Harper's magazine remains the best watchdog of the U.S. Dept of Justice corruption.

From Scott Horton's column today blasting U.S. Atty Biskupic:

Compensating the Victims

The Bush Justice Department has engaged in a number of blatantly political prosecutions. One was already ascertained in an internal probe. My understanding is that a pending Inspector General investigation has reached the same conclusion in another case in which it confirmed Karl Rove’s intervention and involvement, and that it is looking at several more. And one of them was ascertained by a Court of Appeals decision, by a unanimous, all-Republican panel of the Seventh Circuit, which in fact labeled a prosecution, which produced a conviction and was before them on appeal, with a stinging one-word rebuke. They called it “preposterous.”

The Appeals judges ordered the immediate release of the prisoner after hearing the case, not even waiting for the issuance of an opinion. This was the case of Georgia Thompson, a Wisconsin civil servant, who was prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney in Milwaukee with the evident purpose of helping the Republican candidate for governor get a leg up during the election. Moreover, the U.S. Attorney had previously been on Karl Rove’s list of prosecutors to fire, and after this and some other highly suspect cases, his name disappeared off the list. The facts speak for themselves, a lawyer might say.

Yesterday, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports, the Wisconsin Senate voted unanimously to compensate the victim of the political prosecution. This follows the precedent established in 1801 by Thomas Jefferson, who asked Congress to compensate the victims of political prosecution by the Federalist Government from 1798-1800, after he pardoned them. My sense is that this is the first of a substantial number of cases in which the politically-motivated abusive prosecutions of the Bush Administration will be overturned and the victims will be compensated out of the public purse.

But there are some open questions coming out of this affair. One is that U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic, who brought the case, continues in his job as U.S. Attorney in Milwaukee. How is this possible? In fact, it appears that the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility and Office of Inspector General have never even opened a probe into the matter, notwithstanding the quite extraordinary slapdown handed down by the Court of Appeals. ...

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