victim by choice

I listened to most of the Goodling testimony last week while cutting-and-pasting graphics and inventing phraseology for training lessons. I don’t think either topic is much to write home to mother about, so if I must choose, and choose I do, I’ll gab a little on the Goodling testimony.

Who’s worse for the wear? Every member of the House Judiciary Committee. What a bunch of lost folk; not one of them came off as anything close to impressive. The Democrats couldn’t form a consistent line of questioning and the Republicans were like State Troopers who just pulled over a pretty girl…I’ll get to that further down the tome.

Where did they make mistakes? The Dems decided it would be a good idea to harp on her attending law school at Regent University, a religously affiliated university. The plot was lost right here because attending Regent wasn’t an issue that needed to be addressed. That's not the root of what bothers me and it simply opened up the door for Republican members to gush about godly universities and education (and every one of them did). What bothers me is how a 27-year old Goodling from a Tier-4 law school joined the Justice Department in 2001, and by 2003 (at the latest) was a 30-year old with no prosecutorial experience making judgments on attorneys at Justice.

Where didn’t they make mistakes? The Republicans just sat there looking stupid and waiting for the fish (the Dems) to take the bait. On the hook they had a mixed platter of god and the ‘harmless girl defense’. Not one of them was interested in the proceedings. They decided to not actually say anything...play dumb. There was bluster aplenty, but no intelligent questions or input. Beyond the ludicrous evolutionary timeline that attempted to link Yale to Harvard to Regent in the history of great institutes, I will take a moment to point out one deeply disturbed member of the committee. In his sophomoric attempt to make people look silly for bothering with this event, he revealed what is apparent to all: no matter where you go to law school, you can still be a dolt. Here’s to the smooth-brained Rep. Ric Keller (R-Fla):
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KELLER: OK. The reason I bring [the Carol Lam controversy] up is because one of the most controversial things -- and you just hear it in the L.A. Times this week, and I'm looking at an article May 18, 2007.

And I'll just read you what it says: “Speaking at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles on Thursday, John McKay, who was the fired U.S. attorney in Washington state, said he suspected that U.S. attorney Carol Lam was removed in San Diego to derail the expanding probe of then-Rep. Randall 'Duke' Cunningham.”

You hear that allegation over and over, and yet I have the documents here, the first of 20 members of Congress to complain about Carol Lam not prosecuting illegal immigration was February 2, 2004, from Darrell Issa, which was circulated to Department of Justice, the White House and Carol Lam.

I hear from you that you had heard complaints about not enforcing gun control gun crimes in 2003, 2004, and you had heard complaints about not enforcing immigration-related prosecutions in 2005.

And yet, the San Diego Tribune did not even break the initial story of Duke Cunningham until June 12, 2005, which is a full 14 months after Congressman Issa wrote the first of many letters complaining about her not enforcing alien immigration laws, which makes it literally impossible that she was fired as a pretext for Duke Cunningham because all the problems were occurring, as we hear from the documents and your testimony and others, before the story even broke about Duke Cunningham.

And, in fact, when I had Carol Lam right here, I asked her, Do you have any evidence whatsoever that you were fired because of Duke Cunningham? She said no.

When I had the U.S. attorney here, Did you fire her because of Duke Cunningham? No.

I've looked at 10,000 documents, e-mails, many witness interviews, testimony, not a shred of evidence. But I still see (inaudible) that we saw in the L.A. Times this week saying that our attorney general's a criminal because he let Ms. Lam go because she prosecuted Duke Cunningham.

I'm happy that we were able to set the record straight with your testimony that the problems that she incurred dealing with illegal immigration and gun crimes far predated the breaking of the Duke Cunningham story.
And I will yield back the balance of my time.
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What I’d ask Mr. Keller at the end of his Barnum act of waving around Xerox copies of newspaper accounts (and he was) is this: If Carol Lam was so incompetent for so many years, and had 20 members of congress complaining about her (including the divine Mr. Issa!), why did it take the Justice Department 32 months to act? By the way, for those for geniuses like Keller, those 32 months are the 14 months you complain about in your pompous speech plus the 17 months before she was involuntarily resigned in December 2006. If I play along with your support of the Justice Department then I’m shocked that it would take over 2 ½ years to dismiss someone who was “obviously” so incompetent. I'm not sure that pointing out immature leadership actually increases the publics opinion of the department.

How did Monica do? Not bad. If this had been a heads-up poker game she would have won. That’s not really say much since she was playing against a bunch of 9-year olds. X pointed out this weekend that it’s horribly embarrassing to see that people of authority are still be swayed by any type of doe-eyed female using the distress defense. Monica’s greatest benefit was the immunity. She could be long-winded, she didn’t admit to much while at the same time admitting to breaking the law, she brought on a hair style suitable for maximum flattering of the crowd, and generallye managed to drive off with a warning. It was very well played on her part. Two things I suspect: her daily haircut, for a fastburner like her, was no doubt more rigid. Also, I think she had on way too much make-up, but what do I know.

And finally, to clarify the continually trotted out line that all Presidents fire U.S. Attorneys: they do, just not their own. According to the Congressional Research Service, and they only have numbers for those that don’t serve full initial four-year terms, not the carryovers, the numbers are staggering. A “carryover” is a U.S. Attorney who has completed the four-year term and remains in office after a presidential reelection (Reagan and Clinton) or because, for some reason, the new party president decides to leave them in office. Here are the numbers of U.S. Attorneys replaced when a new President takes office:

Reagan: 71 of 93 attorneys
Clinton: 80 of 93 attorneys
G.W. Bush: 88 of 93 attorneys

I don’t have the numbers for the first Bush, but I assume since there wasn’t a change of party in the White House in 1988 most of them were allowed to stay.

In the quarter century between 1981 and 2006, a total of 54 U.S. Attorneys did not complete their four-year team; only two of those were fired, the last being in 1984. The reasons for the others leaving are outlined in the document; those that didn’t gain appointments to the bench or return to private practice have some very interesting stories.

I’m just saying…suddenly 8 or 9 U.S. Attorneys are dismissed for performance-related issues? These aren’t holdovers that slid through from the last administration; these are your Attorneys. It’s comical if you think about it.

Peace.

T.

(pix: Stephanie Kuykendal for Newsweek (right); Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)