Above the Law

Lieboy fondly refers to Karl Rove as Turdblossom. He's more like Metastatic Cancer.
Firings of U.S. Attorneys, "at the pleasure of the pResident" midstream, dictated by Rover and Miers, and buttressed by Gitmo Gonzo and his chief of staff D. Kyle Sampson (resigned), reveal that Rove is in the thick of it...again. The DoJ (who?) denies Rove involved.

Gonzales is "dismayed".
I acknowledge that mistakes were made here. I accept that responsibility. And my pledge to the American people is to find out what went wrong here, to access accountability, and to make improvements so that the mistakes that occurred in this instance do not occur again in the future.
Mistakes were made
Harriet Miers, then Bush's lawyer, recommended firing all 93 U.S. Attorneys in 2004. Rove vetoed that idea as too many, Sampson worked with Rove on a shorter list of firings, and submitted that list to the White House in late 2006, Miers said.


Kyle Sampson takes one for Gonzo. He "resigned" per Alberto-the-inept. Sampson, a former counsel to Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) on the Senate Judiciary Committee, worked as deputy White House counsel for two years under Gonzales starting in 2001. He joined the Justice Department in 2003 as a counselor to Ashcroft, and stayed on when Gonzales became attorney general. He became chief of staff in September 2005.
Sampson isn't the one who should fall on his sword...Schumer calls on Gonzales to resign

Bush retains full confidence in the attorney general, said spokesman Dan Bartlett, traveling with Bush in Mexico.

Q Dan, the Attorney General said he took responsibility for mistakes. Does the President still have full confidence in the Attorney General? And given the White House role in this, does the President acknowledge that there were mistakes made -- and take responsibility for them?

MR. BARTLETT: He absolutely has full confidence in the Attorney General, and the reason why he does is for exactly what he said today: He's a standup guy; he's a person who comes to the job every day, doing the best he can to serve the United States of America; he takes that job very seriously. And when he saw problems, he's pledged to the American people and to the United States Congress to fix those problems. So the President has all the confidence in the world in Alberto Gonzales as the Attorney General for the United States of America.

He also feels it's important that the information as to how these decisions were made be provided. He accepts the decision so far that has been made by the Attorney General for the resignation of Kyle Sampson. And he is satisfied that we are addressing the concerns. But make very clear the decision, the original decision to remove the seven U.S. attorneys who serve at the discretion of the President was the right decision.

end