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Where is Brown? Mr. Brown is out of town.
Mr. Brown came back with Mr. Black.
Brown and Black eat a snack...
Maybe Reverend Ashcroft the -coverering prude will re-appear.
Frist's insider dealing,
Abramoff slime sticking to key Repubs,
Repubs white-washing the Katrina investigation,
these next 3 years are going to be delicious payback.
dubuya's years are going to make Harding's administration look like Boy Scouts.
===========================
The New York Times
September 27, 2005
Demotion of a Prosecutor Is Investigated
By PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 - The Justice Department's inspector general and the F.B.I. are looking into the demotion of a veteran federal prosecutor whose reassignment nearly three years ago shut down a criminal investigation of the Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, current and former department officials report.
They said investigators had questioned whether the demotion of the prosecutor, Frederick A. Black, in November 2002 was related to his alert to Justice Department officials days earlier that he was investigating Mr. Abramoff. The lobbyist is a major Republican party fund-raiser and a close friend of several Congressional leaders.
Colleagues said the demotion of Mr. Black, the acting United States attorney in Guam, and a subsequent order barring him from pursuing public corruption cases brought an end to his inquiry into Mr. Abramoff's lobbying work for some Guam judges.
Colleagues of Mr. Black, who had run the federal prosecutor's office in Guam for 12 years, spoke on condition of anonymity because of Justice Department rules that bar employees from talking to reporters. They said F.B.I. agents questioned several people in Guam and Washington this summer about whether Mr. Abramoff or his friends in the Bush administration had pushed for Mr. Black's removal. Mr. Abramoff's internal e-mail messages show that he boasted to clients about what he described as his close ties to John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, and others at the department.
Mr. Black's colleagues said that similar questions had been raised by investigators for the Justice Department's inspector general's office, which serves as the department's internal watchdog.
Spokesmen for the department in Washington have said there was nothing unusual about the timing of Mr. Black's reassignment in 2002. They said it was appropriate for the Bush administration to want to replace him with a permanent, Senate-confirmed United States attorney.
Mr. Abramoff, once one of the capital's best-paid lobbyists, is now the subject of broad corruption investigation by federal prosecutors in Washington focusing on accusations that he defrauded Indian tribes and their gambling operations out of millions of dollars in lobbying fees.
A spokesman for Mr. Abramoff said he had "no recollection of being investigated in Guam in 2002" but would have cooperated if he had been aware of any inquiry at the time. Mr. Abramoff had a lucrative lobbying practice on Guam and the neighboring Northern Mariana Islands, another American territory; his lobbying clients paid for luxurious trips to the islands for several members of Congress.
Justice Department officials said they knew of no evidence to suggest that Mr. Ashcroft was involved in the decision to reassign Mr. Black. A spokesman for Mr. Ashcroft said the former attorney general and his aides at the Justice Department had done nothing to assist Mr. Abramoff and his clients and had no significant contact with the lobbyist.
Reached in Guam, Mr. Black, who continues to work as an assistant United States Attorney, declined to answer questions about his 2002 reassignment.
The Los Angeles Times and news organizations in Guam have reported on questions about the cir stances of Mr. Black's demotion. The recent inquiries by the F.B.I. and by the Justice Department's inspector general had not been previously reported, nor had Mr. Black's contacts in November 2002 with the department's public integrity section about his investigation of Mr. Abramoff.
In a statement on Monday, the department said it was natural for the Bush administration to replace Mr. Black, whose assignment to run the United States attorney's office was never meant to be permanent, with a White House selection.
The department said the vetting process for Mr. Black's replacement, Leonardo Rapadas, the current United States attorney, was "well under way in November 2002," when the nomination was announced.
Colleagues said they recalled that Mr. Black was distressed when he was notified by the department in November 2002 that he was being replaced.
The announcement came only days after Mr. Black had notified the department's public integrity division in Washington, by telephone and e-mail communication, that he had opened a criminal investigation into Mr. Abramoff's lobbying activities for the Guam judges, the colleague said. The judges had sought Mr. Abramoff's help in blocking a bill in Congress to restructure the island's courts.
The colleagues said that Mr. Black was also surprised when his newly arrived bosses in Guam blocked him from involvement in public corruption cases in 2003. Justice Department officials said Mr. Black was asked instead to focus on terrorism investigations, which had taken on new emphasis after the Sept. 11 attacks.
"Whatever the motivation in replacing Fred, his demotion meant that the investigation of Abramoff died," said a former colleague in Guam.
The Justice Department's public integrity section is responsible for cases involving government corruption. It is now overseeing the larger investigation of Mr. Abramoff in Washington.
Representative George Miller, a California Democrat who has long focused on issues involving American territories in the Pacific, said the disclosures about Mr. Black's demotion raised questions about a possible conflict of interest at the Justice Department in its investigation of Mr. Abramoff.
"What this starts to suggest is that Abramoff's ability to corrupt the system was far more pervasive, certainly than we knew at the time," Mr. Miller said.
* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Where is Brown? Mr. Brown is out of town.
Mr. Brown came back with Mr. Black.
Brown and Black eat a snack...
"Sometimes, when I sleep at night, I think of 'Hop on Pop'"
— George W. Bush, in a speech about childhood education, AP, April 2, 2002
George: Pat... Cat...
Laura: George?
George: Pat sat on cat.
Laura: George honey?
George: No Pat no! Don't sit on that!
Laura: George! Wake up!
George: Whuh...?
Laura: You were dreaming.
George: Drea... dreaming?
Laura: Yes dear. "Hop on Pop." Again.
George: But there were fish. Three fish in a tree.
Laura: Oh George, fish in a tree? How can that be?
George: You're right. Still, it seemed so real. And you were all there. Colin was Red, and was Ned, and Ashcroft was Ted, and I was Ed.
Laura: And you were all in bed?
George: How did you know?!
Laura: That's from the book, dear.
George: Oh. So we weren't all sleeping together.
Laura: Actually, I wanted to talk with you about that...
Ashcroft: Morning Chief !
Colin: o Mr. President !
: Hope my snoring didn't keep you up, sir !
Laura: I'll just go make some coffee.
George: Morning, fellas. Good sleep?
Colin: Ashcroft hogged the blankets again.
Ashcroft: These rubber sheets are cold!
: Hey, we wouldn't need the waterproof pad if you'd stop...
George: All right, never mind. Just want y'all to know that "Hop on Pop" has done it again. I've got the Middle East solution.
Colin: Sir?
George: I don't have to tell y'all how many times "Hop on Pop" has saved my bacon. Like during the campaign, I couldn't figure out how to get support from the minorities. Then I dreamed about that one part in "Hop on Pop"...
: Yes sir. "Snack snack. Eat a snack. Eat a snack with Brown and Black."
George: Those minority brunches went over big.
Colin: Suckered me in.
George: So last night I'm dreaming about "Hop on Pop," and the solution for the Middle East hits me: Vroom.
Ashcroft: Vroom, sir?
George: Vroom. You know, it's that powerful stuff Little Cat Z has under his hat. Cleans up snowspots just like that. 'Cause, you know, all that pink snow had to go.
: Sir, that's not "Hop on Pop." That's from "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back."
George: Really? Strange, I haven't read that one yet.
Ashcroft: That's probably my fault, sir. I talk in my sleep.
George: Ah, well, good thing you did. Vroom, boys, will fix everything. We just find this Little Cat Z, send him over to Israel, have him take off his hat, and Vroom! Everything's cleaned up before Mother gets home.
Colin: Mr. President, I don't believe Vroom actually exists.
George: So we'll make some. We got a big defense budget, and if we need more money, we'll just cut taxes again.
Laura: George?
George: Yep, stands to reason...
Laura: George? Honey?
George: ... you cut taxes, you can spend more.
Laura: George, wake up!
George: Whuh...?
Laura: Honey, you were dreaming.
...
Laura: Also, the bed's wet again.
George: Ashcroft!
Ashcroft: Sorry sir.
http://www.satirewire.com/news/april02/hoponpop.shtml
Anybody got a Vroom for Iraq?
(a Vroom is the thing that cleans up a big mess in "Cat in the hat comes back". the cat in the hat has 26 progessively smaller cats under his hat, lettered from A to Z, and Cat Z had the "Vroom" that cleaned up the mess in it. Yes, I am the parent of a 3 year old, why do you ask..?)
At first I thought you took the time to write that...I was going to say, if you're that bored, you can always come over and help us with some of the remodelling we're doing....
I don't think he's that random after all.
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