An extremely important story that is being ignored is the ongoing story of the Bush Administration turning the the Department of Justice into a political weapon. The eight fired attorneys were a tiny tip of a very large iceberg. The election of Obama has done nothing yet to reverse the damage, or even to stop the ongoing misconduct.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/DOJ-Prosecutorial-Injustic-by-Gail-Sistrunk-090818-411.htmlHere are some facts that Sistrunk cites:
-Over 700 elected officials were investigated or indicted since 2001....85% were Democrats.
-The likelihood for those Democratic elected officials, and those around them, to be tried by Republican judges, namely Bush judges, range from 75 - 100%. (The cases are supposed to be assigned at random).
-In many cases, the Federal Prosecutors failed to turn over evidence to the defense or inform the defense of witnesses, a violation of due process.
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Prosecutors threatened to indict family members of defendants in order to secure pleas, and even threatened to take away defendants' children.
-Federal authorities contacted defendant's business associates repeatedly in what appeared to be effort to destroy defendants financially.
-Of those prosecuted, at minimum, there are 26 still in prison and 36 on supervised release.
-Besides poor Donald Siegelman, the list of those convicted under this campaign include
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/10/hbc-90001343">Paul Minor,
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/01/hbc-90002211">Judge Wes Teel and
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larisa-alexandrovna/mississippi-supreme-court_b_96051.html">Judge John Whitfield,
http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/Dershowitz071022.pdf">State Sen. Charles Walker from Georgia (pdf file) and many others.
-The 15 percent prosecutions of Republicans show a pattern suggesting that they also had nothing to do with actual justice, but more to do with disciplining disobedient party members. Congressmen Ted Stevens, Mitch McConnell and Jerry Lewis all had either indictments or were being investigated. The trouble disappeared when their voting records turned radically more conservative. One Bush delegate from Alabama is under indictment now after refusing to give false testimony at to a Grand Jury in the Siegelman case.
-Some Bush appointed judges were apparently in on this, and not just a few.
-The Department of Justice is still infiltrated by Bush appointees, who's positions were changed from appointed to civil service. The Deputy DoJ positions between AG Eric Holder and the rest of the DoJ are all actually Bush appointees. Holder is decapitated from the rest of the DoJ.
This means that Republicans have effectively politicized and subverted the DoJ. I think we can trust that those operatives are dug into the civil service, perhaps to foil and inform on investigations of Republicans and certain favored companies or industries. However, given the methodical nature of the whole Republican campaign to capture the department and the courts, I think those deputies may also be there to groom the department for the next Republican president. This is very apparently an attempt for the GOP to own the DoJ.
Importantly, this is not something that will automatically become notably better because we elected Obama. We have to keep attention on this and make sure the DoJ is restored and those people who dared to be in on this are indicted and tried themselves. Also, I suggest that Obama pardon all the political prisoners convicted under the Bush Regime. Just declare that the investigations are suspect.
It's a story that immediately failed to get attention even here, and we should have it in the forefront of our minds. It's at least as staggeringly important as health care reform.
IMO-- the Republican party deserves the death sentence of history for this and its other crimes.