Newly released emails directly contradicted the claims of Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, that he had not prepared the names of replacement candidates for the eight terminated U.S. attorneys. This raises the . . . MORE . . .

In his hometown paper, the Auburn Journal, Republican Congressman John T. Doolittle writes that the FBI raid of his home in Northern Virginia and incessant questioning of his wife is evidence of an effort by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to esca . . . MORE . . .

Last week, I reported here and again here on the interview run in a local Seattle public affairs broadcaster concerning the murder of a young AUSA named Thomas Wales and the role it played in the decision to fire Seattle U.S. Attorney John McKay. . . . MORE . . .

Alberto Gonzales is still the attorney general, which considering what he’s been through over the last two months is an amazing fact. George Bush, in remarks for a cinco de mayo celebration, labeled him as the “eternal general.” He was caught in a do . . . MORE . . .

Tara McKelvey is the author of the new book Monstering: Inside America’s Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War, which tells the story of the Abu Ghraib scandal and, more broadly, examines the pattern of detainee abuse in Iraq. . . . MORE . . .

Alberto Gonzales’s prepared remarks, just released to the House Judiciary Committee, contain a strained plea. It’s time for Congress to move on, he says, and stop obsessing about all this criminal conduct by figures at the top of the Justice Departm . . . MORE . . .

Today, in a performance that seems largely a repeat of his Senate appearance, Alberto Gonzales had his say in front of the House Judiciary Committee. It’s hard to see how this appearance could set aside concerns about his leadership; more likely, it . . . MORE . . .

Alberto Gonzales isn’t leaving. But evidently many of his best career staff are planning to do exactly that if he hangs around. Speaking at a conference at Seattle University Law School, former U.S. attorneys John McKay, David Iglesias, and Paul Char . . . MORE . . .

Dahlia Lithwick offers a brilliant analysis of Fredo’s appearance today before the House Judiciary Committee. One interchange really sums the whole thing up: . . . MORE . . .

For several weeks now, reports have been circulating in Washington that, bracing for an onslaught of investigations from the new opposition-oriented Congress, the Bush Administration had been giving lessons to other government agencies about how to s . . . MORE . . .

Today the New York Times’s Eric Lipton takes a close look at the role played by Department of Justice White House liaison Monica Goodling and the program to subvert the Hatch Act by building political litmus tests into the hiring process across the b . . . MORE . . .

During his recent testimony, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey described the former U.S. Attorney in Las Vegas, Daniel G. Bogden, as “straight as a Nevada highway and a fired-up guy.” During his tenure, violent crime fell dramatically in Nev . . . MORE . . .

Anthony Trollope was a very great novelist, a man who in a sense is a far better surveyor of English society in the Victorian Age than Charles Dickens. His works are filled with humor and wisdom and importantly, they never tire the reader. I hardly e . . . MORE . . .

The McClatchy Newspapers report today that in the final weeks before the midterm Congressional elections of November 2006, presidential political advisor Karl Rove orchestrated a large-scale effort to suppress voter turnout among potentially Democra . . . MORE . . .

In an appearance this morning on Bloomberg television’s Margaret Carlson program, conservative columnist Robert Novak has coined a new defense for embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales: he’s a dummy, but only one of a great number of dummies t . . . MORE . . .

The Navy has commenced the court-martial in Norfolk, Virginia, of LtCmdr Matthew Diaz. Commander Diaz is a 19-year veteran who was last detailed to serve as a JAG at Guantánamo—he faces charges that he disseminated “secret national defense informatio . . . MORE . . .

The New York Times has released a fascinating account of Paul J. McNulty’s internal battles with the White House and Alberto Gonzales and the series of steps leading to his decision to resign. . . . MORE . . .

In a letter published in the Washington Post, Alberto Gonzales’s Harvard Law School classmates (class of ’82) write to say how ashamed they are to be associated with him. “Your country and your President are in dire need of an attorney who will do th . . . MORE . . .

The reliably Republican editorial page of the Chicago Tribune takes a look at the bubbling cesspool that Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales have made out of the Justice Department. It reaches some inevitable conclusions: . . . MORE . . .

Newsweek reported some time back that Alberto Gonzales had pressured the Justice Department to approve an obviously illegal – indeed, criminal – surveillance program targeting U.S. citizens and had been rebuffed. Today in his testimony before the Sen . . . MORE . . .

The dramatic testimony of former Deputy Attorney General James Comey provides the perfect framework for re-examining some of the less-than-brilliant editorial page writing appearing recently in the Washington Post. The Post’s national security report . . . MORE . . .

In a dramatic expansion of the current Purgegate scandal, the Washington Post reports this morning that Alberto Gonzales knowingly gave false evidence to the Judiciary Committee when he attempted to limit the scope of the program aimed at removing U . . . MORE . . .

McClatchy Newspapers breaks important new ground in the U.S. attorneys scandal by confirming that the roster of U.S. attorneys involved is still larger than previously suspected. . . . MORE . . .

Alberto Gonzales is challenged on his testimony about FISA, in which he sharply contradicts Deputy Attorney General James Comey. His response is predictable: Gonzales is sticking with the sworn account he furnished earlier, which is to say, he’s st . . . MORE . . .

The disclosures of James Comey and the tedious answers of Alberto Gonzales are a wonderful evocation of the Stasi state, indeed they show how much closer America is moving towards that workers’ paradise with every passing week. Those who have seen t . . . MORE . . .

Former senior Justice Department official, now Georgetown law professor Neal Katyal explains in an interview with Time magazine that the late night visit by Andrew Card and Alberto Gonzales to the hospital bed of John Ashcroft–described so vividly by . . . MORE . . .

Lieutenant Commander Matthew Diaz has been acquitted on accusations of trying to “aid the enemy” but convicted on counts of passing classified information, reports the Associated Press. He thus emerges as the latest in a long line of military martyrs . . . MORE . . .

Karl Rove protégé Tim Griffin, installed as interim U.S. attorney in Little Rock in the first round of Purgegate, had a term of 120 days, which ran out on April 20, 2007. Guess what? He’s still there. Notwithstanding Alberto Gonzales’s personal assu . . . MORE . . .

We’ve seen the pattern–with Richard Clarke, Paul O’Neill and a dozen others. They come out and reveal some unpleasant truth about the inner workings of the Bush Administration. They have broken the most sacred law of the “Loyal Bushies,” the law of o . . . MORE . . .

The ultimate question of the Watergate era is posed today in an editorial by the newspaper whose modern reputation was cut on Watergate, the Washington Post. . . . MORE . . .

The Washington Post reports this morning on a private meeting that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales conducted on Wednesday with U.S. attorneys from around the country in San Antonio. . . . MORE . . .

The Bush Administration, entering into its last, lame-duck year, has the usual difficulties finding qualified help. Add to that public approval levels as low as have ever been seen. And consider finally what must be the least desirable place to work . . . MORE . . .

Back in the era of the titans, the bar knew some great figures - none greater than Elihu Root – secretary of state, secretary of war, senator from New York, but he said, he wore no title more proudly than that of president of the Association of the B . . . MORE . . .

In the end, the legacy of the Bush era will be this: that no act of nobility or decency goes unpunished if it casts the leader in a bad light, nor will any venal or criminal deed of an acolyte go unshielded if it is true to the will of the leader. . . . MORE . . .

Under Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division was transformed from an organization that defended the voting rights of minorities into a tool in a Republican Party campaign to suppress minority voters, McClatc . . . MORE . . .

One week ago, following his appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, Alberto Gonzales told friends that he had “weathered” the scandal and expected to stay on. That seems laughable at this point, as Congress prepares to vote “no confidence” i . . . MORE . . .

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who after eight years of service as attorney general was certainly the state’s most popular prosecutor since Thomas E. Dewey, has a few words to offer on Alberto Gonzales and the sad state of the Department of Justice . . . MORE . . .

U.S. News & World Report’s Chitra Ragavan notes that Alberto Gonzales’s late night visit to John Ashcroft at George Washington University Hospital to talk about extension of a highly classified and unlawful surveillance program may not be under revie . . . MORE . . .

Voters in the northern reaches of San Diego, centered around the town of Poway, California, sent Randy “Duke” Cunningham to Congress for a generation. In short order he became one of the most powerful Republicans in the House of Representatives. Cunn . . . MORE . . .

About two years ago, I was asked to give an address concerning the organized bar’s engagement on the torture issue before a gathering of bar association presidents from throughout the Western hemisphere. When it was over, a former president of the Ar . . . MORE . . .

Former Nixon administration counsel to the president John Dean looks at the conduct of Alberto Gonzales from the outset of the Purgegate affair and draws some conclusions: perjury, obstruction of justice, orchestration of a potentially criminal consp . . . MORE . . .

Wednesday was Monica Goodling day in the House Judiciary Committee. After invoking the Fifth Amendment, Monica got immunity in order to facilitate her testimony. In the end, what she put on the record is very unwelcome news for the three men at the t . . . MORE . . .

For the ancient world, birds played a powerful role in furnishing signs about what was to come in the future. In modern English we have the words “auspicious” and “augury,” each of which reflect the role of birds in telling us what the future holds – . . . MORE . . .

In my post on Monica Goodling’s testimony, I neglected to discuss one absolutely critical element: her statement that she had been deeply engaged in the process of appointing immigration judges. These appointments were not subject to the normal civil . . . MORE . . .

One of the mysteries surrounding the testimony last week of Monica Goodling has now been resolved, thanks to the reporting of the Legal Times. Emma Schwartz and Jason McLure take a look at some litigation launched by a disappointed career immigration . . . MORE . . .

Yet another senior aide to Karl Rove has resigned in the face of a Congressional subpoena. Sarah M. Taylor, a presidential assistant who works directly under Karl Rove and is widely known as an expert in voting suppression targets directed against mi . . . MORE . . .

Today’s New York Times features a story on the Intelligence Science Board’s study on the efficacy of the Bush Administration’s enhanced interrogation techniques, but it also picked up some discussion from a speech given by a former senior State Depar . . . MORE . . .

Robert Greenwald’s video reviewing the accusations of criminal misconduct leveled at Attorney General Alberto Gonzales – perjury, violations of the Hatch Act, misrepresentations to Congress, suborning perjury and obstruction of justice–can be viewed . . . MORE . . .

Conviction on a felony works an automatic disbarment. Which helps explain why Alberto Gonzales is so eager to keep his fingers wrapped about the wheel of the nation’s prosecutorial machinery. . . . MORE . . .

His name is Adam Kokesh, and among other things, he’s the man who kept the famous tally on Alberto Gonzales’s convenient memory lapses during his Senate Judiciary Committee testimony. Now the Marine Corps is, on White House direction no doubt, doing . . . MORE . . .

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Former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey’s responses to the written questions of the Senate Judiciary Committee have now been submitted, and they contain a number of further bombshells. In general, his testimony and his written responses reflec . . . MORE . . .

Notwithstanding the case made for Wordsworth in the current Harper’s, I hold steadfast to the belief that Samuel Taylor Coleridge is the Prometheus of English Romanticism. Moreover, Coleridge is such a vibrant and roguish figure put side-by-side with . . . MORE . . .

The Senate prepares for a vote of no-confidence in the service of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General on Monday. In the meantime, the list of accusations of criminal conduct and ethics lapses against him continues to swell. The crimes include: perj . . . MORE . . .

On March 27, 1782, the House of Parliament at Westminster voted no confidence in Lord North, then serving as Prime Minister. He immediately announced that in view of the expression of no confidence he was honor bound to resign his office, and did so. . . . MORE . . .

Michael B. Nifong was the state prosecutor in Durham, North Carolina, who brought and trumpeted rape charges against a group of Duke University lacrosse players. The charges were false, and the decision to hype them to the media was unconscionable. N . . . MORE . . .

I’ve now heard from several sources within the Administration that a significant part of the documents which are being withheld–both by the Department of Justice and the White House–demonstrate Karl Rove’s on-going dabbling in the internal affairs of . . . MORE . . .

The New York Times’s Neil Lewis profiles exactly what the Civil Rights Division does under Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Racial discrimination and protection of the voting rights of minorities is passé, it turns out. Instead the Civil Rights Div . . . MORE . . .

The Senate Judiciary Committee has confirmed that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is now the subject of an investigation concerning his testimony about and dealings with former DOJ employee Monica Goodling, the Washington Post reports. . . . MORE . . .

One of the principal architects of the GOP’s voter suppression campaign is an attorney from North Georgia named Hans von Spakovsky. The son of emigrants who fled Nazi oppression, Spakovsky seems to have taken to partisan politics at a very early age. . . . MORE . . .

There is a case south of the Mason-Dixon line that resembles the Thompson case in some respects, except that the prosecutorial misconduct appears if anything more serious and more pervasive. In fact, the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Sie . . . MORE . . .

The dean of the Pentagon press corps, Joe Galloway, says that in light of the disclosures this week of Secretary Rumsfeld’s lies about the Abu Ghraib investigation and how it was stopped short of the obvious conclusions, it’s time now to re-open the . . . MORE . . .

The Judiciary Committee wants your help in investigating Justice Department misconduct. . . . MORE . . .

At the core of the complex of scandals swirling around the Department of Justice now is a process of Gleichschaltung, namely a careful review of career staff to purge all those considered not sufficiently loyal to the Republican Party and George W. B . . . MORE . . .

Funny, isn’t it? Alberto Gonzales, Hans von Spakovsky, Will Moschella, Brad Schlozman, and now Paul J. McNulty. When they are questioned by Congress about the key decisions that were made to cashier a crop of U.S. attorneys, terminate staffers and h . . . MORE . . .

Writing in his masterwork Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft in 1922, Max Weber showed that the “bureaucratic class” (Beamtentum) manipulated state secrets in order to undermine democratic institutions. By wielding security classifications, they could claim . . . MORE . . .

During the history of Japan, for various periods the power of the emperor was checked as military dictators called “shoguns” ruled the country. The term “shogun” in fact meant “supreme general of the samurai.” The legal rationalization for the shogun . . . MORE . . .

I get a chuckle reading in what passes for newspapers down in Alabama that the “flap” over the conviction of former Governor Don Siegelman is all just so much protesting from “Democrats.” However, the facts are different. No political party in Americ . . . MORE . . .

In another strange twist, U.S. Attorney General Alberto “Fredo” Gonzales was forced to seek shelter Wednesday in a much-beleaguered institution these days – a U.S. Attorney’s office. Gonzales was in Boise, Idaho, to deliver a speech on anti-gang effo . . . MORE . . .

Anthropologists studying Mesoamerican cultures from the late Middle Ages through the arrival of Columbus have noted the remarkable prevalence of human sacrifice as a religious and social rite. Mel Gibson’s recent film, “Apocalypto” presents this in a . . . MORE . . .

It’s after five p.m. on Friday, and the question is therefore: What compromised senior official of the Department of Justice will resign today? The resignations are always put out at exactly this time in order to minimize public attention. Afterall, . . . MORE . . .

On Thursday, United States District Judge Mark Fuller sentenced former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman to prison for a period of seven years and four months—a sentence of unprecedented harshness and severity. Ruling that appeals had no prospects for s . . . MORE . . .

The current scandal over politicized prosecution had its epicenter in the Land of Enchantment, where a highly regarded young Republican prosecutor, David Iglesias, was ousted for refusing to politically manipulate a prosecution of a Democratic electe . . . MORE . . .