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Lots of bad reasoning on both sides here.

First of all, the throwing of the election required only the prosecution, not the prosecutorial misconduct. So the misconduct is not evidence of Democratic election tampering.

Second, the fact that the prosecutor was appointed by the Bush admin (Gonzales) does not mean that the Democrat was not motivated by politics to pursue the investigation. They hired him thinking he’d be a sound prosecutor; clearly they were wrong. They also hired him thinking he’d be non-partisan; perhaps they were wrong about that, too.

It’s possible that Welch and his office were coordinated with some wider Democratic witch hunt against Republicans, but let’s face it: Stephens is one of the porkiest porkers in the Senate, and most likely deserved prosecution. The investigation must have been going on for years, and probably began long before Welch was appointed US Attorney.

I think the real take from this is that US Attorneys tend to think they’re a law unto themselves, and Democrats tend to think they’re the universal source of morals, so a Democrat as US Attorney is a very dangerous, unmanageable beast indeed. These two basically ignored the law and assumed they had every right to railroad a defendant. We’ve seen similar behavior from Democratic AGs and Governors (think Eliot Spitzer) and from the Obama administration.

Short version: Democrats can’t be trusted to obey the law. They think they’re above it.

ChrisK wrote: “First, it would seem to the casual observer that the Federal prosecution of a sitting U.S. Senator would be a big enough deal that the Attorney General would keep himself in the loop.”

I doubt that “in the loop” would extend to his reviewing depositions from individual witnesses regarding the misconduct of FBI agents, unless that had been brought up by the judge. I would imagine the supervisor stays in the loop by asking for the bullet points regarding what’s at issue, and asking what help, if any, the prosecutors need. So if the Attorney General actually did know the details of the prosecutorial misconduct ahead of time, it would mean he was guilty of micromanaging at an intensely low level, and probably incompetent.

It really looks to me as though this Welsh character was a bad egg.

@ChrisK: You still haven’t given me ONE verifiable, substantive, authoritative source to back up your point of view. Instead, you simply gainsay what I have put forward and repeat that mantra over and over and over.

You denigrate my federal service and are apparently without any comparable expertise in this area so I don’t see how an honest debate is possible.

You’ve attempted to drag the conversation here away from the topic of the post with another of the transparent distractions so favored by those on the left when they don’t want anyone to seriously consider the issues that are originally presented.

Again, if you can offer me something to consider that isn’t based on your opinion I’m all ears. But until then, you are just repeating yourself, wasting my time and attempting to distract other readers from the topic at hand.

@ChrisK: You still haven’t given me ONE verifiable, substantive, authoritative source to back up your point of view.

The topic of the post is that somebody screwed up at DoJ and that Ted Stevens got the shaft because of it.

Your position is that the only people who should be held accountable are the people at the very lowest level–those directly involved in what happened. Because they’re Democrats. And that nobody else at any level should be held accountable for it. Because those people would not be Democrats.

What “facts” did you use to back up that opinion? Can you direct me to a source?

Your experience in the government, whatever it was, apparently tells you that it is “asinine” to expect that supervisors would bear any responsibility for the function of their departments. I find it difficult to believe that such is the case. Can you provide ONE verifiable, substantive, authoritative source to back up the idea that supervisors in the government don’t supervise?

My position is that, whoever the functionaries are who screwed the pooch on this one, that this was a Department of Justice under a Republican president. Here’s my source on that one. Of course, the source is the Department of Justice web site, so, by your reckoning, it cannot be trusted, right? Aren’t you the one who bolstered your posting with a quote saying that the DoJ was “corrupted?” (To be fair, though, the quote was specifically referring to the DoJ under Bush.)

Were you the Attorney General at some point in the past? I don’t see “Mike’s America” anywhere on the list of former Attorneys General, but maybe you went by a different name then. Are you, possibly, Michael Mukasey himself? That would explain why you’re so intent on insulating Mukasey from responsibility.

Did you, in fact, work for the Department of Justice at all? If so, was it in a supervisory capacity? If yes, when was this? Hundreds of thousands of people can say that they have, at one point or another, worked for the Federal government. A mailman works for the Federal government. That doesn’t mean that he has any particular expertise in the inner workings of the top levels of the DoJ, or even of the Post Office Department. Were you an employee at the top three or four rungs of one of the Federal departments? Heck, we can even stretch it to the top four or five rungs, just to give you a fighting chance. If you want your experience to be authoritative, then you must provide enough detail that I accept you as an authority. Otherwise, how on earth can I take you as seriously as you seem to want to be taken?

Listen, Mike’s America. I worked in food service for a long time, but that was over twenty years ago. My experience as a baker in a local restaurant two decades in the past doesn’t mean that I have any idea about how to run a five-star restaurant in Manhattan.

@ChrisK: So now I’m being lectured on government by a food service employee… Great! I guess my work in government at every level from the Court House to the White House was a complete waste of time. I should have worked the drive-in window at McDonald’s if I expected my arguments to have any credibility.

Again, you present NOTHING to validate your point of view other than your point of view.

Hardly what I would call substantive or authoritative.

Your goal is to steer blame away from the criminals who perpetrated this abuse of power and effected the balance of power in the U.S. Senate onto Bush Administration political appointees who had they interfered in the case would have been tarred and feathered by Democrats in the Senate.

It isn’t that you DON”T get the fundamental issue here, I am sure you do. You simply want to distract anyone else who might be on the fence from drawing a reasonable conclusion with the timeworn liberal tactic of throwing so much mud against the wall that some of it will stick.

You’re playing a game here and it stopped being amusing hours ago.

@ChrisK: So now I’m being lectured on government by a food service employee… Great! I guess my work in government at every level from the Court House to the White House was a complete waste of time. I should have worked the drive-in window at McDonald’s if I expected my arguments to have any credibility.

To recap:

Did you, in fact, work for the Department of Justice at all? If so, was it in a supervisory capacity? If yes, when was this? Hundreds of thousands of people can say that they have, at one point or another, worked for the Federal government. A mailman works for the Federal government. That doesn’t mean that he has any particular expertise in the inner workings of the top levels of the DoJ, or even of the Post Office Department. Were you an employee at the top three or four rungs of one of the Federal departments? Heck, we can even stretch it to the top four or five rungs, just to give you a fighting chance. If you want your experience to be authoritative, then you must provide enough detail that I accept you as an authority. Otherwise, how on earth can I take you as seriously as you seem to want to be taken?

Again, you present NOTHING to validate your point of view other than your point of view.

My point of view has three parts:

1. This all happened at the Bush Department of Justice.
2. People responsible for screwups should bear that responsibility.
3. “People responsible” includes the people who actually committed the misdeeds, as well as the supervisors who allowed the misdeeds to take place on their watch.

Number one is not open to discussion. It is a fact.

Number two seems like common sense, and it’s something most people would agree with. If you feel that people who are responsible for screwups should not bear the responsibility for their screwups, then you need to explain why that is.

Number three also seems like common sense. If you disagree, the onus is on you to explain why. The responsibility may not go all the way up to Bush or even Mukasey, but your contention that supervisors bear no responsibility for what goes on in the departments they supervise flies in the face of what I’m guessing most people feel.

A construction foreman can face consequences if the construction crew screws up the building project.

A school principal can face consequences if teachers don’t raise test scores fast enough.

A CEO can face consequences if the thousands of people working below him don’t make enough profits to please the Board of Directors.

A president can face consequences if the thousands of people working below him don’t please the electorate.

You’re saying that government bureaucrats are immune to consequences from awful misdeeds of the people they supervise. Please give authoritative proof that such is the case. Otherwise, this is just your point of view, and a foolish one, at that. Nobody except you, it would seem, believes that government employees are immune to consequences from poor job performance.

Mikes America – So now I’m being lectured on government by a food service employee… Great! I guess my work in government at every level from the Court House to the White House was a complete waste of time. I should have worked the drive-in window at McDonald’s if I expected my arguments to have any credibility

You interned at the white house (wasn’t monica an intern?). You got at job at the EPA, did you have qualifications and an education for that role? Were you were a political appointee? And since 1996 when you went off the government dole, have you earned a dime in the private sector?

Yep, I guess that qualifies you to go off an any tangent you want with self rightiousness and ingnigation.

@ChrisK: Simply repeating your opinion over and over and over and over hardly qualifies as a substantive, authoritative source.

Again, you offer NOTHING.

You’re wasting everyone’s time here.

@Mastiff: I’ll stack my White House experience up against your stint at the Burger King any day.

ChrisK/Mastiff… do not misrepresent yourself as different individuals here, or you will find yourself in the spam filter. Such game playing is unacceptable at FA.

@MataHarley: Thanks for spotting that. I just assumed Mastiff was a worthless phony and didn’t bother to check. Now I know for sure.

Pretty typical of a lib to invent a sock puppet to back them up.

[Repetitive non-substantive comment removed by post moderator].

[Repetitive non-substantive comment removed by post moderator].

[Repetitive non-substantive comment removed by post moderator].

Sorry guys but game over. Continuing to repeat yourselves over and over and over and over without offering the slightest back up for your opinion isn’t going to fly.

Further comments by ChrisK and Mooseburger on this thread will be deleted.

Mike:

Censorship?

And actually I was waiting to hear you responses….but?

Ron

@Ron: Censorship? Not really. When you consider that the two above had simply repeated themselves over and over and over and over. You can read what they have to say above in all it’s skimpy detail.

They made their points. Their points were wrong and despite repeated opportunities to back them up they simply repeated them.

That’s not a debate and it’s not a discussion. What they were doing is attempting to throw so much mud up that the point of my post would be obscured.

But the facts stand. Activist Democrats working with Dept. of Justice cover and protection by Senate Democrats worked to subvert justice and the balance of power in the Senate.

ChrisK/Mastiff…. you wanted to know what I was talking about on your dual personality here? Comment #57 as ChrisK, and comment #59 posted 20 minutes later, the same Mike’sA comment were both from the identical IP address. You are either the same individual, or two in a mind meld, sharing the same computer.

Playing the multiple personality game to portray bolstered support for arguments is something we have little tolerance for here at FA. And we’ve busted many for doing this in the past.

I believe that there is third sock in that drawer as well.

That one appeared prior to ChrisK.

@MataHarley:

http://www.nuip.net/

As it says on the site,

Every website you visit will record your IP address which is your online identity. From having your IP address people can find out where you reside and which internet service provider you are using. nuip.net changes your IP address within seconds!

Is this a valid concern? You tell me:

Comment #57 as ChrisK, and comment #59 posted 20 minutes later, the same Mike’sA comment were both from the identical IP address. You are either the same individual, or two in a mind meld, sharing the same computer.

Case closed, Nancy Drew!!

Yo Chris… Nancy Drew here. All computers have a unique static or dynamic IP that assigned to their particular computer by your ISP. The only way several can use the same is via a router for a local network.

NUIP is one of the services to the professional poster who likes to hide his/her identity by hiding behind a central and singular IP address (i.e. NUIP).

Are you now telling us that you subscribe to a masking service that is also used by Mastiff?

Are you now telling us that you subscribe to a masking service that is also used by Mastiff?

No. I’m not saying anything about Mastiff. I’m speaking only about myself.

I don’t “subscribe” to anything.

I do go to NUIP and type in the url I want to visit.

(My caution, I might note, seems to be warranted.)

All I really wanted, by the end of this whole affair, was for Mike’s America to tell me what his qualifications were. As I pointed out, I can’t take him seriously as an “expert” if he doesn’t detail the source of this supposed expertise–and he definitely expects me to accept him as an expert.

The reason I asked the question repeatedly was because he repeatedly refused to answer.

Then I shall take you at your word, ChrisK. As I said, we like to have some sense of open communication here (not necessary real names, but at least a singular personality). We do not play well with a schizophrenic tag team. Your similar mind meld post make me wonder if you got dumped into the spam filter, and took on another identity to get thru. When I found you weren’t labeled spam, that’s why I raised the caution flag to you.

Interesting you feel you must “hide”… what *do* you say elsewhere?? And BTW, IPs don’t give out your home address and name of first born… just a region.

@ChrisK:

Uh Chris, Frank Hardy checking in with a couple of questions.

Are you really trying to convince us that your post @ 10:04pm was completely unrelated and separate from Mastiff’s post of 10:05pm, and that Mastiff is a completely unrelated and separate person posting by some bizarre coincidence from the same IP address that is still currently assigned to you?

Is that what you’re trying to convince us of in your endearingly clumsy way?

Really?

Yeah.

Ever hear of Occam’s Razor?

Aye Chihuahua: I’m not a sock in anybody’s drawer, LoL, although apparently I’ve been banished from this conversation.

Mike: You argued like Hell with ChrisK, but never did respond to a simple question I put to you. Then you lumped both, (or all three?) of us together. A pretty slick tactic to avoid defending your silly post. You will probably delete this too.

I used your own words and inferred logic to pose my questions and form a conclusion, Mike. Granted, it was an extreem analogy, but it was a valid point to consider.

If my question to you is from your own posting as a source, where would I pray tell, find some acceptable proof you desire? Not trying to play games, if you believe in your position, then defend it. I haven’t been disrespectful to you in any way. I have disagreed with the premise of you post, and called it silly. maybe I don’t understand the rules here. Maybe me and Mike would get along great as long as I jump in and bash the President every word I write, like you do Mike.

Somebody needs to be the Devil’s Advocate at times Mike, If you can’t handle that, with all your experience and all, delete me all you like. It says more about you than it does about me. And Hell, someday, I just might agree with you on some issue.

@mooseburger:

I’m not a sock in anybody’s drawer, LoL, although apparently I’ve been banished from this conversation.

I don’t think that I said anything about you being a sock, but thanks for clearing that up for us.

@Aye Chihuahua:

How fast do you think I can type, anyway? Razor that Occam, my friend.

@MataHarley:

Fair enough, though “mind meld” seems to be going a little far. I’m not the only person disagreeing with Mike’s America in this thread.

As to what I say elsewhere…only the Shadow knows.

@ChrisK:

How fast do you think I can type, anyway?

With the innovations of copy/paste and multiple browser windows you would be amazed by what you can accomplish.

@mooseburger: Moosepaste, are you just going to keep boring us to death with the same drivel? It’s old and tired. Move on pal.

As for Chris K’s latest evasion, note that he never answered Aye’s direct questions.

P.S. Has anyone else noticed that we stopped talking about the substantive and documented charges in this post a long time ago????

Seems the moonbat tactic works!

Testing.

Testing.

In the spirit of Easter I’m prepared to cut Chris K some slack and offer forgiveness. I do so not to curry favor with him or mealy-mouthed moderates who just want us all to get along but out of curiosity.

With that in mind I offer Chris K an amnesty if he was in fact using sock puppets if he will only admit to doing so.

But I also wish to ask: Who are you Chris K? What founding principles do you have, if any? WHO did you vote for in 2008?

I’d like to believe my offer of amnesty will be greeted with honest answers and I invite his/her reply.

@ Mike’s America #82
re: Aye Chihuahua #74

Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.

@ Mike’s America #82
re: Mike’s America #82

I’m ChrisK. I’m a Lefty. I haven’t voted in many years.

@ChrisK said: ” I haven’t voted in many years.”

So there is a bright side here.

Mike’s America:

It is ironic that you should expect me to answer direct questions about my background after having repeatedly refused to answer my direct questions about your background.

@ChrisK: How much more of my background do you need? Social Security number and birthdate? Bank records, school transcripts, vaccinations?

My bio is posted and once you reach that level of disclosure come and talk to me about what else you want to know.

I was just being curious and wondered if you might have some expertise or other interests you may wish to share.