The Ridiculous LexisNexis Search that the Justice Department Used 589
[First name of a candidate]! and pre/2 [last name of a candidate] w/7 bush or gore or republican! or democrat! or charg! or accus! or criticiz! or blam! or defend! or iran contra or clinton or spotted owl or florida recount or sex! or controvers! or racis! or fraud! or investigat! or bankrupt! or layoff! or downsiz! or PNTR or NAFTA or outsourc! or indict! or enron or kerry or iraq or wmd! or arrest! or intox! or fired or sex! or racis! or intox! or slur! or arrest! or fired or controvers! or abortion! or gay! or homosexual! or gun! or firearm!
Needless to say, when asked about it, Williams first said she didn't remember ever seeing it, then said she'd used an edited version just once. LexisNexis records show she used it, as shown, 25 times." Note that 'sex!' appears twice in the query. Must be VERY important.
Re:TFS Blows, TFA Is About Hiring Practices (Score:5, Interesting)
Dropping Monica Goodling into that query returns 653 results in the last 2 years.
Because It's Illegal (Score:5, Interesting)
There are certain high level posts in the various executive branch agencies that are tagged 'political appointments'. These jobs, which steer those agencies, can be determined based on politics.
For everything else, such discrimination is illegal. It is assumed, by the law, that people are professional enough to do their job regardless of who is in charge - and anyway, they can be fired if they intentionally sabotage the agency without legal cause.
Only recently, since the Neocons took over, has it even been an issue that 'attorneys hate' the people they work for. I mean, really, is such harsh language remotely accurate? Or is it being used as a boogie man in order to make an end-run around very wise laws; laws that prevent the government from swinging to extremes with every change in the administration.
(And lets not even bring up the fiscal nightmare it must be if agencies have to rehire everyone every eight years...)
Now, with my straight face: Clinton did NOT weed out conservatives from executive branch jobs. He in fact explicitly hired many people across the aisle, for better or for worse. The idea that you never hire people who disagree with you is one that has only seen it's heyday in the last eight years. It's actually often a very good idea.
Is LexisNexis Still Relevant for Non-Lawrers? (Score:5, Interesting)
Back when I used LN a lot, about ten years ago, the thing that made it useful to me even when searching through sources that were indexed elsewhere as well were the search terms like A w/5 B, which searches for term A within 5 words of B. That always produced much more relevant results than A and B, and despite all the praise of things like Pagerank, I've never seen a modern internet search engine give nearly as good of results as I was always able to find using this sort of technique.
Is this type of search still limited to LN, or are there ways to do the same sort of thing on Yahoo/Google/etc?
Re:You seem to lack perspective here (Score:1, Interesting)
Well, which is worse: the administration that does all that shit or the people who let them get away with it?
Bush and his cronies may be a bunch of thugs, but the Democrats haven't done jack shit about it except writing "sternly worded" letters and declaring their opposition to FISA before voting in favor of it.
Re:Yes, you hate George Bush ... (Score:2, Interesting)
But the damage he's done will remain for much longer.
Good point.
We are still living with the damage good ole Billy Jeff & Hillary and Carter did to us.
Re:TFS Blows, TFA Is About Hiring Practices (Score:5, Interesting)
To further illuminate what Goodling was doing, she told this to a U.S. Attorney telling him he could hire another prosecutor for his office:
"Tell Brad he can hire one more good American."
"good American" is Goodling and probably Bush administration code for conservative, Christian, homophobe, pro life, Bush supporting, Republican. The implication being all other American's are "bad" Americans. How does it feel to live in a country where your Executive Branch has branded you as a "bad" American unless you live and think the way they expect you to live and think.
It is an entirely acceptable standard for political appointees who will come and go with the President who appoints them. It is expected for them to be ideologues in the same mold as their boss. It is an illegal and unacceptable criteria for career civil servants who, once they enter the ranks of civil service, are nearly impossible to get rid of unless they leave of their on accord.
The report unfortunately stops short of finding who directed Goodling to do this, but since she was the DOJ liason to the White House chances are it was Rove, Myers, Cheney and or Bush, who were probably directing Goodling to fill the Justice Department ranks with career civil servants, who need not be well qualified for their jobs, but who were certified ideologues who would carry the right wing flag for decades to come and slant prosecutions and the law in the direction their ideology dictated.
The DOJ has received all the attention but there is an open question if the same program was being practiced in some or all of the other departments and agencies under control of the Executive Branch. If it was there may be an army of entrenched Republican ideologue civil servants who will frustrate future President they don't agree with for decades to come.
Re:You aren't being sensible here (Score:2, Interesting)
Okay, first, there was a huge concerted attack by the right wing against Clinton for the most minor of offenses. It wasn't 'dismissed,' the man was IMPEACHED. Why hasn't Bush been impeached? We will move on when there is at least the same level of justice for Bush.
Impeachment was a complete waste of time for Clinton, because for every "Clinton hater", there was a "Clinton lover". Both were just as committed to their support or opposition, regardless of the facts.
Impeachment would be a waste of time again. It's nothing more than a political act, and the one time that it was warranted (for Nixon), Republicans in the Senate put Nixon on notice that they wouldn't support him and he resigned.
Second, your cynicism is disgusting. You can't excuse one wrong act by pointing that others have done lesser evils. Wrong is wrong and it is never right to pressure people into shutting up about it.
Did I excuse a wrong act? Maybe you can quote the part where I did. I simply pointed out that this has been going on for a long time, and won't stop because the current generation is indignant about it.
What amuses me is people that just finished partying their way through college and started paying attention to the rest of the world -- then think that the Bush administration invented this crap. Maybe they need to crack open the history books they didn't bother to read in school, or maybe do a bit of research on the 'Net.
Finally, no, sorry, no past administration has ever been this blatant in apply purity tests to career hires rather than political appointees. And unless people like you get their way and this is all swept under the rug, then future administrations will have even less of a chance of doing it.
No, past administrations haven't been this blatant. Actually, no past administration has been so stupid to leave the evidence around -- you can chalk that up to the digital age. Past deals were mostly made in back rooms with a handshake. Future administrations will certainly learn from this -- but I doubt it will be the lesson that you want. They'll just be more careful to conceal it.
It really sounds as if you'd love it if everyone would just shut up and let ourselves get fucked over by the powerful. Not gonna happen, sorry.
Ah, the rage of the immature. You want to blame everyone else because your life is messed up, or at least not going the way you want. I'll refer you back to the advice of the original poster: Get over it. The opportunity for you is limitless, if you take responsibility for yourself. "The powerful" only have power over you if you give it to them.
Re:The spotted owl is a shibboleth. (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't want to blow my moderation..
I don't consider neocons to be ultra conservative.
They spend money like drunken sailors, the support the expansion of the federal government, they ignore the constitution.
OTH, they are pro military, pro corporation, and use religion as a glue to get enough votes to advance their position. I.e. Neocons are very close to facists / corporatists.
I'm not saying that in a half naked hippy screaming "fascist!" kind of way at law abiding cops doing their jobs. I'm looking at the neocons actions- comparing them to historical factions and concluding that the closest match I find is fascists.
Re:Yes, you hate George Bush ... (Score:1, Interesting)
Only if we retain essentially the same Congress. Bush would be impotent if the Republicans and Democrats did not so enthusiastically support him. And most (*) of it can be wiped out overnight if we decide to undo it in the November elections.
(*) Obviously we can't get back the money that has already been wasted and the soldiers we've already lost, but, as they say, life goes on.
Re:I don't understand... (Score:1, Interesting)
And back during the Clinton administration, us Republicans bitched about Janet Reno, and her refusal to prosecute friends of the Clintons. In a few short months, it'll be our turn to bitch again. It's a cycle. It didn't start with this administration, and it won't end with it, either.
Re:You seem to lack perspective here (Score:2, Interesting)
They voted for the Patriot Act, and they voted for FISA. They didn't "let them get away with it", they HELPED.
Re:Classic Republican defense (Score:3, Interesting)
The fact that Clinton did it
has not been established.
Re:I don't understand... (Score:3, Interesting)
Um, you do know that political appointees are "cleaned out" with every new administration, right? That's things like Cabinet posts, US Attorneys, and Ambassadors.
Please read up on the Hatch Act. Bet you can't show me one civil service employee who was fired by Clinton.
Re:LexisNexis Search? (Score:5, Interesting)
I can only wonder how many small coincidences could be completly misconstrued during both investigations, or other things such as affairs.
Re:Yes, you hate George Bush ... (Score:2, Interesting)
The base of support needed to really change that party is mostly like me, a disgusted centrist who loathes both parties but wouldn't touch anything republican with a ten foot pole. The hard part is convincing people the GOP is A: possible to change, and B: worth changing.
It doesn't seem like any change to the republican party can happen utile those who run it now die, or are all arrested.
Re:You seem to lack perspective here (Score:2, Interesting)
You can opt out. Leave the country if you don't like it. Fifty percent of Americans pay no income tax? You've been watching too much Fox News. That statement doesn't even pass a basic sanity check, and if it were true, it would mean that a huge number of Americans were unemployed or living below the poverty line. Which would be all the more reason for them to demand more equitable treatment.
Re:You seem to lack perspective here (Score:3, Interesting)
Agreed, partly. I'd rather have a Clinton style fiscally responsible Democrat who inherited a broken economy and still managed to lower taxes, increase wealth, and increase government services by doing away with waste.
Re:You seem to lack perspective here (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a huge difference between the actions of the President and his band of thieves, and the minimally Democratic House and Senate.
Difference, yes. Huge? I don't know.
One poster used the example of lifting a pack of gum vs. robbing a bank. I think it's more along the lines of the guy in the bank who shoots the guard vs the guy in the bank who grabs the money but doesn't shoot vs the guy driving the getaway car.
Or maybe baseball is a better example. There are the players who cheated by taking steroids, then there is the league which followed a path of such deliberate ignorance and impotence you have to consider it just as guilty as the players.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Yes, you hate George Bush ... (Score:2, Interesting)
I partially disagree. As I see it, the value of alternate parties in a two party political system is that as the ideas of a third party become increasingly popular, the platforms of the two major parties shift their agendas to appropriate the issues that have drawn voters to that third party. Whichever major party can most effectively adjust their platform to accommodate the 3% of the voters who feel that the Loony Toon Party's issues are important to the health of the country can win an election if the margin of victory is 2%. In my view, supporting third-party candidates can be a quite effective means of initiating change within the two major parties.
Re:TFS Blows, TFA Is About Hiring Practices (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The spotted owl is a shibboleth. (Score:2, Interesting)
In Britain and most of the rest of the world, people like Bush are known as neo-liberals.
I think Neo-lib is basically more correct since Bush is an extreme liberal as in "pro foreign wars, pro big government, anti religion and morality, control of dissent, restriction of personal freedoms" with a bit of a conservative twist: likes lower taxes and hates killing human fetuses.
Re:The spotted owl is a shibboleth. (Score:3, Interesting)
Bush? Neocon all the way.
I can't entirely agree. Well, I suppose it depends on how you define a person: based upon what they believe in or upon what they actually do. Bush definitely ran in 2000 on a small government, limited foreign policy platform. His tax cuts and lack of interest in matters overseas prior to 2001 demonstrate that his platform truly represented what he was aiming for as president. His focus was on America, not nation building, and his policies were probably mostly in line with your brand paleoconservatism.
There's a lot of room for debate about this, but I'd say Bush's fall from paleoconservatism happened not in 2001, but rather when he selected Cheney as his running mate. A Bush/SomeoneElse presidency would have been very different from what we've seen. Cheney brought back to the executive branch a lot of the so-called neocons who Bush's father and Ronald Reagan had sworn off in the 1980s. And since Bush was not great with foreign policy (and that's not to pick on him - all presidents are bad at some things and that's why there's a Cabinet), he relied heavily on the advice of neocons in shaping his policies.
So in terms of what he's done, Bush is a neocon as you said. I think deep down he's a paleocon. The existence of both paleocons and neocons in a single party, and the ability of so many of your fellow paleocons to embrace neoconservative foreign policy and spending, has always mystified me.
Re:TFS Blows, TFA Is About Hiring Practices (Score:3, Interesting)
"makes it hard for me to take anything else you said seriously. If the US attorneys served at the pleasure of the President, there is no such thing as an "improper" firing."
The U.S. attorneys do serve at the pleasure of the President, but as soon as the White House started selectively firing them to obstruct criminal cases against Republicans, or to threaten Attorneys if they didn't bring cases against Democrats they certainly stepped over a traditional line of non interference in the cases in the U.S. Attorney's offices, and were potentially obstructing justice which might be a crime. Worse than the cases where attorneys were fired for refusing political influence in their cases may be some where they were doing what they were directed to do by Karl Rove and may have brought politically motivated cases against Democrats, putting potentially innocent people in jail, and where the cases may have been fabricated by the U.S. attorney. Its kind ofbad arrangement where we rely on political appointees to bring federal cases which often involve politicians. The system mostly worked until we got to the Bush administration though. Clinton firing all the attorneys at once is way less bad than Bush and Rove selectively firing them to pressure them to bring politically motivated cases.
You might want to read the case of Don Siegelman [wikipedia.org], a better though somewhat biased write up here [counterpunch.org]. Counterpunch is pretty left wing but a lot of interesting people write some really interesting stuff there, though there is garbage too.
Siegelman was a popular Alabama Democratic and governor apparently targeted by Karl Rove in 2002. Rove may have used the Alabama U.S. Attorney to bring a case against Siegelman to neutralize him as a factor in Alabama politics. If true, though that remains to be seen, it is the most disturbing example of Karl Rove using the U.S. attorneys as political tools to destroy Democrats and elect Republicans. Rove and Bush teethed their political teeth in Alabama, its where Bush went when he ducked his National Guard service in Texas, they have a long history there, and politics isn't bean bag so I imagine the knew Siegelman from way back.
Siegelman won a very close reelection as Governor in 2002 before it was declared a voting machine had malfunctioned and he was stripped of 3000 votes which cost him the election. There is a chance the election was rigged by the Republicans which is in with a string of election regularities we had in 2000 through 2004, like in Georgia, all of which went in favor of Republicans. Siegelman supposedly agreed to stop challenging the 2002 election result in a deal with Alabama Republican's where the U.S. attorney would drop the investigation against him in return.
The U.S. attorney didn't drop the case though, he was indicted in 2004. The [rosecutor abandoned the first trial when the judge threw out all of the U.S. attorney's evidence because it was so bad. The U.S. attorney wouldn't stop though and tried again in 2006. In 2006 they got the case heard by a Bush appointed judge who happened to have a nasty grudge against Seigelmen which he didn't recuse himself for. The case hinged on testimony of one Siegelman's aides who was a crook and who may have lied to convict Siegelman in exchange for favorable treatment in his case. Two jurors were also caught emailing each and colluding to sway the jury to convict. It was probably jury tampering and should have lead to a mistrial but biased Judge Fuller refused to even investigate the issue.
From Wikipedia, "In June 2007, a Republican lawyer, Dana Jill Simpson of Rainsville, Alabama, signed a sworn statement that, five years earlier, she had heard that Karl Rove was preparing to neutralize Siegelman politically with an investigation headed by the U.S. Department of Justice"
A new judge threw out Seiglemen's conviction this year when the possibility arose the case was politically