While neither the news columns of the StarTribune nor the idiot box's news shows ever mention the phrase, a small group of us are demanding accountability for torture. Virtually every weekday since Nov. 12, 2009, we have conducted a daily one-hour vigil in front of the U.S. Courthouse, otherwise known as the Federal Building, in Minneapolis. B. Todd Jones, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota, has his offices in that building. Regrettably, Mr. Jones has forgotten we are a nation of laws. Usually the vigil is only a single person, dressed in an orange jumpsuit and a black hood, with a sign and sometimes with leaflets.
Our efforts have had to confront the "what-First-Amendment?" response of court security personnel. I was the guinea pig on the first day of the vigil. After about ten minutes sitting there with my sign that said "I Am Waiting" on one side and "For Justice" on the other, three guards approached me from different angles and asked me to remove my hood. They frisked me, asked for an i.d., refused to let me go retrieve a cap that I had a half block away (it was cold and windy that day), checked me for federal warrants, and told me I couldn't wear the hood. I told them about the First Amendment and that people had been wearing such hoods in demonstrations all across the country, even in front of the White House. The fellow in charge told me there was a Minnesota law prohibiting it, and that even if a lawyer argued the Minnesota law didn't apply, I couldn't wear the hood because it was alarming to people. I asked if my sign and orange jumpsuit alarmed people, would I have to stop using them as well? He said he would talk to those people instead. I suggested that if there were any place that the First Amendment should apply, surely it would apply in front of the Federal Building.
All things being equal, B. Todd Jones will be the next U.S. Attorney for Minnesota. As the Strib notes, the President traditionally accepts the recommendation of home-state Senators of their party when they suggest nominees for these jobs. See Coleman, Norm; Bush, George W.; and Paulose, Rachel.
That example is poignant, because of the massive difference between Paulose's reign of terror in the U.S. Attorney's office and what is expected by several sources in the local legal community to be a strongly justice-minded tenure for Jones.
Of course, simply keeping the Office of the United States Attorney out of the political tabloid pages and providing effective legal leadership would be great first steps.
(One of these days I'll just set Smit's diaries on Heffelfinger/Paulose/Purge-gate to go automatically to the frontpage... - promoted by MNCampaignReport)
Nick Coleman, the Star Tribune star columnist, seems to be the first in the local mainstream media to pick up the Heffelfinger / Paulose story, first reported in my diaries here and here. His piece in the Strib today contains several interesting quotes from Mr. Heffelfinger himself, and also brings up the key fact, mentioned in the KSTP broadcast, that Mr. Heffelfinger was not invited to Ms. Paulose's investiture ceremony:
"Rachel Paulose put together the guest list, and why I was not on the guest list, only she can answer," says Heffelfinger.
Paulose's spokesperson, Jeanne Cooney, claimed that Paulose and Heffelfinger get along "very well," but said:
"I'm not going to discuss Rachel's personal investiture invitation list to anybody. It was a public event. Anybody who wanted to go could have gone."
This just adds fuel to the flames of speculation that Heffelfinger was targeted, though Mr. Heffelfinger claims once again in Coleman's piece that he "left for [his] own reasons."
But Coleman's piece ultimately does a disservice to the story by getting key facts in the saga wrong. Read below the jump to see where Coleman's piece went off-track.
(I tried to wait, but this stuff is too good not to promote. I've had a couple of well-placed folks tell me there's probably nothing to this, but with research like this, it's becoming a bit more difficult to accept.....read on. - promoted by MNCampaignReport)
MNCR: Edited gently to make the images less site-layout-killing.
A week ago, I wrote a diary about Minnesota's new United States Attorney, Rachel Paulose, and her possible connection to the "attorney purge" scandal currently engulfing the White House and the Department of Justice. I speculated that the resignation of the previous U.S.A., Thomas Heffelfinger, was related to the current scandal, and it seemed clear to me that the 33-year-old Paulose was chosen because of her her political connections to the conservative establishment and the Republican Party rather than her being the most qualified candidate for the job.
On Tuesday, Minnesota Public Radio interviewed Tom Heffelfinger, and he claimed that politics played no role in his resignation:
The former U.S. attorney for Minnesota says he never felt political pressure from the White House that allegedly led to the firings last year of eight other U.S. attorneys around the country. On Tuesday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales admitted the firings were mishandled, but rejected calls for him to resign. Tom Heffelfinger stepped down from the Minnesota post a year ago, but he says politics wasn't the reason.
[...]
Tom Heffelfinger resigned his post as U.S. attorney in Minneapolis last February. He had served two stints -- the first from September 1991 to April 1993, and then again from September 2001 to February 2006.
He says no one ever pressured him to leave his post or asked him to leave. He resigned based on a personal decision, driven by his career and his family finances. Moreover, he says he was not pressured to investigate Democrats.
"I got no direction whatsoever at any time during this administration, or my last tour as U.S. attorney, to consider politics," he said. "To the contrary, partisan considerations are irrelevant to a public integrity investigation."
Is he telling the truth, or just being a good soldier for the Bush administration and the Republican team? Keep in mind that Heffelfinger is a Republican through and through, and thus has motive not to rock the boat by involving himself in this scandal. The City Pageslabeled Heffelfinger a "Republican spin doctor" for his role in an investigation into theft at Metropolitan Council Transit Operations. He was appointed as U.S. Attorney by both Bush I and Bush II, ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for Hennepin County Attorney in 1986, and donates heavily to Republican candidates. Based on my investigation into the internal Justice Department documents released recently by the House Judiciary Committee (available at their website), my investigation reveals that there is a good chance that Heffelfinger was one of the U.S. Attorneys originally targeted for dismissal by officials at the Department of Justice and the White House.
