Chris Christie: A gift that keeps on giving

U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie, R-N.J., loves to give New Jersey bloggers somethin' to talk about.

This time, it's because he may be getting gifts -- tickets to Bruce Springsteen concerts in London and in Paris, and plane fares and hotels for six, count 'em six. The Star-Ledger's Auditor column says Christie "scored the tickets courtesy of Springsteen drummer Max Weinberg, whose late father was an assistant U.S. attorney before Christie took over the office in 2002."

Christie, the federal prosecutor who earned the seal of approval from disgraced ex-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, told The Auditor the source of funds for his vacations is none of our damned business:

"Your readers should not be concerned about who paid for the concerts or my vacation."

Take that, constituents!

But, wuh? Since when is a federal political appointee not required to report gifts? Apparently all this wasn't on Christie's personal tab, or he would have just said that a week ago and averted speculation.

I guess since George Bush started making the laws in his kingdom of America, the "unitary executive theory" now extends to every Republican who can get away with similar arrogance.

Thank you, Blue Jersey, for being the only media in New Jersey to care about the news rather than the fiction about crusading corruption-buster (only Democrats need worry) Christie. Another fine job by huntsu:

" ... We now have, in just a month, Christie twice responding to media inquiries with the equivalent of a slimy used car salesman saying, 'Trust me.'

"So I am pretty sure this is more of Christie's arrogant, egotistical indignancy, the same personality trait that caused him to lose his Freeholder seat in a Republican primary.

"But the other reading, that there is something a little off happening here, is also a reasonable one. Christie opened the door himself by admitting he received a personal favor from the son of a former assistant US Attorney and then hiding the source of funding for his trip. ..."

If only we knew what Sibel knows

Monosyllabic Fish puts together some big pieces of the illegal spying/Gonzales puzzle with the help of whistleblowing translater Sibel Edmonds, speaking here:


More Sibel:


Let Sibel Edmonds Speak
Call Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. Demand public open hearings:
DC phone: (202) 225-3976
LA phone: 323 651-1040
Capitol switchboard phone: 800-828-0498

Friday this and that

More bombs found on Surf City beaches: What else?

First, the bees, now, the birds are disappearing.

Interesting discussion over at Blue Jersey about U.S. Attorney Chris Christie's latest gaffe in his charade as a nonpartisan lawman. More in Saturday's NYT:

And in an unusual and oddly partisan attack, the United States attorney for New Jersey, Christopher J. Christie, who was Mr. Rabner's boss for a number of years, sharply criticized legislators and Mr. Corzine for not adequately defending Mr. Rabner.

Only, we don't think it's unusual at all for Christie to show his partisan stripes. He just did it without the usual masquerade. Then we have Christie's buddy at the Department of Justice, Michael Elston, the latest rat jumping off the sinking USS Alberto Gonzales.

U.S. Senate Democrats need just one more vote to break a Republican filibuster (there's that word again) on a bill that would require utilities nationwide to buy some renewable energy. New Jersey already requires them to buy "green tags." Our friends with solar panels love the cash their extra power brings them at online auction, and the utilities get comparatively cheap energy. It's a win-win, for everyone but Big Oil, Big Coal and Big Nuke. Meanwhile, our senators did manage to block a measure that would have allowed oil drilling off of Virginia's coast, 100 miles from New Jersey.

The right-wing bar star U.S. solicitor general George W. Bush appointed is helping Wall Street screw Enron's pensioned employees again, along with small investors, and works to make defrauding investors standard business for all corporations. Must read.

Home foreclosures in the U.S. hit 50=year high.

Gonzogate, the next generation

While Senate minority leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., wastes his bluster threatening games to stop a nonbinding no-confidence resolution on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, filmmaker Robert Greenwald and Democracy for America have launched a video website, ImpeachGonzales.org, to keep us up to date on the inevitable impeachment process to come.

Chris Christie's spin

What will it take to get U.S. Attorney Chris Christie's groupies off Cloud 9?

Christie has been pretty adroit in spinning the media throughout Gonzogate, but now I've seen everything. He has Newark Star-Ledger columnist Tom Morantwisting the latest news so illogically in favor of Christie that it makes me wonder if Moran isn't on Christie's exploratory campaign '08 staff. Moran's awe-shucks piece Friday on Thursday's Washington Post scoop concludes it should prove saintliness that Christie was on the Jan. 1, 2006, list to be fired. He glosses right over the fact that Christie made the partisan grade to be removed from the chopping block in November, after an U.S. Senate campaign in which it's looking as if Christie started a nonsense investigation to swing subpeonas that would include remote landlord records in now Sen. Robert Menendez' office:

As for Christie, he was never given an explanation for any of this, even when he pressed Elston, the man who put his name on the list.

But given what we now know about the breathtaking incompetence of Gonzales and his senior staff, no reasonable person can hold this against Christie. If this crew didn't like him, that's probably a good sign.

Has Moran paid no attention to the fact that virtually every known Christie political investigation since January 2006 has been a Democrat? Did he notice Christie waited until after the statute of limitations ran out to open his Christmas tree investigation on pork barreling that some of us remember the Republicans abusing for a decade, too?

Where are the journalists who scrutinize the powerful, free of fear or favor?

We all want someone to rescue New Jersey politics from rampant corruption. But I'll be blunt: Christie isn't that savior.

If he continues to be left unchecked, we are in serious danger of creating a supermonster of corruption in a few years within the N.J. Republican Party. Christie is taking down the Democrats while letting the corrupt Republicans off the hook and covering their stink with cologne.

Could it be the reason an unusually large number of Republicans are not running for re-election is to take eyes off their corrupt histories? At the same time Christie is prosecuting almost exclusively Democrats, he's stumping for Republicans by giving his "corruption-buster" seal of approval by officiating Republican swearing-ins and speaking to Republican groups about the importance of "voting out the crooks." His mouth says he's not singling out Democrats, but his deeds say the opposite.

And consider another overlooked tidbit in this report: Michael Elston. Christie only now, mid-May, admits Elston called him two months ago about his being on this list, even though Christie has denied knowing anything about the list during that time. Not exactly honest for an adored "corruption buster."

But, who is Elston and what is Christie's true relationship to him, I wonder. Christie implies he's a pal, but then again, isn't Elston now the last man standing behind Attorney General Alberto Gonzales? He put the names on the list after talking to people, so there will be more to this story on Christie when we find out who were those people who said Christie was not being a good partisan boy before January 2006.

WaPo reported:

"We don't know how he got on and off that list," said Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney, reiterating Christie's point to the Post. "It's a complete mystery to us. ...We're clueless as to why he was chosen. This U.S. Attorney's Office has always received the highest marks."

And I'd like to sell you a bridge in Brooklyn.

A little peer pressure

Ouch! Gonzo's Harvard Law School Class of '82 has called him out in a personal letter to him that they also published as a full-page ad in the New York Times on Tuesday, I guess just in case his staff -- if there are any who haven't resigned -- tries to shield him for reality the way he shields his boss from it.

So it has been with dismay that we have watched your cavalier handling of our freedoms time and again. When it has been important that legal boundaries hold unbridled government power in check, you have instead used pretextual rationales and strained readings to justify an ever-expanding executive authority. Witness your White House memos sweeping aside the Geneva Conventions to justify torture, endangering our own servicemen and women; witness your advice to the President effectively reading Habeas Corpus out of our constitutional protections; witness your support of presidential statements claiming inherent power to wiretap American citizens without warrants (and the Administration’s stepped-up wiretapping campaign, taking advantage of those statements, which continues on your watch to this day); and witness your dismissive explanation of the troubling firings of numerous U.S. Attorneys, and their replacement with others more "loyal" to the President’s politics, as merely "an overblown personnel matter." In these and other actions, we see a pattern. As a recent editorial put it, your approach has come to symbolize "disdain for the separation of powers, civil liberties and the rule of law."

As lawyers, and as a matter of principle, we can no longer be silent about this Administration's consistent disdain for the liberties we hold dear. Your failure to stand for the rule of law, particularly when faced with a President who makes the aggrandized claim of being a unitary executive, takes this country down a dangerous path.

On Our Radar thanks his former classmates now of New Jersey -- Robert Chesler of Roseland and Catherine Redlich of Ridgewood.

Next at bat? So, with Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling long resigned, and now No. 2 Paul McNulty taking a hike, who's left to prop up Gonzoles? Michael Elston, with whom Jesus' General blog has some fun. Elston's brother, Rick, is some piece of work.

P.S.: In case you wonder if I can't see Gonzo's pic is out of focus, I can. I pulled it from his official government bio Web site. Good media production, huh? If only Halliburton were in the photography business ...

Revelations about Gonzales

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft's former No. 2 man, James Comey, gave frank and shocking testimony Wednesday about how George Bush's patently illegal warrantless wiretapping "program" came about.

Mail bag

People for the American Way is circulating a petition calling for U.S. Attorney Alberto Gonzales to be fired. Common Cause has a letter to sign on the same subject.

United for Peace and Justice has a calendar of events around the nation for the fourth anniversary of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. UPJ/New York City has a march this Sunday. The big march on Washington is Saturday.

Democracy for America also has scheduled four days of anti-war events nationwide including vigils at 6 p.m. Monday at Broad and Harding in Red Bank and near the Chuck E. Cheese at Brick Plaza, Chambers Bridge Road, in Brick starting at 7 p.m. Monday.

Rutgers students' e-mail didn't give a link but announced a campuswide walkout and demonstration against war in Iraq starting at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday at Voorhees Mall at the Vietnam Memorial behind Scott Hall, 43 College Ave., and marching down George Street to the Marine Recruiting Station at 303 George St. in New Brunswick. Lots of speakers at both ends, it says.

Brave New Foundation's e-mailed tells of its new online video memorial to fallen soldiers.

Physicians for Social Responsibility is organizing a lobby day April 26 to stop new nuclear weapons and curb global warming.

And all that fun is free!