Digging Beyond Schlotzie and Alberto

The progressive blogging community isn't a vast left-wing conspiracy. Maybe it should be -- at least temporarily.

That's what it might take to get to the bottom of the Justice Department scandal, which isn't just about Alberto Gonzalez and the inappropriate firing of US Attorneys and hiring of political hacks. It's about a White House-driven conspiracy to use the United States Department of Justice to influence elections. Everything else is background noise that threatens to obscure the truths that matter most in this story.

On Tuesday, former US Attorney Bradley Schlozman testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Schlozman is the Republican ideologue who, just days before the '06 election, filed flimsy voter fraud charges in Missouri against Acorn, a left-leaning voter registration group. At the time, Democrat Claire McCaskill was locked in a down-to-the-wire race against Republican incumbent Jim Talent for the US Senate. Schlozman was given the opportunity, courtesy of the USA Patriot Act, to serve the citizens of Missouri without Senate confirmation.

Schlozman's testimony before the Judiciary Committee would have made his big daddy Alberto proud. Schlozie dodged and twisted, asserting that filing the indictments just before Election Day was proper, notwithstanding Justice Department guidelines strongly discouraging such action. Schlozie's superiors must have thought he was doing a heckuva job -- he admitted once pounding his chest about the number of conservative Republican lawyers he had hired as head of the Civil Rights Division. Schlozie, by the way, is the very same guy who, while director of the division, overruled Justice staff and backed the unconstitutional Georgia voter ID law. He also refused to pursue a challenge to a Minnesota ID law that threatened to disenfranchise some Native American voters. Maybe you've detected a pattern here.

Unfortunately most Americans didn't hear or see much about all this and Schlozie's testimony. It wasn't a big story. Just more dribble having something to do with that US Attorneys thing. The story didn't make the front pages of the New York Times, the LA Times or the Washington Post. However, it did land on the front page of the Kansas City Star, which happens to be based in the very same town to which Schlozie was dispatched by the powers-that-be. To be fair, the McClatchy-owned Star has done a solid job on the story and the other aforementioned papers have done some good reporting as well. So have a number of blogs, among them TPM Muckraker. But in general, the use by the administration of phony voter fraud allegations to influence elections hasn't received the attention it deserves. This should be a very big deal -- it's hard to imagine a more fundamental perversion of justice and our democratic system.

As early as next week the Senate may vote on a motion to conduct a vote of no confidence on Alberto Gonzalez. If it fails, undoubtedly many in the media will dutifully follow the Republican line and treat it as end-of-story. But it shouldn't be. The vote is merely a side-show. Bloggers rightly give themselves a pat on the back for pushing some important stories to the fore over the inertia of the MSM. Now is the time to do it again, to raise some hell and keep pushing Leahy, Conyers, Waxman, et al to keep investigating all the way to Rove and the White House.