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The Nation editor Katrina Vanden Heuvel on Sunday said that Republicans were succeeding at using "weapons of mass distraction" to obstruct President Barack Obama's second term agenda.

During an ABC News panel discussion about the a number of scandals that Republicans are using to attack the Obama administration, Washington Post columnist George Will asserted that IRS scrutiny of tea party groups was like Watergate because "it's the use of the federal machinery to punish enemies of the administration."

"Watergate? Seriously, George?" Vanden Heuvel replied. "I mean, Watergate was a scandal unique in its depths of criminality. You had a president at the heart of the White House directing the subversion of the FBI and other institutions, including the IRS... And the key scandal -- which you will disagree with -- is that we had after Citizens United a flood of money coming in, and you had groups which were clearly political and partisan trying to use this 501(c)4 [tax-exempt] categorization to escape political scrutiny."

Vanden Heuvel went on to point out that the Republican Party was trying to substitute the so-called scandal at the IRS, attacks in Benghazi and the Justice Department's seizure of Associate Press phone records for a real political agenda.

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Our corporate media has been trotting these Bushies back out for years on end now, so it's no surprise that we'd eventually see Alberto Gonzales take his turn. I guess the producers of Morning Joe thought there was no one better for their audience to hear from when it comes to Department of Justice scandals than Gonzo.

It does seem his memory has improved slightly since 2007, when he couldn't recall much of anything when testifying before Congress.

Steve Benen summed up his appearance this Wednesday quite nicely. After first explaining why it's likely Gonzales has kept such a low profile since leaving office and the fact that he went through quite a bit of trouble finding a job, he reminded us why he has absolutely no credibility to be commenting on the DOJ and journalists: Alberto Gonzales returns from obscurity:

The former A.G. nevertheless appeared on MSNBC this morning, apparently ready to address some of ongoing controversies. He seemed inclined to give the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt when it came to subpoenaing Associated Press phone logs, but this nevertheless stood out for me.

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales recalled on Wednesday a time when he was confronted with a "very serious leak investigation" similar to the one that has embroiled the Obama administration this week. But, he said, he went a very different route and decided against subpoenaing a reporter's notes.

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Republican strategist Brad Blakeman on Friday said that President Barack Obama was complicit in encouraging criminal activity because he supported contraception for young women.

Last month, a federal judge ordered the Obama administration to make emergency contraception available to girls as young as 15 without a prescription. The Justice Department vowed to appeal the ruling, but the president on Thursday told reporters in Mexico that he was "comfortable" with giving girls access to the morning-after pill.

"This makes no sense at all," Blakeman opined to Fox News host Martha MacCallum on Friday. "You have to be 18 years old to buy a pack of cigarettes. And the president is also encouraging criminal behavior because in most jurisdictions in America, engaging in sexual intercourse at 14, 15 years old is statutory rape. So the president is somehow saying, 'If you engage in that activity -- criminal behavior -- that's okay because the government is going to provide you the out for your bad decision making.'"

Left-leaning Fox News contributor Julie Rodinsky, however, was more realistic, pointing out that "15 year olds and people who are older do have sex, and if they do have sex, isn't the whole point here to prevent them from getting pregnant? And this is the best way to prevent conception. This is not an abortion pill."

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Once again, the banks are given a pass for their criminal behavior, while homeowners are given the shaft: 4 million people wrongfully foreclosed on. Can they get their houses back?:

Imagine you are a homeowner who has made your mortgage payments on time. Or pretend for a moment that you have been informed you are entitled to relief or promised a modification. Now, imagine that in spite of all that, you receive a foreclosure notice, which the bank follows through on.

That is the reality for the 4 million people the banks wrongfully foreclosed on between 2009-2010. Tuesday, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve announced the beginning of payments for some of those people whose homes were wrongfully taken from them.

As Hayes explained in the clip above, "given the scale of the deception and error, the amount of money on the table for those who've been victimized, is in most instances, cartoonishly small."

Here's more from Salon on Alexis Goldstein's What You Can Buy for Having Your House Stolen Tumblr page -- Bank stole your house? Have 10 pitchforks’ worth of compensation:

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This story is just disgusting. There ought to be criminal charges against this contractor for doing this, instead of them trying to dump their liabilities onto the taxpayers: KBR, Guilty In Iraq Negligence, Wants Taxpayers To Foot The Bill:

Sodium dichromate is an orange-yellowish substance containing hexavalent chromium, an anti-corrosion chemical. To Lt. Col. James Gentry of the Indiana National Guard, who was stationed at the Qarmat Ali water treatment center in Iraq just after the 2003 U.S. invasion, it was “just different-colored sand.” In their first few months at the base, soldiers were told by KBR contractors running the facility the substance was no worse than a mild irritant.

Gentry was one of approximately 830 service members, including active-duty soldiers and members of the National Guard and reserve units from Indiana, South Carolina, West Virginia and Oregon, assigned to secure the water treatment plant, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Sodium dichromate is not a mild irritant. It is an extreme carcinogen. In November 2009, at age 52, Gentry died of cancer. The VA affirmed two months later that his death was service-related.

In November, a jury found KBR, the military's largest contractor, guilty of negligence in the poisoning of a dozen soldiers, and ordered the company to pay $85 million in damages. Jurors found KBR knew both of the presence and toxicity of the chemical. Other lawsuits against KBR are pending.

KBR, however, says taxpayers should be on the hook for the verdict, as well as more than $15 million the company has spent in its failed legal defense, according to court documents and attorneys involved with the case.

KBR's contract with the U.S. to rebuild Iraq’s oil infrastructure after the 2003 invasion includes an indemnity agreement protecting the company from legal liability, KBR claims in court filings. That agreement, KBR insists, means the federal government must pay the company's legal expenses plus the verdict won by 12 members of the Oregon National Guard who were exposed to the toxin at the Qarmat Ali water treatment plant.

The military disagrees. A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers contracting officer told KBR in November 2011 that litigation costs "are not covered by the indemnity agreement."

The public doesn’t know what the indemnity agreement actually says because the military considers it classified. Until recently, the veterans exposed to the toxin couldn’t know either, nor could attorneys at the Department of Justice, who were left battling the contract in the dark, according to a source there.

Michael Doyle, a Houston-based lawyer who helped the successful suit against KBR, told The Huffington Post the military declassified the indemnification agreement on Dec. 21 and gave it to him under a protective order that banned him from sharing the language to parties not involved in the case. John A. Elolf, a spokesman for KBR, confirmed the declassification of the agreement and said the contractor also was prevented from providing a copy. HuffPost has requested the document under the Freedom of Information Act from the Corps of Engineers. Read on...

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As Current TV's John Fugelsang, filling in for Eliot Spitzer this week reminded us, when average citizens break the law we have to pay fines that might actually act as a deterrent or face jail time and when these bankers and Wall Street commit crimes, they get a slap on the wrist compared to the profit they already extracted and give up their bonuses.

As John noted, you don't go to prison for Wall Street crimes, but you can't say the same for those protesting Wall Street. And he's right, if they cracked down on these bankers stealing the same way they have park zoning laws, there would be no need for an Occupy Wall Street movement.

Barclays to pay more than $450 million in interest-rate settlement:

Barclays Bank PLC has agreed to pay more than $450 million to settle charges it attempted to manipulate key interest rates.

The London-based investment bank announced settlements with the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission and the British Financial Services Authority.

Investigators found the bank manipulated the London InterBank Offered Rate, or LIBOR, and the Euro Interbank Offered Rate, or EURIBOR, benchmark interest rates used in the world's financial markets. [...]

Under the settlements, Barclays would pay the Justice Department a $160-million penalty and cooperate with its ongoing investigation to avoid prosecution. The bank would pay the U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission $200 million, with the rest going to the British Financial Services Authority.

In a statement, Barclays Chief Executive Bob Diamond said he and other top executives would forgo bonuses this year.

“The events which gave rise to today’s resolutions relate to past actions which fell well short of the standards to which Barclays aspires in the conduct of its business," Diamond said. "When we identified those issues, we took prompt action to fix them and cooperated extensively and proactively with the authorities. Nothing is more important to me than having a strong culture at Barclays; I am sorry that some people acted in a manner not consistent with our culture and values."

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The Young Turks Cenk Uygur did one of the better summations of just what went wrong with this Fast and Furious operation and on Fortune Magazine's investigative report: ‘The Fast and Furious program as you know it is a myth’ :

Cenk digs into Fortune Magazine’s report following a six-month investigation into claims that agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sold guns to straw purchasers for Mexican cartels during Operation Fast and Furious. Attorney General Eric Holder may be held in contempt, but Fortune concludes that ATF agents never purposely sold to cartels. Instead, their efforts to track purchasers were often blocked by weak gun control laws. “You want to know the irony of this? The NRA had those weak laws passed in the first place,” Cenk says. “Do you know that, in Arizona, all you need to do to buy a gun is to be 18 and pass a background check? In fact … you can buy 10 guns — 100 guns, if you want.”

Here's more from Dave Dayden over at FDL's News Desk: On Eve of Contempt Vote, Revelation that Fast and Furious Is a Convenient Fiction:

White House officials have been in consultation with the GOP House leadership in advance of tomorrow’s contempt of Congress vote for Attorney General Eric Holder over the Fast and Furious scandal and the Justice Department’s response to an Oversight Committee investigation and document request. However, the two sides have not reached an agreement, and as of now, the contempt vote will be held as scheduled. Even though the White House provided access to 30 new documents, that was not enough to delay the contempt vote, suggesting that the vote itself and not the investigation is the end goal here.

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This has to be one of the most pathetic things I've watched in a long time and given the crazy train that the Republican Party has become in recent years, that's saying a lot. Here's more from Ed Kilgore over at Washington Monthly: A Classic of Inversion:

If for some reason you can’t access this video, it’s an ad from famous African-American right-wingers Ken Blackwell and Herman Cain attacking Eric Holder for failing to protect the right to vote by refusing to pursue the hallucinatory New Black Panther Party voter intimidation “threat” and by persecuting poor Rick Scott, who’s just trying to protect the “integrity” of the ballot box. This rolls out after images from the civil rights movement and a pious statement from the duo about the hard-fought right to vote.

This ad is the most striking example yet of the peculiar psychological need of conservatives to convince themselves that when they are messing with minority folks they are actually warriors in the fight for civil rights, while the self-same minority folks are self-hating bigots and/or helpless pawns in the grip of white elites. I mean, really: they could just admit they want to discourage African-Americans from voting because they tend to vote for the wrong party, or that they’d oppose “welfare” whether or not a case could be made that it is victimizing its beneficiaries. All this bizarre self-righteousness and parading of minority spokespeople in communications clearly aimed at a virtually all-white audience is getting downright pathological.

Here's more from Wonkette: Herman Cain, Ken Blackwell Team Up For Most Ludicrous Video Ever:

Herman Cain and Ken Blackwell, the former Ohio secretary of state who STOLE THE 2004 ELECTION WITH MACHINES, have teamed up to produce this video about the Right to Vote. They do so by criticizing the Justice Department’s attempts to ensure black people can vote in the face of new laws that are clearly trying to suppress black turnout. And how could DoJ also refuse to pursue the New Black Panther Party scandal? Herman Cain and Ken Blackwell would have pursued it, for civil rights.

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As Think Progress reported today: Executive Privilege Does Not Apply Exclusively To Presidential Communications. Apparently it was asking too much for CNN's John King to have pointed that out to Sen. Chuck Grassley today. The Hill didn't inform their readers of that fact either in this report: White House move sets off lawmaker questions over 'Fast and Furious':

Republican leaders in both chambers are raising sharper questions about the White House's involvement in the controversial "Fast and Furious" program after President Obama invoked executive privilege to withhold documents from Republican investigators.

Both the White House and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder have claimed repeatedly that high-level officials – both in the Department of Justice and in the White House – were unaware of the nature of the botched program, which put firearms into the hands of known gun-runners in an effort to trace them to drug-smugglers along the Mexican border.

But with the White House moving unilaterally Wednesday to assert executive privilege over documents sought by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Republicans have grown more suspicious that those officials knew more than they've claimed.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the administration's maneuver "raises monumental questions" about who knew what – and when.

"How can the president assert executive privilege if there was no White House involvement? How can the president exert executive privilege over documents he's supposedly never seen?" Grassley, who met with Holder Tuesday night, said Wednesday in a statement. "Is something very big being hidden to go to this extreme? ... The questions from Congress go to determining what happened in a disastrous government program for accountability and so that it's never repeated again.”

The office of House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) was quick to raise similar concerns. Read on...

Here's more from Think Progress from earlier this week on Darrell Issa's witchhunt: Five Things To Know About The Republican Witchhunt Against Attorney General Holder.

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Nothing like seeing a Republican vow to do their best to make sure all of the voters of her state still have to worry about being thrown off of the voting rolls even if they don't belong there, as GOP AG Pam Bondi promised to do on Megyn Kelly's show on Fox this Tuesday:

AG Pam Bondi Promises Florida Will ‘Keep Fighting’ For Voter Purge:

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly on Tuesday that the state would “keep fighting” for its right to purge noncitizens from the state’s voter rolls, even though the efforts have removed legitimate voters from the rolls.

“I think every American should find it very frustrating and troubling that [the feds] don’t want to work with our state to insure that the proper people vote,” Bondi said.

The Justice Department told Florida last week that their voter list purge is illegal. Florida is supposed to respond by Wednesday.

Bondi went on to blame their latest tactics on asking the federal government for a list from Homeland Security and it not being made available to them, instead of the list they used to purge the voters off of the rolls. I'll be curious to find out if that statement is true, just what information they were asking for and why it was denied and why the state thought that justified their actions in response. It doesn't change the fact that they instead decided to start purging voters from their rolls that they knew full well were probably legal voters and why the Republicans would have an interest in doing so.