Senator Leahy wants Dept. of Justice to investigate Gonzales
The Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee wants the Inspector General at the Department of Justice to investigate the leader of the Department of Justice, Alberto Gonzales according to The Hill:
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) asked Department of Justice Inspector General Glenn Fine Thursday to review whether testimony Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has provided “was in any instances intentionally false, misleading, or inappropriate.”
Leahy had granted Gonzales additional time following the attorney general’s last appearance before the panel to revise or clarify any statements he made. The senator said that Gonzales “has not meaningfully addressed our significant concerns.”
Leahy added that he has “identified numerous instances in which the attorney general appears to have contradicted his own previous testimony or the statements or testimony of other senior officials, or where he appears to have engaged in efforts to mislead.”
The senator specifically asks Fine not to limit his inquiry to whether Gonzales has committed criminal violations.
mine bursts
Seismographs can pick up the slightest tremors and so have to be installed in isolation where no footsteps, or someone dropping a book, etc. can give false readings. The "mine burst" (given here as a "bump") would certainly have generated a shock wave through the earth (called a seismic event) so it would have been recorded and easily identified because certain seismic events have characteristic signatures. Because seismographs give directional indications two separate seismographs can pinpoint the "foci" of a tremor by intersection of directional vectors.
If the mine burst had been triggered by a separate tremor such as an earthquake, the seismographs would have recorded two separate events: one for the initial tremor that triggered the burst and a second for the burst which would have generated a subsequent tremor . The seismologists quoted can confidently determine whether or not the mine burst was triggered by a separate seismic event (such as the earthquake claimed by Murray, the mine owner), and they say it was not.
As employees of the university of Utah these seismologists are public employees. Academic tenure would help insulate them from the sort of corrupt pressure persons public employees sometimes are used to see, but they might not possess this. It remains to be seen if these seismologists stick to their first interpretations or if their testimony starts to "skew".
Leahy uses the last of his credit
on another DOJ internal investigation
Syndicate this content
James Sturcke and
James Sturcke and agencies
Friday August 17, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Three rescue workers were killed and at least another six were injured today when they attempted to reach a group of miners trapped underground for more than a week in the US state of Utah.
Officials were poised to suspend rescue efforts at the mine after the searchers were caught in a cave-in as they were tunnelling through rubble.
The deaths occurred on the 11th day of a rescue operation to find six miners who are trapped 1,500 feet (450 metres) underground at the Crandall Canyon mine, situated about 100 miles south-east of Salt Lake City. It is not known if the miners are alive or dead.
Six of the rescue workers were taken to Castleview hospital in Price, about 30 miles south of the mine, where one died. A second worker died at Utah Valley regional medical centre in Provo, while another worker there was in a critical condition with head injuries. The third death was confirmed by the US Department of Labour.
Authorities said the cave-in was caused by a mountain bump - a build-up of pressure inside the mine that shoots coal from the walls with great force. Seismologists say such an event caused the August 6 cave-in...
The disaster has focussed attention on Mr Murray, who owns a number of private coal mining companies and is a Republican party donor. Murray Energy Political Action Committee has given more than $155,000 (£75,000) to Republican candidates, including $30,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, since 2005, according to Federal Election Commission records. Mr Murray has also made personal contributions to the senatorial committee.
Government mine inspectors have issued 325 citations against the Utah mine since January 2004, according to federal Mine Safety and Health Administration records. Of those, 116 were what the government considered "significant and substantial," meaning they were likely to cause injury.
Davitt McAteer, the former head of the MSHA and now vice-president of Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia, said the number of safety violations was not unusual.
Earlier in the rescue effort, Mr Murray said that "only God" knew whether the trapped miners were alive and blamed the mine collapse on an earthquake.
But seismologists said the collapse was the likely source of the seismic movement they recorded. Lee Siegel, a University of Utah spokesman, said: "Our seismologists at the University of Utah are careful not to rule out any possibility, but they tell me all of the available evidence indicates that the mine collapse itself was the earthquake."