Monica Bids Farewell

By Scott Horton

Friday afternoon at four o'clock is the favored hour for dissemination of news that the administration wants to bury. Last week's dose is the long-awaited resignation of Monica Goodling, the fifth amendment-invoking advisor to Alberto Gonzales. The Associated Press reports that she provided no reason for her departure. Senator Schumer makes the obvious observation:

“While Monica Goodling had no choice but to resign, this is the third Justice Department official involved in the U.S attorney firings who has stepped down,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., who was among the first senators to question the firings and the first to call for Gonzales' resignation.

“Attorney General Gonzales' hold on the department gets more tenuous each day,” Schumer said in a written statement.

And how did Monica get where she got—to a position of tremendous power and influence over the 93 U.S. attorneys? Josh Marshall has a fascinating videoclip of a story done by the BBC several years ago. In it, we see a woman named “Monica,” who looks exactly like Ms. Goodling, working during the election campaign in the dirty tricks department of the RNC under the supervision of Tim Griffin, the Rove aide whose appointment as U.S. attorney in Little Rock launched the whole affair. The video is worth a look.