But it’s interesting to know that you feel “harassed” at the mere sight of a link to an outside source of information (such as the City Pages article) that might upset your predetermined beliefs.
Mr. Doe, this is finally descending into the level of “I am rubber, you are glue.”
Note also that John Doe ignored the quote from the New York Times that refuted his claim about why Iglesias didn’t prosecute (the director of the DoJ election crime branch said he was neutral about whether he prosecuted or not!), and had no response to Steve’s point that the NYT didn’t claim that there were 3000 fraudulent registrations (the phrase was “3,000 faulty registrations, with some most likely resulting from mistakes”). If he can’t be accurate about the very article he hyperlinked, why should we believe him on a single other thing?
I have no opinion about the Cragan and Shields study.
the director of the DoJ election crime branch said he was neutral about whether he prosecuted or not!),
Um, that’s supposed to be a point against me? What that really means is that Iglesias could have prosecuted the dang case. Word to the wise: Prosecutors are part of the executive branch, and the President gets the final say about what priorities they should place on prosecuting certain types of cases. That’s why Clinton had a task force trying to investigate the possibility of prosecuting pro-life groups, for example. Setting investigative and prosecutorial priorities is what Presidents get to do.
the NYT didn’t claim that there were 3000 fraudulent registrations (the phrase was “3,000 faulty registrations, with some most likely resulting from mistakes”).
OK, fair enough, you caught me in a minor misstatement. Tje Times said, “3,000 faulty registrations,” of which only some unknown number (could have been 3, for all we know) were “most likely” due to mistakes, with the rest possibly being due to fraud of some sort. So clearly, in a state that Gore won by 366 votes, there couldn’t possibly have been an incentive for any funny business.
But on another note, how convenient that you have no opinion on the Cragan/Shields study. Why not? Are you aware of any other study that purports to measure the incidence of some activity over a 5 or 6-year period by seeing how many news stories or press releases pop up on Google? If you’ve ever seen any social science study at all, you’ll be aware that something is amiss with such an approach, which is just unprecedented. And if you’ve actually taken a statistics course at any point, you’ll be aware that studies based on cherry-picked data are not reliable. Why wouldn’t you have an opinion about these most elementary matters?
There are many millions of stories that turn up on any Google search for the relevant terms (6.6 million results for Democratic city officials, for example).
Then you would include a date restriction, or limit the results in some other way. The point is that you assert Google is biased towards returning hits on Democrats, by a factor approximating 7:1, yet you’re unwilling to suggest any methodology to actually test your theory. For someone who’s so ready to criticize others’ studies, that demonstrates a tragic neglect of the scientific method.
But on another note, how convenient that you have no opinion on the Cragan/Shields study. Why not?
Because he’d like to study all of it? That’s kinda reasonable.
Mr. Doe, stop being an idiot. You could very well be right (I repeat…you could very well be right), but you certainly are not approaching this with anything resembling proper methodology. Thowing around accusations of partisan hackery without knowing the study’s methodology is the very antithesis of sound scientific practice—something you were excrociating the authors for.
That says far more about you than the authors.
As gwangung says, stop being an idiot. The Cragan-Shields study may be lousy or not; if it is lousy, it may still be the case that US Attorneys were prosecuting Democrats disproportionately; and if this is not the case, it doesn’t diminish the evidence already presented that pressure was brought in specific cases.
Yes, it’s a point against you that the director of the DoJ branch didn’t tell Iglesias that he should prosecute the case. Are we supposed to think that the President set prosecuting election fraud as a priority for USAs and didn’t tell the DoJ official in charge of election crime? No, we are not supposed to think that, unless we are idiots. So it’s fair to conclude that, even given an emphasis on prosecuting alleged election fraud, the DoJ official thought this was a marginal case. Probably because absent a confession it was impossible to prove intent.
Incidentally, that letter you cited where one of the assistant USAs criticized Iglesias? One of the points of criticism was that Iglesias didn’t speak out sooner about the improper pressure brought by Wilson and Domenici. Truly exculpatory of Republican misconduct!
Another point is that Iglesias is a Republican. Why he was supposed to have some incentive to cover up for the Democrats, I don’t know.
We don’t know if the search engine was google, or Lexis/Nexis (which is quite handy) or Westlaw. I have used all of them and each can produce reliable data, as long as cogent restrictions are used in the search engine. I have seen no factual basis yet for criticising the search other than unsubstantiated allegations of what engine was used.
Then you would include a date restriction, or limit the results in some other way. The point is that you assert Google is biased towards returning hits on Democrats, by a factor approximating 7:1, yet you’re unwilling to suggest any methodology to actually test your theory. For someone who’s so ready to criticize others’ studies, that demonstrates a tragic neglect of the scientific method.
Do you know how to do Boolean searches on Google restricted to news stories that appeared in 2002? It would be news to me if that were possible.
Just to be clear, though, I don’t know that Google is “biased” 7-1 in favor of mentions of Democrats. It could be biased by some smaller magnitude, and the rest of any disparity could be because of actual differences in the level of corruption among local officials.
But the relevant point is, Cragan and Shields are the ones who came forth with a startling claim, but no rational person who has any familiarity with social science would think that they have proven their case. They’ve admitted that they had “no data” outside of Google searches, and we now know that they were counting certain Democrats as having been “investigated” when no such investigation ever happened.
Thowing around accusations of partisan hackery without knowing the study’s methodology is the very antithesis of sound scientific practice
Please. I know quite a bit about the methodology. Indeed, I’m the only person around here who has shown any curiosity about the methodology, and any ability to do additional research in that regard.
But this research is necessary only because the authors didn’t even take the minimal step of describing their methodology in the “study” itself. Really, if you don’t know how unusual and unprecedented this is, you have no idea what you’re talking about. Every last social science article has a section describing the methodology being used — from the econometric to the ethnographic. It’s always up to the authors of a study to show their work.
And it’s not “sound scientific practice” to blindly accept anything that is labeled a “study” and to try to shout down anyone who digs into what methodology was used.
We don’t know if the search engine was google
Yes, we do. We know this because, as I have repeatedly pointed out, a journalist asked them, and they said that they used Google. We also know this because when they responded to said journalist, they didn’t deny having told him that they used Google.
Can we have a moratorium on saying that “we don’t know” things that have been proven, if not to a 100% certainty, at least to a certainty that is far and beyond anything else that has been alleged about the entire U.S. Attorneys issue?
The Cragan-Shields study may be lousy or not; if it is lousy, it may still be the case that US Attorneys were prosecuting Democrats disproportionately; and if this is not the case, it doesn’t diminish the evidence already presented that pressure was brought in specific cases.
True enough. Their claims could be unsubstantiated but still true — an unjustified true belief, as philosophers might say (but you knew that).
But since that’s purely a theoretical possibility, people shouldn’t be bandying about, as if it were a proven fact, the claim that Bush prosecutes Democrats at a 7-1 ratio. Why not direct some of your ire in the direction of these gullible fools, rather than just parachuting in to take potshots at me for being too insistent on seeing the evidence?
So it’s fair to conclude that, even given an emphasis on prosecuting alleged election fraud, the DoJ official thought this was a marginal case. Probably because absent a confession it was impossible to prove intent.
OK, fair point. But Iglesias could still have been fired for poor management issues. You seem to be implying that either he was legitimately fired for failing to prosecute real voter fraud, or else he was fired for unlawful or unethical political reasons. This is a false dilemma.
But Iglesias could still have been fired for poor management issues. You seem to be implying that either he was legitimately fired for failing to prosecute real voter fraud, or else he was fired for unlawful or unethical political reasons. This is a false dilemma.
Sure, and it could have been both. But the preponderance of evidence so far indicates he was fired for insufficient loyalty to Bush.
Where this is leading is that over the next 2 years USAs are not going to be fired for disloyalty unless there’s a very solid case for the cover story. The control is eroding away faster and faster.
Bush might possibly succeed in destroying the Republican party. No certainty. It’s only a few years ago they were talking about destroying the Democratic party for good. But look at the gerrymandering. People talk like it’s an evil trick that works for evil people. But it can backfire. I’ll describe the ultimate exaggerated case to make the logic plain. Say your side has 1/3 the voters and the other side has 2/3, but you get to draw up the voting districts. And you draw them so that they get 100% of the votes in the districts they win, while you win each district by a small margin. So they win 1/3 of the districts with 100%, and you win 2/3 of the districts with tiny margins. You have 1/3 of the popular vote and 2/3 of the wins. Sounds good, right? But then what if something happens to make your party a tiny bit less popular than it was before. Instead of winning 2/3 of the seats by tiny margins, you lose all of them, 1/3 by 100% and 2/3 by tiny margins.
And right now, that’s where the Republican Party is headed. They have no possible argument why a patriotic american should vote for them except the claim that no matter how bad they are, the democrats are even worse. This is not an argument that patriotic americans can stomach. If they can publish it well enough, the result will be that the Democratic Party will also become a third party.
Bush said he had political capital and he was going to spend it. That’s the kind of rich guy Bush is, he spends his capital. He appears to be planning to spend the very last of his political capital around December 2008, leaving no inheritance at all for the next guy.
So I really don’t understand at all why guys like you are still loyal to him. Does he pay you well? If you guys don’t make a big show of reforming the GOP, cleaning up the corruption and all that, there may not be a GOP in a few years. Why would anybody contribute to the Republican Party if the party can’t give out patronage? The libertarians are going to take your place, and you can join them but you’ll be pretty far down the totem pole, at the far end of the trough.
So why are you so blindly loyal?