All Blog Posts from Courtwatch

All you need to know about the current state of the ever-so-slowly-churning U.S. Attorney investigation can be summed up in the headlines offered Thursday afternoon by two of the best and most dogged newspapers of American history. Both the Washington Post and The New York Times were trying to make meaning of the conclusion of the still-private testimony of Karl Rove, the famous former senior advisor to President George W. Bush, before the House Judiciary Committee.

Both papers, evidently, were granted "exclusive," conditional interviews with Rove, the condition being that the contents of those interviews could not be published until after the completion of Rove's testimony. In those interviews, naturally enough, Rove downplayed his role in the scandal, telling the papers that he was merely a "conduit" passing along from lawmakers to the Justice Department grievances (often silly, unwarranted ones, by the way) about the federal prosecutors (who ultimately were fired).

This is how things work in Washington. Team Rove obviously was hoping to steer post-deposition spin his way, to minimize the damage from Committee leaks that are sure to follow. And if you only read the Times on Thursday, or today, you would certainly agree that the plan worked. The Times ran a piece by David Johnston titled: "Rove Says His Role In Prosecutor Filings Was Small," a story that took Rove's comments, looked at a few of his old emails, and concluded that there were no smoking guns.

Read full post…

This column is actually an open letter to the students of Texas Tech, who now will have the dubious privilege of taking courses from former Attorney General and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales. The disgraced former official finally landed a job outside of government—he resigned in 2007 — and now (for one year anyway) will teach political science - “contemporary issues in the executive branch” - at a school most recently known for hosting basketball coach Bobby Knight.

Hey, young people! What an opportunity you have. It’s not every day that you get to take a class with a man who has played such a significant role in recent American legal and political history. After all, your new professor is at the heart of: 1) the U.S. Attorney scandal, 2) the terror-memo scandal, 3) the Texas clemency memo scandal, 4) the Valerie Plame scandal, and the 5) domestic surveillance scandal. There are probably a few other scandals he’s involved in that we don’t even yet know about!

Your new professor is so wanted as a witness and deponent in Washington that when he lectures to you in Lubbock you’ll probably have federal investigators sitting in on the class hoping he says something material and relevant. So the first thing you ought to do is buy yourself a really good cell-phone with recording capabilities. You never know when you are going to be able to sell sound-bytes of his remarks to your local television station. And YouTube? Forget about it.

Read full post…