“The Department of Veterans Affairs has habitually exaggerated the record of its medical system, inflating its achievements in ways that make it appear more successful than it is,” reports McClatchy. Among the many distortions:

– The agency has touted how quickly veterans get in for appointments, but its own inspector general found that scheduling records have been manipulated repeatedly.

– The VA boasted that its customer service ratings are 10 points higher than those of private-sector hospitals, but the survey it cited shows a far smaller gap.

– Top officials repeatedly have said that a pivotal health-quality study ranked the agency’s health care “higher than any other health-care system in this country.” However, the study they cited wasn’t designed to do that.

Writing on his blog this morning, ex-Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) accuses liberals and “the radical left” of being the “only” people who enjoy “likening the United States to Nazi Germany,” ignoring his own past comments comparing American liberals to “the ranks of scoundrels like Hitler.”

Noting a recent speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which the head of state apparently compared U.S foreign policy to that of the Third Reich, DeLay hypocritically launched into an attack on liberals:

Odd, I only thought it was the radical left in our own nation which enjoys likening the United States to Nazi Germany. Apparently this disease has spread to Russia as well.

As recently as last month, DeLay made comments comparing American liberals to Nazis. On April 10, appearing on WERS radio in Boston, DeLay claimed that the process that saw him indicted for money laundering, which would be the American legal system, “is the same process” that led to the Holocaust: “it may be six million jews, it may be indicting someone on laws that don’t exist, but it’s the same philosophy, it’s the same world view,” said DeLay.

DeLay also compared liberals to Nazis in his recently released book, “No Retreat, No Surrender”:

“I believe it was Adolf Hitler who first acknowledged that the big lie is more effective than the little lie, because the big lie is so audacious, such an astonishing immorality, that people have a hard time believing anyone would say it if it wasn’t true. You know, the big lie — like the Holocaust never happened or dark-skinned people are less intelligent than light-skinned people. Well, by charging this big lie” — that DeLay violated campaign-finance laws in Texas — “liberals have finally joined the ranks of scoundrels like Hitler.”

DeLay is demonstrating a Gonzales-like memory when he claims that Nazi analogies are an exclusive tool of liberals. In fact, DeLay and many of his conservative allies, are more than happy to make Nazi references if it suits their political aims.

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After learning that Jersey City resident Corey Andrew was gay, U.S. Army recruiter Sgt. Marcia Ramode responded in an e-mail, “GO BACK TO AFRICA AND DO YOUR GAY VOODOO LIMBO TANGO AND WANGO DANCE AND JUMP AROUND AND PRANCE AND RUN ALL OVER THE PLACE HALF NAKED THERE.” The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network reports that Ramode has now “been suspended from recruiting duties,” and “has been reassigned from Army Recruiting Command to a duty position elsewhere in the Army.” Pam’s House Blend notes that it seems to be a “slap on the wrist.”

Murray Waas: “The Bush administration has withheld a series of e-mails from Congress showing that senior White House and Justice Department officials worked together to conceal the role of Karl Rove in installing Timothy Griffin, a protégé of Rove’s, as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.” These emails, according to Waas, “were made available to National Journal by a senior executive branch official, who said that the administration has inappropriately kept many of them from Congress.”

Under the Bush administration, U.S. citizens can be detained as enemy combatants and arrested without being charged of any crime.

At today’s House Judiciary Committee hearing, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales whether any U.S. citizens are “being held today, for over a month, who have been denied habeas corpus or access to an attorney.” Instead of giving an answer, Gonzales replied, “[Y]ou’re asking me a question I hadn’t really thought about.”

Sherman then followed up and asked whether there any “U.S. citizens being held now by foreign governments or foreign organizations, without access to attorneys, as a result of rendition.” Gonzales again said, “It’s just — quite frankly, I hadn’t thought about this.” Watch it:

When Gonzales testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in January, he claimed that there is “no express grant of habeas in the Constitution.” Today, Sherman asked Gonzales, “Wouldn’t it be your duty as Attorney General to make sure that their [U.S. citizens'] rights to habeas corpus were honored?” After some hedging, Gonzales finally agreed: “Yes.”

Matt Stoller and Glenn Greenwald have more on the habeas fight. Sign a petition telling Congress to restore habeas corpus HERE.

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“Veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are at increased risk of suicide because Veterans Administration health clinics do not have 24-hour mental health care available, an internal review found.”

In June 2006, the Justice Department fired Bud Cummins as U.S. attorney in Arkansas and replaced him with Karl Rove-protege Tim Griffin.

In a Dec. 26, 2006 article in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse explained that they “temporarily” appointed Griffin, rather than Bud Cummins’ deputy Jane Duke, because Duke was pregnant:

He noted that often, the first assistant U.S. attorney in the affected district will serve as the acting U.S. attorney until the formal nomination process begins for a replacement. But in this case, “the first assistant is on maternity leave,” he said, referring to Jane Duke, who gave birth to twins earlier than expected the same week of the announcement.

As ThinkProgress noted earlier, on Jan. 11, Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) wrote a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and expressed concern with the maternity leave excuse, saying that it “concerns me on several levels, but most importantly it uses pregnancy and motherhood as conditions that deny an appointment.” He added, “The U.S. Department of Justice would never discriminate against women in this manner.”

Today, Murray Waas reveals that the Justice Department has withheld several e-mails from congressional investigators, including one “in which Sampson wrote to six other senior Justice Department officials and derided Pryor’s letter“:

The PDF below is an outrageous letter we got from Sen. Pryor; we don’t think it has hit the press yet. … [The Justice Department has been asked to] respond to the allegation that we troglodytes discrimatorialy [sic] passed over the FASU [First Assistant U.S. Attorney] because she is apparently a mother out on maternity leave.

In recent written testimony provided to the House Judiciary Committee, Cummins confirms that pregnancy and motherhood were used as excuses to deny an appointment. He said that Roehrkasse’s statement was “ridiculous” and “mocked” by people in the Arkansas legal community because Duke would have been perfectly able to serve as an interim U.S. attorney “for six weeks or more” if she would have been asked.

Additionally, as Waas notes, “Sampson and the White House had decided to name Griffin as a U.S. attorney in June 2006 even before Duke knew she was pregnant.”

New reports this week revealed that Todd Graves, the former U.S. Attorney from Missouri, was dismissed in January 2006, contradicting “repeated suggestions” by Alberto Gonzales and other senior Justice officials “that the firings did not extend beyond the eight prosecutors already known to have been forced out.”

During today’s House Judiciary Committee hearing, Gonzales refused to say whether any other U.S. Attorneys have been forced out of office but whose names are not yet public.

Under questioning from Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA), Gonzales claimed he believed that Congress had no interest in any attorneys beyond the eight already identified. “It’s always been my understanding that this focus has been on the eight United States attorneys that were asked to resign last December 7th and June 14th,” he said.

But Gonzales left open the possibility that more U.S. Attorneys have been pushed out. He told Sanchez, “Throughout my tenure as attorney general and throughout the tenure of my predecessors and other attorney generals, U.S. attorneys have left the department for a number of — variety of reasons. So that happens.” Watch it:

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