Ashcroft was never told...

Well no wonder he wouldn't sign off on the wiretapping program. The White House wouldn't even tell John Ashcroft what they were doing!

Wow - who knew? It appears that Ashcroft was never a Bushie: apparently he didn't have insider 'Bushie clearance.'

And so, because he wouldn't play the game and sign whatever piece of paper they put in front of him, Bush replaced Ashcroft with Gonzo. And Gonzo knew exactly what he was signing -- because he and Loo undoubtedly wrote it -- although now, of course, he doesn't recall...

I should have saved the 'banana republic' pic for this. Can we have Ashcroft back? Or better yet: can we have Comey? Why don't they impeach Gonzo and give us someone we KNOW is honest?

This from Matt Renner of truthout.org:

Notes from FBI Director Robert Mueller, released Thursday by Congress, revealed that Bush administration officials may have prevented Attorney General John Ashcroft from conducting a review of a spying program, while at the same time attempting to gain Ashcroft's approval of the program.

Former Counsel to the House of Representatives Stanley Brand said it is "unbelievable" that "the Attorney General of the United States was barred from getting information on a decision that the law required him to make." Brand said, "This notion that the President can seal himself off from his own Attorney General is ludicrous."

In May, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey told Congressional investigators that in March 2004 a standoff between the White House and the Justice Department ensued because Comey would not authorize a continuation of a warrantless wiretapping program instituted by the Bush administration. According to Comey's testimony, his refusal to reauthorize the spy program resulted in a street race between himself and two White House officials to the hospital, where then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and President Bush's former Chief of Staff Andrew Card tried to coerce a barely conscious Ashcroft to approve the controversial eavesdropping program.

Mueller told Congress that he recorded and kept notes about this incident because of the extraordinary nature of this encounter.

According to his notes, Mueller arrived at the hospital at 7:40 p.m., 20 minutes after receiving a call from Comey saying that Gonzales and Card were en route to the hospital and requesting Mueller's presence in order to "witness the condition of the Attorney General." By the time Mueller arrived, Gonzales and Card had already left. Mueller's notes of the subsequent conversation between Comey, Ashcroft and Mueller reveal that the top law enforcement officer of the United States may have been prevented from reviewing the wiretapping program that had already been put in place by the president.

In his notes, Mueller says that Ashcroft "reviewed for Gonzales and Card the legal concerns relating to the program. The AG also told Gonzales and Card that he was barred from obtaining the advice he needed on the program by the strict compartmentalization rules of the White House."

John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, called this new revelation "particularly disconcerting."

Gosh -- ya think?