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Chuck Todd, NBC Political Director

Mark Murray, NBC Deputy Political Director

Domenico Montanaro, NBC News Political Reporter



Gonzales

Posted: Tuesday, June 12, 2007 9:21 AM by Domenico Montanaro
Filed Under: , ,

NBC’s Ken Strickland reports that the no-confidence vote on Alberto Gonzales failed, 53-38. Sixty votes were needed for the motion to proceed. Senator Stevens (R) voted present. The following seven Republicans voted with ALL Democrats in the symbolic no-confidence vote: Collins, Coleman, Smith, Specter, Hagel, Snowe, and Sununu. (Collins, Coleman, Smith, Hagel, and Sununu are all up Senate re-election in 2008.) Lieberman voted against the resolution with most of the Republicans.

Presidential candidates Biden, Brownback, Dodd, McCain, and Obama didn’t vote on the measure. The AP has the full roll call vote.

The New York Times: “Republicans who rejected the proposal offered little defense of Mr. Gonzales, but criticized the resolution as a politically motivated stunt and a waste of the Senate’s time. ‘If I were president, I would have asked Alberto Gonzales to resign as attorney general,’ George V. Voinovich, Republican of Ohio, said in a statement. But he said, ‘Today’s vote does nothing to rectify the current problem or ensure it doesn’t happen again.’”

The New York Daily News adds, however: “[I]t still forced Republicans into the uncomfortable role of challenging a statement most agreed with: that Gonzales is not competent to be the nation's top lawman.”

As for the future of the Gonzales probe, the Los Angeles Times notes: "Democrats vowed to continue their investigation into whether Gonzales, in tandem with the White House, had politicized hiring decisions and various investigations at the Justice Department in ways that would boost Republicans. There were signs that Democrats were on the verge of taking that investigation to a new level, possibly by issuing subpoenas to the White House for documents and testimony of such figures as political operative Karl Rove."

Still, it does appear that congressional Democrats are running out of ways to bring up the Gonzales situation in a public way, making it appear that the attorney general may have weathered this storm -- for now, unless something else comes out. Then again, Gonzales has already survived longer than many in this town expected.

But Gonzales and his Justice Department suffered this defeat yesterday. “The federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled yesterday that the president may not declare civilians in this country to be ‘enemy combatants’ and have the military hold them indefinitely. The ruling was a stinging rejection of one of the Bush administration’s central assertions about the scope of executive authority to combat terrorism.”

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News Flash
Investigation into the alledged 5,000,000 missing Emails has revealed that 4,900,000 of them were spam offering Herbal Vigara and Faux Rolex Watches.

Someone with more time to kill than I have did a little calculating and found that 5,000,000 emails generated by aproximately fifty accounts would be in the neighborhood of 100 a day. Thats a buttload of typing, perhaps everyone involved was writing novels about their adventures as agents of the dastardly Karl Rove.
Personally I hope you people find 5,000,000 emails to go through, it will keep you busy for awhile.

PS
If Karl Rove did not exist we'd have to create one, he scares the pants off the Democrats, who apparently think he is a combination of Rasputin and Machivelli.
If they didn't have Karl to hate they'd be able to consentrate their venom more effectively, as it is they just spew it wildly hoping to hit someone or something sooner or later.
Wayne, Wayne, Wayne....

You have been drinking the Kool-Aid a bit to long and no longer are in touch with reality (No Lush Rimjob is not reality).  

First of all your historical references are BS. Neither party represents anything that they did during the time that you indicated. Lincoln would turn in his grave if he saw the corrupt religious right and corporate greed driven organization that it has become, and yes the democrats were one the party of the south but this is not the case today. It seems that the roles have reversed. Most of the folks that would be burning crosses today would proudly wear an R not a D. In fact you have no farther than the senate to look. You can almost see the outline of the hood on McConnell and Lott.

As the subpoenas continue to be issued we will see who has perpetrated the real voter fraud. There sure are a lot of rats that seem to be trying to crawl under the woodpile. Thor Hearne just has someone from his own Law Firm (at least their IP address), removes all reference to ACVR from his profile and won’t talk to anyone. Schlockman will be back under a subpoena soon as now will be Sara Taylor and Harriett Myers. Mcnulty is testifying next week. So is Von Spakovsy. All of these people can be directly tied to voter improprieties from suppression to caging. They were the one who tried to backdoor voter “protection” laws that only protected minorities and senior citizens from havingthier votes counted.

Yes, we will see where the real fraud was…

BTW: some of those “missing” emails are available because they were misaddressed and ended up in a .org address MB instead. They were from Tim Griffin (remember him). They had “caging” lists attached. Tim just quit his new post as a USA on the very day that these emails were turned over to John Conyers. Also, Monica Goodling admitted in here testimony that they appointed him knowing that he had been doing this (It is a Class A felony BTW).

I could go on….

Firts of all your historical referrences are BS. Neither party represents anything that they did duirng the time that you indocated. Lincoln would turn in his grave if he saw the currupt religous right and corprate greed driven organization that it has become, and yes the democrats were one the party of the south but this is not the case today. It seems that the roles have reversed. Most of the folks taht would be burning crosses today would proudly wear an R not a D. In fact you have no farther than the senate to look. YOu can almost see the ouline of the hood on McConnel and Lott.



As the supoenas contue to be issued we will see who has perpetrated the real voter fraud.
Wayne...

BTW... You really have a bit too much time on your hands to be so ill informed...
Joe Bob
"BTW: some of those “missing” emails are available because they were misaddressed and ended up in a .org address MB instead. They were from Tim Griffin (remember him). They had “caging” lists attached. Tim just quit his new post as a USA on the very day that these emails were turned over to John Conyers. Also, Monica Goodling admitted in here testimony that they appointed him knowing that he had been doing this (It is a Class A felony BTW).

I could go on….

Firts of all your historical referrences are BS. Neither party represents anything that they did duirng the time that you indocated. Lincoln would turn in his grave if he saw the currupt religous right and corprate greed driven organization that it has become, and yes the democrats were one the party of the south but this is not the case today. It seems that the roles have reversed. Most of the folks taht would be burning crosses today would proudly wear an R not a D. In fact you have no farther than the senate to look. YOu can almost see the ouline of the hood on McConnel and Lott.
"

Sure you aren't thinking of Robert Byrd?
"Participation in the Ku Klux Klan
In 1942 24 year-old Byrd joined the Ku Klux Klan, which he had seen holding parades in Matoaka, West Virginia, as a child. Byrd was unanimously elected to be the leader, known as the Exalted Cyclops, of his local chapter.[2]

Byrd, in his autobiography, attributed the beginnings of his political career to this incident, although he lamented that they involved the Klan. According to Byrd's recollection, Klan official Joel L. Baskin told him, "You have a talent for leadership, Bob... The country needs young men like you in the leadership of the nation." Byrd recalls that "suddenly lights flashed in my mind! Someone important had recognized my abilities. I was only 23 or 24, and the thought of a political career had never struck me. But strike me that night, it did."[2] He participated in the KKK for a period of time during World War II, holding the titles "Kleagle", which indicated a Klan recruiter, and "Exalted Cyclops". Byrd did not serve in the military during the war, working instead as a welder in a Baltimore shipyard where he helped to assemble warships.[citation needed]

Byrd commented on the 1945 controversy raging over the idea of racially integrating the military. Byrd, when he was 28 years old, wrote to segregationist Senator Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi, in which Byrd vowed never to fight:

Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."[3]
He had earlier written Bilbo:

I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side[4][5]
"
The South is as its always been majority Democrat. Every out spoken Racist I've ever met was a staunch Democrat who could trace their heritage back to some hooded night rider or another.

Lets see some actual evidence rather than repitition of suspicious claims of emails somehow ending up being sent to a site run by a so-called "Trickster".
Fake Emails are even easier to forge than fake TANG documents.
Sounds like another attempt to divert attention from DNC dirty tricks like their attempt to invalidate the ballots of our military serving overseas.
I FOUND THE MISSING 5,000,000 E-MAILS ,THEY WERE IN KARL ROVES BOX. LET'S TAKE A LOOK SEE. "GONZO GATE" IT JUST ISN'T GOING TO GO AWAY.
This Greg Palast character (the one who claims to have missing Eamails)sounded familar so I dug up an article he wrote in 2002 where he claimed at first  
"I have obtained a cable from the CIA to its station chief in the Capitol: "Re: Coup. Activities to include propaganda, black operations, disinformation, or anything else your imagination can conjure... "

Then admitted
"Admittedly, this is old stuff: written just before the coup against Salvador Allende. "

This particular article
(Greg Palast
Guardian Unlimited

Wednesday April 17, 2002)
was an attempt to paint Hugo Chavez as an heroic figure beset by CIA conspiracy.
From his other works Palast seems to be a major Hugo Chavez cheerleader.

He has made multiple claims of conspiracies involving Iraq's Oil fields and when one plot didn't appear fruitful he'd claim this as evidence for his opposing conspiracy theory.
If Palast had any reputation left he'd still be working in the US instead of for The Hooterville World Guardian.
Joe Bob's claim
"BTW: some of those “missing” emails are available because they were misaddressed and ended up in a .org address MB instead. They were from Tim Griffin (remember him). They had “caging” lists attached. Tim just quit his new post as a USA on the very day that these emails were turned over to John Conyers. Also, Monica Goodling admitted in here testimony that they appointed him knowing that he had been doing this (It is a Class A felony BTW).
"

From "Legal Times"
(Jason McLure and Emma Schwartz
Legal Times
May 24, 2007
)
"Additionally, she alleged, McNulty did not disclose the extent of his knowledge about allegations that Griffin had been involved in "caging" African-American votes during the 2004 elections, and inaccurately described the Justice Department's assessment of a commission that reviewed candidates to become U.S. Attorney in California.

McNulty has reportedly told congressional investigators that errors in his testimony were a result of Goodling withholding information about the firings from him during a briefing in advance of his testimony.

"The allegation is false," Goodling said. "I did not withhold information from the deputy."

Late Wednesday, McNulty took issue with Goodling's testimony. He issued a statement, saying: "I testified truthfully at the Feb. 6, 2007, hearing based on what I knew at that time. Ms. Goodling's characterization of my testimony is wrong and not supported by the extensive record of documents and testimony already provided to Congress."

Knowing about an "Allegation" is not the same as knowing that an act has been committed.

You wrote
"Monica Goodling admitted in here testimony that they appointed him knowing that he had been doing this "

Perhaps you'd care to post excepts from the Transcript of Goodling's testimony to back up your claim?
Earth to Wayne,

Once again you are delving back to history with you references to Robert Byrd. yes, he was once a racist many years ago but has long since renounced this and now is one of our strongest defenders on the constitution including civil rights. It is not valid to compare the parties of that time as the roles then were pretty much reversed. The Republican party of today is NOT the party of Lincoln now is it? Who would be wearing the hood today?

Gregg Palast works for the BBC (which last time I looked was respected as the standard for world journalism). Any real journalist would rather work for them than the corporate driven American media, especially Fox (which BTW is NOT really a US company).

As to Tim Griffin and Caging, you can look at the caging emails for yourself. They are available here (including all internet headers)

http://2004.georgewbush.org/deadletteroffice/index.asp

BTW, I notice that you seem to regularly quote rather obscure facts that seem to come from lexus Nexus, not Google. Hmmmmm, now where might you get that? You also seem to use the obscure facts not the more relevant ones to make your point?

You are not by chance a "ringer" for a certain party are you????  
"BTW, I notice that you seem to regularly quote rather obscure facts that seem to come from lexus Nexus, not Google."
I'm not sure what that even means.
Have you never read a history book in your life. Books are neat low tech items, schools used to use them all the time.
Googling up information already known is a good way of cutting and pasting it here with less likelyhood of error.
As for more recent articles by Palast which show his decided bent for slavering on the feet of Hugo Chavez, you can look them up yourself.

The manta about the Parties somehow switching skins is ludicrous.
Raise a hood in just about any state and you'll find a Democrat under it.

And as I mentioned earlier an Email is alot easier to forge than a TANG Document.
Why don't you find some claim that these have been authenticated by let's say the FBI.

Funny you should mention the BBC a friend who works for the BBC was the victim of just such a prank only yesterday.

The Guardian was the news source which published the truncated Wolfowitz interviews which ignited the "Blood for Oil" mantra. They published a retraction which no liberal ever seems to have read.
Lets see if this works

Copied and pasted from the Dead Letter site.

-----Original Message-----
From: Karen Unger [mailto:karen@jeb.org]
Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2004 9:31 PM
To: 'Alan Levine' [mailto:levine@jeb.org]
Cc: 'Jeb Bush' [mailto:jeb@jeb.org]; bdoster@georgewbush.org
Subject: RE:

Oh yeah. Bill can be a bit nutty. Brettler, are you familiar with what's going on down there? Do you know what Bill is talking about?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alan Levine [mailto:levine@jeb.org]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2004 9:36 PM
> To: Karen Unger [mailto:karen@jeb.org]
> Cc: Jeb Bush [mailto:jeb@jeb.org]; bdoster@georgewbush.org
> Subject:
> karen,
> today i was in pasco county with the LG. while there, bill bunting pulled me and the LG aside
> and told us that he was going after rep. anderson because anderson would not drop mail for the
> president. I don't know what is going on, but bill is capable of sometimes being fairly extreme,
> and it worries me that he may do something that draws attention. it may be worthy of someone
> talking to him...
>
>now lets add some faked text. perhaps even an attachment link, though I wouldn't know how to go about it I could copy a shortcut from somewhere else and label it as "Yo Mammas Trick book" I suppose.

> alan

This is of course a crude attempt. Not sure if it will show up very well in this posting format.

Find us a link to authentication of the emails if you don't mind.

PS
I get emails from both the GOP and the DNC all the time. I have no idea where they got my addy.
I suppose I could compose a fake email from either site if I put my mind to it.
PDF File of the ruling against the Democrats who tried to deprive Military serving overseas of the right to vote.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/documents/20001209_xnjdo.pdf
Don't wish to dominate this thread but I must add a couple of things that may not be common knowledge.

"Other than the sender's IP address, there is no verification of any information in an e-mail. It is quite easy for a spammer to make an exact copy of an e-mail from smithbarney.com, including a long complicated sequence of headers and a genuine logo in the body of an e-mail, then change the content to send readers to a website that appears to be genuine, but is actually a phishing scam designed to capture names, passwords, and credit card numbers.

So why can't the sender's IP address be used to identify the spammer? There are two problems. One is that spammers often work through forwarders to hide their IP addresses (see below). Another is that the sender is often a zombie that has been infected by a computer virus, and is programmed to send spam without the owner even knowing about it. There are millions of insecure home computers, and they have become a major source of spam.

"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_authentication
O Wayne,

You seem to be jumping through hoops to defend something that the very perpetrator himself will not defend. Griffin is not attempting to claim that the emails are bugus for one reason. THEY ARE REAL! He quit as soon as this came out. While it is easy to spoof an email address, it is not the case here and Griffin knows that. Also, all you need to do is to start looking at the recipients systems and you can usually find copies for verification. I have done a bit of forensic work in the past and can assure you that this is the case. The senders IP Address is clearly abailable in this case, as well as the recipients. They also are registered to who they say they are. In the case of a spammer, the scenario is very different and the senders address will show up as some random IP address regstered to a consumer network (DSL, Cable). This will typically be a computer that has been compromised and is now a "bot". The Judiciary committee has now asked for an investigation. Lets see where this goes. Also, in regards to "caging" you might check your history books. The GOP has a bit of a history with this scheme!

By the way, your comment about Democrats and hoods is laughable at best. Maybe you should be paying more attention to what is going on now, rather than facts from 60 years ago. The Democrats were the party of the south for a long time but is not the case anymore is it?

Regarding Palast, just because he wrote some complementary articles about Hugo Chavez does not make him a bad journalist. While there are many things that most of will not agree on about how Hugo has been handling things in his country, he has been willing to stand up to the World Bank and how they have been raping third world economies. There is much we could learn from him in this respect.




Joe Bob

"The Judiciary committee has now asked for an investigation. Lets see where this goes."
The one sentence I gleaned from your post that shows good sense.

"You seem to be jumping through hoops to defend something that the very perpetrator himself will not defend"
How does my position here equate defending anything?
I'm pointing out that Emails can be forged just as TANG documents or Downing Street Memos could be forged or misrepresented and that authentication is necessary for anything of this sort to rise to the level of evidence.

Griffin chosing not to feed a public spectacle by insisting on retaining his already temporay apointment does not indicate criminal intent and the Term Caging applies to legal activity which only becomes illegal if there is a provably illegal intent.
"In third-party direct mail fundraising, on behalf of the organization conducting a solicitation, a caging agent receives contributions, processes donor mail, and "deposits all contributions to the client's account," according to Eberle Associates, a United States direct mail and political fundraising firm.[1] The Association of Fundraising Professionals similarly defines caging as "the process or act of collecting donations by an entity other than the not-for-profit organization for which they were solicited."[2] Often the processing of responses to direct mail is conducted by a third party hired to conduct a number of individual services, which may include processing payments, compilng product orders, correcting recipient addresses, processing returned mail, providing lockbox services and depositing funds received into the hiring organization's bank account, and all of the associated data entry for each of these services. Caging is a short-hand term for all of these services bundled together.[2] The term may be a derivative of the financial teller cage, since a number of operations related to lockbox services involve the control and protection of funds.[2]

The personal information gathered about respondents may be more valuable than the donations received, or purchases made by the receipients. Mal Warwick Associates explains that "caging" allows an organization to process "information that can be gleaned" from contributions that result from a direct mail campaign. In addition, "information from the caging process is often massaged and manipulated six ways from Sunday, all in hopes of finding a productive new mailing list, marginally improving a letter's results, or cutting its cost by a few pennies."

Direct Magazine adds that caging is also called "secure response management." The quality of response data -- and how those data might be used in future campaigns -- is directly proportional to pre-mail planning, which includes labor-saving devices like matched barcodes and other methods for "all digital workflow."

"

"By the way, your comment about Democrats and hoods is laughable at best. "
Try growing up in the South, Confederate Night Riders killed an ancestor because he preached a sermon which stated that the Negro had a soul just like Whites.
The KKK was the assasination arm of the Southern Democratic party for decades targeting both blacks and White Republicans in order to subvert the Democratic process.

Earlier someone wrote
"YOu can almost see the ouline of the hood on McConnel and Lott.
"
I simply pointed out that Richard Byrd had worn that Hood Proudly for many years, and like a lot of Democrats he voted against Civil Rights legislation.

Besides the better known KKK activities in the South the KKK was a powerful political party in the Middle West and some Northern States, and even Canada, well into the 20th century.
Good ol' Give 'em Hell Harry Truman was a dues paying member early on as well.

"While there are many things that most of will not agree on about how Hugo has been handling things in his country, he has been willing to stand up to the World Bank and how they have been raping third world economies. There is much we could learn from him in this respect.
"
Since you obviously formed this opinion based on the propaganda screeds of people like Plast it proves my point better than you can comprehend.
Do you own a Che' T-Shirt by chance?
it would seem that the Bush administration will hold hostage anyone in Washington that won't put a hit on him. He would not let Ashcroft quit after erasing most of our civil liberty'ss and wont answer up to it now that the whole world know he is off on another tyraid to put his stuborn Texas mentality to some sort of use like as if his 28% is his new mandate.
He could not walk the streets in most of the north east the way he did on his last business trip to Albania.


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