1115.org

The Bush administration took quite a few dumps late on Friday afternoon. News dumps, that is. Their scandal and bad news minimization team was working overtime. By my just concocted index of the Bush Administration’s Admitted Skullduggery and Shame (henceforth BAd ASS), they had one of their worst Fridays ever. The sheer volume of market intervention is unprecedented. Add to that the nature and quality of the deeds and facts that necessitated market intervention on such a broad front, and it is clear that BAd ASS just scaled a new high.

First, there was the sad saga of Randall L. Tobias, director of U.S. Foreign Assistance and administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), who had previously served as the ambassador for the President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief (he actually held ambassador rank), and the platonic massages he was wont to receive from alleged hookers who visited him in his condo to perform the massages. News stories have neglected to mention whether Mrs. Tobias was also usually in attendance. They have also sadly neglected to mention whether Mr. Tobias, 65, has ever sought medical attention for an erection lasting for more than four hours. (I see that I have neglected to mention how Mr. Tobias used to be CEO of Eli Lilly Co., the manufacturer of Cialis. Perhaps the true story of why they decided to develop Cialis has never been told?)

Then there was the State Department report on global terrorism whose findings Condi Rice decided to announce late on Friday afternoon (even though the report itself will be released early this week). Apparently, the real story was not so much what the report said (a 30% increase in terrorist attacks worldwide in 2006, which will surprise no one other than Laura and Barney), but that the report was released at all:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her top aides earlier this week had considered postponing … the release of this year’s edition of the terrorism report, officials in several agencies and on Capitol Hill said.

Ultimately, they decided to issue the report on or near the congressionally mandated deadline of Monday, the officials said.

“We’re proceeding in normal fashion with the final review of this and expect it to be released early next week,” State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said.

It is not clear at the time of going to press whether the State Department has adopted a new policy of making a public announcement every time they decide to follow the law. But we may as well celebrate the fact that, in the time of Bush, one of his key henchwomen decided to ultimately follow the law, even if she was sorely tempted to do as her boss routinely does. (News stories neglected to speculate on the extent to which Condi’s decision was based on a reluctant assessment of the probability that some bloody quisling would leak the damn report if she decided to sit on it.)

(This story, by the way, comes to us from McClatchy Newspapers‘ Washington Bureau, which has now finally — thanks to Bill Moyers — attained the mythic cult status it has always richly deserved. This next story comes from them too. Funny how that works, huh?)

We come now to the sad saga of Robert E. Coughlin II, the deputy chief of staff of the criminal division of Alberto Gonzales‘ Department of Justice. The criminal division, reasonably enough, oversees the investigation and prosecution of criminals. (It’s easy to say “reasonably enough”, but in the time of Bush you would be well advised not to take any government label at face value.) Mr. Coughlin resigned because he apparently has close personal ties to people who have close personal ties to Jack Abramoff. And Jack Abramoff, of course, is a dude whose prosecution was handled by the criminal division of Alberto Gonzales’ Department of Justice. Coughlin, to be sure, recused himself from the Abramoff investigation. But it’s still nice to know that Abramoff’s tentacles reached into the upper echelons of Alberto Gonzales’ Department of Justice. I imagine that any day now McClatchy Newspapers‘ Washington Bureau will break the story of how Jack Abramoff was presented the keys to the city of Washington D.C., in a secret White House ceremony, conducted deep in an underground bunker.

A senior Justice Department official has resigned after coming under scrutiny in the department’s expanding investigation of convicted super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to federal law enforcement officials with knowledge of the case.

Making the situation more awkward for the embattled Justice Department, Robert E. Coughlin II was deputy chief of staff for the criminal division, which is overseeing the department’s probe of Abramoff.

Spokesman Bryan Sierra said Coughlin had recused himself from the Abramoff investigation and “played no role in any aspect of the investigation during his tenure in the criminal division.”

Coughlin stepped down effective April 6 as investigators in Coughlin’s own division ratcheted up their investigation of lobbyist Kevin Ring, Coughlin’s longtime friend and a key associate of Abramoff.

Coughlin held two senior staff positions at Justice while Ring was lobbying the department on behalf of Abramoff’s clients.

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.”

Let it never be said that 1115 failed in its patriotic duty to make such things clear. (Wouldn’t it be really funny, though, if some prankster in the DOJ refused to accept Coughlin’s resignation, and offered to let him continue working from his new Texas location?)

And perhaps it is also our patriotic duty to point out how much better off the country would be if a few more people were to decide to relocate to Texas, and therefore be forced to resign voluntarily?

Finally, at 6:29 pm EST on Friday, TPMmuckraker (who stay pretty closely on top of things like this) announced that “a big new bundle of documents just got dumped by the Department of Justice”. These would be even more documents pertaining to the prosecutor purge. Journalists have now officially lost count of how many document-pages have been released by Alberto Gonzales’ Department of Justice after the announcement on March 21 that “all the documents responsive to Congress’s requests over the time period in question” have been released.

Interesting how Friday afternoon’s market intervention managed to touch so many of the signature themes of the Bush presidency: how TWAT is best fought by manipulating data, how the tentacles of bribery-and-corruption reach everywhere under the Bush administration, and the endlessly diverting sexual shenanigans of distinguished members of the administration and/or what the British (with their quaint, helpless enslavement to the language of monarchy) call the ruling party.