2007 Bush admin politics in review

I have seen several good 2007 retrospectives so far, but the first one that springs to mind is Dahlia Lithwicks' Slate article Legal Fictions: The Bush administration's dumbest legal arguments of the year. Here are just the introductions to each:

• 10. The NSA's eavesdropping was limited in scope.
• 9. Scooter Libby's sentence was commuted because it was excessive.
• 8. The vice president's office is not a part of the executive branch.
• 7. The Guantanamo Bay detainees enjoy more legal rights than any prisoners of war in history.
• 6. Water-boarding may not be torture.
• 5. Everyone who has ever spoken to the president about anything is barred from congressional testimony by executive privilege.
• 4. Nine U.S. attorneys were fired by nobody, but for good reason.
• 3. Alberto Gonzales. [See her discussion for the full list under Al's heading.]
• 2. State secrets. [This is a redefinition of what we used to call 'politically embarrassing. Musharraf is trying to apply this to Bhutto's assassination. And failing.]
• 1. The United States does not torture.

The list I like best is Paul Kiel's TPM´s Great List of Scandalized Administration Officials at TPMMuckraker. I started to try to keep a list like this last Spring, but it overwhelmed me. Here are just the categories and the number of names in each:

• Indicted / Convicted/ Pled Guilty [10 entries.]
• Resigned Due to Investigation, Pending Investigation or Allegations of Impropriety [24 entries]
• Nomination Failed Due to Scandal [5 entries]
• Under Investigation But Still in Office [3 entries]

Paul did limit the list to only those "Bush Administration officials who'd been accused of corruption and/or resigned in the face of scandal."

Most of those below were the subjects of criminal probes, but we also included officials who were credibly accused of acts that, if not criminal, were a corruption of office (like the U.S. attorney scandal). And even then, such officials were only included if their accusers had them dead to rights (which is why Karl Rove didn't make the cut). We also limited ourselves to officials who were either political appointees or whose actions were so political that they were effectively political appointees (like John Tanner).

Without those limitations the list would have been endless.