Good Friday News Dump

Monica Goodling at a Regent Law School picnic
MSNBC reporting that Abu Gonzales aide Monica Goodling to resign -- tomorrow. Probably busy with some Good Friday reenactment today.

Goodling, graduate of the famed Pat Robertson law school Regent, has asserted Fifth Amendment rights to avoid testifying before Congress. Neither the Fifth Amendment nor this resignation will take the focus off the Bush Administration's relentless politicizing of the Justice Department.

Just today we learn that Rachel K. Paulose, the new US Attorney for the District of Minnesota, was BFF with Monica Goodling. Maybe that's why a 33-year-old with minimal legal experience (here's her resume, pdf doc, page 11) was appointed to this position, after the former US Attorney mysteriously resigned without explanation. And before she was appointed she was -- wait, wait -- a senior aide to none other than Abu Gonzales. Today the four most senior members of Paulose's office resigned en masse from their supervisory positions, bumping down to regular trial attorneys in protest of her management style.

Four of her top staff voluntarily demoted themselves Thursday, fed up with Paulose, who, after just months on the job, has earned a reputation for quoting Bible verses and dressing down underlings.

A Bible-quoting bitch. Must have been a real treat to work with.

Then there are the other US attorneys. Not the ones who got purged; not the young Christian zealots who replaced them. No, I'm speaking of the 85 or so US attorneys who kept their jobs. The ones who went along with the Bush Administration's demands for bogus voting rights cases. The ones who investigated Democrats, not Republicans. Like the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, U.S. Attorney Steven M. Biskupic, who brought a bogus case against a state purchasing supervisor (a woman) for steering a state travel contract to a political contributor of the Democratic governor. The Republican candidate for governor in 2006 hammered away on this case in political ads. (Fortunately for the citizens of the state of Wisconsin, the Democrat won anyway.)

And yes, this was a certifiably bogus case. Yesterday the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals heard the case and set the poor woman free. That's almost unheard of in appeals cases. On the very day they heard the arguments they issued their opinion that she was innocent. The three-judge panel ordered her set free immediately. The Seventh Circuit is no land of liberals. It's a strongly right-leaning circuit. And they found this case thin as tissue.

The Carpetbagger Report lists other US Attorneys who may have been bringing political hitjob cases for the Bush Administration.

The incompetence, the cronyism, and the corruption are now joined by the criminality of using the impartial justice system for partisan, political ends.