Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

T R E 4 5 O N

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

If you are in line to indict donald trump, stay in line.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Let’s finish the job.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

You are here: Home / Politics / Republican Stupidity / Breakin’ the law

Breakin’ the law

by | 75 Comments

This post is in: , ,

Nothing to see here, folks:

During the 2006 midterm elections, White House political aides to President George W. Bush engaged in widespread violations of a federal law which limits partisan political activity by government employees, a long-running federal investigation has found.

A report issued Monday by the little-known Office of Special Counsel cites numerous violations of the Hatch Act and concludes that federal taxpayers ended up footing the bill for activities that were intended to advance Republican political candidates.

Look forward, not backward. This is nothing compared to Socksgate or the wanton destruction of W’s on keyboards under Clinton. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Reader Interactions

75Comments

  1. 1.

    General Stuck

    Well, if you are going to break the law, best to break all of them, to make it seem perfectly normal.

  2. 2.

    Crashman

    Why do these cynical bureaucratic weenie investigators have to take the mystery out of life!? Keep on walkin’!

  4. 4.

    hilts

    Don’t worry Doug, Wolf Blitzer, Parker/Spritzer, Anderson Cooper, and “The Best Political Team on Television” will be all over this story.

  5. 5.

    Bob Loblaw

    The Hatch Act, eh? I wonder what ol’ Orrin would have to say about this if he were still alive…oh. Right.

  6. 6.

    Steeplejack

    This hits a nerve with me, because just yesterday I was ranting to my brother about how no one ever followed up on the whole mess where the Bush White House didn’t keep copies of all its e-mail correspondence–in clear violation of the law–and in fact was found to be communicating and running things off the government servers and on private GOP servers.

    It seemed like such a no-brainer, open-and-shut case that to let it go was just a gigantic “Fuck you!” to the rule of law, etc., etc. Plus it sets a horrible precedent. “Hey, do whatever you want. The chances of your ever getting called on it are almost nil. We look forward, not back.” Bleah.

  8. 8.

    Comrade Javamanphil

    I just heard a whooshing noise which must have been the eyes of the DC Press Corps glazing over. You’re going to need to find something sexier than law breaking to get their interest.

  10. 10.

    Uloborus

    Doesn’t make a Hell of a lot of difference if you prosecute them well after the fact, and it sure wasn’t going to happen at the time.

    …that said, what difference it WOULD make I would welcome. I don’t see the slightest chance that it would deter repeats, but I’d like to see the many crimes of that administration prosecuted. I wish I knew exactly what the political realities against that are, because I know there are a HELL of a lot of them. For starters, what are the odds you even could get the evidence for a real conviction?

    But I WANT it.

  12. 12.

    C Nelson Reilly

    The Republicans had to break the law because of the unfair advantages ACORN provided for the Democrats.

  13. 13.

    BruinKid

    Idea: we all e-mail/call Darrell Issa’s office and ask if he’s going to investigate this one. And when they say he won’t, demand to know why not.

  15. 15.

    Xecky Gilchrist

    The rampant co-opting of government for getting more Republicans elected – e.g., the Texas redistricting reign of terror – was one of the creepiest things about the Bush years, IMO. They took that whole “Permanent Republican Majority” thing pretty goddam seriously, and I still blush with pride for the American electorate throwing it off, if much later and less decisively than it should have.

  18. 18.

    Mary G

    The Justice department’s firing of moderate or apolitical attorneys who graduated from places like Harvard and hiring of very right-wing lawyers from 2-bit “Christian” colleges was appalling and there seemed to be very little outrage at all.

  19. 19.

    Ash Can

    This is good news, to be sure, but I’m wondering what happens now. We’re all painfully aware that threads on this site have blown up along the lines of “Obama’s as bad as Bush for looking forward not backward”/”the investigation is ongoing; wait until they announce their findings before trashing the Prez.” I’ve generally been in the latter camp myself, but now there actually are findings that are being announced. The rubber’s meeting the road now, and I’m very interested to see what comes of it, to say the least.

  20. 20.

    suzanne

    But no one’s been convicted of anything, so apparently I’m out of line for offering my opinion that Bush is corrupt.

  22. 22.

    PaminBB

    And the sun came up in the east today.

    I’ll be surprised if anyone actually pays a price for these violations.

  24. 24.

    J

    Ultimately, from the cosmic perspective, all of these failings, if indeed they are failings, can be laid at the door of the imperfectibility of humankind. To find fault, to hold those guilty to account, to want prosecutions or punishment is the sign of a liberal temperament, at once shallow and dangerous, for it can stem only from a belief in the perfectiblity of human life. It is, in a word, utopianism! And we know where that got us, and who was responsible–Lincoln, FDR, Emancipation, The new deal, sorry I mean Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the Gulag and so on.

  25. 25.

    BGinCHI

    One of Loathsome Andrea Mitchell’s first guests today was a Teaparty Express spokeswoman, invited to talk about the SOTU and the GOP/TP response.

    The woman was given the same platform as anyone else from both parties, with no explanation.

    And there you have it. The media is so wired for the right that there just isn’t any way to break into it.

  28. 28.

    Niques

    I have a hope that, if the US won’t prosecute our villains, the UN will take a stand and do so on our behalf.

  31. 31.

    JCT

    But, ACORN!

    And that whole mess with Clarence Thomas is mind-blowing. Can you imagine if that was Ginsberg? Her head would be on a pike already.

  32. 32.

    Jager

    @BGinCHI:

    I was at my granddaughter’s B-Day party on Saturday night and one of her history profs told me, he think that over the next few years the Repubs will split into 2 parties, “nuts and nuttier”, But what would he know, he’s just a dammned over educated, ivory tower, left coast elistist, right? (The fact that TP folks get a forum seperate from the regular R’s is interesting isn’t it)

  35. 35.

    Gustopher

    I hope all involved are arrested and put into solitary confinement until they turn on each other.

    Or they get cancer, which would be fitting since they are a cancer on democracy.

  38. 38.

    BGinCHI

    @Jager: I’m disgusted by it, but part of me roots for them to split the party.

    Anyone else wish we had a pluralistic, parliamentary democracy?

  39. 39.

    danimal

    This just shows that the Office of Special Counsel under Obama is politicizing the Hatch Act.

    /wingnut logic

  40. 40.

    Gustopher

    I don’t think Thomas’ failure is a big deal — it’s a paperwork violation where everyone already knows the relationships that the paperwork is there to expose.

    In an ideal world, it would be filled out right, but I can see it getting screwed up. Honest and easily corrected mistake seems the most likely explanation.

  44. 44.

    BGinCHI

    @Martin: I’d have to use the google, but off the top of my head I’d say it’s by far the most common form in the West.

    But yeah, I take your point.

    For whatever reason, all this news is fucking depressing today. I think I might have SAD.

  45. 45.

    TOP123

    @Gustopher: If it is plausible for one of the top judges in the land to make an honest mistake when filling out a legal document and checking ‘none’ by the line for spousal income when in fact his spouse makes well over half a million dollars in a given year that is known of, then I would like to be a judge. My being unfamiliar with some of the case law should be no impediment.

  46. 46.

    Gus

    If Nixon was president at any time in the last 10 years, he wouldn’t have had to resign. Hell, they might not have held hearings.

  47. 47.

    slag

    I’m curious as to how often the Hatch Act has been violated in the past. Just as a general point of inquiry.

    Also, as a general point of inquiry, why does BJ font now look unfortunately like Comic Sans to me? Chrome? What have you done?

  50. 50.

    The Grand Panjandrum

    … little-known Office of Special Counsel …

    Yes. Especially to those who allowed a “mere blog” (TPM) to break the story on the US Attorney firing scandal because it wasn’t interested in real reporting.

  54. 54.

    Alex S.

    @freelancer:

    Haha… you see these awesome production values, a score that could have been made by Hans Zimmer (Inception), flashbacks of 200 years, and then you ask yourself “What’s a pawlenty?”

  56. 56.

    The Moar You Know

    Slightly OT, and worthy of a front page post: Looks like Planned Parenthood is anticipating someone trying to pull off an O’Keefe like scheme, or something much worse. They’ve called in the FBI on the matter.

    @Loneoak: Definitely worthy of a FP post. That story pissed me off so much I gave Planned Parenthood $100, the very first charitable contribution of my life. Fuck those assholes who are trying to shut them down – they saved the futures and lives of several women that I knew back in the day, and they deserve every dollar you can give them.

  57. 57.

    HeartlandLiberal

    Main page hosed in IE 8 and FireFox 3.6.13.

    No sidebars at all. Only a blue bar header followed by a paragraph of tect for the story. An arrow on the right margin of the blue bar you can click to go to the permalink for the story.

    At the very bottom a stack of blue bars across the page, with a title in each bar, ‘Search Site’, ‘Sitemeter’, ‘Contact’, ‘Categories’, etc.

    Oh, I get it. I am getting the mobile site by default, even though I am sitting here with my Dell laptop.

    There is a link at bottom to switch to the desktop site.

  58. 58.

    Davis X. Machina

    It’s their government, and there’s no real limit on what you get to do to keep and hang onto, and keep others off of, your property. Think “Castle Doctrine”, just applied to politics.

    Born booted, spurred and ready to ride.

  59. 59.

    freelancer

    @Martin:

    Yeah I posted it after I saw it on Maddowblog, but then TPM compared it to the Armageddon Trailer. Mindmeld I guess, I just remember when I was in high school and my friend was in love with all things schmaltzy and stylistic without regard to actual substance. He couldn’t shut up about the President’s speech montage at the time. He feels a bit more shame now. Content matters.

  63. 63.

    Turgidson

    @Xecky Gilchrist:

    Of course, the bad news is that the same party somehow got considerably crazier after the 2008 election and the wise American electorate rewarded them for it.

    At least the Bush crime syndicate’s involvement in this was reduced aside from Rove raising gobs of untraceable money to fund candidates. I guess. Also, too.

  64. 64.

    handy

    @Mark S.:

    But some commenter on a blog somewhere said they wanted Bush to die therefore BOTH SIDES DO IT! The obvious solution is more guns for all.

  65. 65.

    GregB

    So it appears that President Obama’s dildonic advisers are going with the 5 pillars theme for the SOTU.

    Be prepared for a full on Pam Gellar and Frank Gaffney shit-fit, mosque, Muslim ooga-booga melt-down.

  66. 66.

    lamh32

    OT, but during the discussion last week over Rick Santorum’s slavery/abortion analogy, many people including Joe Klein over at Time brushed it off as just the usual pro-life/conserv spiel about abortion and slavery. Even with the possibility that it was a common comparison in many pro-life circles, it didn’t sit well with me, and unfortunately, I’m not as good as some people were in articulating my problem with the analogy.

    Well, thank goodness for TNC over at the Atlantic. Damn that dude can write. Anyway, he’s posted a very good post on the subject anyway, read the whole post, but this is the paragraph that stood out for me:

    ..difference (that) lies the racism implicit in the abortion/slavery analogy Santorum employs and Klein defends. The analogy necessarily holds that the enslaved were the equivalent of embryos–helpless, voiceless beings in need of saviors. In this view of American history, the saviors, much like the pro-life movement, are white. In fact, African-Americans, unlike, say, zygotes, were always quite outspoken on their fitness for self-determination. Indeed, from the Cimaroons to Equiano to Nat Turner to Harriet Tubman to the 54th regiment, slaves were quite vociferous on the matter of their enslavement. It is simply impossible to imagine the end of slavery without the action of slaves themselves. And it is equally impossible to say the same about the end of abortion, if only because fetuses are generally incapable of egressing from the womb and setting up maroon societies, publishing newspapers or returning to the womb to “liberate” other presumably endangered fetuses.

    Noting that Jesse Jackson employed the same logic, or that anonymous members of some black church, somewhere — as is the fashion in this day — is an appeal to authority, an argument via proxy that simply shows that the alleged authority (Jesse Jackson, unnamed black people) is wrong too. But the appeal also shows how little pro-Lifers who push this issue, and pundits who defend them as “right on the facts,” actually know about American history…

    The Unbearable Whiteness of Pro-Lifers and Pundits

  67. 67.

    Mike in NC

    Office of Special Counsel cites numerous violations of the Hatch Act and concludes that federal taxpayers ended up footing the bill for activities that were intended to advance Republican political candidates.

    To the extent this gets noticed at all by the MSM, their reaction can be expected to be the usual shrug that ‘both sides do it’, right?

  68. 68.

    Q

    Here’s a serious question that I’ve never seen answered: Can anyone explain to me how taxpayer-supported Glenn Reynolds can spend his entire workday essentially stumping for Republicans, all the while working on taxpayer-paid-for computers and and taxpayer-paid-for phone lines without violating the Hatch Act? Is there some dumbass-professor-exemption?

  70. 70.

    PIGL

    @Comrade Javamanphil: I’m wondering which would be more perverse, a high or low ratio or dead girls to live boys? And could there be anything decadent, perverse, loathsome, and sick enough is the public arena to distract our jaded eyes from the perpetual search for a free porn site with even worse?

    I’m guessing no.

    There is no longer a political price to be paid for any evil, howsoever grotesquely and in-your-face Satanic. The only price exacted is against those few who still notice it.

  72. 72.

    ppcli

    I can’t even get outraged anymore. Of course nothing will happen. What was the most astonishing to me at the time was the sheer shamelessness of those people. Rove sets up a separate email account, in flagrant violation of the law – Ooopsie! And it was erased? So clumsy. Will do better next time. Wink wink. Subpoena from congress? I don’t feel like showing up. Ya gonna send your heh-heh enforcer? Every single decision out of that White House, from the visit to Mississippi before New Orleans after Katrina, to the hiring of purportedly apolitical career employees and interns was politicized to a degree that would make Nixon blush. Rove was rubbing it in the Village’s face. And hardly a peep from them, or from the supine “opposition party”.

  74. 74.

    tofubo

    they did not take those letters off those keyboards, i’m using one right now, and i can spell george UU. bush just fine

    hey holder, uphold the law much ??

  75. 75.

    redoubt

    @slag: I’m a Fed, and every single year about six weeks and two weeks before election time our agency sends out an e-mail about the Hatch Act.

    In my experience Republican appointees tend to try to pretend they never heard of it, until they have a sit-down with their agency’s general counsel. . .

Comments are closed.