A Rational Animal

 

Meet Patrick J. Rogers:  Counsel to NM GOP, attorney for U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson, legislative fund director of the [badly misnamed] American Center for Voting Rights, professional "voter fraud" hysteric, U.S. Attorney-wannabe, informal consigliere to all interests Bush and Rove in NM, and Mickey’s co-architect in Iglesias’s ouster.

Despite the fact that Mickey Barnett is also an attorney - and an attorney to Bush’s campaign, no less - his role as lawyer has always been subordinate to his role as GOP fixer.  Rogers, on the other hand, seems to have been the dyed-in-the-wool counselor to the NM GOP.  In recent years, his clientele has clearly expanded to include the interests of "loyal Bushies," and he has just as clearly worked hard to ensure that he himself is regarded as a "loyal Bushie."

Biographical Data:  Patrick J. Rogers is listed as a "shareholder" with the Albuquerque law firm of Modrall Sperling.  According to his bio on the firm’s Web site, he graduated from UNM and the Georgetown Law Center (which the site misnames as "Georgetown Law School"), and began his political career as a legislative assistant to NM’s Republican former U.S. Sen. (and former astronaut) Harrison "Jack" Schmitt.  From the brief bio, it appears that Our Pat jumped straight from Schmitt’s office into the waiting arms of Modrall Sperling, which would, presumably, have been sometime in the mid- to late ’80s.  Among his "professional activities," it lists membership on the Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF) Board of Litigation, a right-wing nonprofit that bills itself as "a nonprofit, public interest law firm dedicated to individual liberty, the right to own and use property, limited and ethical government and the free enterprise system."  MSLF expends a great deal of energy and resources battling "tree-huggers" and others who presume to try to limit the capitalist efforts of the oil and gas industry and other such corporate lobbies.  John Dendahl (surprise!) is an "emeritus" member of the MSLF board of directors.

Our Pat is also a founding member of the American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR), and serves [served?] on the board of directors of its Legislative Fund - which is a misleading appellation.  The "Legislative Fund" is actually the American Center for Voting Rights Legislative Fund, a separate entity organized under Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code; it serves as ACVR’s lobbying arm.  (More about the ACVR below.)

"Block the Vote":  Otherwise known as the "2004 election," which saw the nadir of Rethug vote suppression tactics.  Not only was little old New Mexico not exempt from such tactics, but it was, in many ways, ground zero for a nationwide effort to suppress the vote under the guise of "preventing voter fraud."  And little old New Mexico was ably represented in that endeavor by . . . you guessed it.  Our Pat.  of course, the MSM got it all wrong, parroting the GOP line:

[L]ocal attorney Pat Rogers said he is working with some individuals who support the voter ID law. Rogers was one of attorney representing a group of Republicans that, prior to the November 2004 Presidential election, wanted Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron to comply with state law governing voter registration.

Got that?  Vigil-Giron (a Democrat) wasn’t "comply[ing] with state law."  How does our intrepid reporter know this?  Well, because Our Pat said so! 

Time to call bullshit.  The state law was, admittedly, a horror show of drafting, with seemingly conflicting subsections.  However, I was intimately familiar with the statute in question, because I was working on the issue locally at the time.  The Rethug argument was a classic example of ripping one snippet (the most confused one, of course) of the statute completely out of context and trying to force it to stand alone.  No dice.  [In a future post, I’ll dig up the text of the statute, as well as the NM Supreme Court’s ruling, and walk through them step by step.]

But drive-by slander of the Secretary of State wasn’t enough for Our Pat; he had to break out the Privileged White Boy Whine:

"I just don’t think it’s appropriate to raise the racial angle every time the ID matter comes up," Rogers said. "I don’t know, and certainly they haven’t shown me, this impacts Hispanics more than any other group or so on. It’s real easy to make that claim but it’s somewhat poisonous to the debate."

Again, time to call bullshit.  It’s been shown over and over again, in stte after stte, and Hispanics are one of the most affected demographics.  In New Mexico, the only demographic more affected in this context has been Native Americans.  It’s not that "they haven’t shown" you, Pat; it’s that every time "they" do, you close your eyes and stick your fingers in your ears and then announce, "I’ve never seen or heard anything . . . ."  And, Pat, let me tell you what’s "poisonous to the debate" (hint:  It ain’t talking about race):  What’s "poisonous to the debate" is the systematic campaign waged by you and your BFFs, Barnett and Adair and Foley and Co., pasty privileged white boys all, to deprive entire classes of voters of their most fundamental of American rights on the basis of race.  That’s "poisonous to the debate," you slimy Rovian tool.

Not content with suppressing the Democratic vote, Pat and his buddy Rod Adair also went to great pains to try to dilute it.  Some of you may remember that we had another ugly courtroom battle of ballot access in 2004:  this one involving access not for voters, but for candidates.  Or, rather, for one particular candidate, who wasn’t even able to drum up enough support to get himself on the ballot legitimately.  So who was this idiot?

Who else?  Ralph Nader.

Nader, in his overweening hubris, miscalculated, and couldn’t collect enough legitimate petition signatures to get on the Reform Party ballot in New Mexico.  (This despite Rod Adair actually collecting petition signatures for Nader - from Republicans!)  So, in an ugly foreshadowing of Holy Joe Lieberman 2006, Nader demanded to be put on New Mexico’s ballot as an "Independent."  Never mind that he hadn’t collected petition signatures as an Independent; never mind that doing so effectively flipped off the entire NM Reform Party (demonstrating once and for all that Ralph’s loyalty to them and their causes extended precisely as far as they were useful to him); never mind that (as with Holy Joe) there was no mechanism in state law to allow him to do so.  As soon as he was denied, he pulled a classic Ralph:  press conferences filled with incessant whining about Democrats fearing him and trying to destroy him, followed by ominous threats to sue.

And into this breach steps none other than our Pat (with a little help from Adair).  Pat offered to represent Nader pro bono, because - get this - he thought the trial court judge "gave too much credence to the argument by the Democrats to ‘protect’ the poor, dumb New Mexican voters from the ideas that Ralph Nader was trying to convey in other states."  As opposed to, say, trying to "’protect’ the poor dumb New Mexican voters" from actually voting while brown/red/black/[insert ethnic minority designation here], a legal immigrant, a student, a person with a disability, a senior citizen, etc., etc.  Sadly for the entire planet, Pat’s boy won.

Our Pat was busy, busy, busy in the fall of 2004.  Not content with helping Ralph "Messiah Complex" Nader get on the ballot illegitimately, he also filed an amicus brief on behalf of the American Center for Voting Rights in the infamous voter ID lawsuit, urging the court to dismiss the plaintiffs’ case and uphold the [nonexistent] law demanding photo ID.  Here’s the opening salvo in the brief’s argument:

Post-’04 Propaganda:  Also during the 2004 election, then-House Administrative Committee Chair Bob Ney (yes, that Bob Ney, now doing time for his corruption shenanigans with Jack Abramoff) convened hearings on "voting problems in Ohio."  Ney invited exactly one entity to testify as an "election expert" at the hearings.  You guessed it - ACVR.  But it gets better; at the time that ACVR delivered its supposedly "expert" testimony, the group had been in existence for five days - and one of the group’s founders was Mark F. "Thor" Hearne, II, who had most recently been the "national general counsel" to Bush-Cheney ‘04.  [Ed. note:  "Thor?"  Out of "Mark F.," he gets "Thor?!"  How utterly emblematic of these people’s pathologies.]  In 2006, Our Pat took on Thor’s role, testifying on behalf of ACVR before the Committee on House Administration to the lurking danger to the Republic represented by "voter fraud" (a/k/a letting scary brown people vote for Democrats). 

It’s especially interesting that the American Center for Voting Rights apparently had a Web site right up until March 17, 2007.  Going to its URL now brings up this message:

"americancenterforvotingrights.com expired on 03/17/2007 and is pending renewal or deletion."

That same year, Our Pat was also a "participant" at a Santa Fe conference hosted by the Atlas Foundation, a conservative org that with delusions of international grandeur that describes its vision as follows:   "To achieve a society of free and responsible individuals, based upon private property rights, limited government under the rule of law and the market order."  He also represented Mike McEntee, a former federal employee candidate for Albuquerque mayor - who ran in that nonpartisan election as a Republican - in his failed suit against the Merit Systems Protection Board over his suspension for violating the Hatch Act.

2006’s Fraud Frenzy:  Rogers was not merely counsel to NM GOP.  He was also Heather Wilson’s attorney - the attorney who represented her post-election, while the ballots were still being tabbed.  And while those ballots were being tabbed, where was Our Pat?  All over NM’s media, agitating for audits and an open canvass, threatening lawsuits, and taking credit for then-Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron’s hiring of an outside auditor. 

Election Day 2006 in New Mexico was a massive, bleating GOP hypocrisy-fest.  The same people who had spent the entire election season duplicating their ‘04 campaign to suppress Democratic votes indulged in an embarrassing public display of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth with regard to supposed Dem efforts to disenfranchise Rethug voters.  (Or, rather, it would have been embarrassing if these people had any shame, which they don’t.  It was still embarrassing to the rest of us ordinary, civilized, law-abiding folks.)

The day began with Heather Wilson throwing a tantrum because, she alleged, amid dark insinuations of deliberate and malign intent, the [Democratic] Bernalillo County clerk had not provided enough ballots for voters in one GOP-dominant precinct.  Pete Domenici called a press conference to urge oppressed Republicans to refuse to give up their places in line.  And note the photo in that link:  Who’s that standing in the background while Pete monpolizes the microphone?  Why, yes, indeedy.  That’s Our Pat.  [More about Heather and Pete in upcoming posts.] 

And Our Pat did, of course, weigh in on the supposed crisis:

Okay, let’s leave aside the reporter’s mischaracterization of "provisional ballots."  What I want to know is this:  Where was Our Pat when all those [ethnic minority] Democratic voters in precincts all across the state were being denied provisional ballots that were available?  Talk about your violations of federal law . . . .  Oh, silly me - IOKIYAR.

Of course, Our Pat’s concerns about vote suppression and vote fraud didn’t extend to supporting New Mexico’s ‘06 change to paper ballots:

Destroying David Iglesias:  Of course, we now know that Our Pat, along with his BFF Mickey Barnett, were two of the GOP operatives who eld the campaign to oust Iglesias last year.  McClatchy Newspapers reported on an exclusive, 9-guest, $5K-a-plate luncheon with Karl Rove on September 30, 2006  at the home of NMGOP chair Allen Weh.  Former NM Supreme Court justice and current GOP adviser and strategist Paul Kennedy attended, but wants us to believe that he never so much as discussed with Rove his desire to get rid of Iglesias.  Our Pat, on the other hand, has suffered an unusually convenient memory lapse:  He wants us to believe not only that he never discussed his desire to be rid of Iglesias with either Rove or Bush, but that he can’t remember whether he attended the Rove luncheon or not.  Um, Pat - a hint:  Break out your checkbook.  Did you write a check for five grand on or around 09/30/06?  I know that having divested myself of $5K for a lousy lunch would jog my memory, but that’s just me.

However, the memory lapse didn’t get Our Pat off the hook.  Thanks to the doggedness of McClatchy’s reporters, Pat has had to acknowledge that he was indeed one of the state operatives agitating for Iglesias’s removal:  

But between then and the election, at least three backers of the courthouse corruption case - Wilson, Domenici, and Rogers - acknowledged they were on the phone to Iglesias to inquire about the status of the investigations. Rogers represented Wilson after she won re-election by less than 900 votes.

Rogers said he asked Iglesias before the election to talk about the case. When they finally met for lunch, Rogers said he told Iglesias, "David, in my mind, the failure to bring appropriate changes and proceed on a corruption case because of the pending election is as bad as ignoring it entirely."

"I don’t know whether anyone talked to Rove or President Bush about David at any time, but complaints about David would track way back to before the election of 2004," Rogers said. "It was not a secret, the unhappiness with David."

Besides, Our Pat’s memory lapse with regard to the Rove luncheon is frankly moot:  We already know that he and Mickey Barnett met directly with Monica "Pleading the Fifth" Goodling on June 21 (more than three months prior) specifically to complain about Iglesias.

I’ve heard through the proverbial grapevine for quite some time that Our Pat felt that he should’ve been made New Mexico’s USA - if not in Bush’s first term, at least in the second, since he was such a "loyal Bushie."  But after all of Rogers’s hard work up to and including the 2004 election to help suppress the Democratic vote on Bush’s behalf, those administration ingrates allowed Iglesias, that unqualified token of a "diversity hire," to remain in his cushy sinecure, even though he hadn’t distinguished himself as a sufficiently "loyal Bushie" by persecuting prosecuting all those evil, corrupt Democrats.  And, indeed, when Iglesias’s "resignation" was announced and Pete Domenici forwarded his short list of four nominees, among those four names was that of Our Pat.

Rogers, being no dummy, immediately realized that his short-listing gave him a glaring conflict of interest, and disavowed any interest whatsoever in the position.  At least, that’s the official version:

Rogers said he didn’t ask to be nominated for U.S. attorney, and he took himself out of the running after the Justice Department contacted him to set up an interview earlier this winter. He says he told Goodling that he was not interested in the job, and that he lodged complaints about Iglesias ‘’because I’m concerned about the U.S. attorney’s office.'’

Domenici had for years wanted Rogers to be U.S. attorney in part because of his experience with touchy political issues, but Rogers had turned him down, Domenici’s chief of staff, Steve Bell, said Monday. Domenici recommended Rogers again this year in hopes he might take the job, Bell said.

‘’He’s just done an awful lot of stuff for the state,'’ Bell said. ‘’Our state — especially with the history (of corruption) we’ve had — we need to have somebody with a fair amount of courage.'’

Right.  I don’t know anyone who actually thinks that Our Pat "was not interested in the job."  He may indeed have "[taken] himself out of the running," but given this administration’s history of hanging its allies out to dry, it’s probably at least as likely that he was advised that, in the aftermath of press reports of his role in the firing fuckup, he had zero chance of actually getting the nomination, much less Senate confirmation.  However, Steve Bell is right about one thing:  Our Pat has "just done an awful lot of stuff for the state" - all of it detrimental to democracy and civil rights.

In fact, immediately after David Iglesias went public with the real circumstances surrounding his "resignation," Our Pat hit back, hard and low:  He published an OpEd in the March 28 edition of the Albuquerque Journal that bore the catty headline "Iglesias a Made-for-TV Man."  The entire piece is nasty, spiteful, and redolant of sour grapes.  An especially choice passage rips Iglesias’s military service completely out of context:

For someone preoccupied with his own travel to exotic foreign lands in lieu of hiring more prosecutors, his demands seem very misguided.

Because service in the Naval Reserve, especially during wars being fought on two separate fronts, is the functional equivalent of a luxury cruise.  I particularly love that "exotic foreign lands" bit - Our Pat makes it sound as though Iglesias was spending time at various sunny ports-of-call lounging on the beach, sipping mai tais in the company of dusky, doe-eyed beauties who fed him peeled grapes and attended to his every - um - need.

Our pat also takes the opportunity to flog his own work-ethic bona fides:

I acknowledge a bias for hard work and timely, appropriate prosecutions over the formation of government task forces favored by Mr. Iglesias. His government task force— like many government task forces— was to borrow a phrase "nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people." 

Yes, Pat - and this gratuitous slam was nothing less than a not-so-subtle attempt to show all of us poor benighted New Mexicans what a loss we’re suffering now that you’ve so generously taken yourself "out of the running" as David’s prospective successor. 

But Our Pat’s cattiness knows no bounds.  In a particularly snotty little passage, he writes:

I do agree with Mr. Iglesias, but not about the need for a book on his life story or the dramatic made-for-TV movie that certainly must follow. Rather, I agree that appointment of the next U.S. Attorney for New Mexico is important.

The chief federal law enforcement official for New Mexico must be tough enough to deal with murderers, possible terrorists and the occasional phone call that ends without a "good-bye."

The next U.S. Attorney should not need the help of the Democratic Senate campaign chairman, Chuck Schumer, The New York Times or a literary agent to help recover a three-month-old memory of feeling "violated" by a phone call.

Because non-Democrat-pursuing, nonexistent-voter-fraud-ignoring, exotic-land-junketing, jumped-up little "diversity hires" are a bunsh of pussies who can’t be relied upon to protect the Bush administration America from the terrible threats posed by Democratic voters murderers and terrorists.

Our Pat concludes his snotty little screed:

So, what is next for Mr. Iglesias? I am not sure whether there are many opportunities in New Mexico for lawyers in private practice specializing in the formation of government task forces, but we need not worry about Mr. Iglesias …. We can also count on Mr. Iglesias appearing regularly in the media, at least through the 2008 election. The Democratic National Committee, Democratic Senate campaign chief Chuck Schumer, and Hollywood "are not done with him yet."

And what about, O Fair New Mexico?  [Ed. note:  Nice comma splice, Pat.  Thought you were supposed to be smarter than that, you putz.]  Perhaps the United States Attorney’s Office, without an absentee manager, can now reconsider its priorities and soon find the ability, the will and the resources to properly pursue appropriate public corruption and election fraud cases on a timely basis.

Of course, Our Pat’s not done slandering his former fellow foot soldier.  (In fact, he probably won’t be done for some time; he’s too busy nursing his own petty sense of injury and the fact that now he’ll never get to be USA.)  Never one to let an opportunity slip past, Our Pat used last month’s federal indictments in the Albuquerque courthouse construction case to slam Iglesias yet again:

Pat Rogers, an attorney for the Republican Party of New Mexico and one of the nominees as a possible replacement for Iglesias, said Iglesias’ claims of vindication were "hard to understand."

"This isn’t about David Iglesias today," he said. "This is about public corruption, and it’s a sad day for New Mexico."

Rogers said it is well known within the legal community that other projects, including the construction of the state District Courthouse, were also part of the federal corruption investigation.

Iglesias’ failure to move more quickly with the case could jeopardize other parts of the investigation because of statute of limitations issues, Rogers said.

"(Iglesias’) failure to promptly attend to and proceed with indictments will cause significant problems with crimes committed by some of these same people prior to 2002, of which he is aware," Rogers said.

Yeah.  Just like those "exotic junkets," huh, Pat? 

 

Meet Mickey Dee Barnett:  GOP lawyer, lobbyist, member of the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors, all-around Bush fixer, and one architect of Iglesias’s ouster.

Mickey’s been a major player in NM GOP politics for years.  He’s a native of Clovis, New Mexico, a little podunk GOP town on the east side of the state, just west of the Texas border.   I mentioned here that Southeastern New Mexico is known as "Little Texas." Clovis (and Portales, just a few miles south) are barely within the southeast quadrant, but they’re as much a part of "Little Texas" - politically, philosophically, and in appearance and accent - as any town in the state.

The Early Years:  Mickey made his first appearance on the state’s political scene in 1972, when he went to work as a legislative assistant for U.S. Senator Pete Domenici in his D.C. office.  After four years on Domenici’s staff, Mickey (to use the ghastly neologism so common to this administration) "transitioned" into the policy world in 1976, becoming staff attorney for right-wing nutjob tank The Heritage Foundation.  At the same time, he became a director if Heritage’s "Resource Bank," which is a stable of like-minded power brokers.

Consolidating Power:  Upon returning to New Mexico, Mickey did what so many lawyers in this state do:  He launched a private law practice, and ran for the state Lege.  He was only a state senator from 1980 to 1984, but he was already working to become a power player in the state GOP.  During this period, he also reportedly helped found the "Oliver North Defense Fund."  Throughout the ’90s, he worked systematically to consolidate his power in the "new GOP" (read:  the wing-nut Gingrichite version), becoming the RNC national committeeman from New Mexico (2000-2004); a member of the NM Republican State Executive Committee; a high-powered, highly connected lawyer for the state party and the Bush campaign; and a state  GOP "kingmaker."

Lobbying Interests:  Much has been made of Mickey’s lobbying interests and activities by partisans on all sides - but not necessarily along usual partisan lines.  At various times, he’s been reviled by factions within his own party for representing the interests of certain lobbying clients.  One glaring example was drug legalization:  In 1999, NM’s then-Guv Gary Johnson stepped in it on the national stage when he announced his support for halting the "war on drugs."  Johnson, a Republican with libertarian rather than fundy leanings, admitted to having tried drugs in his youth, openly opposed the nation’s draconian drug laws and "lock ‘em up" approach, and supported legalizing and regulating the hell out of drugs while investing in treatment.  Mickey and Gary were already BFFs, and Mickey lobbied the state Lege on behalf Johnson’s drug reform package as the hired lobbyist of the pro-legalization Lindesmith Foundation/Drug Policy Center - until some of his GOP buddies reportedly advised him to drop the elgalization issue or risk his political future with the GOP. 

Mickey’s also known (and criticized by his own party) for allegedly being "an ardent backer of Indian gaming."  This, of course, is unmitigated bullshit (and yet another example of Monahan’s MSM tendencies.).  Mickey is an ardent backer of lining his own pockets, and like fellow Bush BFF Jack Abramoff, he’s perfectly happy to induce state tribes to part with their money to pay his lobbying fees.  Santa Ana Pueblo is one of his current clients.  There is also this notion floating around the state that Mickey represented O’ke Owingeh (still incorrectly known by most of New Mexico as San Juan Pueblo) in an anti-labor case.  First, the case involved yet another example of the government’s refuse to recognize tribal sovereignty; I don’t have to agree with the Pueblo’s stance or the case outcome to understand why its Council took the position it did.  Second, Mickey did not represent the Pueblo.  Rather, he and another lawyer filed an amicus brief on behalf of a Virginia-based anti-labor lobbying group with a vested interest in the case’s outcome:  The National Right to Work Foundation.  (Take a look at their roster of staff attorneys here - white males, one and all.)  And, in fact, Mickey’s got a long history of lobbying on behalf of so-called "right to work" (read:  anti-union) initiatives, and against state attempts to raise the minimum wage.

Mickey’s list of corporate lobbying clients reads like a roster of member of the Big Business Bad Actors Guild.  One is El Paso Electric; in 2005, FERC fined Enron to the tune of $32 mil for allegedly maintaining an "improper business relationship" with El Paso Electric from 1997 to 2003.  EPE was found to have colluded with Enron to manipulate prices, and to have inflated energy prices during California’s power blackouts in 2002 (at the link source, scroll to page 45 for the summary).  Ultimately, EPE settled several lawsuits, paying $10 million to its own shareholders; $14 million to regulators; and $1.5 billion to consumer groups in a class-action settlement.

In 1999, a Texas firm called Waste Control Specialists (WCS) sought to sell land it owned in southeastern NM (in Lea County, to be exact, which is as "Little Texas" as it gets) to USEC, described as "the world leader in enriching uranium fuel for nuclear power plants."  USEC wanted to put an enrichment plant in Lea County.  To that end, WCS lobbied then-Guv Gary Johnson and U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici (both of whom were already solidly "on board"), as well as members of the state Lege and local officials, through a combination of nearly $50 grand in contributions to state and local pols, the two major parties, and various political cmmittees and groups.  Another $35 grand in a single-source contribution found its way into Johnson’s campaign coffers by way of a Waste Control Specialists subsidiary, Contran Corp.  (WCS’s owner also gave $10,000 to George W. Bush.)  And who, pray tell, was WCS’s lobbyist?  Why, that’s right:  none other than Mickey Barnett.  And, yes, WCS got its way - and now locals are fighting a proposal to put a new uranium processing facility in the same area.

But perhaps the most venal of Mickey’s corporate clients is the so-called "payday loan" industry, which labors diligently to keep the working class head over heels in debt.  The industry’s market share in this state is enormous; in some towns’ business districts, there are multiple loan shark joints per block.  When it became obvious that then-AG Patricia Madrid was going to get her way and that some form of payday loan regulation would be enacted, Mickey and his compas went to work on behalf of a watered-down version that permitted such companies to continue such egregious practices as the charging of triple-digit interest rates.

Bush 2000:  And then, of course, there are Mickey’s ties to the Bush campaign, dating all the way back to the 2000 "election."  While serving as RNC committeeman, he was also one of the state lawyers for the Bush campaign, and proved his loyalty by doing his part by laying the groundwork for the coming hype over alleged "voter fraud."  While the nation was consumed with the mess in Florida, Mickey was busy getting judges to order New Mexico State Police to impound all paper ballots statewide.  While the "loyal Bushies" in Florida were deriding the notion that the numerous undervotes on that state’s ballots in the presidential race were anything other than real undervotes, Mickey was arguing the exact opposite over the 10% of the votes in dinky, heavily Republican Roosevelt County (i.e., Mickey’s former home) that showed undervotes - and demanding the hand recount that the Florida Bushies wanted to avoid at all costs.  However, the 115 votes that the Roosevelt County recount threw to Bush weren’t enough to make up for Gore’s statewide edge of 368 votes.  And predictably (why will become clear in an upcoming post), Mickey wanted a full recount in Chaves County - where local GOP apparatchiks began their own "informal recount."  Mickey’s efforts in the service of the Bush campaign machine were repeated in 2004, to much more insidious effect, as he and his cronies turned from allegations of machine error to trumping up hysteria over nonexistent voter fraud and working actively to suppress the vote.

The Interregnum:  Between the 2000 and 2004 elections, Mickey’s star rose and fell drastically.  As a new RNC committeeman in 2000 (having forced out long-time GOP stalwart Manny Lujan), he and his pals worked aggressively to consolidate their power, launching an all-out intraparty war in the process.  Now, before we get into who dissed whom, it’s important to understand one fact:  These folks are all about ideological purity - for others.  For themselves, they’re all about power, period.  Which makes them perfect "loyal Bushies" - the rules were made for everyone else. There are two reasons this is so crucial.  First, it explains the motivations and tactics used against David Iglesias (and others).  But, more fundamentally, it explains why these folks were so willing to eat their own, despite the fact that their targets often seemed to have more in common philosophically with the modern GOP.  Here’s what I mean.

Mickey, as we’ve seen, has been more than willing to jump on bandwagons that are traditionally anathema to the GOP, such as drug legalization and Native American casino gaming.  And what you don’t hear about or from Mickey is a lot of fundy-speak; he’s not particularly known for ranting against the evils of abortion or homosexuality, except insofar as it might suit his immediate political purposes at a given moment.   The same is true of his buddy John Dendahl.  Now, Dendahl grew into the role a bit during his years as NM GOP chair (during Mickey’s tenure as NM’s RNC committeeman); he loves to slam public education, labor, immigration, and non-English-firsters.  But he’s got a decidedly libertarian bent, and took a lot of flak for supporting drug legalization.

Other members of the Barnett faction, however, include Rod Adair and Dan Foley, state legislators from Chaves County.  Both are, likewise, obsessed with grabbing and keeping power, but they both consistently make all the right noises with regard to fundy talking points.  Both make great hay out of their "Christianity" - and both are classic bullies in the Bush/Cheney mode.  But, as with Bush and Cheney, power is key, and they long ago allied themselves with the Barnett/Dendahl wing of the wingnut party.  And by 2000, part of what that meant was fealty to Bush and Cheney and Rove.

By contrast, the intraparty opponents of Barnett’s faction were often ideological conservatives, both in terms of religious and cultural issues and on fiscal, foreign, and domestic policy.  Unlike Barnett’s Boys, however, they tended not be "bombthrowers" - i.e., they toed the basic party line and worked hard on behalf of Christian conservative candidates, but weren’t necessarily about public muscle-flexing displays of raw power.  And by 2003, these traditional NM Republicans were fed to the teeth with the headline-whoring antics of Mickey’s crowd.  At that year’s convention of the GOP state central committee, they fielded an opponent to Dendahl:  Ramsay Gorham of Bernalillo County, wife of wealthy GOP businessman Frank Gorham, who had impeccable conservative credentials.  Gorham was no shrinking violet, either; she and her backers fought hard, and ultimately deposed Dendahl as state party chair.  And to Barnett’s Boys, this was a dissing that had to be answered - with, as "loyal Bushies" might put it, "overwhelming force."

Barnett’s Boys responded immediately, waging an all-out war against Gorham and her supporters.  The bloodletting was profligate; no issue was too small or petty to be used against her, and they declined to confine themselves to the issues.  Gorham’s backers accused their opponents of attempting to destroy Gorham personally and entirely, smearing her reputation, and state ops and pundits seem to agree.  More, this was done with the backing of the Bush campaign:  During the ‘04 race, Rove and Co. openly dissed Gorham by refusing to invite her to a campaign strategy meeting held in Albuquerque by Bush campaign manager Marc Racicot.

A year or so later, Barnett and his boys engineered Gorham’s ouster, and at the behest of Domenici and his protege, Heather Wilson, Allen Weh (he of anti-Iglesias jaw-flapping fame) was installed in her place.  But in 2004, Gorham’s faction hit back hard, running 75-year-old George Buffet for RNC committeeman and ousting Mickey, during a Bush election campaign, from his plummy and powerful RNC seat.  At that point, the battle was wholly joined, and both factions spent their time overtly working to defeat the others’ candidates. In 2004, Mickey’s personal secretary, 24-year-old Justine Fox-Young, challenged state rep Bob White in the GOP primary in a typically brutal campaign - and won.  Barnett’s Boys, led by Adair, fought successfully to defeat long-time GOP rep Earlene Roberts in a vitriolic race (which, come 2006, Roberts would not forget).

2004 Presidential Race:  Mickey and his minions reprised their 2000 roles on behalf of the Bush campaign, but with a few changes.  Thanks to their performance in 2000, Barnett’s Boys were firmly institutionalized in the Bush-Cheney ‘04 campaign this time around:  Mickey himself was the state campaign’s counsel, and his BFF Rod Adair was one of the state campaign’s co-chairs, giving them ready access to Karl Rove’s ear.   In retrospect, however, it’s interesting how seldom Mickey’s name arose in coverage of the 2004 campaign; the public heavy lifting was done primarily by Pat Rogers, John Dendahl, Rod Adair, and Allen Weh.  (That "heavy lifting" - involving an all-out attempt to suppress the Democratic vote, under the guise of trumped-up "voter fraud" hysteria - will be the subject of upcoming posts.)  If the last six+ years have demonstrated anything with regard to Bush and his loyalists, it’s that any course of action (or inaction) occurs with specific and malign purpose, so I find it unlikely in the extreme that Mickey was off the radar only incidentally.

2006:  Fast-forward to last year.  Below the radar, Barnett’s Boys were busy once again, opposing insufficiently pure GOP primary candidates and flogging the races of those in their own corner.  The big story, however, occurred post-primary, when Mickey, Dendahl, Weh, and a few others in their play group ambushed GOP gubernatorial candidate J.R. Damron, forcing him to "withdraw voluntarily" from the race to make way for "a more aggressive candidate" who supposedly stood a chance of beating Bill Richardson. 

And who might such a candidate be?

In a move worthy of Dick Cheney circa 1999, Dendahl became the anointed.  To give you some idea of the shamelessness of this crowd, Dendahl apparently managed to keep a straight face as he told the Santa Fe New Mexican that

"he had been hearing talk among Republicans in recent weeks about the possibility of Damron withdrawing.  He said Barnett had called him recently saying there was a ‘groundswell of support’ to field a new candidate - someone like Dendahl.  Last Tuesday, Dendahl said, he got a call from U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici’s chief of staff, Steve Bell, who said Barnett and Domenici had discussed replacing Damron with Dendahl. Bell told Dendahl that Domenici liked the idea."

"Groundswell of support" <snort>.  My ass.  This was a put-up job from start to finish.  Damron was never more than a stalking horse - and the poor schlub didn’t even know it.  Damron played the good soldier, but his wife, Barbara, didn’t go quite as quietly:

"I kept hearing all this talk that he wasn’t being aggressive enough, but when it came to actually challenging Bill Richardson, nobody stepped up to the plate but my husband," Barbara Damron said. "Others were slinking off and hiding under their chairs. I told them, either come do it better yourself, give us money or shut up."

And I imagine they’ll be made to pay for that comment, somewhere down the line. 

In addition to the Barnett-Dendahl-Weh troika, Pete Domenici and his chief of staff, Steve Bell, were intimately involved in ousting Damron and replacing him with Dendahl. News reports at the time made oblique yet pointed references to certain facts:  1) that Mickey allegedly broached the subject of the switch with Pete; 2) that Mickey was already Bush’s nominee for the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors; and 3) that Pete was Mickey’s Senate "sponsor" for the appointment.  Knowing what we now know, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find Rove’s greasy fingerprints all over this operation, too.  Particularly since then-RNC chair Ken Mehlman felt compelled to weigh in approvingly on the switch via an official RN press release, on the same day that Damron bowed out - a Saturday.

Two months later, in the dogs days of summer, the Senate held its confirmation hearing for Bush’s nominees for the USPS Board of Governors - including our Mickey, who now holds the office until December 8, 2013.  However, Mickey’s road to confirmation was not without a few bumps:  Ron Godbey, a former GOP state rep whose ouster Mickey engineered, lobbied the American Postal Workers Union and the National Association of Letter Carriers to oppose Mickey’s nomination.  After pointing out Mickey’s anti-union efforts and his lobbying on behalf of the payday loan industry, Godbey concluded: 

"Given Mr. Barnett’s past record, and controversial deportment, I can’t believe he would or could be fair-minded with your initiatives, programs and ideas."

Godbey wasn’t the only one.  Earlene Roberts (remember her - also ousted at Mickey’s behest?) wrote a letter to U.S. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) to protest Mickey’s nomination and asking persmission to testify at the confirmation hearing.  Before launching into a laundry list of Mickey’s ties to lobbyists and his penchant for targeting fellow Republicans, Roberts leads with this: 

"I can tell you in no uncertain terms that Mr. Barnett does not hold the qualifications or the person [sic] qualities that a Postal Governor should possess."

Of course, we now know that by the time Mickey was confirmed to his new patronage position, he’d already set in motion the process for ousting Iglesias.  As The New York Times reported last month:

The focus on Mr. Iglesias intensified in June 2006, when Mickey Barnett, a Republican Party activist in New Mexico, requested “a meeting with someone at DOJ to discuss the USATTY situation there.”

The e-mail message alerting Justice Department officials, sent by a senior official in the White House Office of Political Affairs, noted that Mr. Barnett is “the president’s nominee for the US Postal Board of Governors. He was heavily involved in the president’s campaign’s legal team.” The next day, Mr. Barnett and Patrick Rogers, a New Mexico lawyer who has led a campaign against voter fraud, met with Justice Department officials. 

Local blog New Mexico FBIHOP lays it out in greater - and better - detail:

On page four, William Moschella writes the following:

Sen. Domenici called for the AG because he wants to discuss the criminal "docket and caseload" in New Mexico.  Sen. Domenici offered to come here, talk on the phone, or we could stop in on the Senator.

Fast forward to page 50.  There, an e-mail from "SJennings@GWB43.com" to Monica Goodling on June 20, 2006.  J Scott Jennings is the Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Political Director

I have a person from New Mexico coming to town this week - he is the President’s nominee for US Postal Board of Governors.  He was heavily involved in the President’s campaign’s legal team.

His name is Mickey Barnett, and he has requested a meeting with someone at DOJ to discuss the USATTY situation there.

Will someone in EOUSA or you or Kyle be available?

The next page shows a meeting with Barnett and Patrick Rogers scheduled at 5:30 on June 21 in a planner.

And unbeknownst to Iglesias (is this sounding like a familiar refrain?) his fate was presumably sealed - nearly six months before his actual dismissal.

I’m waiting to see what comes out of the hearings; while hauling Gonzo and Rove and all of their apparatchiks before Congress to testify on the record and under oath, they should drag Mickey and his minions along, too.

Of course, Barnett’s Boys are making great hay, at least locally, of last Thursday’s indictment of Manny Aragon and three others in the courthouse case that’s been giving local Rethugs wet dreams for years.  This was the corruption case that Iglesias should have brought, so the story goes, and the fact that his successor brought it now just demonstrates that Iglesias was fired for cause.

Bullshit.

But even if you believe that, why don’t you ask Mickey this question:

Mickey, why did you give $1,000 in $100 bills to Walter Cristobal of Santa Ana Pueblo (your lobbying client) to give as a campaign contribution to Manny Aragon in 2001, in violation of state law - and then not report it?

Because, seriously - the "explanations" won’t wash. l

Shot from a few years ago at Three Rivers Petroglyphs in south central NM

Okay, kidz, here’s the deal:  I’m devoting today and tomorrow almost exclusively to pulling together the background story (New Mexico edition) on the prosecutor purge.  I’ll post throughout both days, but I’m spending a great deal of time pulling links to sources, etc., so if you don’t see an update when you visit, check back in an hour or two.

I think I said once that this goes back to the 2004 election.  That’s true, but really a misstatement on my part.  This goes back to the 2000 election, and it was a constant undercurrent throughout the first [illegitimate] Bush term.  It seemed to peak in the 2004 race; after Kerry conceded [also illegitimately; that was not his decision to make when we knew what had happened in Ohio], it seemed to disappear.  However, a lot of us kept expecting to see fallout - and the prosecutor purge is it.  Serendipitously for this pack of criminals, staging the purge now and in this way gave them the chance to stop several investigations (like Carol Lam’s) dead in their tracks.  It has thus expanded to encompass a whole host of administration goals - goals that are as illegitimate as they come.  Strike that; goals that are as criminal as they come.

Anyway, some of the coming posts may seem a bit disjointed in the larger scheme of things.  Bear with me; they’ll all tie together nicely in the end.  And for those of you who are blogging yourselves on these issues, please:  Take these stories and run with them!  Use them as a guide to digging up what happened in your own states.  Spread these accounts far and wide.  Because I guarantee you, these eight prosecutors are just the proverbial tip of the iceberg.  This pattern and practice exists in every single contested state (in fact, probably every single state, period).  Since the MSM won’t do their jobs, it’s up to us (following the lead of the incredible TPM guys) to make sure that the Bush/Rethug Titanic smashes to smithereens.

First up:  Bush BFF Mickey Barnett. 

 

Before we get into the story in depth, I thought it might be helpful to post the cast of Rethug characters.  Most of them are unknowns on the national stage, despite being local heavywieghts within the GOP.  Some have (as far as I can tell) only bit roles, while others snagged the leads.  These are only the players who come immediately to mind; as we delve further into this, others may make an appearance, so don’t treat this as an exhaustive list.  Without further ado:

Adair, Rod:  NM state senator from Chaves County (county seat:  Roswell); one-third of NM’s axis of evil.

Barnett, Mickey:  Albuquerque-based lawyer and lobbyist; confirmed in 2006 as Bush’s nominee to the U.S. Postal Service Board.  Former legislative aide to U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici; former state legislator; second third of NM’s AoE.

Dendahl, John: NM GOP 2006 candidate for governor and former state GOP chair.  (He has left the state since his dismal performance as a gubernatorial candidate.)  Tight with the AoE, he was anointed state GOP chair at their urging after they ousted Ramsay Gorham (see below).

Domenici, Pete:  U.S. Senator for more years than anyone can remember.  Formerly regarded as a largely honorable pol from the wrong party; now seen as a pimp for the administration and a rent boy for the AoE.  Early political employer of Barnett (see above).

Foley, Dan:  NM state representative from Chaves County (Roswell), BFF of Adair, and third third of the NM AoE.  Also tight with Tom Krumland (see below) and willing to blow $20K in taxpayer-funded military resources to plug the opening of his buddy’s new business, then lie about it.

Gorham, Ramsay:  Former chair of the NM GOP, ousted in a very ugly, very public intra-party battle by the axis of evil.  Gorham, a woman and (by some accounts) a relative moderate, was insufficiently vicious for the AoE’s collective taste, and thus needed to be replaced by their buddy Dendahl, a likeminded bombthrowing bigot.

Krumland, Tom:  Roswell Republican and auto dealer; upon expanding his corporate empire in 2005, he and BFF Foley cooked up a scheme to get the NM National Guard to "donate" a flyover during his grand opening "ceremonies" (said 2-minute flyover, occurring at a time when the news was full of reports of U.S. soldiers in Iraq dying for lack of up-armored HumVees and adequate weaponry, costing the NM taxpayers $20,000).

Krumland, Linda Chavez:  Wife of Tom Krumland, above, and fellow traveler among Roswell’s rabid Rethugs.  During the 2004 election, Chavez Krumland launched a supposed nonprofit (without appropriate registration and reporting) called New Mexicans for Honest Courts, which apparently consisted solely of Chavez Krumland herself and worked to destroy judicial independence in the state.

Pat Rogers:  Albuquerque Rethug lawyer tight with the AoE; reportedly wants Iglesias’s job; long-time whiner about nonexistent voter fraud, nonexistent activist judges, etc, and author of recent ABQ Journal hit piece on Iglesias.

Weh, Allan:  Current executive director of the NM GOP (although maybe not for long, after putting his foot in it a couple of weeks ago); rent boy for the AoE and Dendahl.

Wilson, Heather:  U.S. Representative from NM’s 1st CD; in 2006, beat Democratic challenger Patricia Madrid by a mere (and suspect) 800 votes.  Wilson previously got into trouble as head of state’s division of Children, Youth, and Families when she physically removed a file from the office’s archives that allegedly documented an incident of child abuse by her husband.

I’ll update this with links later, and I’ll also add information about the players in future posts.  This should get you started for now.

 

[Ed. note:  This is the basic intro of a post I started several weeks ago.  I’m posting this portion of unchanged, despite the fact that some of it is now clearly outdated (e.g., the reference to Josh Marshall’s failure to recognize that the voter fraud issue is the key).  I’m also not going to dig up the internal links again, becuase it’s going up purely to lay the groundwork for the series of individual posts to follow later this evening.  Those posts will include links and references.]

Josh Marshall and Paul Kiel have been all over this story from day one, and they’ve compiled a hell of library on it.  Marshall insists that the ouster of Carol Lam is at the heart of the scandal, because her investigations into Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Jerry Lewis, and their compas were hitting too close to home.

I’m sure that he’s right, to the extent that Lam’s investigation was what made it necessary to oust her now, and I’m also sure that the others were fired simultaneously in part to provide cover for Lam’s dismissal.  But only in part.  What Marshall has missed - and certainly the MSM have all missed, except the occasional glancing blow - is the fact that this goes far deeper than current corruption investigations.  It’s a wholesale attempt to roll back minority access in the country and to deny the vote to entire classes of people - and it’s absolutely breathtaking in its fascism and bigotry.

How do I know this?

Because during the 2004 election, I was at ground zero for the Rethug voter intimidation operation in New Mexico.  And make no mistake:  What this is about, on the broader scale, is nothing less than attempting to disenfranchise African-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, legal immigrants, persons with disabilities, senior citizens, young voters, and even active-duty members of the military.  Why?  First, because with the exception of the last category (and now, it applies to members of the military in increasing numbers), members of those groups tend to vote Democratic.  And secondarily, because members of those groups have had the termerity to believe that they’re "entitled" to the rights that go with being "Americans" - and their interests don’t jibe with those of wealthy white Xtian male Rethug elites.

And considering what happened during the 2004 election, "Rethug" is more apt than most people know.

Those of you who are regular readers of ARA are also regular readers of other progressive sites, and I know you know about the attempts to intimidate minority voters in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin, and other states in 2004.  The flyer in the image above was a classic passive-aggressive version of such activity:  All over the country, flyers showed up on poles and windshields in minority neighborhoods - and in some cases were actually mailed to voters - as part of a widespread disinformation campaign.  The less malignant of these flyers simply gave the wrong date for Election Day.  Most included dire warnings about unpaid parking tickets, child support arrearages, overdue taxes, etc.; they told voters that if they owed such debts, they would not be allowed to vote.  They also threatened them with jail if they dared to show their faces at their polling locations.

I’m not even going to bother here trying to unpack all the racism in those stupid flyers.  We all know what they were:  unmitigated shit, bigotry in its rawest form.   There were other efforts, too - rerouting of traffic in Florida; police roadblocks set up a mile from the polls to check the licenses of black drivers; the presence of police dogs at polling places; attempts to create enormous delays at locations serving senior citizens, whose health wouldn’t permit them to wait on their feet for hours in the sweltering humidity in Florida or freezing rain in Ohio.

But what didn’t get much coverage nationally was the orchestrated attempt to suppress the vote here in New Mexico.  And despite the occasional reference to Rethug allegations that NM USA David Iglesias and WA USA John McKay failed to prosecute voter fraud cases, the media have ignored the fact that this was a GOP-administered pattern and practice in 2004.  And I guarantee that once you start overturning rocks in each of the jurisdictions where a USA was purged, you’ll find that same pattern and practice somewhere.

Obviously, I can only speak from experience with regard to NM.  But I can tell you that David Iglesias was a walking target:  We Dems, knowing his party loyalty and ties, quite rightly distrusted him, particularly since certain local Rethugs were overtly working to suppress the vote under the bullshit rubric of "voter fraud."  But we were also surprised to hear the pissy whingeing from the other side, way back in September and October of 2004, that Iglesias wasn’t doing his job and going after all those [nonexistent] fraudulent Democrats - or after Richardson, or after Dem AG Patricia Madrid, or Dem SoS Rebecca Vigil-Giron, or, or . . . you get the idea.

So, in the posts to follow, here’s the real story underlying the attempt to get rid of Iglesias.

 

Okay, since we don’t get C-SPAN 3 in this godforsaken place, I’ve been obsessively hitting "refresh" over at TPM all day and waiting on pins and needles for 6PM to arrive so that I could watch the rebroadcast of Kyle Sampson’s grilling on C-SPAN 1.

For weeks, I’ve been working on a post on what’s really behind the prosecutor purge, but health and work issues have kept me from finishing it to my satisfaction.  Part of the problem is that it has grown to such a length that it has to be split into separate posts.  I’ll be doing that tonight.

Josh Marshall and Paul Kiel over at TPM have been doing an incredible job of covering the whole mess, and of unraveling what’s behind it.  They’re mostly there:  A few days ago, Josh finally snapped to the fact that it was not in fact Carol Lam’s investigation of Cunningham, Lewis, Foggo, Wilkes, et al. that drove the purge - Lam was more a case of serendipitous timing - but rather, the so-called "voter fraud" issue that underlies the whole sordid thing.  He’s not quite there yet on the whole story, but he’s got a lot of it.

Obviously, I can’t speak from personal experience with regard to what occurred in Washington, Florida, South Dakota, and other states.  However, I was at ground zero for this effort in New Mexico during the 2004 election, and I can provide some first-hand background that is, I’m positive, representative of what went on in other states.  Throughout the course of this evening, I’ll be throwing up discrete posts on various players and issues.  I may not get through it all tonight, but by tomorrow morning, you should have a good picture of what happened here three years ago, and how a good soldier like David Iglesias has become the latest victim of administration swiftboating.

Stay tuned . . . .

And BTW:  I know Sessions is an administration pimp, but does Specter have to fellate them quite so obviously?

"Thanks, Al, for finishing off that pesky Constitution thingy for me - now here’s your bus ticket."

[No, that’s not confirmed.  But if he’s not gone by Friday, I’ll . . . oh, hell.  I don’t know.  Vote in the comments for what you want me to do if I’m wrong.]

Last week, maladministration partisans kept nattering on about how Bush would never cut Gonzo loose - how Bush was too loyal (*cough* *choke*) to him, too enamored of his "American Dream" bio, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Bullshit.

As soon as it hit the fan, you had to know he’d be gone soon.  But the final nail in the coffin came yesterday, when a reporter asked WH SpokesTool Tony Snow whether Gonzo’ll be leavng soon:

SNOW:  . . .  We hope he stays.

Q: He will remain in office for the rest of the administration?

SNOW: Well, we hope so.

"Well, we hope so"?!  WTF kind of response is that?!

Actually, it’s the same kind of damning-with-faint-praise response this administration gives WRT every problem-child official once it’s made the decision to cut that person loose.  The moment they trot out the press guy to make bland, pleasant statements about keeping an official on - well, it’s the Bush administration equivalent of waking up to find a horse’s head in your bed.

I never thought Gonzo would survive this.  I didn’t think, though, that they’d already be talking about replacements who are objectively fucking incompetent.  Olbermann’s reporting that four names are being bandied about by administration buddies:  Larry Johnson (who might actually be qualified); Ted Olson (Who’d be fucking scary; having him as SG was bad enough); Frances Fragos Townsend (Bush’s personal anti-terror czar - yeah, I knowl; the jokes write themselves). 

What’s that, you say?  Only three?  Oh.  My bad.  So who’s four?

DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff. 

Stop laughing.  No, stop.  Really.  Seriously.  That Michael Chertoff. 

Yep.  The mike Chertoff who advised the CIA to torture detainees.  The Mike Chertoff who oversaw the DOJ’s institutionalization of torture as a legitimate plea bargaining tactic. The Mike Chertoff who coauthored the criminally misnamed USA PATRIOT Act.  The same Mike Chertoff who excused the administration’s criminal negligence during Hurricane Katrina on grounds that it "surprised" people.  The same Mike Chertoff behind the sweetheart Dubai port "security" deal.

Oh, yes - and how could I forget?  The same Mike Chertoff who was one of Ken "Javert" Starr’s most trusted minions in his panty-sniffing prosecution persecution of Bill and Hillary.

But that’s it, of course.  Who else could possibly be more qualified (save, of course for the sex-crazed Starr himself)?  After all, Mike Chertoff is someone who participated in the systematic effort to destroy that greatest of all threats to national security - TEH CLENIS! 

And, you know, with Hillary running for the White House, Teh Clenis will be back . . . .