You probably already know that Alberto Gonzales is chest-deep in the kind of hot water usually reserved for missionaries in old New Yorker cartoons. Kyle Sampson, his former chief of staff, will testify on Thursday; according to U.S. News & World Report, he will say that Gonzales was in the loop on the USA firings -- despite Gonzales' own contradictory testimony.

But there's another controversy lurking in the background -- one which I hesitate to mention because the primary "mainstream" print source is a fellow I would rather not cite: Jerome Corsi, of World Net Daily.

Yeah, I know. The Swift Boat guy. Not my favorite person. But his latest tears into Gonzales -- or rather, the Bush Justice Department -- rather fiercely.

The controversy surrounds the Texas Youth Commission, which is embroiled in a rather grim scandal. In 2005, investigators from the Texas Rangers found that guards and administrator were sexually abusing institutionalized youths, who were recruited to provide "entertainment" during night-long orgies.

(As long-time readers know, this blog has an ongoing interest in abusive youth institutions, which often have ties to the Republican hierarchy.)

Corsi cites this report by a progressive group in Texas, the Lone Star Project. The gist: The Texas Rangers submitted their report of sexual abuse to the A.G. in Texas and to the U.S. Attorney for that state, Johnny Sutton, and to the Department of Justice. The Rangers wanted someone to prosecute the bad guys, and they felt they had a strong case.

Now, Johnny Sutton -- unlike, say, Carol Lam -- was never in danger of losing his gig, since he is considered one of the "loyal Bushies" among the U.S. Attorneys. In fact, his jurisdiction covers Dubya's ranch in Crawford. He is no stranger to controversy.

When the Texas Rangers asked to have the Texas Youth Commission abuses prosecuted, Sutton's chief assistant sent an extraordinary response: The office had decided not to pursue the matter because the sexually abused boys had not sustained "bodily injury."

Baumann's letter continued, adding a definition of the phrase "bodily injury," as follows: "Federal courts have interpreted this phrase to include physical pain. None of the victims have claimed to have felt physical pain during the course of the sexual assaults which they described."

Is statutory rape no longer a crime in Texas? Even if it isn't, the Dallas Morning News reports that the youths were, in fact, coerced -- violently.

When an inmate at a state juvenile prison complained of an administrator's sexual advances, swift and merciless punishment followed: The teenager was thrown into an isolation cell "and put in shackles for over 13 hours," a Texas Rangers report revealed.

And:

In one common form of payback, inmates say, guards instruct their favored juveniles to beat those who complain. This, many inmates say, has been a practice for years at TYC.

In the facility, everyone knew the rule: "Snitches get stitches."

The Alberto Gonzales Department of Justice declined prosecution as well. The paperwork is here. Matt Angle of the Lone Star Project believes that the case was shut down on direct orders from Washington.

The folks behind the Lone Star Project seem particularly outraged that both the State and Federal justice systems gave the TYC outrages a pass, even as they both made a priority of pursuing partisan "voter registration fraud" claims against Democrats:

In February 2006, an agent from Attorney General Greg Abbott's office was informed that sexual abuse had taken place in the Ward County TYC facility. Meanwhile, Abbott had an agent on sight near Ward County working on Abbott's controversial and partisan voter fraud project...and was never reassigned to help with the TYC investigtion... The election case involved a 69 year old woman who had simply mailed sealed and completed ballots for several senior citizen neighbors.

U.S. Attorney Sutton deserves a closer look. We'll be returning to him soon.

Meanwhile: Why is Jerome Corsi one of the few voices reporting this stuff? His primary source is a left-ish group. The Dallas Morning News has run a series of reports on the TYC scandal. See also here.