cab drollery: For those naive enough to be laboring under the delusion that the Obama administration's Department of Justice is any different than the Bush administration's, allow me to disabuse you of that misconception.

The Big Picture: How overrated is sentiment in economics?

alicublog: The Children of Zhdanov

Corrente: What we can learn from Iceland

Mondoweiss: Feeling the hate in Washington

The Grey Matter: Light bulb moment, striking statistic, dramatic change

The Justice Department has subpoenaed indymedia.us for its visitor logs for a certain date. While this raises big flags regarding online privacy, something else happened with this action that is very odd. The recipient of the subpoena was told she could not talk about it unless authorized by the Justice Department – an essential gag order.

Of course news like this would send the right into a full frenzy that Obama is trying to silence the media, even a left-leaning site like indymedia. Here’s Hot Air’s take on it:

Did the White House try to open up a two-front war on the media?   Before the Obama administration launched an all-out battle with conservative-leaning Fox News Channel, the Department of Justice demanded the records of all visitor information of left-leaning Indymedia.us in an remarkable subpoena of a media outlet, for one specific day.  No one can recall any precedent for such a wide-ranging probe into the records of a media website, but it may provide a challenge to a national-security law if the DoJ presses hard enough:

But there’s a problem with this “blame Obama” mentality. The original source of the article is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and this is what they say about the subpoena:

On January 30th, 2009, Kristina Clair of Philadelphia, PA — one of the system administrators of the server that hosts the indymedia.us site — received in the mail a grand jury subpoena from the Southern District of Indiana federal court. The FBI had sent an email to Ms. Clair a couple of weeks earlier asking where a subpoena directed at the indymedia.us site should be sent. So, we at EFF were ready and waiting to evaluate the subpoena as soon as it arrived. Yet even we were surprised at what we saw. A PDF of the entire subpoena is available here.

And let’s look at when the actual subpoena was signed:

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The Seminal: Demint's Sedition: Flying off to fight against the U.S.

unbossed: Beef processors' dirty secrets exposed

Steve Benen: Marine General Jones pushes back against McCain

market folly: The next financial mania

The Cunning Realist: Get a life

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: Good journalism...Change?...Beck boycott goes international...Peep Creep Arrested...Branch tells the truth...Letterman, Polanski, Palin and Beck...The Sure Thing...Are search engines killing newspapers?...Ratwang-Dango...Journamalism...Conventional wisdom...Iraq Today...How can these two things both be true?...Iran fail...Is Moonie Times a real newspaper?...For-profit newspapers lose money accidentally...George Will still fulla sh*t..

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Rachel Maddow talks to former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias about the pressure put on him to go after ACORN for voter fraud allegations and how Karl Rove wanted to use the issue of voter fraud as a wedge issue to win elections. As Rachel notes sadly, that plan is still paying dividends with the Democrats being all too happy to cave into political pressure by the Republicans instead of standing up for ACORN.

MADDOW: We have previously reported on this show how corporate interests opposed to ACORN`s really successful efforts to raise the minimum wage targeted the group using Republican-allied P.R. firms that proudly specialized in demonizing their opposition.

But ACORN has not just been targeted by corporations who worry that ACORN`s advocacy for living-wage ordinances and an increased minimum wage will hurt their corporate bottom line. ACORN has also been the subject for years of a purely political smear campaign, a campaign engineered by Republicans who are threatened by ACORN`s work to register young and poor and minority voters.

The American voter is typically older and more wealthy than the typical American, and that tends to give the Republicans an electoral edge among voters as compared to the preferences of the populations at large. But ACORN`s registration drives have gone some distance to changing that. Over the past five years, ACORN registered close to 2 million voters. And, yes, the groups of people that ACORN typically registers tend to vote for Democrats.

Over the last few election cycles, fear of a younger, less wealthy, and, frankly, less white electorate led Republicans, especially in swing states, to go after ACORN aggressively, and, in fact, to try to gin up charges against them, to try to make their voter registration efforts in general seem suspect and perhaps to bring down the group entirely. And when I say "ginned up," I`m not exaggerating.

Do you remember the U.S. attorney scandal, the alleged fire ring of U.S. attorneys because of U.S. political considerations? Recall what that scandal was really about. In 2006, nine U.S. attorneys were fired, surprisingly and suddenly, by the Department of Justice under George W. Bush.

Former U.S. attorney David Iglesias -- one of those U.S. attorneys who lost his job despite positive job reviews -- maintains that his pink slip came after he resisted pressure from Republicans to pursue bogus voter registration cases involving ACORN. The pressure began as early as 2002 when Mr. Iglesias says in his book "In Justice," he received an e-mail from the Department of Justice in Washington, quote, "suggesting, in no uncertain terms" that U.S. attorneys "offer whatever assistance we could in investigating and prosecuting voter fraud cases."

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August 24, 2009 News Corp

(Heather): Wow. Bill-O actually put someone on his show who does a good job of shooting down his talking points. O'Reilly thinks that no one wants torture investigated and that it's just a witch hunt, and that our torture program was "an absolute success". Jami Floyd hits back at him with some logic, like the Department of Justice is not supposed to be politicized, and that "we have federal laws on torture for a reason".

I guess after all of those years of the Bush administration using the D.O.J. as a political arm of the White House, Bill-O is having a little bit of trouble understanding that how the Bush administration did things is not exactly how they are supposed to work.

Transcript below the fold.

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It is curious that this AP article left out one giant aspect of the UBS scandal -- the role former GOP Senator Phil Gramm may have played in their illegal activity.

MIAMI – Swiss bank UBS AG "systematically and deliberately" violated U.S. law by dispatching private bankers to recruit wealthy Americans interested in evading taxes and must be forced to reveal the identities of 52,000 of those clients, the Justice Department said in a court filing Tuesday.

The filing, which comes amid several published reports that the case may be near settlement, urges U.S. District Judge Alan S. Gold to hold UBS accountable for conducting years of illegal business on U.S. soil — business that earned the bank more than $100 million in fees but cost the U.S. hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid taxes.

"It is time for UBS to face the consequences that it has brought upon itself," said Justice Department tax attorney Stuart Gibson in the 55-page filing. "The United States has proven its case for enforcement."

As Jon Perr wrote earlier this year, Gramm was instrumental in handcuffing the IRS while he was in the Senate, and may have paved the way for UBS to commit their crimes once he became their Vice Chairman in 2002.

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Well, you had to figure this was coming:

The Justice Department on Friday opened an investigation into the killing of Kansas abortion provider George Tiller to see whether the accused gunman had accomplices.

The department will investigate possible federal crimes in connection with Dr. Tiller's slaying at his church on Sunday in Wichita. State prosecutors have already ruled out seeking the death penalty against the accused gunman, but federal prosecutors did not rule out doing so as they announced their own investigation.

"The Department of Justice will work tirelessly to determine the full involvement of any and all actors in this horrible crime," said Loretta King, head of the department's civil rights division.

Anyone who played a role in the killing, she said, will be prosecuted "to the full extent of federal law."

The sound of sphincters clenching from people like Randall Terry and Cheryl Sullenger could be heard for miles and miles.

You can read the text of the DOJ release here.

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(Attorney General Edward H. Levi - you wonder what he'd have to say today)

". . .for example some of the alleged instances of misuse of the FBI over previous periods have involved directions from the White House, often from low ranking officials, given orally and couched in terms of law enforcement of national security. They involve such matters as surveillance at a political convention, investigations of a newsman unsympathetic to the administration cause, or the collection of information on political opponents. The proposed guidelines require that the request be made or confirmed in writing, specify those who may make requests, require the official initiating the investigation be identified, the purpose of the investigation stated among certain routine areas, and where a field investigation is initiated, an attestation that the subject has given consent".

Attorney General Edward H. Levi (1975-1977) addressing the American Bar Association convention in Montreal in 1975. Post-Watergate, post-Nixon. Listening to this address, I wondered what Levi would have to say about Roberto Gonzalez and the shambles the judicial system had become - falling very far from the "high moral ground" we had been so tenuously placed. I was struck by Levi's mention of the "ambiguous nature" of our Constitution as part of the genius of it. But all it of seemed to be based on an assumption it would never be manipulated to fulfill an agenda of fear. The unscrupulous placed in charge to find loopholes in order to justify immoral behavior and the degree in which those behaviors are carried out.

Not many people know that Judge Jay ByBee is a Mormon and an anti-gay supporter. As Patrick Leahy, Russ Feingold, Jerry Nadler, and Jan Schakowsky all spoke out against him, Harry Reid wasn't saying much. Even though Diane Feinstein voted against his confirmation she now either has a no comment or is trying to wrestle control of the investigation.

Russ Feingold voted against his nomination back in 2003:

On more than 20 occasions, Mr. Bybee refused to answer a question, claiming over and over again that as an attorney in the Department of Justice he could not comment on any advice that he gave at any time. This is unfortunately becoming a very familiar refrain of nominees before the Judiciary Committee.
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But the failure to make OLC opinions available to the Judiciary Committee during the consideration of a nominee for a seat on a circuit court is unacceptable... The administration should be able to agree to an acceptable procedure to allow the Judiciary Committee to review Mr. Bybee's OLC opinions. Given the recent history of many OLC opinions being made public, it is hard to believe that there are no opinions authored by Mr. Bybee that could be disclosed without damaging the deliberative process. Indeed, it is very hard to give credence to the idea that OLC's independence would be compromised by the release of some selection of the opinions of interest to members of the Judiciary Committee or the Senate.

After the release of these memos why then is Harry Reid not in line with almost every Democratic Politician?

A serious setback, however: Harry Reid, whose Senate would rule on an impeachment in the House, doesn't seem to like the idea:

"Judge Bybee has a good professional reputation in Nevada," Reid spokesman Jon Summers said in an e-mail. "While the memos that have been released are disturbing to Sen. Reid, at this point in time, he doesn't think we should be making a rush to judgment."

And as Alex Koppelman reports in Salon:

Reid has also resisted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's request to create an independent commission to investigate the interrogation tactics. In a recent statement, Reid said, "I think it would [sic] very unwise from my perspective to start having commissions, boards, tribunals until we find out what the facts are.”

Reid sponsored Bybee's judicial appointment, along with fellow Nevada Senator John Ensign. Ensign has been adamant in his support of Bybee, referring to the calls for the judge's ouster as "outrageous" and saying that "This was not torture. This is the thing we have to get away from, that this is somehow accepted that it was torture. The United States does not engage in torture. This was 'advanced interrogation techniques.'"

My question is of Harry Reid. Are you supporting Judge ByBee because he is a Mormon? I'm not against religion as I've said many times, but if Bybee was involved with any other religion, would Harry Reid have supported him? Will any reporters pose that question to Harry Reid? It just seems odd to me that Reid didn't condemn the memos he's credited with writing much more harshly and is resisting any form of inspection. This is very troubling.

Glenn Greenwald, who's a former constitutional attorney, is very unhappy with this move from the Justice Department:

[...] Late Friday afternoon, the Obama DOJ filed the government's first response to EFF's lawsuit (.pdf), the first of its kind to seek damages against government officials under FISA, the Wiretap Act and other statutes, arising out of Bush's NSA program. But the Obama DOJ demanded dismissal of the entire lawsuit based on (1) its Bush-mimicking claim that the "state secrets" privilege bars any lawsuits against the Bush administration for illegal spying, and (2) a brand new "sovereign immunity" claim of breathtaking scope -- never before advanced even by the Bush administration -- that the Patriot Act bars any lawsuits of any kind for illegal government surveillance unless there is "willful disclosure" of the illegally intercepted communications.

In other words, beyond even the outrageously broad "state secrets" privilege invented by the Bush administration and now embraced fully by the Obama administration, the Obama DOJ has now invented a brand new claim of government immunity, one which literally asserts that the U.S. Government is free to intercept all of your communications (calls, emails and the like) and -- even if what they're doing is blatantly illegal and they know it's illegal -- you are barred from suing them unless they "willfully disclose" to the public what they have learned.

There are several notable aspects to what happened here with this new court filing from Obama:

(1) Unlike in the prior cases where the Obama DOJ embraced the Bush theory of state secrets -- in which the Obama DOJ was simply maintaining already-asserted arguments in those lawsuits by the Bush DOJ -- the motion filed on Friday was the first response of any kind to this lawsuit by the Government. Indeed, EFF filed the lawsuit in October but purposely agreed with Bush lawyers to an extension of the time to respond until April, in the hope that by making this Obama's case, and giving his DOJ officials months to consider what to do when first responding, they would receive a different response than the one they would have gotten from the Bush DOJ.

That didn't happen. This brief and this case are exclusively the Obama DOJ's, and the ample time that elapsed -- almost three full months -- makes clear that it was fully considered by Obama officials. Yet they responded exactly as the Bush DOJ would have. This demonstrates that the Obama DOJ plans to invoke the exact radical doctrines of executive secrecy which Bush used -- not only when the Obama DOJ is taking over a case from the Bush DOJ, but even when they are deciding what response should be made in the first instance. Everything for which Bush critics excoriated the Bush DOJ -- using an absurdly broad rendition of "state secrets" to block entire lawsuits from proceeding even where they allege radical lawbreaking by the President and inventing new claims of absolute legal immunity -- are now things the Obama DOJ has left no doubt it intends to embrace itself.

(2) It is hard to overstate how extremist is the "sovereign immunity" argument which the Obama DOJ invented here in order to get rid of this lawsuit. I confirmed with both ACLU and EFF lawyers involved in numerous prior surveillance cases with the Bush administration that the Bush DOJ had never previously argued in any context that the Patriot Act bars all causes of action for any illegal surveillance in the absence of "willful disclosure." This is a brand new, extraordinarily broad claim of government immunity made for the first time ever by the Obama DOJ -- all in service of blocking EFF's lawsuit against Bush officials for illegal spying.

As EFF's Kevin Bankston puts it:

This is the first time [the DOJ] claimed sovereign immunity against Wiretap Act and Stored Communications Act claims. In other words, the administration is arguing that the U.S. can never be sued for spying that violates federal surveillance statutes, whether FISA, the Wiretap Act or the SCA.

January 27, 2009 News Corp

I'm actually a lot more interested in how the Obama administration plans to purge the DoJ ranks of those appointees who were hired based on this illegal criteria:

Ideological considerations permeated the hiring process at the Justice Department's civil rights division, where a politically appointed official sought to hire "real Americans" and Republicans for career posts and prominent case assignments, according to a long awaited report released this morning by the department's inspector general.

The extensive study of hiring practices between 2001 and 2007 concluded that a former department official improperly weeded out candidates based on their perceived ties to liberal organizations. Two other senior managers failed to oversee the process, authorities said.

The key official, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Bradley Schlozman, favored employees who shared his political views and derided others as "libs" and "pinkos," the report said.

Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine and Office of Professional Responsibility chief H. Marshall Jarrett said they would refer their findings to legal disciplinary authorities.

"The Department must be vigilant to ensure that such egregious misconduct does not occur in the future," Fine said in a statement.

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From Countdown Keith reports on the lastest findings from the Justice Department on the illegal hiring practices of Bradley Schlozman.

We already knew that President Bush had corrupted even the US Justice Department... that his political appointees appointed their own political appointees to fill even jobs that are not allowed to be political... with political appointees. And we knew that the appointees of Mr. Bush's appointees broke the law in doing so, by applying a political litmus test to job applicants... in violation of the law those appointees were sworn to enforce. Tonight, in our third story, we now have the smoking guns -- plus a little racism thrown in for bad measure -- in a stunning report from the Justice Department itself.

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Keith talks to John Dean about whether we might ever see prosecutions for war crimes after Cheney's public admissions and the findings from the Senate Armed Services Committee. He rightfully notes that a commission to determine if there were any crimes committed is just a way to kick the can down the road and make sure no one is prosecuted for anything before the statute of limitations runs out. It's a sad state of affairs when we have to be wondering yet again if this country is going to allow crimes to go unpunished for political reasons rather than caring about the rule of law. We still have a two tiered system of justice in America. One for the rich and politically connected and another one for everyone else.

  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.