the guy by the door …

The Senate Judiciary Committee released a letter Thursday indicating that the Department of Justice will investigate whether DOJ head Alberto Gonzales tried to bias the testimony of his former aide Monica Goodling’s testimony before Congress about the firing of U.S. Attorneys.

Monica Goodling, Gonzales’s former White House liaison, told Congress last month that the attorney general “made me a little uncomfortable” when he asked about her recollection of events leading up to some of the dismissals.

James Rowley, Bloomberg News.

Harvard Alum (’79, HLS ‘82) Glenn A. Fine, the DOJ Inspector General, joined Head of the DOJ Office of Professional Repsponsibility H. Marshall Jarrett in a reply to the Judiciary Committee that this would be investigated.

Earlier this year the OPR attempted to investigate the role of DOJ lawyers in crafting the National Security Agency warrantless wiretapping program. The investigation was closed when OPR was denied the necessary security clearances. According to Torture Alum, the President personally made the decision.
Tearing up the pea patch?

My thesis advisor grew up in Opelousas, Louisiana¹. They had a saying about achievement. Does it apply to the Senate Judiciary Committee?

On Wednesday, the Judiciary Committees of both the Senate and House issued subpoenas for the testimony of two former White House staff - former White House Counsel Harriet Miers, who was nominated for the Supreme Court and Sara Taylor, the former political director at the White House.

¹To the charge of Yankee chauvinism, I must plead gulity as charged. Earlier I said Tuscaloosa, which is in Alabama. This is particularly serious in the light of Hurricane Katrina. The Gulf Coast, which was in many ways neglected before, has been profoundly neglected since. A small bit of light - Tulane Law has been working with area residents to get some of the promised government relief. Points on the posterity book for the Late Larry for taking some of their folks in. The hard question, as always, how many?

¹There always is at least one (wo|)man behind a manager otherwise they wouldn’t be a manager. N’est pas?

Alternet relays an article by Ben Landon of United Press International, Iraqi Troops Face Off Against Striking Oil Workers. The arrest warrants accuse the strikers of “sabotaging the economy”. Its hard to tell whcih labor demands are causing what reaction from the government, but:

The demands include union entry to negotiations over the oil law they fear will allow foreign oil companies too much access to Iraq’s oil, as well as a variety of improved working conditions.

refering to a law before the Iraqi parliament governing the long term [~30 year] “production sharing agreements.”  In drafts to date the law would grant the lion’s share of the profits to foreign [outside of Iraq] oil companies. Labor intervention in these agreements is certain to meet with disfavor in the “foreign investment Community.”

In the first few hours after the U.S.-Iran talks, the wire services offered no specifics, offered differing acounts of when the next meeting would be, and cast a generally negative light on the outcome. It was only later that the highly non-specific “broad general agreement” was offered. According to Michael Hirsh and Mark Hosenball of Newsweek diplomacy generally and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice specifically are “on the ascendancy” in the administration against Cheney’s desire for war with Iran. One of their sources is former U.N. Ambassador [i.e. Rice subordinate ] and Cheney intimate John Bolton. Hirsh and Hosenball claim that Bolten and others leaving the government have weakened Cheney’s position.

Secretary Provost Dr. Rice is not the first Secretary of State to go head to head with Veep Shooter Cheney. Jeff Stein of the Congressional Quarterly, reports that Cheney’s office actively tried to undermine the “One China” policy forged by Nixon and affirmed by George W. Bush. At stake was possible nuclear war with China.

Stein quotes Lawrence B. Wilkerson, the U.S. Army colonel who was Powell’s chief of staff through two administrations:

“The Defense Department, with Feith, Cambone, Wolfowitz [and] Rumsfeld, was dispatching a person to Taiwan every week, essentially to tell the Taiwanese that the alliance was back on,” Wilkerson said, referring to pre-1970s military and diplomatic relations, “essentially to tell Chen Shui-bian, whose entire power in Taiwan rested on the independence movement, that independence was a good thing.”

Wilkerson said Powell would then dispatch his own envoy “right behind that guy, every time they sent somebody, to disabuse the entire Taiwanese national security apparatus of what they’d been told by the Defense Department.”

According to China experts Richard Bush and Michael O’Hanlon:

A Taiwanese declaration of independence, they said, “could result in the first major war between nuclear weapons states in history, with no guarantee it would be successfully concluded prior to a major escalation.”

Maybe it’s a good thing Cheney’s star is falling? Then again, maybe we should be sure that it is. With the senior military opposed to war with Iran, maybe there is some hope that it won’t happen. Their view is based largely on logistics. Hegemony is just too expensive - in treasure and blood. Slightly more hopeful is to hear a deeper question finally by asked in the “liberal media” i.e. somebody besides Noam. What kind of relationship do we want with the world?