To excavate the depths of tragedy in Iraq, try this on for size: the attempted arrest of a minister accused of murdering another parliamentarian's sons is sparking the latest deterioration in sectarian relations. And the parliamentarian fears the Bush administration is helping the minister escape arrest in order to prevent the Maliki government from imploding.

Today the largest Sunni bloc in the Iraqi parliament, the Accordance Front, said that it was withdrawing its cabinet ministers -- including Iraq's defense minister -- to protest the attempted arrest of the outgoing culture minister, Asad Kamal al-Hashimi, an Accordance Front member. On Monday, Iraqi security forces executed a warrant issued by an Iraqi judge for Hashimi, who is wanted for the 2005 murder of the adult sons of Mithal al-Alusi, one of Iraq's most prominent secular, liberal politicians. Escaping a raid on his home, Hashimi fled to the al-Rashid hotel in the Green Zone, while his party blamed PM Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, of unfair treatment. (Maliki says he had nothing to do with the raid.)

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Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA), ever the optimist, thinks it's just peachy that federal investigators have contacted as many as six of his former aides:

Doolittle said Thursday, during a weekly telephone conference with reporters, that he has no problem with his former aides talking to prosecutors because he thinks it might hasten his dismissal as a focus of the Abramoff probe.

"Why didn't they do this a year and a half ago when I wrote the attorney general, or even before that?" Doolittle said of the prosecutors.

"I finally wrote him (Attorney General Alberto Gonzales) and said please investigate," Doolittle said. "To have this dragged out for over three years is ridiculous. They've had three years to get to the bottom of this. At least they've started."

"I've always believed that the truth vindicates us," he said. "I am glad they are going to delve more into it."

It's a familiar stance from Doolittle, who's been goading prosecutors for the past couple years. In January of 2006, he announced that he'd written that letter to the attorney general, asking the Department of Justice to "come investigate me." In October of last year, his spokeswoman announced that his lawyers had been having conversations with prosecutors "which we believe have been helpful toward clearing the congressman's name." Those contacts, the spokeswoman said, had been initiated at Doolittle's request.

The thing is, prosecutors don't seem to need much encouragement (here are the reasons why). Doolittle has been in investigators' sights dating back to the very beginning of the Jack Abramoff investigation -- back in 2004, investigators subpoenaed records for Doolittle's wife's consulting firm due to her work for Abramoff. Finally, in April of this year, prosecutors offered Doolittle an opportunity to plead guilty. After he refused, FBI agents raided his Virginia home (for some reason, Doolittle wasn't happy about that).

So it's apparent the Justice Department has taken Doolittle up on his offer to "come investigate me," and they've obviously much more than just "started." But I'm sure they appreciate the support.

July 9 is the new June 28 in the U.S. attorneys scandal, if House and Senate judiciary committee chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and Pat Leahy (D-VT) have anything to say about it. That is, it's the next phase of the White House-Judiciary Committee showdown.

In a just-released letter (posted in full below) to White House Counsel Fred Fielding, Conyers and Leahy signal their intent to hit back against the White House's claim yesterday that its internal discussions about the firings of nine U.S. attorneys are outside congressional scrutiny. The two chairman write that unless Fielding specifies the claim of privilege for each document being withheld by July 9, they'll "consider whether the White House is in contempt of Congress." A contempt vote in committee is the first step, to be followed by a vote in the full House or Senate. Experts say the process has never gotten further. But if the clash between Congress and the White House continued, the next step would be a referral to the District of Columbia’s U.S. attorney to enforce the subpoena by seeking an indictment from a grand jury.

From the letter:

A serious assertion of privilege would include an effort to demonstrate to the Committees which documents, and which parts of those documents, are covered by any privilege that may apply.

Indeed, the subpoenas themselves specifically stated that for each document withheld, you should provide a description of the nature, source, subject matter, and date of the document; the name and address of each recipient of an original or copy of the document and the date received; the name and address of each additional person to whom any of the contents of the document were disclosed along with the date and manner of disclosure; and the specific legal basis for the assertion of privilege. Such privilege logs have been provided by the White House in previous Administrations, and this Justice Department has provided similar logs in this very matter, which have been used to help resolve disputes about the production of documents. Yet, you have failed to provide any such information.

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It's looking grim for the Military Commissions Act of 2006. The Act, one of the final masterstrokes of the GOP Congress, stripped war-on-terrorism detainees of access to U.S. courts and entrenched the Bush administration's system of military tribunals.

First, at the beginning of the month, military judges at Guantanamo Bay dismissed charges against two detainees, ruling that the detainees weren't properly classified as "unlawful enemy combatants," as the act demands. That prompted Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) to worry aloud that the commissions created "too many shortcuts in the whole process." Then, barely a week later, a panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the entire legal category of "unlawful enemy combatant," a neologism crucial for the Military Commissions Act. And now, today, the Supreme Court announced it will hear a case brought by two other detainees challenging the constitutionality of the act:

The Supreme Court, reversing course, agreed Friday to review whether Guantanamo Bay detainees may go to federal court to challenge their indefinite confinement.

The action, announced without comment along with other end-of-term orders, is a setback for the Bush administration. It had argued that a new law strips courts of their jurisdiction to hear detainee cases.

In April, the court turned down an identical request, although several justices indicated they could be persuaded otherwise.

The move is highly unusual.

The court did not indicate what changed the justices' minds about considering the issue. But last week, lawyers for the detainees filed a statement from a military lawyer in which he described the inadequacy of the process the administration has put forward as an alternative to a full-blown review by civilian courts.

Last week, Defense Secretary Bob Gates failed to convince President Bush to shutter Guantanamo. The court won't hear the case until at least the fall, as its term is concluding, so Gates will have several months to argue that the administration is at risk of having its entire legal edifice for Guantanamo Bay collapse.

The salmon are fighting back. The House Resources Committee has announced an investigation into Cheney's involvement in Klamath River water management following a WaPo report that Cheney helped to push a federal water policy that benefitted farmers but also killed over 70,000 salmon. A date for the hearing has not been set. (McClatchy)

U.S. companies are partly to blame for civil unrest in Colombia, according to Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-MA), who said at a congressional hearing yesterday that Chiquita Brands International and an Alabama coal company were funding paramilitaries with millions of dollars. (AP)

Cheney's expense account is safe. The House narrowly rejected Rep. Rahm Emanuel's (D-Ill.) proposal to cut off funding for the Office of the Vice President. (AP)

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So, the White House has claimed executive privilege, and Congress has thrown down the gauntlet. So where are we now?

Enter the legal scholars! If there's one thing they agree on, it's that there's no easy answer.

Marty Lederman over at Balkinization, no fan of the administration, calls Solicitor General Paul Clement's arguments for privilege "serious and substantial" and "consistent with similar arguments in analogous privilege memos in Democratic and Republican Administrations alike." That doesn't mean they're right, but that does mean they must be reckoned with.

Such a reckoning would be a long and murky process. It would start with a congressional vote of contempt against the White House, which would in and of itself take months. "Since 1975," USA Today tells us, "10 senior administration officials have been cited but the disputes were all resolved before getting to court. No president has mounted a court fight to keep his aides from testifying on Capitol Hill."

A long court fight is clearly more in the administration's interest than Congress', a fact that led Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) to argue yesterday that if Congress wants anything from the White House in the short term, they should take what they can get on the president's terms -- and then escalate later if they're unsatisfied. Given Democratic reactions yesterday, that seems unlikely. And as I pointed out yesterday, the White House is unlikely to go along with such a plan.

Yep, time is on President Bush's side. From McClatchy:

Mark J. Rozell, a political science professor at George Mason University, said presidents historically had put up a fuss and exerted executive privilege only to reach some sort of accommodation with Congress....

But Rozell said Bush might decide to dig in this time.

With low popularity ratings, time running out on his presidency with no anointed successor and a penchant for secrecy, "It's a nothing-to-lose presidency at this point," said Rozell, the author of "Executive Privilege: The Dilemma of Secrecy and Democratic Accountability."

"Bush lacks the kind of incentives that other presidents had to accommodate," Rozell said.

As for the impact of Bush's action Thursday on the congressional investigation into the Justice Department, Rozell said: "Clearly the president is trying to stall or shut down access to critical information that Congress feels it needs. For now, it slows the investigation and puts the two branches on a collision course constitutionally."

It's been one subpoena-crazy day, what with the White House refusing to comply with congressional demands for information about nine fired U.S. attorneys. But there's at least one set of subpoenas that won't be issued today. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) has been able to come to terms with the White House about the deepening White House Security Office scandal.

On Tuesday, Waxman wrote to White House Counsel Fred Fielding to detail new allegations that the WHSO -- entrusted to ensure compliance with procedures to safeguard classified information -- is dysfunctional. The heads of the office, just-departed director James Knodell and deputy Ken Greeson, took no action when presented with charges that aides to President Bush and Vice President Cheney left classified documents strewn throughout hotel rooms and across their desks, and they themselves took cellphones and Blackberries into secure facilities in violation of protocol. A frustrated Waxman told Fielding that unless House Government Oversight Committee investigators received access to interview three current and former White House officials who could speak to the alleged pattern of abuse, Waxman would ask the committee for authority to subpoena them.

Waxman said he'd seek the subpoena authority at the committee's business meeting today. But committee aides explain that the meeting is off, as Fielding and Waxman have reached an agreement, averting the subpoenas for now. The White House has consented to "transcribed interviews" with Alan Swendimen, director of the Office of Administration; Mark Frownfelter, an ex-security officer; and former WHSO head Jeff Thompson. "The fact that we were able to reach an agreement on testimony and getting the interviews to take place will be helpful in moving the committee's inquiry forward," says an Oversight Committee staffer.

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So what does Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, have to say about the White House's invocation of executive privilege?

Sen. Specter has supported the Democrats' rejection of the White House's offer -- private testimony by aides with no oath and no transcript -- saying that such interviews should only be conducted with a transcript.

At a press conference today, he still insisted on a transcript, but softened his stance a little, reasoning that a court battle over the White House's claim of executive privilege would drag on for years. And given that "this investigation is lagging very, very badly," he said,

I think we ought to give consideration to bringing in those individuals and finding out what we can under the president's terms. It doesn't preclude us from compulsory process and proceeding with the subpoenas at a later time.

So Specter's plan is to conduct the informal interviews offered by the White House and then get tough if need be. The thing is, the White House's offer was very clear on this point. From White House counsel Fred Fielding's letter to the House and Senate judiciary committees back in March:

Such interviews would be private and conducted without the need for an oath, transcript, subsequent testimony, or the subsequent issuance of subpoenas.

The White House has made it very clear it's all or nothing with their offer -- on their terms, exclusively on their terms, or not at all. Maybe Specter thinks they'll be able to strike a deal, and given that he speaks relatively frequently with Fielding, maybe he has good reason to think so. But the White House's actions so far don't give good reason for optimism.

An extended excerpt from Specter's remarks today are below.

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The White House is only willing to permit aides to be interviewed in private, with no oath and no transcript. To which Congress says, OK, except for the lack of a transcript. As Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) argued on the Senate floor earlier this month, they need a transcript in order to hold aides to account for lying. It's a crime to lie to investigators, but without a transcript, it becomes much more difficult to prosecute that crime.

Which, it would seem, is precisely the point. During a backgrounder with reporters today, a "senior administration official" said that the arrangement had been offered in order to "provide information, not to appear to be having testimony without having testimony." False testimony is a crime; whereas false information is, well, lamentable. Transcripts would mean testimony and that would create "a perjury trap" -- I guess in the sense that a liar might get caught.

The official continued soothingly: "misleading Congress is misleading Congress, whether it's under oath or not. And so a transcript may be convenient, but there's no intention to try to avoid telling the truth."

But for some reason, Specter, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT), and others just won't trust in the White House's good intentions.

While Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) hasn't "expressed a specific opinion yet on this latest development," according to spokesman John Hart, the White House-Senate Judiciary Committee showdown over the U.S. Attorney firings puts him in mind of GOP blunders with the Clinton administration. It would be better for the Democratic majority to focus on government waste than "witch hunts," in Coburn's view. Says Hart:

"Recall that Dr. Coburn is perhaps the only Senator who called for Gonzales' resignation to his face so he can't be dismissed as an administration apologist. He would rather see the Majority engage in waste hunts rather than witch hunts. If Congress spent a fraction of the time it spends on political oversight on real, objective oversight of agencies we could save the taxpayers billions of dollars every year. Also, if the Majority wants to set the standard for openness and transparency they should follow Senator Obama's lead and disclose their special interest pork-barrel requests.

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Several readers have asked how it is possible that former Gov. Don Siegelman (D-AL) might go to prison for 32 charges when he was acquitted on 25 of them.

I asked Nora V. Demleiter, who wrote the case book Sentencing Law and Policy and is the managing editor of the Federal Sentencing Reporter, about the legality of the judge's decision to consider all 32 charges. She said that in fact federal judges can consider those charges during sentencing thanks to the Supreme Court's 1997 decision in United States v. Watts. In that case, the Supreme Court held that as long as the government shows that the acquitted charges pass a "preponderance of evidence" standard, they can still be entered as evidence in a sentencing hearing. (This is clearly a lower hurdle to clear than the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard necessary for a criminal conviction.)

So even though Siegelman was acquitted on 25 charges, that alleged conduct can still be reviewed for sentencing.

Federal investigators are continuing on Rep. Tom Feeney's (R-FL) trail. The latest pin to drop -- the FBI has asked Florida Today for a video of an interview with Feeney. During the interview, from September of last year, Feeney minimized his relationship to Jack Abramoff to the vanishing point, saying that "“My office has never done anything for Jack Abramoff” and that "he’s never asked us for anything.” (The St. Petersburg Times later found a possible exception to that.)

“We didn’t have any relationship at all with him other than he gave us a contribution" was the kicker.

Feeney, of course, accompanied Abramoff on one of his infamous golf junkets to Scotland in 2003. Feeney was one among three lawmakers on the trip -- the other two were ex-Reps. Bob Ney (R-OH) and Tom DeLay (R-TX).

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Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) took a filleting knife to Vice President Dick Cheney's attempts to elide the Archives' Information Security Oversight Office on the House floor just now. Following through on his promise to defund the veep's office if it doesn't comply with an executive order mandating the ISOO inspect how each executive "entity" handles classified information, the House Democratic Caucus Chairman introduced an amendment to slice funding for the vice
president's office from the executive branch's budget. Watch:

Some choice excerpts:

Yesterday the vice president was forced to admit what even an eighth-grade student knew: there is no Cheney branch of government. While the vice president's excuses may change, his desire to ignore the rule remains just as strong as ever. The vice president is unwilling to risk that the documents detailing the flawed intelligence or faulty assumptions that led us into the war in Iraq [sic]. He has been held unaccountable for six years, and now he wants to be held unaccountable in the historical record as well...

If his office is not in the executive branch, then there is no executive branch office to fund. And perhaps more importantly, it underscores that the vice president is not above the law, and cannot ignore the rules. The law should follow him, whatever branch of government he chooses to hang his hat in.

Update: From Raw Story:

With limited members in the chamber, Rep. Emanuel's amendment appeared to be defeated by a voice vote. However, the bill is set to receive a recorded vote later in the day. A Democratic leadership staff member told RAW STORY that a party-line vote in favor of the amendment was expected.

Scooter Libby has a new name: inmate number 28301-016. That's according to the Bureau of Prisons, which is ready and waiting for Libby's arrival.

After losing a motion earlier this month to delay his first day in prison, Libby's currently trying a last ditch appeal before reporting to prison later this summer. If he wins, he'll remain free until an appeals court decides whether to uphold the verdict against him; if he loses, only a pardon could save him from beginning to serve his 2 1/2 year sentence.

Ed. Note: Thanks to TPM Reader HC.

The judge on Gov. Don Siegelman's (D-AL) case announced yesterday that the 25 charges a jury found Siegelman not guilty of committing are fair game during sentencing, The Birmingham News reports:

Fuller decided that charges on which Siegelman was acquitted at trial could be used in considering his sentence. Prosecutors had argued that, even though a jury did not find him guilty, there still was evidence of some wrongdoing.

The hearing continues today where prosecutors are still pressing for a 30-year prison term.

Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT), the ranking member on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law, says it's a low-down dirty shame that the White House had to exert executive privilege over the U.S. attorneys subpoena. If only the Democrats, promulgating a "myth of wrongdoing," hadn't opted to "shred the Constitution":

“It is unfortunate that the Majority has seen fit to turn down reasonable offers of cooperation in favor of court battles that will do nothing except draw headlines and further distract the Judiciary Committee from work that needs to be done. After close to 10,000 pages of documents, dozens of interviews and testimony under oath, this investigation has not led, as the majority has speculated, to the White House. This investigation has spent millions of dollars and thousands of hours of work to discover politics play a part in political appointments. If the Majority had accommodated the White House in the early part of the year, we could have already interviewed these people and moved forward with the investigation.

Cannon continued, “Instead, the Majority has stonewalled and denied the Committee the ability to interview the White House staff with the intent to promulgate a myth about wrongdoing. The Majority’s stonewalling has led the American people down a path of ‘constitutional crisis’. We take an oath to defend the Constitution, not shred it.”

Here's the full statement from Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee:

"This is a further shift by the Bush Administration into Nixonian stonewalling and more evidence of their disdain for our system of checks and balances. This White House cannot have it both ways. They cannot stonewall congressional investigations by refusing to provide documents and witnesses, while claiming nothing improper occurred. "

"Increasingly, the President and Vice President feel they are above the law --- in America no one is above law."

Update: More from Leahy, who says he'll "take the necessary steps to enforce our subpoenas backed by the full force of law":

More than three months ago, we rejected the White House’s “take it or leave it” offer of off-the-record, backroom interviews as unacceptable. Since that time, despite many attempts to narrow the dispute and begin to obtain the information we need, the White House has not made any effort to work with us on a voluntary basis. Instead, since that time, and again today it has merely restated its initial, unacceptable offer. Today, the White House has ended its charade of empty proposals and revealed its disdain for our system of checks and balances.

I issued the subpoenas after three months of exhausting every avenue of voluntary cooperation from this White House. Evidence gathered by the investigating Committees in the House and Senate shows that White House officials, including Karl Rove and Sara Taylor, were heavily involved in these firings and in the Justice Department’s response to congressional inquiries about them. Yet, even with a subpoena, the White House has not produced a single document or allowed even one White House official involved in these matters to be interviewed. The White House cannot ... stonewall congressional investigations by refusing to provide documents and witnesses, while claiming nothing improper occurred.

From the Sacramento Bee:

Federal prosecutors have recently contacted as many as a half dozen former aides to Rep. John Doolittle, seeking information from them in their investigation of the Roseville Republican's association with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, The Bee has learned.

A statement just out from House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI):

"The President's response to our subpoena shows an appalling disregard for the right of the people to know what is going on in their government. The executive privilege assertion is unprecedented in its breadth and scope, and even includes documents that the Adminstration previously offered to provide as part of their 'take it or leave it' proposal. This response indicates the reckless disrepect this Administration has for the rule of law. The charges alleged in this investigation are serious - including obstruction of justice and misleading Congress - and the White House should be as committed to this investigation as the Congress. At this point, I see only one choice in moving forward, and that is to enforce the rule of law set forth in these subpoenas."

Update: And this just in from Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA), the chairwoman of the subcommittee that's led the House's investigation:

"It's tough to get lectured on the Constitution from the same Administration that said the Vice President is his own branch of government. The fact is that the Bush Administration, which has publicly declared its commitment to getting the truth on this issue, has stonewalled from the beginning. Mr. Fielding should understand two things: that nobody in their right mind would accept a White House offer that would condone perjury, and that saying 'take-it-or-leave-it' for months is not actually negotiation."

And so the constitutional battle begins. For only the second time in its six-plus years in office, the White House today asserted executive privilege after the House and Senate judiciary committees subpoenaed White House documents about the firing of the eight U.S. attorneys.

Update: You can read the letter from White House counsel Fred Fielding here.

"With respect, it is with much regret that we are forced down this unfortunate path which we sought to avoid by finding grounds for mutual accommodation," White House counsel Fred Fielding said in a letter to the chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. "We had hoped this matter could conclude with your committees receiving information in lieu of having to invoke executive privilege. Instead, we are at this conclusion."

Thursday was the deadline for surrendering the documents. The White House also made clear that (former counsel Harriet) Miers and (ex-political director Sara) Taylor would not testify next month, as directed by the subpoenas, which were issued June 13. The stalemate could end up with House and Senate contempt citations and a battle in federal court over separation of powers.

In his letter, Fielding said Bush had "attempted to chart a course of cooperation" by releasing more than 8,500 pages of documents and sending Gonzales and other senior officials to testify before Congress. The White House also had offered a compromise in which Miers, Taylor, White House political strategist Karl Rove and their deputies would be interviewed by Judiciary Committee aides in closed- door sessions, without transcripts. Democrats Patrick Leahy of Vermont and John Conyers of Michigan, the chairs of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, have rejected that offer.

On the other hand, Fielding said Bush "was not willing to provide your committees with documents revealing internal White House communications or to accede to your desire for senior advisors to testify at public hearings.

"The reason for these distinctions rests upon a bedrock presidential prerogative: for the President to perform his constitutional duties, it is imperative that he receive candid and unfettered advice and that free and open discussions and deliberations occur among his advisors and between those advisors and others within and outside the Executive Branch," Fielding said.

A third claim of executive privilege is probably not far behind. Fielding's move surely foreshadows the other looming battle between the Senate Judiciary Committee and the White House: yesterday's subpoenas for documents about the administration's warrantless surveillance program.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has a business meeting at 10 this morning. Stay tuned for its response to Fielding.

Update: Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, says the White House is engaged in "Nixonian stonewalling."

Sen. Leahy (D-VT) wants to know if a former White House lawyer testified truthfully during an appellate court nomination hearing about his role in formulating detention policies for enemy combatants. Kavanaugh testified that he had no involvement in the White House debate, but recent new stories from the Washington Post suggest otherwise. (Reuters)

Remember Shirlington Limo, the little firm that could who found its way into a contract with the Department of Homeland Security via ex-Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA)? The company was suing DHS for a wrongful termination of contract, but a judge threw the lawsuit out on the grounds that Shirlington submitted their original contract after the application deadline. Legal precedent: no points for late work. (Associated Press)

Gonzales returns to the Senate. July 26th. Get the TiVo ready. (The Politico)

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No other agency in the government has as much power over the lives of citizens as the Justice Department. That's what has made the U.S. attorney firings scandal so urgent.

And time and time again, the scandal has provided dispiriting glimpses of how the Department under Alberto Gonzales has handled that power. The latest came yesterday via Paul Charlton, the former U.S. attorney for Arizona -- who was among the eight fired last December.

One of the reasons that Charlton was fired, according to Justice Department officials, was "repeated instances of insubordination." There had been "multiple failures to follow [the attorney general's] instruction on death penalties," according to a chart officials prepared to justify the firings.

Yesterday, Charlton testified during a Senate committee hearing on the Department's implementation of the death penalty. Charlton is not anti-death penalty. He only believes, he explains, that "of all of the decisions that a prosecutor will make in his or her career, none will be more important than the whether to seek the death penalty." He takes the decision seriously.

So here's what counts as insubordination in Gonzales' Justice Department.

Last year, Charlton's office convicted Jose Rios Rico, a methamphetamine dealer who was charged with slaying his supplier. They decided against seeking the death penalty according to a simple rule: while the evidence had been sufficient to convince a jury that Rico was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, it was not sufficient to be sure beyond all doubt. Rico had been convicted based on the testimony of cooperating witnesses, despite the lack of forensic evidence (there was no body). Charlton explained:

This paucity of forensic evidence, evidence that doesn't forget and cannot lie, means, in my opinion, that Rios Rico should not be a death penalty case. If a government seeks to take another person's life it should do so on only the best of evidence.

It's not that prosecutors didn't know where Rico's body was -- it's in a landfill. But it would cost $500,0000 to $1 million to retrieve the body. When Charlton requested that money, the Department refused.

The attorney general's Death Penalty Committee makes the final recommendations in such cases, and so Charlton and his assistant U.S. attorneys sought to convince the committee that a life sentence was more appropriate for Rico. The committee decided against them. Instead, Charlton received a letter from the attorney general "authorizing" (read: ordering) him to seek the death penalty. Under John Ashcroft, Charlton says, he would have received notification of the disagreement before receiving such an "authorization."

The pattern was to continue. Charlton sought a reconsideration of the committee's decision. And here things went downhill:

My most memorable discussion took place with Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty. After speaking with McNulty, I received a call from his chief of staff, Mike Elston. Elston indicated that McNulty had spoken to the Attorney General and that McNulty wanted me to be aware of two things. First, that McNulty had spent a significant amount of time on this issue with the Attorney General, perhaps as much as 5 to 10 minutes. Second, McNulty wanted me to know that in presenting my view, he, McNulty, had remained neutral, neither supporting nor opposing my position. I was struck that on an issue as important as whether to execute someone, so little time would be devoted to the topic and that the Deputy Attorney General would maintain a neutral position. Elston reported that the Attorney General remained in favor of seeking the death penalty.

Charlton asked Elston if he could speak directly with the attorney general, a request memorialized in an email, dated August 15, 2006. It's from Elston to Kyle Sampson, Gonzales' chief of staff:

In the “you won’t believe this category,” Paul Charlton would like a few minutes of the AG’s time. I explained that he had already been given extensive, unusual process and that I did not think that it was a good idea for him to press this, but he insisted on me making the request.

Your thoughts?

Sampson's reply was to the point: "Denied."

As in so many other instances, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey provided a striking contrast to the current leadership when he testified before the House Judiciary Committee on this question earlier this year.

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US District Judge Mark Fuller announced a sentence range today of ten to 12 years in prison for former Gov. Don Siegelman (D-AL) and eight to ten years for his codefendant.

From the AP:

After hearing attorneys for Siegelman and Scrushy object to findings in a sentencing report filed by federal probation officers, U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller issued his findings on a sentence range for the defendants.

He found that the range for Siegelman was from 121 months to 151 months, with a fine range from $17,500 to $175,000. The prison sentence range for Scrushy was from 97 months to 121 months and the fine range from $15,000 to $150,000.

Fuller does not have to follow the guidelines and can give final sentences that are harsher or more lenient.

The prosecution pushed again today for a 30-year sentence for Siegelman.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) continues his full-court press on Dick Cheney's claims to be exempt from oversight on how his office handles classified information. In a just-released letter (pdf) to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Waxman -- joined by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and rep. William Lacy Clay (D-MO) -- asks after the status of a DOJ review requested by the head of the Archives' Information Security Oversight Office in January to settle the matter of whether the vice presidency resides in the executive branch:

Due to conflicting statements from your department, the status of your review in this matter is unclear. More than six months have passed since (ISOO Director J. William) Leonard's letter to you, and the Information Security Oversight Office has received no response to its inquiry. ... Last week, however, a spokesperson in the Department of Justice stated that this matter is under review in the department.

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And so it continues:

California GOP Rep. John Doolittle's former legislative director said Wednesday he was recently contacted by federal investigators in their probe of Doolittle's ties to jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Pete Evich, Doolittle's legislative director from 1998 to 2002 and now a lobbyist, told The Associated Press that he plans to talk to the Justice Department.

From the AP:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales met with federal prosecutors here Wednesday, where he caused an uproar by firing U.S. Attorney John McKay last December.

He also met with relatives of longtime Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Wales, who was shot to death at his Seattle home in October 2001. The murder remains unsolved, and Gonzales' now-former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, suggested in a congressional interview that the reason McKay was targeted for firing might have been that he was too aggressive in asking for additional resources to investigate the crime.

"Bringing those involved in his killing to justice is of the utmost importance to the (Justice) Department," Gonzales said in a statement issued Wednesday morning. "Together, we will work as long and hard as it takes to solve this crime and prosecute those responsible."

Gonzales has testified that he was not aware of DOJ officials using the Wales case as a reason to fire McKay, whose former office remains recused from the investigation. McKay has suggested that Sampson made up that explanation to disguise what might have been the real reason for McKay's firing: His decision not to bring election fraud charges in the extremely close 2004 governor's election in Washington state, won by Democrat Chris Gregoire after two recounts.

Ex-Gov. Don Siegelman (D-AL) is again questioning the motives and impartiality of the prosecutors who want to put him away for 30 years. And the prosecutors keep giving him good reason to.

Siegelman's sentencing hearing, which has extended into its second day today, has provoked his latest assertions.

His lawyers have also raised objections to prosecutors supporting their call for an extraordinarily tough sentence by using evidence connected to charges on which Siegelman was acquitted. Siegelman was charged with 32 counts, but acquitted of 25. According to the New York Times, Siegelman's lawyers have had it:

“The government is asking that he be penalized for every single thing he was charged with, whether he was acquitted or not,” said Susan James, a Siegelman lawyer. “The government drastically lost the case,” she said. “We strongly object to the court considering acquitted conduct.”

This is not the first time Siegelman has called his prosecution biased. He has long maintained that the investigation was based on a Republican vendetta. He's pointed to an affidavit signed by Republican lawyer Dana Jill Simpson to support his claim.

As we've detailed before, Simpson says she heard Bill Canary, a state GOP operative, say Karl Rove had promised to get the Justice Department on Siegelman. Canary also allegedly said he'd get his "girls" on Siegelman, referring to two of the US attorneys in the state.

One of those US attorneys is Canary's wife. After launching an investigation, she was forced to recuse herself from the case after objections from Siegelman's lawyers. The head prosecutor on Siegelman's case now, Acting US Attorney Louis V. Franklin, has claimed he has had complete independence from Canary. He even goes so far as to say he was solely responsible for Siegelman's case.

But there is reason to think he protests too much.

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The CIA's declassification of its "family jewels" -- decades-old files on scandals past -- may have attracted a ton of attention, but the Senate Judiciary Committee this afternoon subpoenaed the Bush administration's family jewels: information on the origin and execution of President Bush's warrantless surveillance program. Circle July 18 on your calendars -- that's the compliance deadline. If it's not met, the committee will seek explanatory testimony from White House chief of staff Josh Bolton, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Cheney chief of staff David Addington, and National Security Counsel executive director V. Philip Lago.

The committee wants a ton of material: all documents from September 11, 2001 on the program's legality; the administration's filings to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court; deals reached between the administration and "telecommunications companies, internet service providers, equipment manufacturers, or data processors" on potential liability to these companies for complying with the program; everything from the now-famous Comey episode; and more. If the administration wants to assert privilege over any of the subpoenaed material or testimony, it must specify the basis of that assertion "in sufficient detail to ascertain the validity of the claim," rather than relying on blanket claims of congressional impertinence.

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The trigger is pulled. Breaking news from the AP:

The Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney's office Wednesday for documents relating to President Bush's warrant-free eavesdropping program.Also named in subpoenas signed by committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., were the Justice Department and the National Security Council.

The committee wants documents that might shed light on internal squabbles within the administration over the legality of the program, said a congressional official speaking on condition of anonymity because the subpoenas had not been made public.

Leahy's committee authorized the subpoenas previously as part of its sweeping investigation into how much influence the White House exerts over the Justice Department and its chief, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Get ready for a huge court fight. The White House has already indicated it will challenge the subpoenas on the grounds that the executive branch has a right to receive confidential advice.

At an acrimonious hearing underway of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on the surge, retired Major General John Batiste, a former division commander in Iraq turned critic of the war, got on the administration's case for recently attributing most violence in Iraq to al-Qaeda. The audio gets a little screwy, but bear with us:

I also believe we cannot attribute all the violence in Iraq to al-Qaeda. There's a tendency now to lump it all together, and call it al-Qaeda. We have to be very careful with that. This is a very complex region. al-Qaeda is certainly a component. But there's larger components. al-Qaeda is a worldwide organization. It recognizes no national boundaries. And it's in areas where we ought to be focused.

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The latest development in ex-Rep. Tom DeLay's (R-TX) looooong, winding legal road: DeLay successfully argued to have a conspiracy charge dropped against him -- but he's still on the hook for money laundering charges. Today a state appeals court upheld an earlier district court ruling, the AP reports. To give you a sense of how fast they move down there in Texas, it took a whole year for the appeals court to deliver its ruling.

DeLay was indicted in September of 2005 by Austin District Attorney Ronnie Earle -- since then, both camps have been battling over the charges. A trial date has still not been set.

The charges here deal with accusations that DeLay helped funnel corporate political contributions (illegal in Texas) through his political committees to state candidates. DeLay is also reportedly under federal investigation for his ties to Jack Abramoff, but he has not been charged.

Apparently that letter from David Addingtion to Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) yesterday really did constitute a wholesale retreat from the "fourth branch" argument. No more will you hear Cheney's lawyers claim that the vice president isn't in the executive branch, reports Mike Allen at The Politico:

The White House has no plans to reassert the argument there is any vice presidential distinction from the executive branch, the officials said.

Two senior Republican officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the rationale had been the view of the vice president’s lawyers, not Cheney himself.

But as Addington made clear in his letter this morning (by a transparently weak argument), that doesn't mean that the vice president will submit to review by the National Archives' Information Security Oversight Office. So the game's still on. Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) is still planning a vote late today or tomorrow on cutting off the VP's office $4.8 million in executive-branch funding. We'll keep you updated as that approaches.

Those salmon never stood a chance.

As The Washington Post reports this morning in part four of the paper's series on Vice President Cheney, when the fate of some endangered salmon threatened Republican electoral prospects in Oregon, Cheney sprang into action. Farmers wanted water from the Klamath River basin diverted for irrigation, but federal biologists said that two species of fish were at stake. From the Post:

Bush and Cheney couldn't afford to anger thousands of solidly Republican farmers and ranchers during the midterm elections and beyond. The case also was rapidly becoming a test for conservatives nationwide of the administration's commitment to fixing what they saw as an imbalance between conservation and economics.

And as the Post details, Cheney reached deep into the Interior Department to make sure that the issue was dealt with.

But Karl Rove also weighed in -- in his own way. Just in case the vice president's heavy hand wasn't enough, Rove made sure that Department officials far and wide knew where the administration stood on the issue by way of one of his now famous PowerPoint presentations.

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Part IV of the Washington Post’s profile of Dick Cheney arrives today, with a focus on his interest in the environment. In 2001, Cheney reached down the chain of command to overturn the EPA in the case of the Klamath River; his intervention privileged the farmers and ranchers over government scientists in a hotly contested election state. (Washington Post)

Several complaints have surfaced recently that the Justice Department, which is tasked with documenting other agencies' progress in enforcing the Freedom of Information Act, produced reports that seriously overstated government-wide success in compliance. (Think Progress)

An institute director for the National Institute of Health has been found in gross violation of conflict-of-interest guidelines for, among other things, not divesting his holdings in biotechnology and pharmaceutical stocks. (Washington Post)

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Dana Perino, the White House spokeswoman caught in the Dick Cheney information-security scandal, relies on the fact that she's not a lawyer to deflect questions on Cheney's claims to be outside both the executive and the legislative branches of government. What's David Addington's excuse?

Addington -- who served as Cheney's chief lawyer before becoming his chief of staff after Scooter Libby was indicted -- wrote a letter (pdf) to Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) yesterday defending Cheney's asserted exemption from review by the National Archives' Information Security Oversight Office. He's got two options: either argue that the Office of the Vice President is outside the scope of the executive order governing review of how executive branch agencies are supposed to handle classified material, or return to the claim that the veep is a unique branch of government and is exempt by default. Addington, somewhat surprisingly, chooses Option One.

The executive order on classified national security information -- Executive Order 12958 as amended in 2003 -- makes it clear that the Vice President is treated like the President and distinguishes the two of them from "agencies." The executive order gives the ISOO, under the supervision of the Archivist of the United States, responsibility to oversee certain activities of "agencies," but not of the Vice President or the President.

As TPMmuckraker highlighted yesterday, that amended order, known as Executive Order 13292, doesn't just deal with "agencies," it also deals with Executive Branch "entities." Former Justice Department lawyer Marty Lederman explains that because both the President's office and the OVP "are 'entities' within the Executive branch, they are 'agencies' covered by the E.O. (see section 6.1(b)) under a plain reading of the E.O."

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While former state Senate President Ben Stevens (R-AK) headed a seafood grant board that his father, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) funded with millions in federal dollars, the younger Stevens took in thousands of dollars in consulting fees from the very companies that won the allocations. At least some of those fees, one retired Alaska fisherman has said under oath, were veiled bribes.

The fisherman, Victor Smith, spoke with the FBI in Seattle last year, just before a grand jury in Alaska issued at least three fisheries