In testimony on Jan. 18, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales assured the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Justice Department had no intention of avoiding Senate input on the hiring of U.S. attorneys.

Just a month earlier, D. Kyle Sampson, who was then Gonzales's chief of staff, laid out a plan to do just that. In an e-mail, he detailed a strategy for evading Arkansas Democrats in installing Tim Griffin, a former GOP operative and protege of presidential adviser Karl Rove, as the U.S. attorney in Little Rock.

"We should gum this to death," Sampson wrote to a White House aide on Dec. 19. "[A]sk the senators to give Tim a chance . . . then we can tell them we'll look for other candidates, ask them for recommendations, evaluate the recommendations, interview their candidates, and otherwise run out the clock. All of this should be done in 'good faith,' of course."

That would be "Lying to Congress," "Perjury," and "Violating the Oath of Office." Goodbye Alberto. Now apologize about the door, you could have walked through it gracefully rather than defenstrate yourself.

Statements On Firings of Prosecutors Are Key Issue - washingtonpost.com

The New York Times got the editorial ball rolling on Monday, calling for the firing of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales due largely, if not completely, to the burgeoning scandal involving the forced departure of eight U.S. attorneys. Today the notion spread across the country.

That Georgie Bush, he's a uniter, not a divider. Why, the whole country is united that he should show Alberto Gonzales the door!

Editorial Pages Call for Axing Attorney General

Gonzales, who cancelled an out-of-town trip to appear at a hastily called Department of Justice (DOJ) press conference Tuesday, said, "I was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on . . . That's basically what I knew as attorney general."

In other words, you had no idea what your chief of staff was doing, and no idea why he was talking to the White House all the time? Bullshit.

Is Gonzales's Apology Enough? -- TIME

But lawyers for Jennings had not even seen the letter from ES&S until recently; it was not provided to them by election officials as it should have been under discovery motions in the case, Hirsch said. Instead, the legal team came across the document on a North Carolina-based website on election reform.

Sarasota County election officials clearly had seen the letter, though, because they referred to it in a series of emails that were among the thousands of pages of documents that were provided to Jennings's legal team. "It wasn't clear until we saw the letter what the emails were about," Hirsch said.

And we're back to the last election again because it was botched. Way to go Sarasota! And whose seat was that before the election? Why Katherine Harris' of course!

Melinda Henneberger: Mechanical Glitch Ignored In Now Contested Florida Congressional Race | The Huffington Post

A US grand jury in Guam opened an investigation of controversial lobbyist Jack Abramoff more than two years ago, but President Bush removed the supervising federal prosecutor, and the probe ended soon after.

The previously undisclosed Guam inquiry is separate from a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia that is investigating allegations that Abramoff bilked Indian tribes out of millions of dollars.

In Guam, a US territory in the Pacific, investigators were looking into Abramoff's secret arrangement with Superior Court officials to lobby against a court reform bill then pending in Congress. The legislation, since approved, gave the Guam Supreme Court authority over the Superior Court.

In 2002, Abramoff was retained by the Superior Court in what was an unusual arrangement for a public agency. The Los Angeles Times reported in May that Abramoff was paid with a series of $9,000 checks funneled through a Laguna Beach, Calif., lawyer to disguise the lobbyist's role working for the Guam court. No separate contract was authorized for Abramoff's work.

Follow this, Poppy Bush nominated the formaer US Attorney in 1991, Clinton left him there, he stayed on the job until about the beginning of 2003. Here's where things get interesting. At that point he's investigating and has sent out subpoenas based on what he's got and then gets axed.

We're probably looking at fraud, money laundering, bribes, and any number of other things based on the description given, and that's just in Guam. Now let's take a trip to Washington. This is not someone who was fired with all the other US Attorneys, he's got a different track. He gets fired, and replaced by, get this, an operative of the then governor of Guam, who the prior attorney was investigating for corruption!

Bush may end up meeting the high standards or Harding of Buchanan. Oh who am I kidding, he's exceeded them. Harding didn't get us into a war and Buchanan didn't have the same levels of influence peddling and corruption. Bush combines the worst of both worlds.

Bush removal ended Guam investigation - The Boston Globe

`(viii) participation in any game or contest in which participants do not stake or risk anything of value other than--

`(I) personal efforts of the participants in playing the game or contest or obtaining access to the Internet; or

`(II) points or credits that the sponsor of the game or contest provides to participants free of charge and that can be used or redeemed only for participation in games or contests offered by the sponsor; or

This is pretty curious. It presents some challenges for online games like WoW (sort of), EQ2 (station exchange has some issues here) and Second Life is really hurting on this, but their exposure may be limited because they expressly say the content is owned by the in game creator of it.

I detect some extreme messiness coming out of this one, above and beyond the actual poker places...

(Because of the way the Library of Congress handles links, the link here goes to the level above the text of the bill. I can safely say, I despise ho they handle things, it is made to make information as hard as possible to share.)

Gambling Provision of the SAFE Port Act

Putting encryption into a hard drive is no mere security window-dressing. According to Seagate, any U.S. company that loses a laptop using the Seagate drive in conjunction with the launch security management system from Wave Systems, will not have to give public notification of the loss, even if the data is of a highly confidential nature.

This is cool. Next question, is there a government mandated backdoor that will mean it's all for naught?

PC World - Seagate Ships Super-Secure Hard Disk Drive

Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate "bad spirits" after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday.

"That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture," Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, said Thursday.

But tell us how you really feel?

Priests to Purify Site After Bush Visit | The Huffington Post

Officials said they could not be sure of the scope of the violations but suggested they could be more widespread, though not deliberate. In nearly a quarter of the case files Inspector General Glenn A. Fine reviewed, he found previously unreported potential violations.

I'm trying to remember how I said they'd use the PATRIOT act... let's see... Oh, here I am in June of 2005,

Why am I opposed to things like TSA and PATRIOT? Because they've demonstrated time and again they don't pay any attention to minor niceties like what's legal. Add to that the fact that they are notoriously bad at safeguarding that sort of information and you have a recipe for being a bigger threat than the one they are trying to stop.

Adding sugar to urine doesn't make it stop being urine. They took this, and managed to abuse even its incredibly open-ended ability. That's not easy. It needs to go.

Frequent Errors In FBI's Secret Records Requests - washingtonpost.com

Listed as a "new requirement" for foreign travelers on U.S. government business, the memo says that requests for foreign travel "involving or potentially involving climate change, sea ice, and/or polar bears" require special handling, including notice of who will be the official spokesman for the trip.

The Fish and Wildlife Service top officials need assurance that the spokesman, "the one responding to questions on these issues, particularly polar bears" understands the administration's position on these topics.

Bush Bans Bears!