Why Rove Resigned? To Grant the Administration Immunity-by emptywheel

[kpete]

Why Rove Resigned? To Grant the Administration Immunity
by emptywheel

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/18/AR2007081801182.html?hpid=topnews
But Rove, who announced last week that he is resigning from the White House at the end of August, pursued the goal far more systematically than his predecessors, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The Washington Post, enlisting political appointees at every level of government in a permanent campaign that was an integral part of his strategy to establish Republican electoral dominance.

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Investigators, however, said the scale of Rove's effort is far broader than previously revealed; they say that Rove's team gave more than 100 such briefings during the seven years of the Bush administration. The political sessions touched nearly all of the Cabinet departments and a handful of smaller agencies that often had major roles in providing grants, such as the White House office of drug policy and the State Department's Agency for International Development.

See, for the most part, we're talking about civil Hatch Act violations. And the punishment for civil Hatch Act violations? To be fired from your job. Shall we review the names of those most involved in leading this process?

Karl Rove
Sara Taylor
Scott Jennings
Barry Jackson
Ken Mehlman
Susan Ralston

Rove, Taylor, Mehlman, and Ralston are gone, and Jackson is rumored to be leaving. Add in Monica Goodling, who only admitted to her massive Hatch Act violations after she resigned. So how are you going to hold the White House responsible for its massive Hatch Act violations, if the people involved have already mooted the only punishment available?

FWIW, with the David Iglesias firing and cover-up, the Administration has strayed into criminal Hatch Act violations, which carry a criminal penalty (if we can find anyone who would actually charge them for it). And there may be more examples where you could make the case. But most of what the recent flurry of reporting talks about? By resigning, Rove basically made the Administration immune from any punishment for it.

more at:
http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/08/why-rove-resign.html