The Alberto Gonzales hearings, seemed to me to be pretty redundant. I think the defining moment in the DOJ firings issue was when Kyle Sampson gave contradictory testimony, Monica Goodling refused to testify and the email records turned up missing.
I don't recall, I cannot remember, it wasn't my decision. A poor excuse for the head of the department? Actually I think Gonzales' answers were realistic and expectable.
Gonzales was a widely regarded as a lap dog for George Bush. His appointment was a travesty in the first place, tainted by Enron money in Texas and roundly criticized for designing legal loopholes for torture and rendition, he also never should have been confirmed by the Senate.
This was the expected course of events, with Bush trying to get as much mileage as possible out of his personal lawyers before they are drummed out of office. If you didn't notice this when he tried to appoint Harriet Myers to the Supreme Court, you must not be paying attention.
Since Gonzales couldn't jolly well admit the firings were political and he was in the know, he did the best he could using style over substance, and it showed. The interesting points were his emphatic repetitions of "I take full responsibility", contrasted with his relatively weak "I feel I can continue to do the job" statements.
The hijacking of the DOJ shows by the many reports detailing not only what the fired prosecutors were working on, but also what the many lawyers who were allowed to stay on were working on.
Since this agenda does not mesh well with the actual mission of the Attorney General position, it was only a matter of time before this had to come to a head. We had the report of the government opening and inspecting private mail. Then we heard of DOJ initiatives to record and report all web site visits by private individuals to the government, under the guise of protecting society from child porn -- despite the fact that the issue was never a stated administration priority before.
Most of all, I was surprised Gonzales wasn't fired for the NSA wiretapping scandal, in my mind a more egregious and indefensible violation of U.S. laws, newly and creatively interpreted by Bush's former lawyer in his favor. We still are absent the explanation of why those hearings all came to an immediate stop without any explanation.
So I'll offer today my "thought balloon" translations for Gonzales statements. "I cannot recall" means I'M NOT GOING TO TELL YOU. "I take full responsibility" means SO FIRE ME. It's clear the Attorney General sat there taking lumps to "protect the prez". As with many of these high crimes and misdemeanors, all roads seem to lead back to Karl Rove, whose influence in the DOJ seems to have exceeded that of Gonzales.
The only difference is that Karl Rove isn't stupid enough to accept any appointment for which he could be held responsible.
GW is a proud American from NY State, concerned about ethics issues, media manipulation and overconsumption. He has recently changed careers to become an inner city schoolteacher. A firm proponent of curbing overpopulation and international adoption, he hopes to adopt a third child and enjoys history, outsider art, garage rock music and rare/unusual vinyl records.
Not only has Rove been smart to never hold a position for which he can be held accountable, he was also smart enough to delete his emails. No doubt, he "forgot" to pass that advice on to the DOJ. Many people will be declared losers in this latest Bush debacle. Karl Rove, once again, will not be one of them.
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Lauria Hale (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 38 comments)
on Saturday, April 21, 2007 at 11:32:00 AM
It's all so torturously slow how long it takes to connect the dots. Using RNC email accounts instead of White House accounts should be reason enough to seize all RNC servers and hard drives. Elected officials are smart enough to understand the regulations require using official White House accounts. They should know why as well, so emails can be properly stored and accounted for. Circumventing this therefore smacks of impropriety, such as not wanting to be detected.
Going hand in hand with contradictions and political improprieties, it should have been enough to impound all machines. Compound this by a large batch of missing emails that pertain to the crucial period in question and you have even more reason to suspect a cover up.
Between 1997-2000, Al Gore was lambasted for not keeping email records during the investigation and hearings into illegal campaign contributions during 1996. The subcommittee was chaired by Fred Thompson and included Ted Stevens, Sam Brownback, Joe Lieberman and Arlen Specter.
Maybe Bush is the smartest of all - he doesn't use email.
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Gustav Wynn (45 articles, 32 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 215 comments)
on Saturday, April 21, 2007 at 1:09:48 PM
