That's the question the House Financial Services Committee will begin to start investigating.

New York Times:

Eight months after a federal investigation into a prostitution ring brought about the downfall of Gov. Eliot Spitzer, the question still persists in some circles: Was the federal government out to get Mr. Spitzer?

No evidence has surfaced to support such an assertion, and the prosecutor in the case has said that politics played no role in the pursuit of Mr. Spitzer, a Democrat. But that has not put to rest suspicions, expressed on left wing blogs, that Mr. Spitzer, a zealous pursuer of Wall Street wrongdoing who some thought could one day be president, had been singled out.

Now, a congressional committee is pursuing what would be the first public examination of the events that prompted the initial inquiry into his bank transactions, which showed he was sending money to a front company for Emperor’s Club V.I.P.

The House Financial Services Committee intends to take up the matter early next year and tentatively plans to hold hearings that could include testimony from the United States Treasury’s law enforcement unit, along with Mr. Spitzer’s bank, North Fork, and HSBC, a bank used by a company connected to the prostitution service.

This should be interesting. After the whole USA scandal, I don't think any reasonable person will dispute the notion that justice has become politicized under George Bush. Whether or not it's the case here will remain to be seen.

Project Censored included this possibility in the yearly Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009. Check it out here.

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Ted Stevens, Congress' longest-serving Republican and recently convicted felon, delivered his farewell speech today on the Senate floor. I understand the camaraderie of the world's greatest deliberative body and Stevens' 40+ years of service, but its pretty surreal to watch the Senate give a standing ovation to someone who was just found guilty by a jury of his peers on a whopping seven felony counts. I gotta admit: Stevens went out gracefully and his embrace of Senator Byrd is some compelling stuff. That said, good riddance and congratulations to Senator-elect Mark Begich.

"I don't have any rear-view mirror, I look only forward. And I still see the day when I can remove the cloud that currently surrounds me. My motto has always been 'to hell with politics, just do what's right for Alaska.' And I've tried every day to live up to those words."

Looks like Ted is suffering from the Palin denial disease, whereby someone who has been found guilty of something simply refuses to acknowledge that they indeed were found guilty. Must be that Alaskan water.

More news coming out of TX...

Cheney is accused of investing some $85 million in the Vanguard Group that houses federal inmates. The grand jury accuses Cheney and Alberto Gonzalez of engaging in organized criminal activity.

Too bad he didn't have to do a perp walk for us.

Michael Froomkin has more:

CNN, Cheney, Gonzales indicted for alleged prisoner abuse: Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have been indicted on separate charges related to alleged prisoner abuse in federal detention centers, Willacy County, Texas, District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra told CNN Tuesday.

The indictment stems from Cheney’s investment in the Vanguard Group — an investment management company that reportedly has interests in the prison companies in charge of the detention centers, according to The Associated Press. It also charges Gonzales halted an investigation into abuse at the detention centers while he was attorney general.

You might think there are some federalism issues here. And there are. You might think there are some qualified/absolute immunity issues here, and there are. (Cf. In re Neagle, 135 U.S. 1 (1890) (creating federal officer immunity defense.)) But what you might not know is that there’s a federal removal statute that deals with state criminal prosecutions, 28 U.S.C. § 1442(a)(1):

Continue reading »

Not much info in the piece because the information is not public yet, but a DA has indicted Cheney and Alberto Gonzalez and a few others on charges that are related to corruption in the private prison system following an inmate's death. And not surprisingly, there's some profiteering involved.

I'm sure Cheney will try to have it thrown out of court.

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You lie, you get convicted. Have Stevens' re-election chances just gone down the "tubes"? Sorry, it was too easy.

The Hill:

Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Senate Republican in history and patriarch of Alaska politics, was found guilty of felony charges for making false statements.

The verdict could spell the end of a 40-year Senate career for a man who rose to be one of the most dominant figures in the upper chamber and who helped transform Alaska in its 50 years of statehood. The verdict was reached after the jury deliberated since Wednesday and found the 84-year-old senator guilty of failing to report more than $250,000 in gifts from Bill Allen, the former head of Veco Corp., and other friends.

The jury did not seem to buy the explanation from Stevens that Allen showered him with gifts he didn't want and was unaware of, and that he believed the $160,000 he gave to another contractor covered all costs for the home renovations.

Good riddance. We'll keep you updated on the sentence when it comes down.

UPDATE: Jed has some good videos of Palin "palling around" with her BFF Ted Stevens.

Back in 1999, John McCain acknowledged his role in the 1980's Keating Five savings and loan scandal that rightly stained his career. "The fact is," he said, "it was the wrong thing to do, and it will be on my tombstone and deservedly so." But again facing withering criticism as a second financial crisis grips the United States, his campaign today instead claimed McCain's intervention 20 years ago with federal regulators on behalf of future convicted felon Charles Keating was merely "a political smear job."

As AmericaBlog and Politico reported, the campaign deployed McCain's lawyer John Dowd to rewrite history on his client's behalf during a conference call Monday:

McCain lawyer John Dowd described McCain's "former relationship with Charles Keating as 'social friends,'" and called the situation a "classic political smear job on John."

Sadly for McCain, Dowd's yarn matches neither the facts nor McCain's self-proclaimed resurrection as a reformer in the wake of his near-death experience in the Keating Five imbroglio.

Earlier this year, the Boston Globe summarized McCain's close relationship with Keating and his decision to intervene with federal regulators on his behalf:

McCain met Keating in 1982, during McCain's successful run for Congress, and soon began accepting offers from Keating to fly McCain's family on a corporate plane to Keating's house in the Bahamas. McCain did not pay for most of the trips until years later, when the matter became public.

Keating, meanwhile, complained regularly to McCain that a proposed regulation would hurt his business. Known as the "direct investment" rule, it limited the amount that savings-and-loan institutions could invest from their assets. In 1985, after having "heard frequently from Charlie on the matter," McCain decided that Keating's complaints "were sound enough to warrant our assistance." He cosponsored a resolution sought by Keating, but it failed to postpone the regulation, McCain wrote in his autobiography.

By then, Keating was one of McCain's most important benefactors; McCain received $112,000 in campaign donations from Keating and his Lincoln associates, mostly between 1982 and 1986.

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    Former CIA third in command and indicted Cunningham bribery scandal co-conspirator Kyle "Dusty" Foggo is threatening to out agents, secret programs and Bush administration skeletons in an attempt to ward of a possible jail sentence on 30 counts of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering.

Prosecutors say Foggo has threatened "to expose the cover of virtually every CIA employee with whom he interacted and to divulge to the world some of our country's most sensitive programs - even though this information has absolutely nothing to do with the charges he faces."

Prosecutors also allege his lawyers are seeking to introduce classified evidence to "portray Foggo as a hero engaged in actions necessary to protect the public from terrorist acts" to gain sympathy from jurors.

Foggo's efforts to disclose classified information are "a thinly disguised attempt to twist this straightforward case into a referendum on the global war on terror," wrote prosecutors Valerie Chu, Jason Forge and Phillip L.B. Halpern in a court motion filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria.

The government wants U.S. District Judge James Cacheris to hold a closed hearing on whether the information is admissible at trial and if it is relevant to Foggo's case.

Desperate much? It's amusing to see the Bush administration panic on this one - especially after all their own thinly disguised attempts to make every issue they could think of a "a referendum on the global war on terror". "Dusty" knows where the bodies are buried on everything from Negroponte's South American death squads to Iraq procurement corruption and if he starts singing who knows where it could end.

But what's truly revealing is the way Foggo only believes in national security up until the point where its his own neck on the line. How Republican of him.

So much for fighting for reform, eh? Sarah Palin built her political capital in Alaska by throwing in with none other than Ted Stevens

Palin's name is listed on 2003 incorporation papers of the "Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service, Inc.," a 527 group that could raise unlimited funds from corporate donors. The group was designed to serve as a political boot camp for Republican women in the state. She served as one of three directors until June 2005, when her name was replaced on state filings.

Palin's relationship with Alaska's senior senator may be one of the more complicated aspects of her new position as Sen. John McCain's running mate; Stevens was indicted in July 2008 on seven counts of corruption.

Palin, an anti-corruption crusader in Alaska, had called on Stevens to be open about the issues behind the investigation. But she also held a joint news conference with him in July, before he was indicted, to make clear she had not abandoned him politically.

Stevens had been helpful to Palin during her run for governor, swooping in with a last moment endorsement. And the two filmed a campaign commercial together to highlight Stevens's endorsement of Palin during the 2006 race.

Shortly after Palin was announced as McCain's vice presidential pick, the ad was removed from her gubernatorial campaign web site. It remains available on YouTube.

And here's that ad, courtesy of TPM, who saved it for posterity.

VECO, the company that gave "gifts" to Stevens, has ties to Palin too according to Think Progress, contributing 10 percent of her total campaign fund when she ran for lieutenant governor in 2002.

Corruption you can believe in!

What's remarkable is that people like Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) are going around repeatedly spouting talking points like "Gov. Palin took on Ted Stevens. If she can take him on, she can take on the Russians. Heh." And the question arises - are they really that dishonest or are they simply ignorant, digging themselves deeper and deeper into holes because of the worst-vetted candidate ever?

  For some strange reason, prosecutors in the corruption case against Ted Stevens (R - VECO) don't want to mention a letter Dick Cheney sent at Stevens' behest, shilling for corporate wheeler-dealer Bill Allen's pet pipeline project.

In a conversation secretly tape-recorded by the FBI on June 25, 2006, Stevens discussed ways to get a pipeline bill through the Alaska Legislature with Bill Allen, an oil-services executive accused of providing the senator with about $250,000 in undisclosed financial benefits. According to a Justice motion, Stevens told Allen, "I'm gonna try to see if I can get some bigwigs from back here and say, 'Look … you gotta get this done'." Two days later, Cheney wrote a letter to the Alaska Legislature urging members to "promptly enact" a bill to build the pipeline. The letter was considered unusual because the White House rarely contacts state lawmakers about pending legislative matters. It also angered state Democrats, who accused Cheney of pushing oil-company interests. The former executive director of Cheney's energy task force had gone to work as a lobbyist for British Petroleum, one of three firms slated to build the pipeline.

Stevens confirmed to NEWSWEEK last week that he asked Cheney to write the letter. "We wanted the federal government to tell the state to act quickly on it," he said. (A spokesman for Alaska's other senator, Lisa Murkowski, said her office also had contacts with Cheney's office.) A Cheney spokeswoman said his office does not comment on pending legal matters.

Now why do you think Bush's Justice Department isn't too keen on using this important bit of evidence? Stevens is charged with offfenses under the Ethics in Government Act. Could it be that following all the leads would open up a big can of worms for the White House?

  CREW:

Next week, John McCain will attend the fundraiser for his campaign, which is being hosted by a close ally of Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed:

“John McCain believes in a strong national defense, a smaller, more accountable government, steady economic growth and opportunity, the dignity of life and traditional values,” wrote Reed, whose 2006 campaign for lieutenant governor sank under the weight of evidence detailing his relationship with Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff — much of it uncovered by McCain’s Indian Affairs Committee. Read on...

The CREW article goes on to mention the damning e-mail correspondence between Reed and Abramoff and wonders if John McCain should reconsider being associated with Reed, (pictured above, center with Jack Abramoff and imprisoned ex-Rep. Bob Ney) who was knee deep in the Abramoff scandal and is a shining example of Republican corruption during the Bush years.

  The framing is genius.  It was just a few rogue aides; it didn't go up to the top.  No one told Monica Goodling to demand new hires pledge allegiance to George Bush or run Lexis-Nexis searches to make sure they weren't latent liberals.  Really. From Law.com: (h/t JR)

Last week, in 140, detail-laden pages, the Justice Department's two top watchdogs laid out the tale of how the Bush DOJ used political litmus tests in an attempt to hire only those lawyers who would pursue a conservative agenda.

The report places the blame for the political manipulation primarily on two top aides to then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales: Monica Goodling, the White House liaison, and D. Kyle Sampson, Gonzales' chief of staff. Both have been accused of breaking federal civil service laws and DOJ policy in using politics to vet applicants for career jobs.

But the report does something else. It provides the most detailed account yet of the inner workings of the Justice Department during the period of January 2004 to April 2007, and it shows how the two young aides were assisted in their effort by more senior officials who either actively helped their cause -- or quietly acquiesced.

The effort ranged from placing what they called "good Americans" in everything from temporary Main Justice slots to career judgeships in the federal immigration courts. More than 480 lawyers interviewed for career and political positions were tested with queries like, "Tell us about your political philosophy."

What follows is the story -- based almost entirely on the report -- of how they gained power and how they used it.  read on...

The report is named An Investigation of Allegations of Politicized Hiring by Monica Goodling and other Staff in the Office of the Attorney General (.pdf).  According to Law.com, current Attorney General Michael Mukasey finds the report "disturbing" and former AG Alberto Gonzales feels "vindicated."

Attorney General Michael Mukasey said he was "disturbed" by the report's findings.

"I have said many times, both to members of the public and to Department employees, it is neither permissible nor acceptable to consider political affiliations in the hiring of career Department employees," Mukasey said in a statement. "And I have acted, and will continue to act, to ensure that my words are translated into reality so that the conduct described in this report does not occur again at the Department."

According to the report, Gonzales told investigators he was not aware of what his top aides were doing. Today, the former attorney general greeted the report as vindication.

"I am gratified that the efforts I initiated to address this issue have now been affirmed and augmented by this report," Gonzales said in a statement issued through his spokesman, Robert Bork Jr.

Oh good Lord, Bork Jr.??? Amazing how some names keep cropping up.  Look, if you don't think that longtime loyal Bushie Gonzales (as well as many others with White House access) didn't know what was going on, I got a bridge to sell you...cheap.

Download | play   Download | play (h/t BillW)

The House has sent articles of impeachment against George Bush to the House Judiciary Committee, however Speaker Nancy Pelosi now says that an actual impeachment VOTE isn't on the table. On Wednesday's Countdown, Jonathan Turley gives his expert analysis on this epic fail as well as the latest attempt by the president to obstruct Congressional oversight by claiming executive privilege in the CIA/Plame leak investigation.

As for Bush's executive privilege claims, Turley goes right for the jugular. Attorney General Michael Mukasey all but begged the president not to make him testify about Dick Cheney's role in the Plame case and has ignored a subpoena to appear to testify about the matter before Congress -- which Turley says should prompt Congress to charge him with Inherent Contempt. That's not likely to happen, and as Jonathan points out, Democrats who voted for Mukasey are now getting what they paid for:

"...This is why, when Senators Shumer and Feinstein saved Mukasey's confirmation, this is what they purchased. And, what Congress needs to do, the only thing they can do, is bring back Inherent Contempt and to say they're going to start to exercise contempt on their own, that the deal is off. Attorney General Mukasey has broken a very long standing promise to be a faithful broker, to bring these cases to the grand jury - he won't. And Congress has a right to now say we're going back to doing this stuff ourselves." 

Download | play    Download | play   (excerpt courtesy of Bill W, full video available at Times Online)

Steve Benen: 

Fundraising for a presidential library has always been controversial, in part because, unlike contributions to U.S. political campaigns, donations to libraries can come from foreign sources, and are easier to conceal.

But this kind of corruption is striking, even by the Bush administration's standards.

The Sunday Times reports Stephen Payne, a Bush pioneer and a political appointee to the Homeland Security Advisory Council, was caught on tape offering access to key members of the Bush administration inner circle in exchange for "six-figure donations to the private library being set up to commemorate Bush's presidency."

In an undercover video, Payne is seen promising to arrange a meeting for an exiled leader of Krygystan with Dick Cheney or Condoleezza Rice. (Not President Bush because "he doesn't meet with a lot of former Presidents these days," Payne says. "I don't think he meets with hardly anyone.") All it will take for him to arrange this high-level meeting, says Payne, is "a couple hundred thousand dollars, or something like that."

Specifically, Payne tells a Kazakh politician he knew as Eric Dos that Payne would come up with "the exact budget," which would be "somewhere between $600,000 and $750,000, with about a third of it going directly to the Bush library." The contribution would "be a show of ‘we're interested, we're your friends, we're still friends.'"

The TimesOnline piece makes no specific mention of the politician that Dos is representing, but both Benen and BooMan narrow it down to former Krygystan President Askar Akayev, and possibly a motive as well:

(T)he prospective client who is being asked to pony up $600,000 - $750,000 ($200,000-$250,000 of which will go to the Bush Library) is former President Askar Akayev, as he is the only exiled former president of Kyrgyzstan in existence. Akayev's human rights record is mixed. For the region, it was better than average, but in the years just prior to his ouster he began to restrict and harass political and media freedoms.

The Times of London sting operation is curious. The video shows a meeting between Stephen Payne, [who is a Bush pioneer, a political appointee to the Homeland Security Advisory Council, and a Senior Advance Representative traveling internationally in advance of and with President Bush and Vice President Cheney], an unidentified representative of Askar Akayev, and an undercover reporter who is surreptitiously videotaping the conversation. It appears that the latter two gentleman colluded in setting up the sting and that part of the agreement was that the Times would not mention Akayev's name or country in print. What possible motivation would Akayev have to embarrass the Bush administration? Let's look at who Akayev blamed for his ouster:

The ousted Kyrgyzstan president, Askar Akayev, last night accused the US of being behind the "anti-constitutional coup" which forced him to flee the country last week, and said he wold only resign if given sufficient a guarantee of his personal safety.

 I believe we have what is known as payback time, ladies and gentlemen.

Perhaps Turdblossom got a little nervous that Democrats might actually locate their spines and charge him with inherent contempt and have him arrested? Video and more from Alternet:

Karl Rove was scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday. He didn't show. Not only that, the Committee was told that Rove had left the country on a "long scheduled" trip.

In this video clip, Rep. Linda Sanchez explains that Rove never told them about any trip.

The Raw Story:

TALLAHASSEE - A black Republican group has put up billboards in Florida and South Carolina saying the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican, a claim that black leaders say is ridiculous.

The National Black Republican Association has paid for billboards showing an image of the civil rights leader and the words "Martin Luther King Jr. was REPUBLICAN." Told about the billboards, the Rev. Joseph Lowery let out a soft chuckle that grew stronger as he began to think more about the idea. "These guys never give up, do they?" said Lowery, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with King. "Lord have mercy."

 "That was not the Martin I know and I don't think they can substantiate that by any shape, form or fashion. It's purely propaganda and poppycock," Lowery said. "Even if he was, he would have nothing to do with what the Republican Party stands for today. Do they think Martin would support George W. Bush and the war in Iraq?" Read on...

For anyone who thought the Republicans wouldn't use race as an issue in the '08 election, think again. The lowest common denominator is always in play for the party thats hemorrhaging members and on its way out. As I read this 2006 article by Dave Johnson at The Huffington Post I found that the NBRA and other associated groups have quite a history of hackery and controversy. Their chairwoman is a plagiarist, the group lost 7 of its 10 board members after members gave glowing reviews to President Bush for his handling of Hurricane Katrina, and many of their offices are nothing more than P.O. boxes and motel rooms set up for ready made, hit-and-run hideouts. Here's all you need to know about these GOP front groups:

Here's how the cynical process works. Your opponent is strong and you are weak in a certain area - in this case it is about strong African-American support for Democrats and a Republican race problem making its way into the news. To fight this you set up a front group that is designed to drive a wedge into the core of their support while providing "cover" to deflect attention from you. And to get this done you say anything - whatever is necessary to trick the voters into thinking their interests are served by your cause. So in this case the front-group Black Republican Freedom Fund is set up to run ads in urban areas that say, "Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan," "Democrats released those vicious dogs and fire hoses on blacks" and "Democrats blocked the minimum wage passed by Republicans." Read on...