Gonzales Has Got to Go
by Pamela LeaveyAlberto Gonzales is “The Failed Attorney General” and it’s time for him to go. He never should have made it past the nomination process, but he did. Now it’s clear he “does not have a clue about the difference” between “the job he held — President Bush’s in-house lawyer — and the job he wanted, which was to represent all Americans as their chief law enforcement officer and a key defender of the Constitution.”
The N.Y. Times opposed Gonzales’ nomination and now in an editorial in the Sunday Times they are calling for Bush to dismiss him:
He has never stopped being consigliere to Mr. Bush’s imperial presidency. If anyone, outside Mr. Bush’s rapidly shrinking circle of enablers, still had doubts about that, the events of last week should have erased them.
First, there was Mr. Gonzales’s lame op-ed article in USA Today trying to defend the obviously politically motivated firing of eight United States attorneys, which he dismissed as an “overblown personnel matter.” Then his inspector general exposed the way the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been abusing yet another unnecessary new power that Mr. Gonzales helped wring out of the Republican-dominated Congress in the name of fighting terrorism.
The F.B.I. has been using powers it obtained under the Patriot Act to get financial, business and telephone records of Americans by issuing tens of thousands of “national security letters,” a euphemism for warrants that are issued without any judicial review or avenue of appeal. The administration said that, as with many powers it has arrogated since the 9/11 attacks, this radical change was essential to fast and nimble antiterrorism efforts, and it promised to police the use of the letters carefully.But like so many of the administration’s promises, this one evaporated before the ink on those letters could dry. The F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller, admitted Friday that his agency had used the new powers improperly.
Mr. Gonzales does not directly run the F.B.I., but it is part of his department and has clearly gotten the message that promises (and civil rights) are meant to be broken.
It was Mr. Gonzales, after all, who repeatedly defended Mr. Bush’s decision to authorize warrantless eavesdropping on Americans’ international calls and e-mail. He was an eager public champion of the absurd notion that as commander in chief during a time of war, Mr. Bush can ignore laws that he thinks get in his way. Mr. Gonzales was disdainful of any attempt by Congress to examine the spying program, let alone control it.
The attorney general helped formulate and later defended the policies that repudiated the Geneva Conventions in the war against terror, and that sanctioned the use of kidnapping, secret detentions, abuse and torture. He has been central to the administration’s assault on the courts, which he recently said had no right to judge national security policies, and on the constitutional separation of powers.
His Justice Department has abandoned its duties as guardian of election integrity and voting rights. It approved a Georgia photo-ID law that a federal judge later likened to a poll tax, a case in which Mr. Gonzales’s political team overrode the objections of the department’s professional staff.
The Justice Department has been shamefully indifferent to complaints of voter suppression aimed at minority voters. But it has managed to find the time to sue a group of black political leaders in Mississippi for discriminating against white voters.
We opposed Mr. Gonzales’s nomination as attorney general. His résumé was weak, centered around producing legal briefs for Mr. Bush that assured him that the law said what he wanted it to say. More than anyone in the administration, except perhaps Vice President Dick Cheney, Mr. Gonzales symbolizes Mr. Bush’s disdain for the separation of powers, civil liberties and the rule of law.
On Thursday, Senator Arlen Specter, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, hinted very obliquely that perhaps Mr. Gonzales’s time was up. We’re not going to be oblique. Mr. Bush should dismiss Mr. Gonzales and finally appoint an attorney general who will use the job to enforce the law and defend the Constitution.
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Oh please this people gotta go stuff gotta go. Look how long it took us to get rid of Rummy. Bush is not getting rid of any of his cronies.
sandrakae,
Worse, he is making room for more cronies by firing some of the old ones. 8 attorney generals, who will be replaced by folks who interpret the law the way The Decider wants them to.
Someone (?) speculated he is going to use a loophole that will allow him to fill the vacancies without Congressional approval.
I keep wondering how deep this will get before he is forced out in some way. Cheney first.
President Pelosi, PLEASE
Ginny
DiFi put up legislation so that they could not use the the loophole. The legislation passed the Judiciary committee, and Gonzeles, BushCo et al said they will honor it.
The person who REALLY has to go is “The Decider” himself. Do people actually think that all of this illegal activity goes on in a vaccum, without King George’s endorsement?
If so, you are living in a dream world. This sorry excuse for a President has shown time and time again that he considers himself above the law.
He was told specifically by the FBI and British Intelligence not to include any remarks about the alleged African sale of uraninum, “yellow gold” to Iraq. It had already been established that the sale had never taken place. However, King George, in his effort to promote his pre-emptive invasion, chose to leave it in his 2002 State of the Union Address.
Then, when Ambassador Wilson had the audacity to expose the Bush statement as false. The administrative plan to out his CIA wife, Valarie Plame, was then hatched. Thus far both our imperial president and VP Cheney (Mr. Cordiality) have dodged investigation. Scooter Libby has been offered up as the sacrificial lamb.
The recent sudden dismissal of ten US Circuit Court Judges, who obviously were considered too “activist” by the Bush hatchet team, bears close investigation. Again I don’t believe the president (via his chief executioner, Karl Rove) was unaware and approved of these dismissals.
The uncivil treatment and detention of uncharged persons at Guantanamo Bay represents a national disgrace. We, who are suppose to be a beacon for democracy, continue our disregard for the provisions of The Geneva Convention! The president had gone on record as saying that the US was not sending detainees overseas to “secret prisons” which permit brutal interrogations.
Then, when newstories confirmed it, the predident recanted his story. In other words, he lied to the American public and the world.
This administrations woeful response to the victims of Hurricane Katrina was criminal! It was estalished that King George was socailizing as the hurricane bore down on the Gulf coast. Kind of like King Nero playing the fiddel as Rome burned. The federal response to the disaster was pityful
and slow. Barbara Bush (The Queen Mother) was interviewed on TV and asked about her reaction to the conditions inside the New Orleans Super Dome. Her answer was that most the occupants were either blacks or poor whites and “they should be use to living this way”. The acorn sure doesn’t fall too far from the tree. “The Decider” did not even see fit to mention New Orleans in this years State of The Union Address.
Lastly there is all of the deceit and half-truths which have been fed us to justify our invasion or Iraq. There are also the recent revelations of the horrifying conditions which exist inside of Walter Reed and other US veterans hospitals. Of course, our Commander-In-Chief, pleads no knowledge of such conditions. Isn’t Walter Reed the hospital were our “Decider” has had his last six yearly physicals?
Admittedly A.G. Gonzales needs to go. However, this president, who can recall “no mistakes” he has made in his 6.5 years, needs to be impeached. The Republicans succeeded in spending millions of tax payers money in their attempt to drive Bill Clinton from office. While his actions certainly represented a serious lapse in moral judgement, the GOP was fully aware that they did not rise to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors” as defined by the US Constitution. The actions of this imperial president do!! The constitutionaly established system of checks and balances, which exsisted among the three federal branches of government, has been trampled on. The democrats now control the legislature!! What are they waiting for? Buzz
I’m with you, Buzz. But it’s the constant, unrelenting pressure from activists, Congress, and the American people that will get Gonzalez out. It took over three years of such pressure to get Rumsfeld out and a Democratic Congress elected. The pressure is still on for Cheney, Rove, and Bush and with our newly elected Congress, the hearings will heat things up. With any luck at all (and it’s about time ‘We, the people’ had a little luck) Bush will resign.
Like Nixon…like Watergate…
Hmmm… President Pelosi? Even Carl Albert (Speaker during the Watergate scandal) didn’t want that title – smelled too much like a palace que – do to the fact that the Dems took the lead in investigating Nixon.
Yes shrub is a bozo, but the votes aren’t there in the Senate; as JK said recently, (I paraphrase) they need 17 Dems in the Senate to take care of business – any business (to override a vote).
that would be ‘veto’
They all have to go. For the good of our country! We need to have the whole group impeached, frogmarched and imprisoned!
Karl ‘The Conduit’ Rove
The latest Bush administration scandal that involves the firings of U.S. Attorneys is now pointing in the direction of none other than Karl Rove.
The White House acknowledged on Sunday that presidential adviser Karl Rove served as a conduit for comp…
To put things in perspective, Nixon had John Mitchell as his A.G. His transgessions were legion, including tons of the same things that Gonzales does. Mitchell, however, was charged and convicted for things done in office. I’m watching for allegations of criminal conduct on the part of Gonzales, but have yet to see any. When you have true crimes as comparison, some of the rest of the stuff begins to look like only dirty Republican politics as usual.
Ronnie rayguns had the inimitable Ed Meese as his first AG. Meese had a reputation as being a dirty prosecutor, and was chosen on the basis of that background. In his personal penchant for graft, he rivaled Spiro Agnew. Miracuously (the same flavor of “miracle” that allowed Rush Limbaugh to avoid prosecution for the same things that thousands have done time for) Meese ultimately avoided prosecution. The published accounts of his conduct (again, while in office) leave little doubt that he would have been convicted, however, and even just his smaller “sins” almost make Gonzales look good by comparison.
With friends like those who populate the current adminsitration, Republicans don’t need any enemies. I say leave them in office, because the public has alrady largely come to associate the Bushies misconduct with business as usual.
Also, there is no way to get into a full blown mudfight with them without some of it rubbing off. Folks don’t like either party a whole hell of alot right now, and the winner in 08 is likely to be the one least disliked.
Anyone interested yet in checking out the 911 Commission Report for irregularities and omissions?
my pal joe has good piece on this on his site
http://www.joeleonardi.wordpress.com/