Coup d'America

Okay, this isn't funny anymore.

It was amusing at first to see Alberto Gonzales getting grilled. The White House seemed to get caught with their pants down, trying to put some Republican-friendly lawyers in as federal prosecutors. People defending the administration said, "hey these are political appointments, Bush can pick whoever he wants."

I thought they had a point. I thought Bush and co. were trying to cover up something the public wouldn't like - political patronage - and were dirtying up some good attorneys in the process. But it didn't seem like anything dangerous... I assume that there is a little bit of politics in all these appointments, and the White House just got caught lying about it.

Inside-the-beltway kind of stuff.

But I've been keeping an eye on this, and the more information comes out, the scarier this gets. By which I mean, to me this is worse than the Iraq war, and believe me I don't say this lightly. And what worries me is that the press isn't putting the big picture together for the public. They need to. I'll do my little bit here.

None of this is proven, but this is what the evidence suggests to me so far. And I'm being as honest as I can, imagining this was some other administration that I loved and whose policy goals I approved of.

There was a concerted effort to infiltrate the Department of Justice and turn it into a political weapon to ensure Republican political dominance. Let me repeat that for clarity. The part of our executive that can put people in jail, that we depend on to enforce our laws fairly, to ensure that all Americans are treated equally... there was a concerted, well thought-out, intentional plan to put political pressure on public servants to prosecute Democratic political candidates, and to stop investigations of Republican political candidates. This occurred at multiple levels. It's not just phone calls, people were relocated to close districts and given prosecutions to pursue and voters to purge, against the recommendations of the civil service staff. This was in violation of clear policies banning this kind of activity in an election year.

And it's not just the 8 attorneys. Previous attorneys were removed (albeit more quietly... pressured to resign etc) and replaced by people with strong partisan backgrounds who immediately proceeded to initiate political prosecutions. Remember Jack Abramoff, the guy who bought off Bob Ney and was chummy with lots of Republican congressmen? He went to jail and the Republicans lost the election. Then the prosecutor who won the case was fired for performance reasons.

What about the whole "the President can appoint whomever he wants" part? Well, until a measure was snuck into the USA PATRIOT Act reauthorization, the President couldn't really pick anyone he wanted, he had to have approval. The part snuck in said that if Bush timed it right, he didn't need any approvals. Not even the Republican congressmen claim to have known the provision was in there, and it has now been abused and repealed.

And besides, it wasn't just these appointments that were being used as partisan weapons. The Department of Justice let a White House representative screen new civil servants so that only good Republicans could get jobs. That's right, federal law enforcement is now dependent on political beliefs. This needs to be on the cover of Time Magazine. The Department of Justice was *illegally* blocking Democrats and Independents from civil service jobs.

This shouldn't be a surprise. Remember that other Texas Republican, Tom Delay, who was pushing the "Permanent Republican Majority"? Who had a K Street Project to force lobbying firms to fire Democrats else they couldn't get a fair hearing? Not to mention the unprecedented midcycle Texas redistricting to create a bunch of new Republican seats in the Congress?

Another name you need to know. James Comey is a senior VP of Lockheed Martin. He worked his way up through the US attorney's office ranks from 1987 to 2002 when he became Bush's Deputy Attorney General. He was the #2 in the Department of Justice until 2005. In this administration. He knows the attorneys who were fired.

This lifelong Republican sat before Congress and defended the fired attorneys as 1st rate. He said that juries have to know that the prosecutors bringing charges against people are 100% clean, that they are the good guys and can be trusted. He said that the damage that has been done to the Department of Justice may be irreparable.

I'd argue the same is being done to the government as a whole. I'm a Democrat by political allegiance but if the Democrats ever tried to take over the civil functions of the government for political purposes I'd vote straight ticket Republican. Our country cannot function if people fundamentally distrust the motives of the government. It's bad enough when, like Watergate, one party breaks the law to beat the other party. A healthy Democracy depends on parties battling over ideas, and absolute power corrupts any party. But it's a whole other Kafkaesque level when one party attempts to turn the government against non-politicians who don't pledge political loyalty.

And who does it look like was behind this? Karl Rove (who I have nothing whatsoever personal against, he's a political strategist, it's his job to be Machiavelli) and Harriet Miers. Let's pause here. George Bush nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. If it were not for the fact that she was not conservative enough for her own party, we might have had a sitting Supreme Court Justice who was behind an illegal and fundamentally anti-constitutional partisan takeover of the one part of the executive branch (save the military) that desperately needs to be nonpartisan. Nothing is sacred.

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I'm generally charitable about people's motives, but for this I'll make an exception. This is rotten as Hell. This is supposedly why we fought a cold war, to protect America and people around the world from corrupt governments that seek to control people's live through enforced political loyalty. This is why true conservatives distrust government, because of the corrupting influence that centralized power brings. At least with Iraq, one can charitably say that this administration was trying to replace something dictatorial with something democratic, and naively underestimated the obstacles.

I cannot believe it is possible to look impartially at the facts coming out every day and conclude anything other than that the administration and its allies were trying to stage a coup of sorts, increasing political power by taking over non-political parts of the government.

This is exactly the kind of thing that is killing our soldiers overseas every day. Americans ask why we should sacrifice lives to support Iraqi leaders who won't find a way to set aside political differences and to build a functioning government that fairly represents and works for all Iraqis. Yet while Maliki and co talk unity, behind the scenes they work to consolidate power just like Putin in Russia.

The White House and its allies are trying to set aside a functioning government that represents all Americans and replace it with one that furthers their political aims. This makes me deeply sympathetic to those I know who want guns to protect themselves not from criminals but from our own government. Our country depends on trusting each other and the government we elect. We see every day from Iraq how hard it is to rebuild trust and civility once it is destroyed. To sacrifice the bipartisan trust that keeps America together, for partisan power... is fundamentally unpatriotic and un-American.

The Department of Justice is not the only thing that this administration has irreparably damaged. And I for one am going to add my voice to the noise about it.

If you'll excuse me, I have to start writing letters to my representatives.