Far be it from me to try to understand this move by the Clinton camp.

Sandy Berger, who stole highly classified terrorism documents from the National Archives, destroyed them and lied to investigators, is now an adviser to presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. Berger, who was fired from John Kerry’s presidential campaign when the scandal broke in 2004, has assumed a similar role in Clinton’s campaign, even though his security clearance has been suspended until September 2008. This is raising eyebrows even among Clinton’s admirers.

“It shows poor judgment and a lack of regard for Berger’s serious misdeeds,” said law professor Jonathan Adler of Case Western Reserve University, who nonetheless called Clinton “by far the most impressive candidate in the Democratic field.”

Adler told The Examiner that it is “simply incomprehensible to me that a serious contender for the presidency would rely upon him as a key foreign policy advisor.”

He added: “If Senator Clinton becomes the Democratic nominee, at some point she will begin to receive national security briefings that will include sensitive information. At such a point, continuing to keep Berger on board as a key advisor, where he might have access to sensitive material, would be beyond incomprehensible.”

Unless there is a huge favor to be repaid to Mr. Berger for his theft and destruction of federal property, the logic behind this move will reamin a mystery. Perhaps recruiting new blood has become difficult for the Senator’s campaign. After all, she has surrounded herself with the same individuals who insulated another Clinton from the press and public.

I would not think in a Presidential campaign one would want to open themselves up to the type of scrutiny that bringing Mr. Berger aboard should receive. Then again, if you can simply offer “no comment” each time a controversial situation is addressed (and get away with it), then I suppose you can pretty much do as you please.

This is whats happening in the real world of scandal. People don’t care about who got a million here or there. They care about things that they can understand in one second of their busy lives. I think that we are going to need more than campaign finance scandal this time around to beat the Democrats because the Republicans seem to be in a self destruct mode.

Scott Reed, a Republican strategist, was at a dinner in Philadelphia on Monday night when his cellphone and Internet pager began beeping like crazy. Only later did he learn why. His party was buzzing with news of a sex scandal involving a Republican United States senator — again.
Just when Republicans thought things could not get any worse, Senator Larry E. Craig of Idaho confirmed that he had pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct after an undercover police officer accused him of soliciting sex in June in a Minneapolis airport restroom. On Tuesday, Mr. Craig, 62, held a news conference to defend himself, calling the guilty plea “a mistake” and declaring, “I am not gay” — even as the Senate Republican leadership asked for an Ethics Committee review.

It was a bizarre spectacle, and only the latest in a string of accusations of sexual foibles and financial misdeeds that have landed Republicans in the political equivalent of purgatory, the realm of late-night comic television.

Forget Mark Foley of Florida, who quit the House last year after exchanging sexually explicit e-mail messages with under-age male pages, or Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist whose dealings with the old Republican Congress landed him in prison. They are old news, replaced by a fresh crop of scandal-plagued Republicans, men like Senator David Vitter of Louisiana, whose phone number turned up on the list of the so-called D.C. Madam, or Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska and Representative Rick Renzi of Arizona, both caught up in F.B.I. corruption investigations.

It is enough to make a self-respecting Republican want to tear his hair out in frustration, especially as the party is trying to defend an unpopular war, contain the power of the new Democratic majority on Capitol Hill and generate some enthusiasm among voters heading toward the presidential election in 2008.

“The real question for Republicans in Washington is how low can you go, because we are approaching a level of ridiculousness,” said Mr. Reed, sounding exasperated in an interview on Tuesday morning. “You can’t make this stuff up. And the impact this is having on the grass-roots around the country is devastating. Republicans think the governing class in Washington are a bunch of buffoons who have total disregard for the principles of the party, the law of the land and the future of the country.”

Story

WOW! What is going on in the Republican Party.

Breaking news from Roll Call:

Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) was arrested in June at a Minnesota airport by a plainclothes police officer investigating lewd conduct complaints in a men’s public restroom, according to an arrest report obtained by Roll Call Monday afternoon.
Craig’s arrest occurred just after noon on June 11 at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. On Aug. 8, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct in the Hennepin County District Court. He paid more than $500 in fines and fees, and a 10-day jail sentence was stayed. He also was given one year of probation with the court that began on Aug. 8.

Craig then entered the stall next to Karsnia’s and placed his roller bag against the front of the stall door.
“My experience has shown that individuals engaging in lewd conduct use their bags to block the view from the front of their stall,” Karsnia stated in his report. “From my seated position, I could observe the shoes and ankles of Craig seated to the left of me.”

Craig was wearing dress pants with black dress shoes.

“At 1216 hours, Craig tapped his right foot. I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct. Craig tapped his toes several times and moves his foot closer to my foot. I moved my foot up and down slowly. While this was occurring, the male in the stall to my right was still present. I could hear several unknown persons in the restroom that appeared to use the restroom for its intended use. The presence of others did not seem to deter Craig as he moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot which was within my stall area,” the report states.

Craig then proceeded to swipe his hand under the stall divider several times, and Karsnia noted in his report that “I could … see Craig had a gold ring on his ring finger as his hand was on my side of the stall divider.”

Karsnia then held his police identification down by the floor so that Craig could see it.

“With my left hand near the floor, I pointed towards the exit. Craig responded, ‘No!’ I again pointed towards the exit. Craig exited the stall with his roller bags without flushing the toilet. … Craig said he would not go. I told Craig that he was under arrest, he had to go, and that I didn’t want to make a scene. Craig then left the restroom.”

In a recorded interview after his arrest, Craig “either disagreed with me or ‘didn’t recall’ the events as they happened,” the report states.

A spokesman for Craig described the incident as a “he said/he said misunderstanding,” and said the office would release a fuller statement later Monday afternoon.

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This is disgusting. These people are rewarded even when they break the law.

When he was last running for the United States Senate from New Jersey in 2002, Robert G. Torricelli collected donations from thousands of people who apparently wanted to see him re-elected. They might be surprised to see how he spent a portion of their money.

Mr. Torricelli, a Democrat who was one of the Senate’s most flamboyant personalities and prodigious fund-raisers, abruptly quit the 2002 race amid allegations of ethical misconduct and became a lobbyist. Since then, he has given $4,000 from his campaign fund to Puerto Rico’s nonvoting member of Congress, $10,000 to Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois and more than $40,000 to Nevada Democratic Party organizations and candidates linked to the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid.

All of those politicians had one thing in common: influence over Mr. Torricelli’s, or his clients’, business interests.

In early 2006, for instance, Mr. Torricelli contributed $10,000 from his Senate account to the mayor of Trenton and his slate of City Council candidates, just as city agencies were reviewing an ultimately successful proposal by the former senator to develop retail and office space in the city.

There is no evidence that Mr. Torricelli, who declined to be interviewed for this article, violated federal rules, which allow retired officials to give leftover campaign funds to charities, candidates and political parties. Sean Jackson, Mr. Torricelli’s campaign treasurer and a partner in his lobbying firm, said in an interview that any suggestion that the contributions were tied to his business interests was “ridiculous.” He said that Mr. Torricelli contributed to people he knew or with whom he shared policy goals.

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I didn’t know that there was a Civil Rights Division in this justice department.

The head of the Justice Department’s embattled Civil Rights Division is to resign at the end of August, officials said yesterday, making him the latest in a series of senior political appointees to leave the agency amid continued controversy over Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales.

Wan J. Kim, the assistant attorney general for civil rights since November 2005, has been closely questioned by congressional Democrats about the administration’s policy decisions and allegations by former career officials of improper hiring within the division, mostly under his predecessor.

Kim is set to join nearly a dozen other senior Justice Department officials and aides who have resigned this year. The departures come as Gonzales fends off calls from lawmakers for his resignation over his handling of the firings of nine U.S. attorneys last year and congressional testimony that lawmakers have called misleading.

Wan’s predecessor, Bradley J. Schlozman, resigned from the department last week. The department’s inspector general is investigating allegations that Schlozman considered political affiliations in the hiring of career employees.

Gonzales said in a statement that Kim, who joined the department more than a decade ago, has “served the Department of Justice and the American people with distinction and honor.” The statement continued: “I will miss his honest opinions and valuable contributions as an advisor to me.” He praised Kim for enforcing traditional anti-discrimination laws, as well as newer statutes on human trafficking and minority-language ballot requirements.

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Now here is a man that shouldn’t be walking the streets free and CNN will now be taken off my channel list of news networks.

This afternoon on The Situation Room, CNN ran one of their “Keeping Them Honest” segments about Crandall Canyon mine owner Robert Murray , examining the safety record of Murray Energy’s 19 other mining operations. Murray correctly claimed that the safety record of Crandall Canyon was “almost outstanding, much better than the national average” — though tragically, that was obviously prior to the collapse that trapped 6 miners 18 days ago and launched a risky recovery mission that took the lives of three rescuers one week ago tonight. CNN looked into Murray’s other mining operations, though, and found some shocking statistics: Of Murray’s 19 mines, 7 were underground and 4 of them had accident rates above the national average. CNN specifically cited Murray’s Illinois Galatia mine, which CNN reports has racked up 3,485 safety citations in the last 2.5 years, and has had an above-average rate of injury every year since Murray bought it. Murray’s Galatia mine has racked up 968 safety citations in 2007, almost a quarter of which are considered “significant and substantial.” Murray challenges many of the citations — but has also paid approximately $700,000 in fines from 2005-2006. Great information to have — but wow, is it ever late.

Story

What the heck is going on in the peoples house?

Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) will not be running for reelection next year, creating a highly contested open seat in a competitive eastern Arizona district.

“I will not be seeking reelection to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2008. I am honored and thankful to serve Arizona’s 1st District and appreciate all that we have accomplished together over the past 6 years,” Renzi said in a statement released by his office.

Renzi had been under an ethical cloud for much of the year, amid a federal investigation into his business dealings. He resigned from all of his committee assignments, and was under pressure from GOP leadership to vacate his seat. He also suffered financial woes: At the end of the second quarter, Renzi’s legal bills were higher than the amount of money in his campaign account.

Renzi’s retirement is the fifth among House Republicans in the last month, following announcements from Reps. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), Ray LaHood (R-Ill.), Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio) and Chip Pickering (R-Miss.) that they will not be seeking reelection.

There will likely be a crowded Democratic field vying for the nomination. State Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick has already announced her candidacy, and is considered one of the leading candidates. Attorney Howard Shanker and television reporter Mary Kim Titla have also announced campaigns, with a slew of other Democrats considering bids.

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Speaks for itself.

WASHINGTON — When he was a keeper of the federal purse strings, Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska told another Republican senator who opposed the infamous “bridge to nowhere,” “I don’t threaten people. I promise people.”

His home-state GOP colleague, Rep. Don Young, was not to be outdone. Last month he told a fellow House member who opposed education money for native Alaskans: “There is always another day when those who bite will be killed, too, and I am very good at that. Those that bite me will be bitten back.”

Stevens and Young may not be promising, threatening or biting anymore, now that both are under federal investigation.

The investigations - and a questionable land deal that entangled the third member of Alaska’s congressional delegation - also may have ended a modern-day gold rush that sent billions of federal dollars to the state.

Alaska’s entire delegation is under an ethical cloud, something congressional historians say is unprecedented:

- Stevens is contending with an extraordinary FBI and IRS raid on his Girdwood, Alaska, home and a probe into his dealings with businessmen who oversaw remodeling of the house.

- Young is the subject of a federal investigation that includes his campaign finance practices, and he has been chided by the leaders of his own party for his threatening comments. He was left off a House-Senate conference on an annual water resources bill that he had handled as a committee chairman.

- Sen. Lisa Murkowski announced that she and her husband will sell back an undeveloped piece of riverfront property after a complaint to the Senate’s ethics committee alleged the purchase was a sweetheart deal.

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What is wrong with these people? Just when you think it can’t get any worse, another one comes up.

The chairman of the Clark County Republican Party — who last month was elected president of the Young Republican National Federation — has resigned both posts, apparently in the wake of a criminal investigation.

On Tuesday afternoon, Glenn Murphy Jr. e-mailed media outlets a letter announcing his resignation from both positions, citing an unexpected business opportunity that would prohibit him from holding a partisan political office.

However, the Clark County Sheriff’s Department on Friday began investigating Murphy for alleged criminal deviate conduct — potentially a class B felony — after speaking with a 22-year-old man who claimed that on July 31, Murphy performed an unwanted sex act on him while the man slept in a relative’s Jeffersonville home.

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Here we go again.

Republican Rep. Bob Allen of Merritt Island, whose district includes a large swath of east Orange County, was arrested for soliciting a male undercover police officer for sex in a Titusville park restroom.

Allen was considered to be acting suspicious by police as he entered and exited the men’s room three times, according to a Titusville Police report. Moments later, he approached the plainclothes officer and offered to perform oral sex for $20, police said.

Allen faces second degree misdemeanor charges. A seven-year House veteran, the term-limited Allen had been considered a likely Senate candidate next year. He also had been named a co-chairman last spring of Arizona Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign team in Florida.

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Do you own some shares?

With the avalanche of corporate accounting scandals that have rocked the markets recently, it’s getting hard to keep track of them all–but our Corporate Scandal Sheet does the job. Here we’ll follow accounting imbroglios only–avoiding insider-trading allegations like those plaguing ImClone, since chronicling every corporate transgression would be impractical–and our timeline starts with the Enron debacle.

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OH NO!

Mayor Michael Bloomberg speaks his mind and that is a big part of his cachet in anything-goes New York. But a sexual harassment lawsuit he settled in 2000 and other racy comments over the years show how his blunt style could prove a liability if he runs for president as an independent.

Before his election as mayor in 2001, Bloomberg was the target of a sexual harassment suit by a female executive who accused him of making repeated raunchy sexual comments while he was chief executive of his financial company, Bloomberg LP.

Bloomberg denied the accusations. Both sides were barred from commenting because of confidentiality agreements. Stu Loeser, the mayor’s spokesman, said Friday he had no comment for this story.

The suit was a minor annoyance for Bloomberg during the mayoral race in 2001 and was not an issue in his 2005 re-election.

But the suit and other potential embarrassments resulting from Bloomberg’s tendency to speak his mind are largely unknown to the rest of the country and are certain to be re-examined if the billionaire media mogul undertakes a third-party, self-financed presidential campaign for 2008.

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I hope they take this all the way and use everything at their disposal to prosecute these people for making a mockery of the justice system.
I’m not for these investigations but why wouldn’t they cooperate if they have nothing to hide?

House Democrats on Monday targeted two of President Bush’s longtime aides for criminal contempt against Congress, escalating a legal fight over executive privilege and access to White House deliberations on the firings of federal prosecutors.

Rep. John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said his panel would vote Wednesday on citing White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former Counsel Harriet Miers for contempt of Congress.

“It is still my hope that they will reconsider this hard-line position and cooperate with our investigation so that we can get to the bottom of this matter,” Conyers, D-Mich., said in a statement after being told again by their attorneys that Bolten and Miers would not comply with the committee’s subpoenas.

The administration showed no signs of budging from its position that the president’s current and former advisers are immune from congressional subpoenas and that any White House documents related to the dismissals are protected by executive privilege.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the decision to act on any House-passed contempt citation would be up to the Justice Department _ but would be inconsistent with the agency’s previous positions.

“The Justice Department long has believed, in Democratic and Republican administrations, that criminal contempt of Congress statutes do not apply to a president or subordinates who assert executive privilege,” Snow said in a statement to The Associated Press.

There were indications, however, that the administration was seeking to repair some political damage Democrats have inflicted during their nearly seven-month investigation into the firings of eight U.S. attorneys. The probe has revealed information about agency practices under Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, including an admission from his former White House liaison that she looked at whether candidates for career positions at Justice were Republicans or Democrats.

Besieged by calls for his resignation but supported by Bush, Gonzales on Monday delivered remarks to the Senate full of regret for his agency’s troubles accompanied by a commitment to repair the damage. He made no reference to the fired U.S. attorneys.

“I will not tolerate any improper politicization of this department,” Gonzales said in remarks prepared for his Senate testimony Tuesday. “I will continue to make efforts to ensure that my staff and others within the department have the appropriate experience and judgment so that previous mistakes will not be repeated.”

“I have never been one to quit,” Gonzales said.

His earnestness was unlikely to blunt Democrats’ efforts, slated to advance on several fronts this week in a constitutional showdown that could culminate in federal court.

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Editorial by Ruth Marcus.
Now I know how the Republicans felt about Bill Clinton.
I just can’t let this go. It’s like an addiction.

Forgive me if I opt out of the “whatever happened to privacy” pity party that’s convened in the aftermath of the Sen. David Vitter sex scandal.

The arc of the press reaction to these episodes echoes the acts themselves — first comes the fun, then the regret.

The fun is self-evident, and the story of the Louisiana senator is especially delectable: the sanctimonious family-values politician caught with his hypocrisy showing. Vitter — the man who called for President Bill Clinton to resign because he was “morally unfit to govern” — was back at work yesterday, a week after he was linked to a D.C. escort service.

The regret, this time around, has been expressed by two of my fellow columnists, E.J. Dionne Jr. and David Ignatius.

Dionne offered a ” qualified defense” of Vitter. A “big part of me is rooting for Vitter to survive because I so want to return to a time when we . . . chose to pay little attention to the extracurricular sexual activities of our politicians,” he wrote.

Ignatius followed with a musing about the sadly diminished right to privacy. “Well, fine, you say, Vitter is a noisy ‘family values’ conservative, who should be indicted for hypocrisy if nothing else,” he wrote. “But what about the thousands of other people whose phone numbers are on the D.C. Madam’s call list?” he asked. “Are they fair game?”

My colleagues left out one key fact: This isn’t just a moral transgression. If Vitter cheated on his wife, that would be a private matter of seeking, as he put it, “forgiveness from God and my wife.”

But Vitter didn’t just cop to a “very serious sin.” It’s a fair inference that he committed a crime. Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the “D.C. Madam” in whose phone records Vitter’s number turned up, is facing federal charges of running a prostitution ring.

Do my colleagues bemoaning the loss of privacy think those charges should be dropped? Dionne says we should “grant Vitter our collective absolution and move on.” Does he want to do the same for Palfrey? What makes Palfrey “fair game” for prosecutors, in Ignatius’s words, but puts her client list off-limits?

Perhaps my colleagues are sexual supply-siders, uninterested in the demand part of the prostitution equation.

editorial

One hell of a mess isn’t it?

The Roman Catholic Church in Los Angeles has apologised to hundreds of people abused by priests after agreeing to a record-breaking settlement.
The apology by Cardinal Roger Mahony, the Church’s leader, comes after the 508 victims reached a pay-out deal with the church worth $660m (£324m).

Attorneys for both sides will appear in court on Monday to finalise the deal.

The deal was reached just before a series of trials into sex claims dating back to the 1940s were to begin.

“I have come to understand far more deeply that I ever could the impact of this terrible sin and crime that has affected their lives,” Cardinal Mahony told a news conference, confirming the compensation deal.

“There really is no way to go back and give them that innocence that was taken from them. The one thing I wish I could give the victims… I cannot.

“Once again, I apologise to anyone who has been offended, who has been abused. It should not have happened, and it will not happen again,” Cardinal Mahony said.

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Byron York of National Review gives his take on the interrogation of Monica Goodling, late of the Justice Dept., yesterday:

Those were significant issues. But they weren’t enough to capture the attention of some committee Democrats, for whom there were more important questions to consider. Questions like: Where did Monica go to law school?

The short answer is Regent University Law School in Virginia Beach, Virginia, founded by televangelist Pat Robertson. The longer answer was provided by newly-elected Tennessee Democratic Rep. Stephen Cohen. Cohen had apparently read Wednesday morning’s edition of the Los Angeles Times, which described Regent this way:

Regent University claims 150 past and present members of the Bush administration among its alumni. Accredited by the American Bar Assn., the law school boasts of a “distinctive” Christian-based mission “to bring to bear the will of our Creator, Almighty God, upon legal education and the legal profession,” according to its website.

A quick student of the Times, Cohen asked Goodling, “The mission of the law school you attended, Regent, is to bring to bear upon legal education and the legal profession the will of almighty God, our creator. What is the will of almighty God, our creator, on the legal profession?”

Goodling seemed perplexed. “I’m not sure that I could define that question for you,” she said.

“Did you ask people who applied for jobs as [assistant U.S. attorneys] anything about their religion?”

“No, I certainly did not.”

“Ever had religion discussions come up?”

“Not to the best of my recollection.”

Cohen pressed. Hasn’t the Justice Department hired an unusually large number of graduates of Regent?

“I think we have a lot more people from Harvard and Yale,” said Goodling.

“That’s refreshing,” said Cohen, a graduate of the University of Memphis School of Law. “Is it a fact — are you aware of the fact that in your graduating class 50 to 60 percent of the students failed the bar the first time?”

At that point, hisses and hoots began to be rise from the Republican side of the dais, and, for just a moment at least, 2141 Rayburn sounded a bit like the House of Commons. Goodling assured Cohen that she had passed the bar the first time around.

What was particularly odd about the moment, at least for a hearing not devoted to the state of U.S schools, was that it was the second time the subject of higher education had come up in the space of just a few minutes. Earlier, Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee was very concerned that Goodling had asked about the political leanings of a job seeker named Seth Adam Meinero, “a graduate of Howard University, one of the top, outstanding law schools in the nation.” (Rep. Cohen did not protest, even though Howard’s bar-passing statistics don’t measure up to Regent’s.) Goodling said she regretted making a “snap judgment” about Meinero’s supposed political leanings, although she stressed that Meinero ultimately got the job he was seeking.

Rep. Jackson Lee also caused a few observers to scratch their heads when she opened her questioning of Goodling this way: “Allow me just to simply begin a series of questions, Ms. Goodling, and I would ask that they — your answers — be as cryptic and as brief as possible, however truthful, because we do have a shortened period of time.”

“Cryptic?” whispered one reporter. “Did she say cryptic? I think she did.”

Indeed she did. But Goodling did not follow Rep. Jackson Lee’s directions. In fact, her answers were quite clear and direct.

That is, when she got the opportunity to answer the questions put to her. Later in the hearing, Jackson Lee, by then taking a temporary turn in the chairman’s seat, had to restrain fellow Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison, who was so anxious to question Goodling that he seemed uninterested in her answers.

“So you all bypassed a chief of [the Civil Division] and went to somebody who had no experience in management simply because they were a liberal?” Ellison asked Goodling.

“No, not at all,” she answered. “There were other reasons involved in the decision.”

“Now — “

“To clarify, we — “

“No, I don’t need a clarification,” Ellison said. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“Well, I would like to complete my answer.”

“Well, I don’t need an answer.”

“Be cryptic”? “Well, I don’t need an answer”? That’s why I used the word “interrogation” in the post. This is a wild goose hunt and may catch the wild goose, but it seems they really don’t want to hear everything that is pertinent to this investigation.