Justice Lied To Congress As Late As Feb 23

A letter from the Justice Department to Congress on February 23, 2007 falsely stated that Karl Rove wasn't involved in the U.S. Attorney firings. E-mails with Rove withheld from Congress show it.

Even Republican Senators are growing more and more outraged at the brazenness with which Alberto Gonzales' Justice Department has lied to Congress.

Listening To The Wrong People On Gitmo

The Denver Post, citing the New York Times as its source, argues that Guantamo Bay remains open because President Bush has relied on two of the least well regarded members of his administration for advice.

President Bush should have listened to Robert Gates in January as the newly appointed defense secretary repeatedly urged that the American prison in Cuba be shut down as quickly as possible. The facility holds nearly 400 detainees, suspected in some way of being complicit with terrorists.

Gates argued the prison had such a tainted reputation abroad that any legal proceedings held there would be seen as compromised. It was a view supported by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other officials who discussed moving Guantanamo detainees to U.S. military brigs. . . .

[I]n the end, objections by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Vice President Dick Cheney carried the day . . . and the prison remains open.

Why is it so hard for President Bush to realize that he should listen to his own Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State, rather than to his disgraced Vice President and Attorney General, in matters of national security?

Alberto Gonzales has lost the support of almost every Democrat in Congress (he did't have support from many of them in the first place), and a number of Republicans in Congress, because documents disclosed by the Justice Department make clear that he lied to Congress about the dismissal of eight U.S. Attorneys. The Inspector General of the Justice Department has revealed that while Gonzales has been AG, the Justice Department routinely broke the law by spying on American citizens even though their powers to do so legally were greatly expanded by the PATRIOT Act. Even his staunchest supporter, Colorado's own Ken Salazar, has been forced to start to come to terms with the fact that his friend is a crook.

Dick Cheney is one of the least popular men in the United States today. According to a CBS News/New York Times Poll taken March 7-11, 2007 of 1,362 registered voters, just 18% have a favorable opinion of the Vice President, while 48% have an unfavorable opinion of him. His Chief of Staff, Scotter Libby, is a convicted felon. There is a strong implication that Libby leaked a covert agent's identity at the behest of his boss. Cheney has been the strong voice in the administration for torture and against the rule of law, from the beginning. He's offered to resign, but the President, unwisely, didn't take him up on the offer.

President Bush is not innocent. The better angels of his administration have repeatedly and resolutely urged him to do the right thing. He received a bold warning that an attack on Americans by Osama bin Laden was coming and did nothing. The CIA and State Department told him that the aftermath of the Iraq invasion would turn out as it in fact has turned out. His generals told him that they didn't have enough troops at the beginning of the Iraq War to conduct it properly. High officials in the administration have told him that his regime of torture and extralegal detention to fight a "war on terrorism" was wrong and perhaps even made him a war criminal. He has remained determined in the face of advisors giving him the chance to do the right things, to instead harm our country.

Booze in Prison, Who Knew?

Sometimes the Denver Post's lack of curiosity about their own stories baffles me. Consider this little understatement today (emphasis added):

Sablan and his cousin, Rudy Sablan, 47, are the first federal defendants in Colorado to face the death penalty since Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. They were charged with killing Estrella Oct. 10, 1999, after a night of drinking and fighting in the cell they shared at the federal penitentiary in Florence in central Colorado.

Since when can prisoners drink and fight with impunity in a federal prison cell? I mean, I know this is the "Wild West" and all, but since when do they have booze on tap in prison cells? Even I have to walk down the hall from my bedroom if I want to get drunk at night. But, honestly, what the hell is going on in Florence?

Alberto Gonzales stopped by the neighborhood three weeks ago and said everything was up to par, but my understanding is that even one of his earliest and most loyal supporters, Ken Salazar, is now calling for his resignation (I may be misinformed, my source had this second hand). Gonzales and creditability don't belong in the same sentence. The guard-union rep was less confident than Gonzales was:

warning that thin staffing has put prisons on the brink of disastrous riots as the nation's federal inmate population approaches 200,000.

Supermax union president Barbara Batulis, who accompanied Gonzales, said terrorists housed there still are able to communicate with followers in Spain and Iraq. . . .

New surveillance technology at Supermax and other prisons ignores the core issue of inadequate staffing, Gage said. "Those cameras will not replace correctional officers. And electric fences? We're not talking about escapes here. We're talking about safety within the walls," he said. . . .

In recent days here, outbreaks of violence prompted tower guards at the high-security U.S. Penitentiary adjacent to Supermax to fire lethal and nonlethal rounds to stop inmates from killing one another, said Ken Shatto, union president at the penitentiary.

"Today I'm trying to head off full-blown riots," he said. "That's where I think we are headed. This is no good for the safety and security of staffers and inmates alike." . . .

Threats to kill staff members have increased to about 110 last year, double the number in 2005, said chief union steward Bob Snelson, who represented guards last fall before an arbitrator who found dangerous understaffing.

Guards lament that, after a Justice Department inspector general's report and lawmakers focused attention on problems at Supermax last fall, federal prison chiefs began moving staff from the neighboring penitentiary and medium-security prison to Supermax.

"It's a shell game with bodies," Batulis said. These moves increased pressures at the other facilities, where riots in January left several guards injured.

Isn't there some middle ground between putting everybody naked in solitary confinement and having enough guards to notice a couple of guys drinking and fighting all night in their cell before the guards arive to be taunted with the loser's entrails?