It's not ancient history, folks

You may have read a bit about the name Renzi today.

Arizona's Rep. Renzi Is Indicted In Land Deal
Washington Post - 1 hour ago
By Ben Pershing Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) used his position in Congress to influence a federal land-exchange deal, collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in payoffs, according to an indictment released yesterday.
Grand Jury Indicts Arizona Congressman New York Times

So, another scamp is indicted. Big deal. Right?

Well, actually it is a big deal, because when you pull one thread you never know what might unravel. Consider these comments by Max Blumenthal at The Nation (via Kagro X at Daily Kos):

In September 2006, just weeks before pivotal Congressional midterm elections, Paul Charlton, US Attorney for Arizona, opened a preliminary investigation into Republican Representative Rick Renzi of the state's First Congressional District for an alleged pattern of corruption involving influence-peddling and land deals. Almost immediately, Charlton's name was added to a blacklist of federal prosecutors the White House wanted to force from their jobs. Charlton is someone "we should now consider pushing out," D. Kyle Sampson, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez's chief of staff, wrote to then White House Counsel Harriet Miers on September 13. In his previously safe Republican district, Renzi had barely held on in the election. On December 7, the White House demanded Charlton's resignation without offering him any explanation.

Stacks of internal Justice Department e-mails subpoenaed by Congress in early March from the White House provided evidence that the dismissals of Charlton and seven other US Attorneys was a political purge orchestrated to install "loyal Bushies," as Sampson called them, into their posts and to protect Republican lawmakers like Renzi from indictments for corruption. The Administration's explanation that the ousters were "performance-related" has been discredited in light of the exposure of the e-mails--and especially proved false in Charlton's case. A model of professionalism, Charlton's office was honored with the Federal Service Award and hailed by the Justice Department as a "Model Program" for its protection of crime victims.

[Emphasis mine]

You remember Gonzogate: the whole scandal over the US Attorneys being fired for phony reasons but in a rather clear partisan pattern of quashing pursuit of Republican misdeed and urging pursuit of Democrat misdeeds.

Kagro X is right on, commenting:

Alberto Gonzales should have been impeached. Instead, American punditry insisted this was nothing, and Congress satisfied itself with allowing Gonzales to move on to the lecture circuit, unsullied by the criminality that average Americans who have given up on the sycophantic media knew was plain to see.

Emptywheel has a couple of posts on this (here and here). The latter one gets technical but the former one is helpful for a general grasp of things.
--the BB

What's House Judiciary up to?

This afternoon, the House of Representatives voted to hold White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and former White House Counsel (and one-time Supreme Court nominee) Harriet Miers in contempt of Congress for their refusal to testify about the White House role in the purge.
--David Kurtz

Josh Marshal has some comments:

With torture debates and the raucous presidential primaries, folks don't think much anymore about the US Attorney scandal and the Bush administration political purge of the DOJ that led eventual to multiple resignations and the fall and disgrace of Alberto Gonzales, President Bush's Attorney and long-time legal confidant. But that's what these contempt citations are about. They're aimed at finally pushing through the stonewalling that the White House has now used for more than a year to keep the truth of what happened from becoming known.

More

--the BB

Dilly, dally, and delay

The Los Angeles Times [free registration required] has an article today about the progress we are NOT making in the investigation into the firing of United States Attorneys under former AG Abu Gonzales.

WASHINGTON -- The government agency that enforces one of the principal laws aimed at keeping politics out of the civil service has accused the Justice Department of blocking its investigation into alleged politicizing of the department under former Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales.

Scott J. Bloch, head of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, wrote Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey last week that the department had repeatedly "impeded" his investigation by refusing to share documents and provide answers to written questions, according to a copy of Bloch's letter obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

The Justice Department wants Bloch to wait until its own internal investigation is completed. A department official signaled recently that the investigation is examining the possibility of criminal charges.

But that, the regulator wrote, could take until the last months of the Bush administration, "when there is little hope of any corrective measures or discipline possible" being taken by his office.

I do hope that when AG Mukasey has his chat with the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow this issue will be discussed.

--the BB