Okay, first diary, working fast here... According to the AP via Yahoo news, the new documents from the DOJ dumped on Friday show that the DOJ Weighed Polical Activism on a scale unacknowledged up to now. The new documents include spreadsheets in which all 124 of the nominated USA's were graded on a political scale.
MASSIVE!
The fun starts below!
From Yahoo:
The political credentials were listed on a chart of 124 U.S. attorneys nominated since 2001, a document that could bolster Democrats' claims that the traditionally independent Justice Department has become more partisan during the Bush administration...
The three-page spreadsheet notes the "political experience" of each prosecutor, which was defined as work at the Justice Department's headquarters in Washington, on Capitol Hill, for state or local officials, and on campaigns or for political parties...
Several of the 124 prosecutors on the list were also members of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. The group was founded by conservative law students and now claims 35,000 members, including prominent members of the Bush administration, the federal judiciary and Congress.
Referring to this chart (in the form of a spreadsheet, evidently) Monica Goodling shows us why she pleaded the 5th:
"This is the chart that the AG requested," Monica Goodling, Justice's former liaison to the White House, wrote in a Feb. 12 e-mail to two other senior department officials. "I'll show it to him on the plane tomorrow, if he's interested."
Well done, Monica! You even managed to finger your boss as the one who ordered the spreadsheets! Not bad for a Regent grad!
As if that weren't enough, she even detailed why Iglesias got the axe:
Under Iglesias' name, Goodling wrote: "Domenici says he doesn't move cases" — a reference to Sen. Pete Domenici (news, bio, voting record), the six-term Republican from New Mexico accused of pressuring the prosecutor on a political corruption investigation. That allegation has been one of the factors driving Democrats' claims that the firings were politically motivated.
Priceless!
Think Progress also notes that these docs reveal that Kyle Sampson lied under oath.
Color me optimistic, but this would seem to be the wave that finally sucks these baboons out to sea...
UPDATE: smintheus (and others) have noted this story actually broke on Friday, and has been referred to in other diaries. I think there's enough variation here to justify keeping this dairy up, but meanwhile I will link to these excellent diaries:
Devilstower's The Chart of Injustice from Saturday's front page notes the significance of the spreadsheet to Gonzalez' previous testimony.
drational's Qualifications for U.S. Attorneys: Federalist Society notes how "the spreadsheet" used membership in the conservative Federalist Society as a litmus for being considered. Includes nice image of the spreadsheet!