The disaster of Alberto Gonzales
By Sean Aqui | Related entries in General Politics, Law, News, Partisan HacksIt’s always the small things that bring people down.
Back when Alberto Gonzales was nominated for attorney general, he was under fire for being one of President Bush’s worst enablers — finding dubious legal justification for ignoring warrants, gutting FISA, torture, almost unlimited executive power and the odious “enemy combatant” designation, under which a U.S. citizen was detained for more than three years without benefit of trial, charges, lawyers or habeus corpus.
None of that, apparently, was enough to prevent him from being confirmed. And he had one thing going for him: He wasn’t John Ashcroft, a man so generally loathed that it would be all but impossible to do worse.
As Attorney General he continued carrying water for Bush, threatening journalists with jail, and denigrating habeus corpus. But that didn’t threaten his job.
Then came the nakedly political firings of eight U.S. attorneys, and the revelations that the FBI had abused its Patriot Act powers.
And guess what? It’s the former, more than the latter, which may end up taking Gonzales down.
The New York Times called for his resignation this weekend, citing a litany of complaints. So did Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer. Pressure has mounted amid revelations that the White House was directly involved in the decision to fire the prosecutors, and earlier today Gonzales’ chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, resigned. The growing controversy finally led Gonazales, who had dismissed the uproar as an “overblown personnel matter”, to say publicly that the firings were mishandled.
It seems to be a case of a relatively minor last straw tipping the balance of opinion on a roundly disliked appointee.
The New York Times said it best, I think:
During the hearing on his nomination as attorney general, Alberto Gonzales said he understood 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. Two years later, it is obvious Mr. Gonzales does not have a clue about the difference.
Gonzales can take solace in one impressive achievement: he may have secured John Ashcroft’s legacy. Most people thought it impossible to be a worse attorney general than Bush’s first nominee. But Gonzales has silenced the doubters. A dubious achievement, perhaps, but an achievement nonetheless.
Meanwhile, ThinkProgress (BIG grain of salt) thinks it has caught Gonzales lying under oath; Gonzales, meanwhile, categorically rejects the idea of resigning.
Fire him. Not merely for the prosecutor kerfuffle, which while sleazy is at least constitutional. No, fire him for the full record of his achievements, and the disrepute he has brought upon our justice system and America’s reputation.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 13th, 2007 and is filed under General Politics, Law, News, Partisan Hacks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 13th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
Sean - The Republic will survive. As you know, U.S. prosecutors can be fired with cause, without cause or for political cause. If this episode is something “sleazy” it only reflects the general sleaze involved in politics.
The litany of grievances against Gonzales is really just a list of disagreements. I disagreed with Janet Reno when she chose to kill an innocent woman on Ruby Ridge, when she chose to burn down a compound full of children in Waco, Tx, and when she refused asylum to a little boy and sent him back to communist Cuba despite the clear wishes of his mother who sacraficed her life to get him this country.
To my knowledge, Gonzalez hasn’t ordered the FBI to shoot a single a American, let alone children — so honestly, how bad is the guy?
March 13th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
The Republic will survive.
Of course it will — thanks to citizens like me. :)
It is threatened only if we allow excesses to go unaddressed.
As you know, U.S. prosecutors can be fired with cause, without cause or for political cause. If this episode is something “sleazy� it only reflects the general sleaze involved in politics.
I have no problem with wholesale firing when a new administration takes office, or firings for cause, or even political firings if it doesn’t harm the functioning of the justice system.
I have a “liar” problem when they say it wasn’t political when it transparently was. I have a philosophical problem when the firings coincide with increased pressure to do things a certain way that would benefit the president or the president’s party politically.
But as I said, such firings are legal. They would not by themselves support a call for Gonzales’ resignation.
The litany of grievances against Gonzales is really just a list of disagreements.
To engage in a bit of hyperbole, that’s like saying the Civil War was a friendly argument.
The list of Gonzales’ actions represent what I consider constitutional abuses. The “enemy combatant” travesty is but the most grevious, the FBI abuse of NSL’s but the most recent. These are not mere policy disagreements.
I disagreed with Janet Reno when she chose to kill an innocent woman on Ruby Ridge, when she chose to burn down a compound full of children in Waco, Tx, and when she refused asylum to a little boy and sent him back to communist Cuba despite the clear wishes of his mother who sacraficed her life to get him this country.
While you can disagree with the handling of each of those incidents, it’s hard to feel sympathy for people who arm themselves and hole up when the cops come calling. Elian was a tragedy, but it was a fairly cut-and-dried custody battle. His mom was dead; his father wanted his son back. We should involuntarily separate families because we don’t like their country of origin? Cuban residents should be able to ignore the lawful orders of the police?
To my knowledge, Gonzalez hasn’t ordered the FBI to shoot a single a American, let alone children � so honestly, how bad is the guy?
No, he just imprisoned one for three years without charge, imprisoned countless nonAmericans for longer than that at Gitmo, tried to find a way around Geneva Convention prohibitions on torture…. the list goes on. Reno committed individual acts; Gonzales has orchestrated a general assault on the system as a whole, in pursuit of vastly expanded executive power.
March 13th, 2007 at 10:07 pm
That is both an insult to Civil War veterans everywhere and the definition of “a bit.”
Right, the key word being “I”. There is a system Sean for the rectification of constitutional “abuses.” That system was demonstrated nicely in Hamdan.
You hit the nail on the head in one sense. You hate Gonzalez because you disagree with him on legal issues and their implications. I hate Janet Reno for what she was personally responsible for.
Cuban residents don’t really have law per se Sean. I’ll assume you meant “Cuban residents of Florida.” Cuban residents have a brutal dictator that throws them in jail for life and takes their property for dissenting, for practicing their religion, exc. I have many good friends from Cuba that would love to educate you on what tyranny really looks like because it isn’t Roberto Gonzalez, it is Fidel Castro. Yeah, you’re a civil libertarian alright - oh so concerned with possible, unproven abuses on a tiny sliver of Cuba and not the least bit concerned with the decades of human rights abuses on the other 99% of the island.
March 13th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
Dos: Yes, I did mean “Cuban residents of Florida.”
I have no truck with Cuba, so I have no idea what your point is. The argument “well it’s worse in Cuba (or Morocco or Iran or whatever hellhole you care to name!)” is extremely weak. I don’t think we should comport ourselves according to the lowest common denominator. Do you? Should I just sit on my hands and not complain until it’s just as bad here as there? Or should maybe we hold ourselves and our elected officials to a higher standard than “better than Fidel”?
March 14th, 2007 at 2:55 am
[...] Other Bloggers Weigh In (all LEFT, unless otherwise denoted): The Democratic Daily; Think Progress; Donklephant; Daily Kos; Crooks and Liars; Obsidian Wings; Wonkette; Shakespear’s Sister (general content warning — in other words, we LOVE these guys); PoliBlog (our fellow Alabamian, slightly left-of-center “moderate” blogger); The Moderate Voice (like us, SLIGHTLY left of center but “centrists” just the same — a “MUST read”) [...]