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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Let's Try Democracy: Most outrageous statement ever by a US Department of Justice

Calitics: WTF! Jerry Brown attends fundraiser for, and endorses, a Republican D.A. in San Bernardino

Mock, Paper, Scissors: Tengrain Presents..."The Memory Hole" starring Chimpy McStagger

The Baseline Scenario: A short question for Senior officials of the New York Fed

Words of Power: Why has the Obama/Biden administration put Pollyana in charge of US policy on Darfur?

HOLY CRAP: American Jihad...Cosmos Remixed...The Empire Strikes Back...Richard Dawkins & Bill Maher...Racist Roots...Hey, we’re not Roman Polanski, OK?...Israeli Taliban...War Whore and Moonie...More Rev. Moon fans...They turned me Muslim...Jesus died for your donuts...Compassion muscle...The War on Language...Catholic movie review...Cheerleader Preaching...God and Wal-Mart...Jesus wants you to laugh!

It's very sad to see the Obama administration act like this.

Joe Sudbay:

Gay Americans lost rights last November in California. We had fundamental rights taken away by an election. Think about that. When was the last time that happened in this country?

Yesterday, a Democratic President of the United States of America, in the year 2009, and an African-American child of inter-racial parents no less, gave his lawyers the go ahead to compare our marriages to incest on the same day that 42 years ago the Supreme Court ruled in his parents' favor in Loving v. Virginia. And these people, along with our President, are suggesting that the appropriate response is to shrug our shoulders and go home, since, after all, the law is the law?

So, yes, I am advocating that we push the envelope and demand new and creative thinking on legal issues, on our civil and human rights. That's how change happens (there's that pesky word again). That's what we expect from our President who promised change, who promised to be a "fierce advocate" for our rights. Yesterday's homophobic brief would have met the expectations we had from George Bush (or Jerry Falwell). From President Barack Obama, it was an appalling betrayal of our humanity, and his own.

The Gay community gets slapped once again in the face.
Digby writes:

And likewise, merely because an unjust law is on the books doesn't mean that its right for the DOJ to defend it, particularly with the kind of inflammatory and (one hopes) disingenuous arguments used in the brief. This isn't God's Law we're talking about (assuming there were such a thing.) This is just a system set up by human beings to create an orderly and (hopefully) just society. Separating justice from the law makes the law nothing more than an arbitrary exercise in power. I recognize that it is that mostly anyway, but there's no reason to legitimize that by saying that anything goes as long as it's "legal."

If he really felt constrained by the law in this case, Eric Holder could have simply argued that the couple in question didn't have standing and let it go at that. The other arguments were gratuitous and seem to me to be designed to form a strong legal bulwark in favor of the law rather than setting the stage for reversing it. Which brings us to the politics.

Needless to say, after so many slights, snubs and various betrayals it's pretty hard to deny that the LGBT community is being used as a pawn in the president's "outreach" to social conservatives. It's a cruel dismissal of a strong and loyal constituency on an issue of fundamental civil rights. I can't defend it and I don't know how the administration is going to keep defending it. And it won't buy them a single vote, I guarantee it.

Facing South: DOJ finds Georgia voter screening inaccurate and discriminatory

MediaBloodhound: NY Times honors Reagan by ignoring history

The Mahablog: "Us "Versus "Peace"

Les Enragés: On teabags and bread

(The Good) Roger Ailes: Alcohol doesn't induce bigotry, alcohol reveals bigotry

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: NYT Co. bleeds union members...Corporate media is bad for your health... The appalling coverage of Sotomayor...Pressure grows on MSNBC to accept two-state solution...How to shrink a newspaper...Take a bow?...Anatomy of a column...The illusion of diverse opinion...CNN fades in prime time...America's Political/Media Kabuki...Project Expose MSM...MSM loves 'em some Newt...Can't hack defamation...Oh, The Irony...Mexican, Puerto Rican, Asian, what's the dif?...Now you see it, now you don't...I'm shocked!...

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David Shuster filling in for Keith talks to Jonathan Turley about the latest twists and turns with Rove refusing to appear before Congress. Turley feels that Rove can no longer continue to maintain the untenable position that they're going to invoke executive privilege to protect the executive branch against information from the executive branch and that Rove might be finally be looking at a real chance of indictment and contempt chareges.

We can only hope. If anyone finally gets to the bottom of the Don Siegelman case I think Karl Rove is in big trouble. This latest news is a good step in the right direction.

Murray Waas reports that Rove is apparently being cooperative with investigators in both the U.S. attorneys case and the Gov. Don Siegalman case:

Karl Rove will cooperate with a federal criminal inquiry underway into the firings of nine U.S. attorneys and has already spoken to investigators in a separate, internal DOJ investigation into the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, his attorney said in an interview.

Rove previously refused to cooperate with an earlier Justice Department inquiry into the firings. The Justice Department's Inspector General and its Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) said in a report released last September detailing their earlier probe of the firings of the U.S. attorneys that their investigation was severely "hindered" by the refusal by Rove and other senior Bush administration officials to cooperate with the probe.

Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, said that Rove, however, will cooperate with a federal criminal probe of the firings being led by Nora Dannehy, the Acting U.S. Attorney for Connecticut who was selected by former Attorney General Michael Mukasey to lead the investigation. Dannehy has recently empaneled a federal grand jury to hear evidence in the matter.

Luskin told me that Rove had earlier not cooperated with the Inspector General and OPR probe into the firings because "it was not his call... it was not up to us decide." Luskin said that Rove was directed by the Bush White House counsel's office not to cooperate with the Inspector General and OPR.

Murray has more here.

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.

Murray Waas' explosive investigative reporting on how more BushCo. cronyism led to a quarter of a billion dollars in payouts to loyal GOPers from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention has led to at least one DOJ offical to be fired so far.

I was told that Murray's post called " The Price of Political Favoritism and Cronyism: Lost Lives," was used as source material during the hearing. While the lead cronyist----Robert Flores did testify, his his chief of staff, Michelle Dekonty, informed the committee through counsel that she was invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Well, she got fired.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform this morning held a hearing on alleged favoritism in the awarding of grants by the Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). While Robert Flores testified at length, his chief of staff, Michelle Dekonty, informed the committee through counsel that she was invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination...read on

OK, yea I know. Another BushCo. corruption case coming out of the DOJ. What's new, right? Well, everything. Bush keeps telling us that his presidency can't be measured correctly until years and years have passed us by.

Bush says an accurate analysis of his legacy, and the war’s role in it, is impossible now. He suggests it might take decades. “There’s no such thing as an accurate history of an administration until time has lapsed — unless you’re doing little-bitty things,” he says.

Sorry Charlie, I believe after more time has elapsed I think we'll uncover more and more cases like this new story that Murray Waas has broken on ABC.com:

The Department of Justice has secretly agreed to settle conflict of interest allegations against the executive director of a group that has received $97 million in federal grants to improve the nation's family courts, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mary Mentaberry, of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ), failed to disclose that her husband had received $94,000 in real estate commission for helping the organization secure new office space. Mentaberry agreed to pay $16,500 in the settlement, which has not been previously been made public, to the consternation of some Justice Department officials.

"You would expect a nationwide association of judges to follow the rules," said one official, who called the matter an embarrassment not only to the group but also to the Department of Justice, which has given so many millions of dollars to the group.

Earlier this month, the same group paid $300,000 to settle claims that it overcharged the Justice Department.
In the case involving her husband's real estate commission, the Justice Department's inspector general said Mentaberry had an obligation to inform officials of the potential conflict of interest because of the group's heavy reliance on federal money.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that an association of Judges should actually know and understand the laws. Am I right? And then the story begs a question: Why did the government do the settlement in complete secrecy? The only hint the story gives is this:

The separate agreements by both the council and its executive director come at a time when several members of Congress have questioned whether the Bush administration appointees in the Justice Department have sidestepped federal regulations in awarding grants on the basis of political favoritism and not merit. The Department official said that he believed that there might have been an effort to keep the agreement with Mentaberry confidential so as to not attract additional attention from Congress regarding the awarding of Department grants.

So fraking judges and the executive director get off the hook because to disclose what she did-or for DOJ to disclose it-would raise cause DOJ to look more closely at DOJ's contracting practices? Yea, that sounds about right to me. Keep quiet and don't rattle the cage anymore. It will all go away Dorthothy. I'm sorry, but the hubris with which they operate is nauseating and should be investigated to the fullest. You know there's more big news coming on the heels of this .

And it's not the first time we've seen this before. remember the sweetheart contracts that former Attorney General John Ashcroft got from DOJ after he stepped down after President Bush's first term? But he's beyond reproach isn't he? Being a man of GOD---he anointed himself in Crisco oil a few times so he would never do something like that, would he?

And----if you've done something wrong---as a JUDGE no less---you get off the hook from the DOJ because they don't want Congress to know about your creepy, money grubbing deals that got you the contract in the first place. Stay tuned because I'm sure there's dirt on its way real soon....