White House working to limit voter turnout.

The Purge of the U.S. attorneys is closely related to efforts by the White House to reduce the number of lower income and minority people on the voters rolls. The effort to keep likely Democratic voters from being successfully registered or from voting is also the reason for the Republican complaints about organized voting fraud after each of the elections since 2000. Now we have another report on this effort to prevent voters from opposing Republicans by using the Justice Department. The report comes from McClatchy Newspapers:

By GREG GORDON of McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates, according to civil rights advocates and a former administration official.

The administration intensified its efforts last year as President Bush's popularity and Republican support eroded heading into a midterm battle for control of Congress, which the Democrats won.

Facing nationwide voter registration drives by Democratic-leaning groups, the administration alleged widespread election fraud and endorsed proposals for tougher state and federal voter identification laws. Presidential political adviser Karl Rove alluded to the strategy in April 2006 when he railed about voter fraud in a speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association.

Questions about the administration's campaign against alleged voter fraud have helped fuel the political tempest over the firings last year of eight U.S. attorneys, several of whom were ousted in part because they did not bring voter fraud cases important to Republican politicians.

Civil rights advocates contend that the administration's policies were intended to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of poor and minority voters, who tend to support Democrats. By filing state and federal lawsuits, civil rights groups have won court rulings blocking some of its actions. [Snip]

Voting laws

Former Justice Department lawyers, public records and other documents show that since President Bush took office, political appointees in the Civil Rights Division have:

Approved Georgia and Arizona laws that tightened voter ID requirements. A federal judge tossed out the Georgia law as an unconstitutional infringement on the rights of poor voters, and a federal appeals court signaled its objections to the Arizona law on similar grounds last fall.

Issued advisory opinions that overstated a 2002 federal election law by asserting that it required states to disqualify new voting registrants if their identification didn't match that in computer databases, prompting at least three states to reject tens of thousands of applicants mistakenly.

Done little to enforce a provision of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act that requires state public assistance agencies to register voters. The inaction has contributed to a 50 percent decline in annual registrations at those agencies, to 1 million from 2 million.

Sued at least six states on grounds that they had too many people on their voter rolls. Some eligible voters were removed in the resulting purges.

Carol Lam, US attorney of San Diego was apparently asked to resign because she was too active in pursuing criminal cases against crooked Republican politicians like Duke Cunningham and John Doolittle. The US attorney of Arkansas was asked to resign so that a political operative who was an aide to Karl Rove could take the job and get some experience as a real attorney to put on his resume. The others were asked to resign because of complaints that they had not brought cases against Democrats just before the election or were not bringing voter fraud cases that Republican politicians thought that they should be able to take to court.

Then there is US attorney Biskupic of Milwaukee, WI who was removed from the list after (because?) he brought a high profile case against a Wisconsin civil servant for steering a state contract for travel services to a travel firm owned by a family which apparently donated political money mostly to Democrats. This case became the only real issue the Republican candidate to defeat the existing Democratic Governor from being reelected, but when the case reached the Appeals Court the Appeal Justices literally threw it out of court, saying that it was not based on any evidence and that the Prosecutor provided no credible evidence that any crime had been committed. Not only was she not shown to get any personal benefit from giving the contract to the travel agency (a requirement to prove fraud) and no evidence that she knew that the family that owned the travel agency were supporters of the Democratic Party, the agencies' bid was the low bid submitted.

The Executive Department generally and the Department of Justice have been so politicized by the Bush administration, including Alberto Gonzales, that it may take years to rebuild the government after Bush leaves office. This report is just one more of the many, many ways the Republicans have worked to destroy America.

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Addendum 8:11 PM CDT.
Digby has a great deal more about the Republican effort to use false accusations about voter fraud to reduce Democratic voter turnout. As usual his reporting is thorough, well-sourced, and well-written. Go enjoy it.

Rep. Doolittle to step down from House Appropriations Committee.

Rep. John Doolittle has decided to step down from his position on the House Appropriations Committee. This action is clearly in response to the action by the FBI to search his home in Northern Virginia last Friday.

Although the decision to step down was made by Rep. Doolittle, "Roll Call" reports that the House Republican Leadership was prepared to remove him if he did not act himself.

Let me state the obvious. This investigation has been going on for quite a while, but it has been mostly under the radar. Now it has broken out into the public arena, and that suggests that the end-game is now in play. The FBI and the Public Corruption Unit of the DoJ wouldn't have let it get this far if they did not have a very good case for the Prosecution.

Bob Ney and Randy "Duke" Cunningham should be preparing a welcoming party for Rep. Doolittle at their federal prisons. It's time for them to plan the entertainment and order the party hats.

Firedoglake liveblogs the Gonzales hearings

For more on the Senate hearings with Alberto Gonzales, Firedoglake is liveblogging them. Here are this morning's hearings, presented with the earliest at the bottom of the list and the last at the top:

• Alberto Gonzales testimony, Part VIII
• Alberto Gonzales testimony, Part VII
• Alberto Gonzales testimony, Part VI
  [Lunch break]
• Alberto Gonzales Testimony, Part V
• Alberto Gonzales Testimony, Part IV
• Alberto Gonzales Testimony, Part III
• Alberto Gonzales Testimony, Part II
• Alberto Gonzales Testimony, Part I
• Just warming up?

Today's Senate Hearings with Attorney General Gonzales

I have been listening closely to the Senate Hearings on NPR in which Attorney General Gonzales is being grilled on the firings of the US attorneys. The questions (with the exception of those by Sen. Cornyn the "box turtle [*]" pretending to be a Senator from Texas) have been sharp and direct.

Gonzales' responses have been imprecise, frequently going off on tangents that appear to have only the twin purposes of making the Attorney General look better and using up the time each Senator has to ask questions, and often contradictory. My impression is that Gonzales was not involved in the process of running the office. He made "decisions" primarily based on the recommendations of his subordinates - and though he dares not say so, probably at the direction of Bush and Rove from the White House. He repeatedly testified that he did not ask his subordinates the basis of their recommended decisions.

Yet he stated repeatedly that he takes responsibility for the decisions he made. Senator Lindsey Graham nailed it when he asked (paraphrased) "Is it fair to say that you depended on your subordinates to have good reasons for the decisions they recommended and never questioned the basis they used for those decisions?" When Gonzales replied "Yes." Sen. Graham went on "And you never considered that some of the US attorneys you were firing might be on the list because they somehow raised the ire of someone on your staff?"

At this point Gonzales stumbled and then agreed that the scenario Sen. Graham presented was possible.

Then towards the end of this mornings' session Attorney General Gonzales was asked if, considering his credibility problems with members of Congress, it might be best if he resigned, Gonzales energetically stated that he did not think he should resign. That he had a great deal more [unspecified] to offer the Department of Justice and he wanted to stay on to accomplish those things.

When the Senate Committee adjourned for lunch, one NPR reporter made a point of stating that while hearings like this often were contentious and highly emotional, this was the first time that many of the Senators involved appeared to pity Gonzales more than simply be angry with him. The pity, the reporter continued, was because of the feeling that had frequently been mentioned on the Hill that Gonzales was a "Dead man walking."

That is my impression so far. For more on the hearings, go to TPM Muckraker. See also Gonzales And The Profound Lie by Rick Perlstein.

---

Addendum 2:17 PM CDT
I rarely ever agree with Byron York at the Corner of NRO, but this time he has it right.

The major problem with his testimony is that Gonzales maintains, in essence, that he doesn’t know why he fired at least some of the eight dismissed U.S. attorneys. When, under questioning by Republican Sen. Sam Brownback, Gonzales listed the reasons for each firing, it was clear that in a number of cases, he had reconstructed the reason for the dismissal after the fact. He didn’t know why he fired them at the time, other than the action was recommended by senior Justice Department staff.

I will say I don't think this is the major problem with his testimony, it certainly sits close to the top of Gonzales' many, many problems.

---

[*]An old Texas joke.
What do you know if you are driving in the country and see a box turtle sitting on top of a fence post? Several things. You know:

• he has no purpose there,
  
• he didn't get there by himself, and
  
• he can't get down by himself.

"Box turtle" is one of the nicer things that Sen. John Cornyn has been called.

FBI negotiation teams go anywhere in the world to free kidnapped Americans

When an American citizen is kidnapped in Haiti, Colombia, Omaha Nebraska, or Iraq what can the U.S. government do to help resolve the situation and free the victim or victims with limited loss of life? Where to law enforcement agencies in the U.S. (particularly smaller agencies) or government officials outside the U.S. go for help in what is often a rare situation and may be one they have never before faced and have no training to deal with? There is a good answer to that question.

The FBI has a Crisis Negotiation Unit (CNU) consisting of 350 trained negotiators who are available to go anywhere in the world 24/7 to help free kidnapped Americans. This unit is a part of the Operations Support Branch of the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group. The mission of the Crisis Negotiation Unit is "to resolve hostage, barricade, attempted suicide, and kidnapping cases throughout the world."

The Crisis Negotiation Unit has deployed overseas about 300 times since it was created. When a kidnapping or hostage/barricade situation involving an American citizen occurs outside the U.S. the appropriate State Department Legal Attaché (Legat) office requests support from the Negotiation unit. When the negotiator arrives his or her function is to provide advice and recommendations to the State Department or Military individuals dealing with the situation. Members of the Negotiation Unit were involved when American journalist Jill Carroll was kidnapped recently in Iraq. She was released alive after 82 days of captivity.

In the U.S. unit negotiators work with and provide training to local tactical and S.W.A.T. teams. The FBI Negotiators work in parallel to local forces, providing advice, recommendations, expertise, and assisting to train family members in the process of negotiation with kidnappers. Over 80% of barricade and hostage incidents in the U.S. are resolved through negotiation or a combination of negotiation and tactical methods. It is rare that such incidents are resolved using only tactical methods.

Since negotiation is such an important part of resolving such incidents, the FBI maintains the Hostage Barricade Database System, which is available to law enforcement agencies throughout the U.S. The database contains information on roughly 5,000 incidents, primarily state and local, to show how they were resolved. Through this database law enforcement officials can learn how previous incidents were resolved as well as how long they lasted, what weapons were used, and how communications were used in the resolution. The CNU and the Hostage Barricade Database System are both tools used by the government to save save lives through the use of communications.

Previously I published an article entitled What do the military and police do for governments? The Crisis Negotiation Unit is an example of a purely police function, something that the military would not do because it would have little or no use in accomplishing the principle missions of the U.S. military.

The CNU develops expertise, trains individuals and provides a long-term career path for professionals with this expertise. I am publishing this article to demonstrate the real distinctions that exist between military and police functions and why military organizations cannot be expected to effectively provide police functions. The military simply isn't organized or trained to do police work. I am also publishing this article because this is a little-known function of the FBI, and I personally find it quite fascinating.

I hope you find it as interesting as I do.

---

This article is based on a PR release from the FBI dated April 13, 2007.

Related stories include

• A review of the FOX network show "The Standoff"
• An Office of the Inspector General Report on the the September 2005 Shooting Incident Involving Filiberto Ojeda Ríos.
Crisis Negotiation Teams: Selection and Training.
• The FBI's Critical Incident Negotiation Team
• Role-play training for negotiators in diverse environments
  and there are many more articles available through Google.

Supreme Court deals loss to women's reproductive Rights.

The Supreme Court has effectively outlawed the surgical procedure called technically "intact dilation and extraction" or politically called "partial birth abortion" by the anti-abortionist's. See Kevin Drum for a short discussion and relevant links.

Ed Kilgore provides an interesting analysis of today's 5 to 4 decision upholding the federal law banning the so-called Partial Birth Abortions:

Ginsburg's opinion for the four dissenters is a model of comprehensive clarity, nailing the majority opinion (penned by that perennial abortion rights weathervane, Anthony Kennedy) for its stealth attacks on the Court's precedents, especially the health exception, the viability standard for scrutiny of abortion restrictions, and the treatment of evidence about the "medical necessity" of various abortion methods.

And the incredibly succinct Thomas-Scalia concurrence, which simply and directly attacks Roe, also challenges the majority to come out of the closet and reverse abortion rights.

There's no question that the majority opinion erodes some of the underpinnings of how the federal courts have applied Roe and Casey. And it opens the door to further abortion restrictions.

But on the basics, this decision may prove to be a pyrrhic victory for the anti-choice forces. Every time the Roberts Court validates a technical and largely marginal exception to abortion rights by claiming to respect abortion rights, it will become more difficult to overturn those rights altogether. If, however, a Republican replaces Bush in 2008, and gets another chance to reshape the Court, then I have no doubt future appointees will find a way to get the job done.

While this may open the way to other state laws that chip away at the forms and conditions for surgical abortions, the inability of the five Justices to agree on a joint rationale for approving it will not make the anti-abortion forces at all happy.

In the meantime, all the younger women who did not consider themselves feminists may suddenly realise that their control of their own bodies is under serious attack.

The result is that this decision offers two possible futures. It may be the breakthrough the anti-abortion forces were looking for and lead to doing away with legal abortions (Digby thinks this is the future,) or it may be the high-water mark for the anti-abortionists that activates the opposition into a force that relegates them back to the shadows where they belong.

I suspect the decision regarding which direction the future is going to take will, like many other things, be revealed in the 2008 elections.

Reid, Pelosi warned Bush to expect a real fight.

Bush met at the White House with Congressional leaders today about the supplemental funding bill for the war in Iraq. Greg Sargent has what he calls some "color" from the confrontation:

A source familiar with the meeting -- at which no compromise of any kind was reached, though Speaker Nancy Pelosi said publicly today that it had been "productive" -- shares a few interesting tidbits. First, the source says, Bush bristled and was taken aback when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid compared the current situation to Vietnam; he also appeared irked by those who said the war couldn't be won.

Second, according to the source, Reid told Bush that he understood that the White House would come after Congressional Dems after the veto of the bill with everything they had; Reid vowed to respond every bit as aggressively.

"Reid talked about a recent conversation he had with a retired general where they talked about the similarities between the current situation and Vietnam," the source relates. "He talked about how the President and Secretary of Defense [during Vietnam] knew that the war was lost but continued to press on at the cost of thousands of additional lives lost."

"The analogy to Vietnam appeared to touch a nerve with the President. He appeared a little sensitive to it," the source continued. "And he clearly didn't like to hear people in the room say that the war couldn't be won militarily."

More: "Reid made it clear to the President that he understood that the President and Vice President after the veto would come after him and Speaker Pelosi with everything they have. Reid said that he and Pelosi would respond just as aggressively. He said he was convinced that they were on the right side of the issue."

It doesn't look like Reid and Pelosi are going to back down. Bush is a bully, and when meeting this kind of opposition, Bully's frequently do back down. However, Cheney is crazy and Rove will not accept any single decision that threatens Republican election possibilities in 2008, and I suspect that Rove would view a retreat by Bush as such a threat.

This is going to be interesting.

FBI searches Rep. Doolittle's home in Virginia

Roll Call reports that the FBI has served a search warrant on the home of California Rep. John Doolittle.

April 18, 2007 4:45 PM
The FBI has raided the Northern Virginia home of Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.), according to Congressional sources. No details are publicly available yet about the circumstances of the raid, but Doolittle and his wife, Julie, have been under federal investigation for their ties to the scandal surrounding imprisoned former lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Faster than I really expected.

As I noted Monday, Kevin Ring resigned Friday, April 13, 2007 without advance warning from his cushy lobbyist job. Ring had previously been a key staffer for Doolittle, and then after 2000 was the principle go-between between now convicted lobbyist Abramoff and Rep. Doolittle.

FBI searches of the home also preceded the arrest and conviction of Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Doolittle's connections to ex-Rep. Cunningham suggest that both were being bribed to provide well-paying government contracts to defense contractors. If true, we can probably expect to hear about those connections soon.

The Hill has a longer story on the FBI search of Doolittle's home. Here is an excerpt:

Doolittle also has been under fire for paying his wife’s company, Sierra Dominion Financial Solutions, a 15 percent commission on all contributions that the company raised for Doolittle’s campaign committee and leadership PAC. Her only other clients were Abramoff’s former firm, Greenberg Traurig; Abramoff’s former restaurant Signatures; and the Korea-U.S. Exchange Council, which Ed Buckham, a former chief of staff to ex-Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), created.

The Justice Department previously subpoenaed Julie Doolittle’s files.

Doolittle also received contributions from indicted defense contractor Brent Wilkes and his associates, and investigators are probing whether those contributions are linked to any official action Doolittle took to help Wilkes’ company obtain millions of dollars in government earmarks.

Wilkes recently was indicted in connection with his investigation stemming from former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham’s (R-Calif.) bribery conviction and jailing.

Who knows? Maybe the FBI has even linked Tom DeLay into this web. Though I suspect that Rep. Jerry Lewis is more likely.

The connections? Cunningham, Lewis and Doolittle all had positions on the House appropriations Committee and all had associations with Jack Abramoff and Brent Wilkes. Tom DeLay had two of his staffers go to work for Jack Abramoff and operated the K-Street Project to get Republicans to work for lobbyists while getting lobbyists to contribute the the reelection of Republicans.

This will be interesting. Oh, and fun for Democrats.

[h/t to TPM Muckraker.]

Why I support Edwards

I have liked Edwards better than any of the other Democrats in the race for a number or reasons, but I hadn't articulated them yet. Now Big Tent Democrat over at talkleft hits the nail on the head. Edwards is willing to stand up for what Democrats mean and is willing to go toe-to-toe with the Republicans without unnecessary compromise.

Go read the post and see if you don't agree - if you are a Democrat. What particularly connects with me is BTD's view of Obama. Check it out.

Perlstein on why the food supply is getting more dangerous

Rick Perlstein is now writing a new blog. His post here on why the Food System has begun letting more dangerous products through is excellent. Conservatives and Grover Norquist won't like it, though.

Sec. Def. Gates - resignation of Sadr's ministers may advance peace

The six Ministers in the Iraqi government who come from Muktada al-Sadr's Mahdi Militia resigned recently. Today the Washington Post has an article on what Secretary of Defense Bob Gates has to say about the resignations.

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer

AMMAN, Jordan, April 17 -- The decision by anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to withdraw ministers loyal to him from the Iraqi cabinet could advance political reconciliation if the vacancies are used to broaden the government's representation, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Tuesday.

Gates, on a Middle East tour, called for a range of efforts from inside and outside Iraq to speed up the formation of a broad-based government of Iraq's majority Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions.

Toward that end, Gates said demands in the U.S. Congress for a timeline to withdraw American troops from Iraq are constructive because they exert pressure on Iraq's leaders to forge compromises.

"The debate in Congress . . . has been helpful in demonstrating to the Iraqis that American patience is limited," Gates told Pentagon reporters traveling with him in Jordan. "The strong feelings expressed in the Congress about the timetable probably has had a positive impact . . . in terms of communicating to the Iraqis that this is not an open-ended commitment."

Sounds like Bob Gates is off the reservation with Bush - and more important, with Cheney.

So what are they going to do? Bush can't fire the guy he just hired to replace the clearly incompetent Don Rumsfeld. Not after he went, hat in hand, to Texas A&M to ask Gates to give up his dream job as President of the University to come save the Department of Defense and the War in Iraq. There would never be an adequate replacement willing to step into the job after that. Gates is really rather free to do as he wishes.

This Freedom from control that Gates has may be why the White House was searching for a War Czar. The rebuffs by the three most likely holders of that position suggest that the White House can't structure around the Secretary of Defense to get what they want. No one who is qualified is willing to become the White House cats' paw to circumvent the Secretary of Defense.

Now we see that Bob Gates feels free enough to say things that don't fit the White House message, so it looks like he knows that the White House can't realistically remove him. It looks to me (as an outsider) as though Bush has lost a lot of the control of how the war in Iraq will be managed.

That won't stop Cheney from being able to sabotage initiatives Bob Gates attempts, but even that may be weakened. Dick Cheney's power to sabotage actions he considers insufficiently hawkish comes from the time when he was in charge of appointing the Executive Department political appointees (See the Plum Book.) That was a job Cheney asked for and was given when Bush first became President. Cheney then arranged for his acolytes to be appointed to a variety of policy positions in every important cabinet department. It has been this network of Cheney acolytes throughout the government which has allowed him to sabotage a number of more moderate initiatives for the last six years. One example is John Bolton who frustrated Colin Powell almost completely the first Bush term. Bolton probably delayed the reduction of tensions with Libya and Qaddafi by at least a year, and may have contributed to the high level of tensions with both North Korea and Iran.

Some of the Cheney acolytes have moved on, but some have also moved up. This network is Cheney's second most significant source of power in the Executive Department, right after his relationship with Bush. But the loss of Don Rumsfeld at Secretary of Defense will have weakened Cheney significantly. The freedom that Rumsfeld's replacement, Bob Gates, demonstrates in making this public statement suggests that change towards a more realistic policy is a bit more possible now.

We need to watch for additional statements and personnel changes out of the Office of the Secretary of Defense that suggest that Gates might be taking control of American actions in Iraq and might actually get something accomplished in spite of Bush and Cheney.

Impeachment To Be Filed On Cheney

It has taken too long, but Dennis Kuchinic states he is going to file articles of impeachment on Dick Cheney.

In my opinion, Dick Cheney is the single most dangerous individual in a position of leadership in any major nation in the world today. It's about time the impeachment process began on him.

Book Review - Seth Hettana's book on "Duke" Cunningham

Ken Silverstein reviews the upcoming book on the most corrupt Congressman in the last half century. The book is Feasting on the Spoils: The Life and Times of Randy “Duke” Cunningham, History's Most Corrupt Congressman. It will be released for sale in July.

Mr. Silverstein focuses more on Kyle "Dusty" Foggo and his sexual proclivities, then drifts off to the use of sex in CIA and Soviet spy operations. As a long-time spy novel reader I found the discussion quite interesting, but I'd sort of like to know more about the book itself.

When the book is closer to being sold we may learn more about its qualities. As it is, it is a story that cries to be pulled together and presented.

The Republicans can't manage student visas, either.

According to Sara over at the Next Hurrah, the shooter at Virginia Tech was a Chinese immigrant who came to the U.S. on a student visa but was not enrolled in any school. He was apparently upset by a girl in the dorm he first went into. His guns were black market weapons with the serial numbers removed.

Back during the Clinton era, the failure to control individuals in the U.S. on student visas was recognized as a major problem, and legislation was initiated to maintain control of individuals here on student visas. The Republicans in Congress killed it. Then after 9/11 the Republicans attempted to resurrect the legislation, but the program was transferred from the Justice Department to the new Department of Homeland Security, where it got lost in the shuffle.
his was not an illegal immigrant. This was a student on a legal student visa which the Republican government did not want to control, then was not competent to control when 9/11 proved that such control was needed.

The problem here was not illegal immigration, or even legal immigration. It was not a problem of gun control. It was a problem, like the response to Katrina/Rita, of total failure of the corrupt and incompetent Republican Party to provide the effective government they promised when they were elected.

Why?

Largely because the Republicans have kowtowed to Grover Norquist and his effort to destroy effective government, especially since Reagan was elected in 1980.

Thirty-two deaths were directly the responsibility of that one foreign individual. But the responsibility for stopping him from killing lies on the shoulders of Grover Norquist and his ilk in the Republican Party.

Just watch them all try to blame someone else now. I'm sure they have already started.

---

Addendum 9:32 AM
Turns out that the killer (or one of the killers - this apparently hasn't been determined yet)was a student on a legal student visa. That contradicts the information I had earlier. So visa control could not have prevented this tragedy.

However, visa control remains a problem, and it is more of a problem than it would have been had the Republicans not stymied the Clinton effort to improve it, and then after 9/11 when even the Republicans realized student visas were a problem they have still screwed up resolving the issue.

I am old enough to remember when Charles Whitman went up to the top of the Tower of Texas in 1966 and killed at last 14 people. This is worse only in the numbers of people killed and wounded.

How long do we wait for Newt Gingrich, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and/or several of the prominent Republican politicians to blame the Democrats (or Liberals or Secular Humanists or the big one - "Leftists") for this tragedy in Virginia. Watch for it. It's coming.

---

I was too late. It has already come.
From Answers in Genesis: The problem is Atheism.

Sadly, when it comes to what people would call “natural evil” (e.g., earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, etc.), I’ve heard many Christian leaders on television make statements such as: “We don’t know why such things occur—we just have to have faith—and we just have to trust God.” When it comes to “moral evil,’’ such as a person shooting fellow human beings, I’m sure most of these leaders would say that it was because of sin. However, if really pushed, many (just like the secular world), would not take all of Genesis 1–11 as literal history.

There’s an inconsistency here in taking Genesis literally to accept sin to explain moral evil, such as the shootings at Virginia Tech, but not taking Genesis literally in their acceptance of millions of years of “natural evil” before man (e.g., death, violence, catastrophe, and extinction of animals). [Snip]

You see, when we accept Genesis as it was meant to be taken—as literal history—then we understand that death, disease, and violence are intrusions into this world, and that they occurred after Adam was created. Paul tells us in Romans 8:19–23 that the whole of the creation is groaning because of sin. [Snip]

We live in an era when public high schools and colleges have all but banned God from science classes. In these classrooms, students are taught that the whole universe, including plants and animals—and humans—arose by natural processes. Naturalism (in essence, atheism) has become the religion of the day and has become the foundation of the education system (and Western culture as a whole). The more such a philosophy permeates the culture, the more we would expect to see a sense of purposelessness and hopelessness that pervades people’s thinking. In fact, the more a culture allows the killing of the unborn, the more we will see people treating life in general as “cheap.”

I’m not at all saying that the person who committed these murders at Virginia Tech was driven by a belief in millions of years or evolution. I don’t know why this person did what he did, except the obvious: that it was a result of sin. However, when we see such death and violence, it is a reminder to us that without God’s Word (and the literal history in Genesis 1–11), people will not understand why such things happen.

As long as people like this person take the Bible as literal truth in history and science, then we will never know either how or why events like the shooting at Virginia Tech occur. And as a person who is aware of several race riots that occurred in East Texas in the late 50's and early 60's that never appeared even in the local papers or any other media, I find that this man's belief that things are getting worse is based on nothing more than just hot air.

What do the military and police organizations do for governments?

After writing the previous post (The gambling addict's dilemma in Iraq), I got to thinking about why the military is the wrong tool to be used to achieve our goals (or more accurately, desires) in Iraq. Here are my thoughts.

The purposes of government

A population accepts the restrictions and expense of a government first and foremost so that it can provide control and social stability. A good government prevents social disruptions such as criminal acts or floods. For the first function the government establishes a police force, maintains a monopoly on the right to use lethal force, and establishes a system of justice to apply social norms of behavior on deviant individuals and groups. Another part of maintaining social stability is to prevent individuals, groups and governments from outside territories from invading and disrupting society. This requires defining outsiders and providing the military organizations necessary to control them.

A more recently developed purpose of government has been to maintain property rights and to create and maintain the economic infrastructure necessary to improve the economy when the costs of that infrastructure cannot effectively be paid for directly from the benefits it supplies. Controlling the money supply and the banks that create it is an example of this function. Another is the provision of commercial law and a court system to enforce it. Without a money supply and enforceable contracts, modern economies are impossible.

The Purpose of a military organization

One purpose of the military organization is to take control of a geographic territory and turn it over to the government that owns the organization to govern. The other purpose of the military is to prevent an outside military force from changing the government that the military force is established to defend.

A government establishes a military force, taxes the populace to support it, and staffs it to primarily prevent outsiders from coming in and replacing that government. The arguments used by governments to get their populations to support the sacrifices necessary to support military organizations are always primarily defensive. Even attacks on other nations are based mostly on some semblance of the idea that the other nation is a danger to the population of the attacker.

The methods of operation of the military

A military force conducts maneuvers in order to apply force against opposing military organizations. The purpose of applying force is to destroy or disrupt the opposing military organizations. The military organization also maneuvers and applies force to avoid being disrupted or destroyed by the opposing military.

The territory over which the armies maneuver is the battlefield. Any local government on the battlefield is ignored, disrupted or destroyed. Since the use of a military force on the battlefield eliminates government and social stability where it is used, a military organization should operate outside the territory under the jurisdiction of the government that owns it. Fighting a war on your own territory means your side is losing, because the government on the battlefield has become ineffective.

Since local governments are not effective on the battlefield, any military organization is designed to operate in the absence of effective government. [This is why contracting out military functions is a bad idea, since private companies require the stability provided by a functioning government for them to operate, and the military by definition operates where there is no effective government. But that is another discussion.]

A military organization is designed to counter another military organization. Historically the military organization able to most rapidly apply the greatest killing power to the opposing force has won its battles. [Note: it is accepted that the U.S. military never lost a major battle in Viet Nam.] Winning means either killing the opposing soldiers or rendering their organization militarily ineffective so that it cannot oppose the transfer of control of the disputed territory to the winning organization. The result of this is that military forces have become more and more destructive. Their goal is to destroy or render ineffective their enemies, not to control them. An army has only a minimal need to understand the communities that the battlefield covers.

Battles eliminate government and leave a power vacuum. The post-battle problem is one of recreating government and returning stability and peace to the previous battlefield. This is not a good function for military organizations or battle-hardened personnel. This is primarily a police function.

Stability and control are functions of government and of police forces. Winning the war, as opposed to just winning the battles, means effectively transferring control of the disputed territory to the friendly or cooperative government.

Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld failed totally to anticipate this problem. The first major clue was the uncontrolled looting that broke out after the U. S. military eliminated the government, military and police forces in Iraq. As additional evidence the U.S. Army has been disbanding Artillery units in Iraq and recreating them as Military Police units. The control of the borders of Iraq after the invasion was a police function.

So was the police function that would have stopped insurgents from preventing the rebuilding of the Iraqi economy and would have limited the growth of effective insurgent organizations. It should be no surprise that the command and control of the Army broke down and permitted the Abu Ghraib atrocities. The military had no guidance or training in how to manage the occupation and prevent insurgency. Without that guidance and training they were stumbling around trying to determine what their jobs were and how they were supposed to perform them. This set of failures belongs to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon and the leadership (?) in the White House.

The purpose of police forces

Since the first purpose of any government is to maintain control and social stability over a specific geographic area, a major tool the government uses to maintain that control is the police. Lethal force and violence are inherently disruptive, so the police attempt to maintain a monopoly on the right to use either of them. They identify individuals and groups who use violence and force for their own benefit and prevent such actions or capture and present such people for judgment in the courts. This means that militias and private armies cannot be allowed if a government is to be effective.

The police also enforce fair economic behavior and property rights. One way they do this is to prevent fraud and enforce property law, the commercial codes and things such as pollution laws. They also perform some economic infrastructure jobs such as control of traffic flow.

Since police have a monopoly of the right to use force, they do not need to develop ever-greater methods of force application. They need only match weaponry used by criminals, and then use their greater organization and ability to obtain Intelligence to overpower the criminals they normally face. By the very nature of a local police force they normally have extensive Intelligence and a deep understanding of the community in which they work. This is sharply different from the circumstances of a military force which must be highly mobile and is by its nature focused on the opposing military force rather than disruptive elements embedded in the local community.

The growth of economic organizations from local producers to state-wide and even nation-wide organizations has required greater reliance on state-wide and nation-wide police organizations to understand and police them. The reason for the more extensive police organizations is that the police have to be able to go where the economic organizations they control go. Otherwise the economic organizations can move fraudulent and criminal elements to the places the police can’t go. Multinationals tend to cause this kind of problem.

Terrorists

Terrorists like the Provisional IRA, Italian Red Brigade, Baader-Meinhoff Gang and the various guerrillas, anarchists and terrorists that abound around the world attempt to destroy governments by attacking the people who operate the government. They do this by violating the government monopoly on the means of using force, and by conducting attacks that sharply increase the fear of the population. Then when the government shows itself to be ineffective at providing stability and control, the population will find another organization they have more faith in to become the government.

The solutions to these problems involve intensive police work and police Intelligence efforts. The strengths of military organizations are more likely to cause an increase of terrorism than to result in its defeat. The Germans, Spaniards, Italians and British have effectively ended the problems of the Baader-Meinhoff Gang, ETA, Red Brigades and Provisional IRA. In each case the solution involved a strong government and effective police work, occasionally supported by military personnel with specialized technology.

None of this has been possible in Iraq because of the DeBaathification program and the disbanding of the police and military forces under the Coalition Provisional Authority. In the absence of those organizations there is no way for the so-called Iraqi government to provide the necessary control and stability that any effective government must provide.

The result is a war that will last until after the U.S. military leaves Iraq. Then there will be an embattled Kurdish government, a Sunni insurgency that wants to be THE government, and a short period in which the several Shiite factions fight it out to see who will provide the Shiite government. Then there is going to be combat over what territory belongs exclusively to each. The presence of American troops will do nothing except delay the final resolutions.

Terrorists work to destabilize and delegitamize the government and its police forces. That would result in greater use of military forces, which automatically causes the destruction of effective government and creates a power vacuum. Terrorism attempts to take advantage of the difference between the military and the police forces and the misunderstanding by political leaders of the sharp distinction between them. With the American top leadership positions in the hands of ignorant men who value loyalty and ideology over competence and experience, the terrorists have had a much easier job in Iraq than they might have had.

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Addendum April 19, 2007
See also the related story FBI negotiation teams go anywhere in the world to free kidnapped Americans.

The addict's dilemma in Iraq.

America in Iraq is in the position of an alcoholic who attempts to drink himself sober. It just won't happen. But that is the logic of the self-destructive addictive behavior that is driving the continuation of the U.S. military activities in Iraq.

There is no possibility of America winning the war in Iraq. The first reason for this was presented by retired Marine General John "Jack" Sheehan when he explained why he turned down the job of "War Czar." He pointed out that Bush and his administration have no strategy for winning the war. They have no vision of what it means to say that we have won. Gen. Sheehan also pointed out that while there is no strategy for winning, there is also Dick Cheney who is always in the background ready to sabotage efforts to resolve the war that he considers insufficiently hawkish. This is not intended to win the war, merely a refusal to accept that the war is unwinnable.

The second reason is presented by Juan Cole. The twentieth century, and now the twenty-first, demonstrate clearly that the western forms of high-tech, industrialized mass war cannot subdue the desires for independence of much less developed nations. The collapses of the Spanish, British, French, Soviet, Ottoman, and American Empires during the twentieth century have all occurred as less developed nations impressed their will for independence on the more developed Imperial nations.

In Iraq in particular

The Sunni Arab guerrillas in Iraq enjoy all the advantages of internal social and political mobilization-- sophisticated tactics, high-powered munitions, excellent networking and communications. They benefit from a vast Sunni Arab hinterland of support that includes the oil millionnaires of the Gulf (there are a lot of them and they hate to see fellow Sunnis mistreated) and the committed young professionals of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, the Sudan, and North Africa.

Against 6 million truly mobilized people, a mere 160,000 foreign troops is unlikely to prevail. The US lacks good intelligence on the guerrillas, and there is no prospect of it getting better intelligence soon. In fact, every year more Sunni Arabs hate us than the year before.

The refusal to accept the inevitability of American defeat in Iraq is the primary motivation of Cheney, Bush, and I think of Sen. McCain. All are convinced that as long as America doesn't admit defeat and pull our troops out of Iraq then there is still some off chance that somehow America will ultimately "win." But fear of loss is not a strategy for winning.

The only possible route to a successful end of the Iraqi dilemma is for the U.S. to somehow extricate our military forces from Iraq and for Iraq to develop an adequate government (or governments) with the necessary police, military and political will to prevent further mass killings. But the Iraqis cannot achieve the goal of stability as long as we have our troops there inflaming the population. It is impossible to achieve peace by fighting a war with nothing but use of military force. There has to be a credible set of actions demonstrating that the use of military force will end as peace and stability is achieved before any of the combatants will consider stopping their combat.

But the American leaders who fear losing the war in Iraq refuse to entertain the necessary confidence-building and necessarily non-military actions that can change conditions enough to permit an ending of military actions. The result is the continuation of a war that cannot be won.

We are essentially locked into the dilemma of the gambling addict who cannot quit gambling until he makes up his previous losses. Since the odds are on the side of the House rather than the gambler, the gambler can never win. He will simply lose at a more or less rapid pace.

But at least the gambler is playing a game in which there is a definition of what it means to win, no matter how unlikely it is that he will achieve that goal. In Iraq there is no such definition of winning. Every goal that is discussed today involves at best not losing, the best such definitions being to be able to stop combat operations using American troops and turn control of Iraq over to two or more effective governments (any effort to eliminate the Kurdish government in favor of a single central government is a recipe for further war.)

As professor Cole points out, the history of the twentieth century is increasingly against hope of conquest in Iraq. The odds are tremendously against any possible success for the military adventure there. Efforts to continue the war so as to avoid admitting its loss cannot succeed.

What can succeed, however, are efforts to continue the war until the situation in Iraq is one that Dick Cheney and the NeoCons are willing to define as "winning." Since there is no advance goal or definition of success this could only happen by chance, and is so unlikely as to be considered impossible.

The real problem with this, exemplified by Gen. Sheehan and the other generals who refused the "War Czar" position, is that there must be a clear goal in order to successfully fight a war. A war without an achievable purpose can never succeed.

This administration has no clear achievable goal for winning. They have simply defined removing the American troops from Iraq as "losing the war" and declared that unacceptable. Just as the gambling addict will keep on gambling forever attempting to leave as a winner, Cheney and the NeoCons will fight on in Iraq forever to the last bleeding soldier, Marine or National Guardsman just to avoid losing.

America will continue to fight in Iraq until

1. the end of President Bush's term, or
2. until Bush resigns or is impeached, or
3. until the pentagon generals revolt and refuse to continue fighting an unwinnable war.

That's just the nature of a gambling addict. His fear of loss won't let him quit and move on to a winnable game.

A war that cannot be won is by definition already lost. The only remaining question is how much money, prestige and how many casualties we will continue to throw into the pot. That's where America is now in Iraq. It is trapped in addictive behavior. Refusing to admit the loss will not somehow achieve a victory in Iraq. It will only perpetuate the losing behavior, just as refusing to quit gambling will not somehow make a gambling addict into a winner.

Rep. Doolitle is in the investigator's sights now.

Damn! These investigations are slow! If this were a TV movie, it would only have taken two hours to get this far, and they even throw in commercials!

California Rep. John Doolittle (CA - R) has been talked about as a target of investigations for corruption since 2005, and his close association with Abramoff has made it clear that there is more than just smoke there. But now everything seems to be heating up. Kevin Ring has just resigned suddenly with no notice from his lucrative job as a lobbyist. This is usually the pattern just before a person makes a deal with the investigators for a lighter sentence if he will give up someone higher on the food chain. In Ring's case it is going to be his former employer, Rep. Doolittle.

TPM Muckraker has the story.

All I can say is, it's about time. Now when does Rep. Jerry Lewis (CA - R) get his turn in the barrel?

New three-column format in blogger. Here's how I did it. Part II.

When I installed the blogger template for a three-column blog back on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 there was a flaw that rather bugged me. I lost the blogger NavBar with its ability to search the nearly 1700 articles published in my on-line magazine. So I have corrected that. But the correction itself created a new problem. When I got the NavBar back, it covered up the title of my on-line magazine. So I had to correct that problem, too. Here is what I have done.

This article starts at the end of my previous article: New three-column format in blogger. Here's how I did it.. By the end of the first article I had the most important parts of what I wanted - a working three-column blogger template. From here it is mostly just tinkering to get it better.

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Introduction - what is the problem.

I wanted a blogger blog because it is cheap (no cheaper than free), and I am used to using it. But the only formats available through blogger itself were two-column formats. I wanted one that kept the administrative stuff like previous posts and archives near the top but I also wanted to recommend books for people to check out and possibly buy. Yes, if it ever happens, I get a commission. Something I am trying to sell also needs to be near the top. A single sidebar does not provide enough space to do all that. I found a web site that offers free Old Blogger three column templates at Free Templates. I chose their template called Lonely to start from.

This source is Indonesian, written in English. Many of the comments are in an Indonesian language (I assume there is more than one) but the HTML code works quite well. Of course, a lot of the comments including mine are in English.

The class names are not in English, but since they are defined for the computer in the Header section this is NOT a problem. I did find it mildly jarring at first, until I found that I can work with a class called "judul" or "isi" and never need to know what that word means. The class definition in the header provides all the needed data in an easy-to-use form.

How I got the three-column template it up and running is the subject of my previous article New three-column format in blogger. Here's how I did it.. If you are going to try this and haven't read that previous article, go back and start there. It's really not too complicated.

This set of instructions is for someone with some experience using HTML in a blogger template, but who is not a polished web programmer. You will know a lot more when you have done this, and I try to explain "why" to do it as well as just "what" to do.

Assumptions

This article assumes that you have converted an existing blogger blog to one of isaini's free three column templates. If you followed my instructions you already have a second test blog to work with, and you have an understanding of how to

1. change the appearance on the screen,
2. test the changes using Preview, and
3. you have added HTML comments to your template to tell you where the blocks of HTML code for the top of the blog, the left and right sidebars, the main column and the footer are.

You are also fully aware that by adopting this isaini three-column template you are stuck with the Old Blogger format, at least for now.

Being stuck with Old Blogger means that you will have to make your changes in HTML in the template rather than using the neat "drag and drop" functions that are built into "New Blogger." But if you have gotten this far, such changes are not difficult for you and you have a lot more capability than the limited "Drag-and-Drop" options anyway.

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[Bonus - social commentary for Techies - If you have gotten this far, you exhibit all the symptoms of being a "Techie." You want control of your screen, you want to do stuff others aren't doing, and you don't want to have to depend on someone else to do it for you. (The latter suggest that you are cheap.) You may well be a person who listens to National Public Radio and enjoys the show "Click and Clack with the Tappet Brothers" that explains how to keep cars running and in repair.

You also find yourself trying to explain the joys of changing HTML code on your own to your family. Their reaction, unfortunately, is for their eyes glaze over before they rapidly find that they need to leave to attend to urgent but unspecified business. Those are the polite ones. The teenagers will roll their eyes and simply walk out without any excuse. (Even the techie teenagers do this. They lack empathy for other techies at that age.) This "Techiness" is incurable. Welcome to the club.

I suggest getting a dog. They have such an in-bred need fro approval by their owner that they don't even roll their eyes as you explain how you did what you did. You will not find a family member who makes as good an audience.

Just feed the dog regularly, provide exercise, a warm dry place to sleep and occasional treats, pet or stroke him or her and they will bond with you like no non-techie you have ever met. The downside is that they tend to complain noisily if they have to sleep outside your bedroom or they are left alone too much. A second dog can resolve this latter problem.]

And now back to your regularly scheduled tutorial.

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Before making these changes to your template code, make a copy of the code and save it in a safe place. I use notepad since it does not add formatting instructions to the code and creates a text file (.txt) for storage. Do I need to emphasize that you do NOT WANT TO MESS UP YOUR TEMPLATE CODE AND HAVE TO START OVER?

Two alternative solutions for providing a search engine.

The goal is to get a Google search engine that searches your blog. The best solution for blogger users is to get the blogger NavBar back. This is built into blogger and does the best job. The alternative to this is to go to Google and find the html code to put a search engine into one of the sidebars of your blog. I'll address the latter alternative first, since it is what I tried first.

The customizable Google search engine.

Google offers a customizable search engine for installation to your site. The instructions and code writer can be found at "Custom Search Engine". Provide a ~short~ name and description to appear on your blog. Follow the guidelines. The "Keywords" ask you to predict what your readers are likely to be looking for on your site. They are used to promote specific items when reporting the results of a search. Guidelines for keywords are found at Choosing good keywords.

Once you have set up the custom Google search engine, go to "My Search Engines" and then "Add this search engine to your blog or web page". This location allows you to adjust what the search engine will look like on your blog. You can change the height, width and color of the border. Then when you are happy with the Preview, go to Get the Code". This is the code you will enter into the template of your blogger site.

I placed mine at the top of the left-hand sidebar. There seems to be a minimum width for the search engine, as there is for the Amazon book search that I already have in the left-hand sidebar. When I tried to put the search engine at the top of the right-hand sidebar, the entire site became too wide to appear on the screen all at once.

The actual installation into the template code was just like the method described in Addendum #4 03 29 2007 of the previous article: New three-column format in blogger. Here's how I did it. Using cut-and-paste, I cut the container and heading from the lower-right sidebar, pasted it into the upper left sidebar, erased the code for the site meter and inserted the code from the Google Get the Code step above.

This works pretty well. Since you are reading this, all you have to do is scroll up and look at the top of the left-hand sidebar and ... you won't find the custom search engine there. That's because I learned how to get the Google NavBar back. That's the second alternative.

But if you want to see how I have inserted the code for the custom search engine, go to View at the top of the page, go down to Page Source and scroll down to the left-sidebar code where the code can be found between the title "Search by Google" and "End Search." I can restore the search engine anytime I wish by removing the HTML beginning and ending comment code. Which brings us to the second alternative .

Restore the Blogger NavBar

Courtesy of Isnaini, the creator of the template I am using, I have learned how to restore the blogger NavBar. It's really quite easy.

Go into the HTML for the template and remove the code < /noscript> at the < head> < /noscript > and < noscript > code before and after < body > tag < noscript > < body > < /noscript > . If you go back to the View source for this website, you will see that I did not erase those instructions. I used the [< !-- and --> ]HTML comment tags to remove those instructions from active use, but left the instructions in place to remind myself what I had done.

But the NavBar is back! Problem solved, right?

I wish.

With the return of the NavBar, it covers up the title to my web magazine. The score is now "NavBar = +1, Title = -1." So it is back to the template again.

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The title is controlled by the block of code that inserts the image at the top of the web site. That is:

< td > < table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" >

< tr >
< td width="449" > < img src="http://i1.tinypic.com/mma788.jpg" width="449" height="150" > < /td >

[Note: the following code in green controls the display of the website title.]

< td align="right" valign="top" background="http://i1.tinypic.com/mma7bb.jpg" > < br > < br > < h1 > < a href=" < $BlogURL$ > " > < $BlogTitle$ > < /a >
< /a > < /h1 >
< h2 > Per < a href="http://www.thetalentshow.org/archives/001896.html" > FEC regulations < /a >, this is an online magazine for political reports, analysis & opinion, with some other interesting items. < br > < /h2 > < /td >

< /tr >
< /table > < /td >

Add one or two line breaks [< BR > shown in red above] just before the < h1 > for the title. This move the title down from behind the NavBar.

Since I wanted to keep the comment that describes the purpose of my on-line magazine [placed on the page by the blogger code < $BlogDescription$ >], I also eliminated the code that displays the left side of the image in the header [shown above in light blue] and changed the code "right" shown in lightblue to "center".

By use of the line breaks and by changing the size of the fonts displayed by the H1 and H2 codes defined up in the head of the blog I was able to get a satisfactory heading for my on-line magazine.

Try it, and you will be amazed at how much better you understand the blogger HTML code when you are through. I also have a great deal of appreciation and admiration for Abdul Isnaini who wrote the "Lonely" template in the first place and was kind enough to post it for free download.

So that is how I got my Blogger NavBar back.

What is the meaning of the falling dollar?

Interesting diary on the falling value of the dollar over at dKos.

The article pulls together a lot of international data. Essentially the discussion points to the fact (which we have all known for three to four years) about the fact that the Bush administration has been utterly irresponsible about borrowing money to keep the American economy afloat. This has already led to a devaluation of the dollar against the Euro, and next is going to mean devaluation against the Chinese currency. The fed has been protecting the American standard of living through financial manipulations, but this is only delaying the inevitable. Unfortunately, the process of delay will also make the inevitable worse than it had to be.

It could be better written. The overall implications aren't really clear, but a lot of useful facts are presented. I guess that's what you call a tepid recommendation [Grin] but the subject is very important.

I can't help but suspect that the Bushies are setting the economy up to where the next President will have to deal with the total mismanagement from the Bush/Cheney administration. The result will be that the next President will take the blame for what this one has done.

US attorney Iglesias (NM) was fired after Bush decided to accomodate Sen. Domenici

The sequence of events that put David Iglesias (U.S. attorney, New Mexico) on the list to be fired in December included a demand by six term Senator Domenici (NM- R) of Bush that he direct Gonzales to fire him. The story is reported today in the Albuquerque Journal (and is excerpted by Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo.)

Alberto Gonzales thought highly of David Iglesias, and told Sen. Domenici that he would only fire Iglesia if George Bush told him to. So Sen. Domenici called Karl Rove and asked him to go to George Bush and get Iglesias fired. Karl did so, and President Bush then directed Alberto Gonzales to fire him. Iglesias was fired as part of the eight U.S. attorneys fired In December 2006.

It's clear that Iglesias was fired for not bringing indictments against Democrats just before the November 2006 election. Iglesias was unwilling to give in to the pressure from both Sen. Domenici and Rep. Wilson to bring purely political cases to indictment in the manner done by Steve Biscupic of Wisconsin.

My previous post on the David Iglesias story is here:

• Ex-New Mexico US attorney David Iglesias is not happy
  March 20, 2007

My previous posts on the Steve Biscupic story:

• US Atty Biscupic (Wisc) saved his job by prosecuting Georgia Thompson
  April 14, 2007
• Georgia Thompson was convicted by right-wing media
  April 13, 2007,
• NY Times gets it right! See editorial today.
  April 09, 2007, and
• Wisconsin US attorney rammed through fake corruption case of Democrat before last Governor's election.
  April 06, 2007.

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Addendum 12:41 PM
Josh Marshall ties up all the loose threads and tells what is important about the Iglesias firing story:

No one disputes that Domenici's call to Iglesias was at best inappropriate. But there's been a lack of direct evidence that Iglesias's refusal to bow to political pressure led directly to his firing. Now we have have that evidence. And it's not Kyle Sampson or even Alberto Gonzales who Domenici went to to get sign off for Iglesias's ouster. It was right to the president. And the available evidence now points strongly the conclusion that the final decision to fire David Iglesias. [was made by George W. Bush.]