Something fishy in DC (Sacramento Bee)

[struggle4progress]

IT'S no easy task to make the odor emanating from the U.S. Justice Department smell worse than it already does. It's even harder to make the man at the top of the department, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, look less fit for the office than he already looks. Unfortunately, it seems that the department and the attorney general are up to those challenges.

A couple of things have made the stink at Justice worse in recent days. One was McClatchy reporter Marisa Taylor's story detailing the department's decision to reassign a prosecutor who was pushing for indictments after a probe of financial fraud at two insurance companies.

Another was the plea agreement that the Justice Department reached last week in a case involving Purdue Pharma, the maker of the notoriously addictive painkiller OxyContin, and three of its executives. The deal let the executives avoid jail.

Both the decision to drop the insurance investigation and the Purdue Pharma plea arrangement raise serious questions about the Justice Department's handling of cases involving high-level corporate wrongdoing. Adding them to the ongoing controversy over the firings of U.S. attorneys intensifies the political odor that now taints the department. ~snip~

http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/opinions/ci_6489860

http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/opinions/ci_6489860

[babylonsister]

1. There's lots that's fishy in DC; begs the question, is the Gonzo fiasco

a smokescreen for all the other fishy things going on?

[Cha]

2. Oh yeah!

There is nothing that ain't Fishy in the chimphouse.

Congratulations all you voters who thought he was what he said he was in 2000 and who still were so freakin' clueless in 2004. :sarcasm:

[roseBudd]

3. K&R & a click through to SacBee to register a unique visitor/page view