Good lord. The Abramoff scandal now seems to be rotting from inside of the DoJ itself. As if it needed any help.
This from McClatchy late this afternoon (via TPM):
Making the situation more awkward for the embattled Department, the official, Robert E. Coughlin II, was deputy chief of staff for the criminal division, which is overseeing the Department’s probe of Abramoff.
He stepped down effective April 6 as investigators in Coughlin’s own division ratcheted up their investigation of lobbyist Kevin Ring, Coughlin’s long-time friend and a key associate of Abramoff.
When contacted at his home in Washington, Coughlin said he resigned voluntarily because he was relocating to Texas. “I was not asked to resign,” he said in an interview with McClatchy Newspapers. “It’s important to me that it’s made clear that I left voluntarily.”
He said he couldn’t comment on the Abramoff investigation, nor on whether he has a job lined up in Texas. He referred all other questions to friend Michael Horowitz.
Horowitz, a criminal defense attorney and former Justice Department official and public corruption prosecutor, did not respond to questions, including about whether he is representing Coughlin.
Get your brain around all of that if ya can, as we head into the weekend with the wheels continuing to come off this thing, with a new shoe dropping, it seems, every hour or so of late.
And if you’re having trouble keeping score — at least in the Abramoff game — McClatchy summarizes our story so far this way:
To which we’ll add: So far.
It’s gonna get much worse before it gets anything close to better.
WOW MOM WOW
How long we have waited, knowing it was worse than we could have imagined and yet somehow still being shocked at how bad it actually is. I’m not sure the wheels can be put back on the bus at this point.
I hate to think it but it seems alls that left for the horrendous thugs to do is “let” another attack happen on U.S. soil…
The “family values” party is dropping like flies!
And before the ink dries on that story, a major State Dept Official quits in another scandal.
The new motto is “one scandal a day keeps The Waxman away, cause nobody can keep up with all the scandals if we just keep em coming“.
The top three officials left are scandal, scandaler, and scandalest, who are overseen by dumb, dumber, and dumbest over at DOJ (Department of Just Us).
The person investigating dumb, dumber, and dumbest is the head of the Office of Special Counsel, a preznit blush appointee, and one who has come under scrutiny himself:
This is getting to be a rubric’s cube of scandals where every layer and every cube has a scandal going.
Best. Headline. EVAR. (Or at least today.)
Hey, did someone delete the RNC and overwrite it with neoCons? Not to worry folks:
(ABC News, emphasis added). So which is it, are they incompetent or incontinent? Is it possible to exercise vision or must they always be in reactionary mode … reacting to bad acting?
The Motherlode – Down a dark hole in the US Attorney purge scandal
And yet, still another one…They’re piling up 🙂
For how bad we’ve been preaching our govt is, it turns out it WORSE that us “conspiracy theorists” actually thought!!! How bad IS it??? What a cesspool!
The #1 defense of the criminal is to call you a “conspiracy theorist”. ANYONE who uses the word “conspiracy” is to be double-checked as possibly covering up something!!!
The “red alert” word is “conspiracy” or “conspiracy theorists”. Only THEY use that word! Ever notice, the people uncovering all the SHIT never use that word? It’s reserved as the first defense before they “go down in flames”…if you are persistent enough to get past their claims of “conspiracy” or “tin foil hat” theorists…
Brad, next time one of these thugs says “conspiracy”, put up one of your “flashing red lights”…which will mean, this dude is possibly covering something up…
Floridiot #7; Big Dan #8
For sure. I remember when all of us could not have contemplated what we see before our eyes.
But it seems that we have all sorta been like the slowly cooking frog that cannot detect small changes in temperature and becomes dinner.
Lets stay OUTRAGED!! We were decent and accurate in our appraisals these past few years. We were poo pooed as lefty conspiracy nuts.
Remember Ricky? After the election he was going to come over and rank on us. Chicken shit ran off when the people listened to us.
Now here we all are with Brad saying “Good Lord” and wondering if the stories are fake news!!! One can hardly blame him because who’d a thunk they would get caught on so many things? I really did suspect this madness but I did not expect they would get caught this many times in this many places.
Which brings up the next scary movie … what are they doing that we have not caught them on yet???
My psyche will not handle much more at the moment. I gotta build up some more resistance. 🙂
I do that by reading your posts and the posts of other Bradbloggers.
The Bushies value loyalty above all else.
But how do you ensure loyalty? How do you know that somebody loyal today might not turn on you tomorrow?
The time-tested way of ensuring loyalty is through blackmail. If you have personal knowledge and proof of a subordinate or colleague’s wrongdoing, you can demand their loyalty as the price they pay for you not revealing what you know.
In other words, the Bushies only hire people as crooked and corrupt as themselves, because they have no way to ensure the loyalty of anyone else.
While rooting out the corruption in the Just-Us system is important, it is even more essential to root out the corruption in the Supreme Court, the so-called “highest law in the land,” as they are the ones who nullified an election to install Bush in the first place. Criminals in the Just-Us Department don’t worry too much about criminal convictions because if Bush doesn’t pardon them, they can always appeal to the criminals on the Supreme Court.
Among the exceptions on the Supreme Court, I think, are Justices Stevens and Ginzburg. As for the rest, if they helped install Bush or were appointed by Bush, they’re dirty and sooner or later that dirt will come out.