American taxpayers (China) paid for Bush administration officials to conduct political campaign activities for the 2006 midterm elections, which violated federal law and is information that, perhaps, we could have used somewhat earlier than a half decade after the fact. This is not surprising, nor is it surprising Karl Rove directed this stuff. What’s really awful is the sheer incompetence of the federal officials using these taxpayer funds, seeing as the 2006 midterms were a total blowout for the GOP. If you’re going to spend our money on elections, at least win some of them. So, are any of these Bush people going to be prosecuted for breaking the law? LOL.
A spokesman for the Office of Special Counsel said Monday that because the administration officials had left office, it no longer has jurisdiction to file any charges.
Did you guys realize you probably need to take less than half a decade on this investigation you’re paying all these bureaucrats to conduct if you want to have any impact on an administration that was ending in January 2009? No? Okay, that’s fine. Not like anyone in Washington has heard about this cult-interest “presidential elections” thing.
It also said that it had not made a formal referral to the Justice Department to ask it to pursue any possible charges.
A Justice Department official on Monday declined to comment when asked if it might file charges based on the report.
We will go ahead and give you the answer: Charges won’t be filed. Because in order for this Justice Department to prosecute the Bush White House, it will have had to do something worse than break treaties and torture and murder people. [NYT]







{ 133 comments }
So, will any charges be brought against Rove?
LOL. I wish.
Perhaps a terse note from Code Pink.
How about they invalidate that Presidential election and that anything done by Bush and his friends is immediately rules unconstitutional and illegal?
They will probably rule that this invalidates the 2006 election and undo everything that happened since the Democrats took Congress, and give the Senate back to Republicans.
HA!
Yes, a flying green water buffalo will deliver the subpoena, and Karl will be tried on the people's court, where Doug Llewellyn will deliver one of his signature alliterative quips and call it "The case of the nerdy, naughty neo-con"
They'll probably just let Scooter take the fall again.
Thats a Scooter Libel
Nope, but I am envisioning a STRONGLY worded memo.
Thank goodness justice will finally be served. I was starting to question whether this was still a nation of laws.
Justice is best served cold, like pizza. h/t to devon banks…
Less and less. Or the law of the jungle.
They should prosecute whomever Obama has in those positions now. In the name of bipartisanship. & since everybody does it.
In other news, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.
And former NFL dimwit and throwing machine Bret Favre valiently holds on in his struggle to remain retired.
Jack LaLanne, still too busy doing sit-ups to let death slow him down, had no comment.
Karl Rove will use this to raise more money.
I wish you were not correct.
Karl Rove will use your comment to raise money, too.
Won't amount to shit.
Scalia and Thomas were probably dry humping the same horse.
In a threesome with Thomas' hideous wife. She was wearing her Statue of Liberty tiara at the time–and nothing else.
Okay, everyone throw up in your mouths on the count of three. 1, 2,
Pee'd for sheer awfulness!
so are we all office-holders now? In a giant upset, W is now the greatest communist leader in american history.
Sad but not surprising. If they are not going to be prosecuted, could I start a class action against them to get back some of that $$$ they blew on hookers and booze and limos and hookers and booze in limos?
Forget the cash, just seize and redistribute the hookers and booze.
It's too bad Congressman Issa didn't learn about this sooner. Things would've turned out differently.
It was all his brother's fault. Honest.
Even this news won't change my dad's opinion that Bush was the greatest (Co) Prez ever. Of course in all fairness to my dad he did suffer blunt force head trauma in 1999.
Oh my GOD! We are siblings?
Does your dad go over all the Beck talking points when you visit too? Gripe about "welfare moms" then complains that his SSI check is late? Then maybe.
And Europe is going broke because they pay half what we pay for healthcare, and Canada has a 10 month waiting list for maternity beds?
I'm shocked and awed – shocked by their galling hubris in misappropriating our tax dollars and awed by the fact they can't even win when they are cheating.
See also: Florida, 2000 election in.
Yes, they "won", by a 5-4 majority… But…
Fortunately they don't win every time they cheat. On the other hand, it looks like they are always cheating, hence the 50-50 balance of American politics.
Suggested Alt. Text "Where Bill Clinton? I need to wipe my hands."
…which violated federal law and is information that, perhaps, we could have used somewhat earlier than a half decade after the fact.
Because no one had any inkling back then that anyone was doing illegal, immoral and generally bad things?
just like nobody ever had any idea anyone could ever fly planes into buildings. . .
Erm, we DID know about it. I saw the PowerPoints years ago.
Interesting man-boobs on a couple of the Negroes.
I demand to see their Birth Certificates!
Ever hear of Watergate? If that had happened today the Justice Department and Congress would have just shrugged their shoulders and said "Eh, there's nothing we can do about this."
It's worse than a shrug. The Democrats currently in office have surely calculated since getting into office that any efforts to force Bush to answer for the gigantic pile of crap he left in his wake would be viewed by a majority of the public as a witch hunt and therefore counterproductive. Counterproductive, that is, if your goal is simply to get elected again in the next cycle rather than to govern effectively during the current one.
This goes way beyond governing, we're into national character territory now. Which is precisely why everyone wants to ignore it.
After the way the witch hunt against the Clintons and subsequent impeachment over a blow job made a lot of people sick of both impeachment and endless investigations, sometimes it seems the GOP knew they were going to out-corrupt Nixon their next time in office and wanted to make sure the public would be too sick of it to demand action.
Doing the right thing is for suckers.
Bush was just aiding us in choosing polis because we can't be trusted to choose the Right (white) people.
I shall sleep better tonight knowing full well that our weary nation will "look forward and not back" and that jack shit will come of this.
And who will be urging us to look forward and not back? The same assholes who still can't help bringing up Chappaquiddick any time a Kennedy is mentioned.
Last time I checked, while being called a sanctimonious purist, it was the Democrats that were asking me to look forward, not back.
Karl Rove will continue to fully exploit his ongoing ability to tour the nation, and speak to faithful 25 percent. Like he's doing early next month for my town's annual GOP dinner event.
Do you think if I showed up they would allow me to ask him about this report? Where's Code Pink when I (finally) need them?
"because the administration officials had left office, it no longer has jurisdiction to file any charges."
So I can kill my boss, then resign to avoid prosecution? Last time I did it the other way around, and it got messy.
Careful, there. Otherwise, my college writing professor will be comparing not just me to Jared Loughner, but also, you.
(He's already compared me to the Virginia Tech shooter, & he really missed a chance to do it again, when Ashley Todd carved a backward B in her cheek, but I still hold out hope Ol' Doc Graham has it in him to libel.)
A spokesman for the Office of Special Counsel said Monday that because the administration officials had left office, it no longer has jurisdiction to file any charges.
Like when I commit murder in NY I can just go to Vermont because, hey, it's a different state.
Wait, what? The Bush Administration broke laws? Wow, I never saw that coming.
"A spokesman for the Office of Special Counsel said Monday that because the administration officials had left office, it no longer has jurisdiction to file any charges."
Besides, the Special Counsel is too busy gearing up to go after Obama for being Kenyan or black or not white or something, also too.
Too many photos today of our most recent President. People touching him, him touching people… it's like going back in time, and thinking that he may have been a decent man after all.
Then I snort awake, shuffle in my seat, and go get more coffee. He only touched people with predator drones and laser-guided bombs.
"because the administration officials had left office, it no longer has jurisdiction to file any charges."
When they were IN office they had "Executive privilege" and now that they are OUT there is no "jusisdiction"? SWEET DEAL! EVERY THINGS COMMING UP MILLHOUSE FOR KARL "SATAN'S TAMPON" ROVE!
This is such a ridiculous argument you're making. Everyone knows that laws and propriety only count for Republithugs if it involved homosexual, or man-on-dog as Santorum likes to think of it, activity (but only when they're caught red-handed, so to speak).
All other laws and morality standards, however, apply to Democrats at all times except for the times it involves someone of the same gender.
Got that? It can confuse people who think that standards of conduct and laws should be applied to everyone equally, regardless of party affiliation.
This is the world of Orange Hardon and the Kentucky Turtle and their secret political donations, where the only thing that matters is the degree of one's unquestioning loyalty to Sean O'Rushbeck.
A five-year criminal investigation that can't result in any prosecutions because the perps are no longer still at this moment committing the crimes? That's fucked up. And at what point is the previous administration revealed to be criminal enough that they will prosecute?
Easy – the day Obama's term ends.
Say isn't one of the new Teabagger Congressmen one of the "Cagers"?
Hello, Tim Griffin.
You should explain "caging" for the edification of those who may not be aware,.
Couldn't they at least waterboard Karl Rove for fun?
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The script for a Wingnut response almost writes itself: This is a technicality, and is nothing compared to the election fraud perpetrated by ACORN and the New Black Panthers. Liberals have nothing new to say so they keep trying to find things to blame on Bush.
Also, Clinton was responsible for 9/11, so we need to cut taxes on the rich.
WOW Right on point. Do you work for Faux?
Ha-ha, haven't you heard? We ALL work for Fox now.
I'd like to work in Megyn Kelly. Bang the stupid out of her.
Not even Ron Jeremy and Long Dong Silver double teaming her could do that.
Or Comcast.
"Clinton was responsible for 9/11"
As he was responsible for mine disasters, Gulf Oil Spill and the degradation of public morality. Bush, however, can't be guilty of anything because in the Republican mind, he never existed. And Faux news, I'm sure, agrees.
You have to wonder what kind of pressure could be applied to the Office of Special Counsel to cause them to disgrace themselves, the rule of law, their office and the American people?
Remember what happened to the madam for Vitter's didey service?
Freedums ain't free, bitches.
Photo Caption should read: "Go ahead and smile, motherfucker, you wouldn't last five minutes in our world."
…was thinking marshmallow-filled chocolate treat but yours is more direct
If, by Marshmallow you mean shit.
If it wasn't for Daddy Dearest, fucknuts there wouldn't last in *any* world for five minutes. The idiot can't eat a pretzel without choking on it, cannot ride a bicycle without hitting someone, and cannot read a book, let alone write one. I sometimes really do wonder if he needs help with basic hygenic matters, like wiping himself.
Well said.
Broke election laws? Thats fucking nothing, thats like saying the bank robbers exceeded the speed limit while they made their getaway. Orchestrating a nationwide campaign of politically motivated prosecutions of democratic politicians from an office in the White House, there is, truly, on earth, nothing more corrupt than this, nothing more corrupt, and morally evil, than corrupting the criminal justice system.
Oh, and coordinating a nationwide voter-suppression campaign, also to be perpetrated through the corrupt federal prosecutors, again orchestrated from the same White House office, by the same pasty evil nasty fuckwad, a racist voter-suppression campaign targeting blacks and browns, and involving intimidation through baseless investigations of alleged voter fraud against groups like ACORN, and again, baseless criminal prosecutions brought by corrupt hack prosecutors and the deliberately inserted Liberty U law grads that are still infesting the justice department.
And this is nothing to the deliberate genocide in Falujah, just because the W got in a snit that they killed some fuckhead shitwad mercenaries there and fucked with their asshole corpses.
Well it's not part of the war on drugz now is it, so case closed.
And the Billions that just disappeared into Iraq like so much smoke in the wind? I'm talking about the cash that just went poof, not just the money actually spent on military operations. The only thing more epic than the epic corruption of the Bush administration is the epic temerity of the Obama administration.
And all while the Veep was actually, literally, still on the payroll of Haliburton, still actually receiving deferred compensation checks.
"the cash that just went poof"
Just like the Bush Administration's 8 years of deficit spending. Only an ultra liberal communist socialist Kenyan could more than double the deficit in a mere 8 months. Clearly, the only way to fix this Democratic debt is to give millionaires more and bigger tax cuts. What part of Reduced Income=Balanced Budge do you commies not understand?
I'm sensing a lot of anger here.
Definitely no decaf this morning
Fists raised in the air and many, many pee fists for you.
They have no jurisdiction but they continued to investigate for 2 years after the fuckers left? What do they do, wait until the people they have jurisdiction over leave office? What is the point of this Special Council anyway. And when they say "special" do they really mean "retarded?"
There's been a recession for the past couple of years you know. All those folks have tried sending out a bunch of resumes but no one was hiring. So they had no choice but to keep working where they were.
Tonight! On Cold Case!
A new lead into a 27-year old murder is found in a District Attorney's unearthed diary! It will take all the talent the team has to determine that the case is really old and therefore irrelevant! And then they all go out for beers!
Only on CBS!
Exactly. We'll see how this "look forward, not backward" thing works when Darryl Issa reopens the Vince Foster case.
It's good to be above the law.
Bush is doing Old Spice commercials?
"Look at me. Now, look at your current President. Now. Look back at me…."
"Look at my hand, it's two warrants for that thing Cheney and I did that you hate … now look again … the warrants are now diamonds. Anything is possible when your president is elected by retards."
All you have to do in this country to smooth over anything is bellow a bunch of patriotic sounding nonsense wave the flag and mention it being "for the troops". Genocide, election fraud, are just fine if it's patriotic genocide and election fraud.
We condone war crimes in this joke of a country – so political operatives subverting an open and fair election is small potatoes. American Exceptionalism at its finest.
So much shit to pay for. I expect the rapture will go much differently than most xtians believe it will. If Jeebus actually shows up he's gonna be very angry.
It would almost be hilarious to be one of those left behind, to hear the Republiklans try to convince the Jeebus that "the liberals did it first", when they ask why they didn't get Raptured.
Most of Rick Ross' finest and unrepentant "gangster raps" are based on Bush Administration officials.
Little Bushie likes his men like he likes his coffee? Strong, black, and with a long stirrer?
If he should ever return to office, vigorous action will be taken.
"What’s really awful is the sheer incompetence of the federal officials using these taxpayer funds." Compared to the gutless nitwits in office now? For everybody who hoped that the Obama administration would be one long investigation/prosecution of the kleptocrats who had just left office, and I was one, the whip that was supposed to drive that was one "Rahm Emanuel", a political hack with a nasty reputation but no real teeth, and no real brains apparently as he couldn't even maintain the residency requirements needed to get his "parachute" job.
I agree about Rahm. I thought he was going to be a tough guy, but evidently that was all in his mouth. Yelling obscenities at people does not equal prosecuting them.
So how soulless do I need to be before laws no longer apply to me? Is there an entrance fee, or is this open to anybody? Fucking fucks — if Issa starts investigating the current "most corrupt ever" administration, he needs his dick shoved in a running blender until he's willing to see the error of his ways and focus on actual corruption. I'm done with civility.
Blender? Those things have deep carafes. Maybe he could stand in the tub and use a one slice toaster???
Only if he lives for a while afterwards. I'm not at a point today where a quick and relatively painless death for all of these fuckers sounds reasonable. It needs to be slow and it needs to hurt.
You miss the point– Soullessness is only needed to be a sociopathic bastard. To get away with it, you need to also have enough power to be above the law.
A great deal of wealth is useful also.
And being a sociopathic bastard really helps in acquiring that.
You HAVE to admire all the shit they got away with. In a hunnerd years they'll be legendary, like Butch and Sundance.
Surely, Karl Rove is in for one hell of a grilling when he appears on O'Reilly, Hannity and every other FOX News show. I assume that FOX will dedicate as much time to this as they did to ACORN, as this apparently has some facts behind it, and they have the person responsible on staff, so it should be easy to get their questions answer.
Or will FOX not cover this, because no one dressed up as a pimp and heavily edited video tape and instead relied on facts for their proof of wrong doing.
Fox knows what real election tampering is: two guys standing outside a polling place and intimidating people by being all black.
Lurita Doan have a future in public service.
Good idea! Is Jeff Gannon still alive?
"In that case, we will go ahead and give you the answer: Charges won’t be filed. Because in order for this Justice Department to prosecute the Bush White House, it will have had to do something worse than break treaties and torture and murder people."
You mean like allow a very, very urban person to actually be inaugurated as president instead of telling him that he wasn't really qualified to be president because of his ancestry from the dark continent and he should just go home and work on his next inspiring book that talks about how all americans are equal regardless of ethnicity or race??? Because if someone did that, then we would have a problem.
So, are any of these Bush people going to be prosecuted for breaking the law? LOL.
Of course not.
However, the Obama Administration is aggressively pursuing whistleblowers who leaked information about the Bush era criminals, and has already seized and sent some of them to CIA black sites (that no longer exist, winketty wink).
~
LOL = Lots o' Luck.
Fuck, it only takes a few seconds to name the few Laws Bush/Cheney actually followed…
Wow….five years to figure out what I knew five years ago….behold – your federal government at work folks.
Moral of the story; If you tamper with an election, the results still stand while the investigation drags on. Keep this in mind for 2012…
But, no, the real threat to our democracy is having too many brown people registered to vote.
What makes this story even more maliciously ironic is the fact that when Jeb's eventually elected president, and his administration is literally made up of almost every single Dubya administration official who isn't dead (plus Cheney, who is), the DOJ will finally once again have jurisdiction to file charges, but will naturally decline to do so because Eric Holder will stay on as Attorney General in a nod to "bipartisanship".
Ya gotta admit that this has the makings of a pretty slick little political long con, my fellow Americans, regardless of which side of the crack your ass is buttered.
So, does this mean that since he had already left office Richard Nixon did not really require a pardon from Gerald Ford? Because once you're out of office, hahahaha, you've gotten away with violating "acts" of Congress, which are akin to "laws," which are vaguely related to "rules," which morph into "suggestions" and "best practices." As it turns out, the Hatch Act is kind of like brushing your teeth, a good thing to follow but nobody's going to make you perp walk if you don't. Looking forward, not back, to a time when accountability and rule of law will have become quaint, and Lee Atwater will come back from the dead and crash in your spare bedroom and diddle your wife.
On the other hand, Hawt Rahm McSupersoaker Emmanuel has 2 years before they come after him.
I'm not sure if it's prosecutable, but I'm pretty sure old George took a dump on the White House lawn. At least once.
Not to mention the R's precious constitution.
First we saw the Supreme Court coup. Then, after 8 or 9 years of pure, rampant, expansionist craziness, Obama/Holder declines to even investigate anything Bush related, thereby cementing New America's new identity.
We need a good name for that interim period we spent waiting for the other shoe to drop. Something other than "the Bush Administration."
"Bush White House Constantly Broke Election Law"
Hello Captain Obvious, so nice of you to join us today. I hear you have an announcement coming in a bit about Alaska.
But seriously, was this ever in question? And you really expect the people who said, "hey, electoral results, heh, what's that, Bush your daddy appointed us so we will make you the new president regardless!" to actually charge him with anything? Bahahahahahaha.
You know, if we were to start spreading the rumor that those shirtless African men pictured above were the entire New Black Panther Party, I'm pretty sure we could get someone prosecuting Bush for his election law violations after all.
OK, but should we really exaggerate the size of the party's membership like that?
The Bush Drunk looks a tad uncomfortable amidst the four colored guys. It appears like a publicity photo for the coolest, new boy band; The Jackass Five.
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