How does a young upwardly mobile conservative Christian woman find her way from a nice office in the Justice Department, an aide to the top law enforcement official in the nation, to pleading the 5th in a Senate hearing on her and her colleagues' acts, and finally to reclusion; out of sight if not out of mind of people who want to know the truth?Only in George Bush’s America is this possible.
It was her first job out of law school. Monica Goodling graduated with a degree in law and public policy from Pat Robertson’s Regent University in 1999. She and 149 fellow Regent graduates filled 150 niches in Bush’s new government. She rapidly rose in the ranks through a display of a combination of hard work and willingness to force talented experienced people out of Justice so that they could be replaced with young Christian conservatives.
Alan Cooperman at the Washington Post uncovered an anecdote on Goodling that sheds some light on her people skills:
“When a college intern in the Justice Department whined that all he was doing was filing and answering phones, Monica M. Goodling took him aside. If he wanted to do ‘substantive work,’ she told him, he was going to have to prove himself first. The intern walked out of the office in a huff, and when he returned an hour later, Goodling took him aside again. ‘You're fired,’ she said.”
Goodling took her devotion to the Bush Administration as seriously as her devotion to Jesus, perhaps mixing the two up from time to time, and required that devotion in her underlings.
Her rapid descent, fueled by releases of emails and documents demonstrating her intimate involvement in the planning and execution of the 7 US Attorney dismissals, brought her and her lawyer to a US Senate Hearing on the firings, where she informed the panel that she would be following her lawyers advice and invoke her constitutional right not to incriminate herself.
Now, let me get this straight. This constitutional right is a right not to incriminate yourself. That is, if you break a law, you have the right not to admit it.
So there was a law broken? Monica broke the law?
I don’t think she as much broke the law in what she was doing as she broke faith with our system of justice. She was merely doing to the 7 US Attorneys what she had been doing within the Justice Department in DC. Carrying out her orders to make the Bush government look more like the government of Jesus.
I may be wrong here, but I don’t think people can invoke the 5th Amendment when they simply don’t want to expose the misdeeds, but not criminal misdeeds of herself and her colleagues. You can’t invoke the 5th Amendment to prevent yourself from being charged with a crime that has not yet been committed. My guess is that the crime that Monica Goodling had in mind, was going to be the crime of perjury that she would be committing when she gave testimony.
I don’t think you can do that.
I think the Senate Judiciary Committee needs to call her back in, now that there is no conflict between herself and her former colleagues.
I think Jesus would want her to do this, too.
Her rapid descent, fueled by releases of emails and documents demonstrating her intimate involvement in the planning and execution of the 7 US Attorney dismissals, brought her and her lawyer to a US Senate Hearing on the firings, where she informed the panel that she would be following her lawyers advice and invoke her constitutional right not to incriminate herself.
Now, let me get this straight. This constitutional right is a right not to incriminate yourself. That is, if you break a law, you have the right not to admit it.
So there was a law broken? Monica broke the law?
I don’t think she as much broke the law in what she was doing as she broke faith with our system of justice. She was merely doing to the 7 US Attorneys what she had been doing within the Justice Department in DC. Carrying out her orders to make the Bush government look more like the government of Jesus.
I may be wrong here, but I don’t think people can invoke the 5th Amendment when they simply don’t want to expose the misdeeds, but not criminal misdeeds of herself and her colleagues. You can’t invoke the 5th Amendment to prevent yourself from being charged with a crime that has not yet been committed. My guess is that the crime that Monica Goodling had in mind, was going to be the crime of perjury that she would be committing when she gave testimony.
I don’t think you can do that.
I think the Senate Judiciary Committee needs to call her back in, now that there is no conflict between herself and her former colleagues.
I think Jesus would want her to do this, too.
2 comments:
I don't really want to speculate on what Jesus wants her to do. All I want or expect her to do is to open up, tell the truth, the whole truth, and sing to the high heavens like the candy ass she is. Now that you got me thinking about it, I think the Good Lord wants the Bush Administration opened up to the sunlight like the salmon I'm fixing to eat for dinner tonight (not like it's going to taste nearly as good).
The fiance is a law student and says since others who may testify may contradict what she says and make it appear as if it were perjury even if she's telling the truth. In that case she can tell plead the fifth, but she can only plead about things in direct relation TO HER if they ask her about Rove, Berto or Dubya she cannot plead the fifth.
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