Nothing to see here

Yesterday, senior Justice Department cheerleader aide Monica Goodling testified before the House Judiciary Committee. Her testimony opened up significant questions about the veracity of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' earlier statements under oath.

So, naturally, the cable news networks covered it extensively, right?

Yeah, right.

During last night's 9-10 pm (Eastern) bloc, CNN had Larry King Live, MSNBC ran Scarborough Country, and Hannity & Colmes was on Fox News. All three covered the same lead story:

An argument between Rosie O'Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck on The View.

The testimony implicating the U.S. Attorney General in perjury was less important than some cat fight on a daytime talk show. Disgusting.

It's really a good news/bad news situation, I guess. The good news is that only about 30% of Americans still have faith in the Bush crime syndicate. The bad news is that 98% of the mainstream media is in the 30% of American idiots.

UPDATE (3:46 pm 5/24/07): Thanks for the link, Wayne. It's cool that Blast Off! is becoming a regular source for Florida's alternative press. :)

Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye)

The curtain is closing rapidly on Alberto Gonzales' career as Attorney General.

Former Senior Counsel Monica Goodling just completed her testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, and in spite of fervent fluffing by the GOP members of that committee (Florida's contribution thereto, Ric Keller and Tom Feeney, a/k/a Dumb and Dumber, left their slime trail on the testimony), they couldn't avoid the truth.

Gonzales testified that he wasn't at a meeting when the firings of certain U.S. attorneys were discussed. Monica, however, says he was. So, one of them's lying. My guess is that the one with immunity isn't the liar.

Incidentally, let's keep in mind what all-star questioner Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.)* said on C-SPAN this morning. The scandal is not about the president or the AG firing the U.S. attorneys. Yes, they have every right to do that, even for political reasons, and yes, The Clenis™ cleaned house in 1993. What they can't do, however, is fire them for failing to prosecute members of the opposing party -- and that's what the investigation is all about.

So spare me your platitudes, Repukes -- your pal Alberto is done, ruined, and fucked.

(Special thanks to the lovely and talented Athenae for providing the "Crack Van" over at First Draft.)

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* Rep. Davis was the unanimous choice of the Crack Van denizens as the star questioner. He elicited the most damning testimony, particularly about Gonzales' perjury and about Goodling's own criminal behavior, for which she was granted immunity. Indeed, even several of the other Democrats on the committee yielded their time to Rep. Davis. They obviously knew a good thing when they saw it.

No. Fucking. Way.

I don't have a link (yet), but watching the Goodling testimony, this fucking mouth-breathing moron congressman Rep. Louie Gohmert from Texas just said that certain members of the House Judiciary Committee (meaning Democrats, natch) might be committing hate crimes because of their criticism of Little Miss Christian Goodling and specifically of Regent University.

HATE CRIMES!!!!!

You have GOT to be kidding me!!! Just when you thought it couldn't get any more inane, any more ludicrous, any more pandering ...

Further words escape me ...

UPDATE (3:09 pm 5/23/07): Wes makes a good point: "I'm sure Matthew Shepherd would sympathize."

Today's Daily Schadenfreude: Monica Goodling

Today Monica Goodling will testify before the House Judiciary Committee about her role in the Justice Department U.S. attorney firing scandal.

Hopefully they'll really give her something to cry about.

Monica Goodling, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' former White House liaison, broke down in tears in a colleague's office as a furor rose about her department's firings of eight federal prosecutors, according to interview excerpts released Tuesday.

"'All I ever wanted to do was serve this president and this administration and this department,'" Goodling said during a March 8 conversation, according to Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis.

Margolis told House and Senate investigators of the conversation during a private meeting earlier this month.

During the 30- to 45-minute encounter, Goodling proceeded "to bawl her eyes out" and repeat the phrase, Margolis said.

[...]

Goodling, Margolis told the investigators, repeated the phrase about serving President Bush, the administration and the Justice Department.

She went on to "cry more, and more, and more, and more and more," Margolis recalled, according to the excerpts.

"She was certainly shaken to her core," he added during the interview May 1. "She thought her career was over, or at least her career in Justice."

If so, she was right.

Oh, boo fucking hoo.

Monica, you committed a crime.* What happened to all your evangelical training from Messiah College and Regent University School of Law? Didn't you learn right from wrong?

The only reason you're not up shit creek as much as your bosses is because you're going to be granted immunity. If you're smart enough to have a law degree (and I know what it takes, honey ... except I graduated from a real law school), and you're smart enough to work in the Justice Department, then you're smart enough to know when you're doing something illegal.

Cry me a river, Monica. Your hypocrisy is not pretty, and you've got no one to blame but yourself.

So, while I pop some popcorn for the show today, I extend congratulations to you, Monica -- today's Blast Off! Daily Schadenfreude is for you!

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* Allegedly.

Immunity for Goodling

Well, our old friend Monica Goodling is really up a creek now.

I'll bet she never thought the House would grant her immunity. But this morning, they did exactly that.

So now she can't plead the Fifth Amendment, since nothing she could say would subject her to prosecution for the original offenses. Therefore, she either snitches on her colleagues (and bosses), or she lies and gets prosecuted for perjury. Rock, meet hard place.

Too bad I already did the Daily Schadenfreude today. Monica deserves a goodly share of laughing and pointing now ...

Document dump from House Judiciary Committee

Well, the predicted doc dump has been taken occurred, and it's all online for the world to see.

Looks like a lot of e-mails and attachments (some from our old pals Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson), including records of testimony before the committee. Stay tuned ... I'll let people with more time sort through it and pick out the juicy parts.

Today's Daily Schadenfreude: Monica Goodling

I made it through the surgery fine and am seeing better than I have since I was a child -- and it's supposedly going to continue to improve as time goes on. Thanks to everyone for your good wishes (especially Ripley and racymind, in comments on the last post).

So, back to the blog. Parting is such sweet schadenfreude :

Monica M. Goodling, the Justice Department's liaison to the White House, gave no reason for her resignation. Since she was at the center of the firings, Goodling's refusal to testify has intensified questions about whether the U.S. attorney dismissals were proper and heightened the furor that threatens Gonzales' own job.

"It has been an honor to have served at the Justice Department for the past five years," Goodling wrote Gonzales, advising him of her resignation effective Saturday.

"May God bless you richly as you continue your service to America," Goodling added.

Boy, the Justice Department is falling apart faster than Jenna Bush after the beer runs out. First Kyle Sampson, now Monica ... I hope they're holding the door open for Berto.

You could have seen this coming. I'm not talking about the resignation, but her wishing God's blessings on Abu. She's a mega-fundie, after all ... and she probably can't understand why all this stuff is happening to her. Maybe she should have removed the plank from her own eye first?

Well, I know this isn't the last we've seen of Ms. Goodling, but at least we're getting the obstacles out of the way before going to the big game: Gonzales himself. And somewhere, John "I Lost to a Dead Man" Ashcroft is thanking Jeebus that he left before the real shit hit the fan. Abu is so bad, he makes Ashcroft look reasonable. At least Johnny only worried about tits on statues.

So, congratulations, Monica, and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. Today's Blast Off! Daily Schadenfreude is for you!

The Goodling Files

Monica Goodling, the now-infamous aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, has a most interesting background, according to a profile published last week in The Washington Post. I knew some of the facts, but not all of them:

Part of a generation of young religious conservatives who swept into the federal government after the election of President Bush in 2000, Goodling displayed unblinking devotion to the administration and expected others to do the same. When she started at Justice, "no job was too small for her," and as she moved rapidly up the ranks, none "was too large," Corallo said.

"She was the embodiment of a hardworking young conservative who believed strongly in the president and his mission," said David Ayres, former chief of staff to Bush's first attorney general, John D. Ashcroft.

This week, Goodling, 33, became the most prominent federal official to invoke the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying before Congress since Lt. Col. Oliver L. North refused to answer questions -- until he received immunity -- during the 1986 Iran-contra hearings.

Goodling, now on an indefinite leave, most recently served as senior counsel to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and as Justice's liaison to the White House. Her name appears on several e-mails about the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are eager to ask her about those dismissals.

Explaining why she invoked her right against self-incrimination, her lawyer, John M. Dowd, called the investigation "hostile" and said that some committee members "have already reached conclusions."

At [Thursday's] Judiciary hearing, senators questioned why she was still employed at Justice. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a former U.S. attorney, noted that the department encourages corporations to fire employees who refuse to cooperate with government investigations.

"I'm a little surprised that she's still there after taking the Fifth," he said.

To her supporters, Goodling's only mistake -- if she made one at all -- was not anticipating the political peril before the 2006 midterm elections.

Yeah, that's a pretty big "whoops." It's instructive to note that so many of the young "loyal Bushies" (and perhaps some of the older ones, too) just had no idea that their ability to wipe their collective asses with the Constitution might be compromised by a Democratic majority in Congress. Whoops, indeed.

Until this latest controversy, Goodling worked in such obscurity that newspapers did not have pictures of her. Regent University, where she attended law school, would not allow The Washington Post to use a picture of her that appeared on an alumni Web site.

Goodling majored in communications at Messiah College, a Christian school in Grantham, Pa., that does not have co-ed dorms or allow alcohol on campus. Her political science professor, Dean Curry, recalls her as a "bright, responsible young woman" who was student body president and "was very serious about politics."

Goodling enrolled in law school at American University but transferred to Regent, founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson in Virginia Beach.

Goodling and her lawyer declined to comment for this article, and classmates said they did not recall the reasons for her transfer. But "the curriculum at Regent is different from other law schools. There is an attempt by professors to integrate biblical principles into areas of the law," said Dugan Kelley, who worked with Goodling on Regent's moot court.

After earning a joint degree in law and public policy in 1999, she worked as a researcher for the Republican National Committee on the Bush campaign, then moved to the Justice Department's press office. She spent six months with the U.S. attorney's office in the Eastern District of Virginia. A friend and former department co-worker, Susan Richmond Johnson, said Goodling was also an amateur photographer and world-class baker of desserts, but had little time for a social life because she was "the first to arrive at the Justice Department in the morning and the last to leave at night."

"She is very motivated by her faith," Johnson added. "She doesn't wear her faith on her sleeve, but she lives a very faithful life."

Picture on an alumni website? You mean this alumni website? From which I appropriated a picture? Fair use, bitches. Methinks the WaPo might have a case.

I'm not trying to castigate Goodling for her faith. But does "liv[ing] a very faithful life" include engaging in and/or covering up criminal activity and hiding behind the very Constitution one has ignored until needed?

The sound you hear is my mind boggling.

Goodling to take the Fifth

Note I said "take," not "drink."

As a graduate of Messiah College and Pat Robertson's Regent University School of Law, Monica Goodling (right, from here) surely is far too devout to drink any of the devil's brew. But Ms. Goodling, aide to Alberto Gonzales, will refuse to answer questions when she appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the investigation into the politically-motivated firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

"The potential for legal jeopardy for Ms. Goodling from even her most truthful and accurate testimony under these circumstances is very real," said [her] lawyer, John Dowd.

He said that members of the House and Senate Judiciary committees seem already to have made up their minds that wrongdoing has occurred in the firings.

As Eschaton commenter res ipsa loquitur aptly notes, it actually sounds like Dowd has made up his mind that wrongdoing has occurred in the firings. The obvious point here is that Goodling, who has taken a leave of absence, knows something and she's going to rest on her right not to incriminate herself or others. I don't have a problem with her taking the Fifth -- it's unfortunate in this instance, but it's her right under the Constitution -- but you can see that the veil of deceit and malfeasance is dropping farther and faster every day.

You think the MSM will note how "poised" and "glamorous" Ms. Goodling is when she testifies, like so many of them did about Valerie Plame? I rather doubt it. Instead she'll be "strong" and "direct" and all the other things that characterize the Right, don'tcha think?

Remember, IOKIYAR. It's okay if you're a Republic(an). Besides, a D.C. scandal involving someone named Monica is so karmic ... now if Ms. Goodling just would wear a blue dress to the hearing ...

UPDATE (4:48 pm 3/26/07): Turns out Monica's used to not answering questions. From May 2004:

The Justice Department won't say. An employee in Clement's office referred a call from Salon last week to Justice Department spokesperson Monica Goodling. Asked what Clement or Ashcroft knew of the Abu Ghraib situation at the time of oral arguments in the Hamdi and Padilla cases, Goodling said: "We wouldn't have any comment." Pressed further, Goodling said the Justice Department would not have any comment at all about the Padilla or Hamdi cases.

So, she's accustomed to not commenting on DoJ activity. No wonder they chose her to work as Gonzales' aide.