On ABC's "This Week" GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a frequent critic of the war, stopped short of calling for Bush's impeachment. But he made clear that some lawmakers viewed that as an option should Bush choose to push ahead despite public sentiment against the war. "Any president who says, I don't care, or I will not respond to what the people of this country are saying about Iraq or anything else, or I don't care what the Congress does, I am going to proceed if a president really believes that, then there are what I was pointing out, there are ways to deal with that," said Hagel, who is considering a 2008 presidential run.
Now W has given the Democratic Party a scandal in which W's goons are attempting to ruin the US legal system by allowing only those US Attorneys who support his twisted view retain their positions. The US is a nation of laws, and these firings show how little W thinks of our judicial branch of the government. He is openly hostile to the legislative branch. Worst, he has been illegally usurping powers by relying upon an over-reaching understanding of the unitary executive powers theory that is completely divorced from reality.
GOP operatives don't like Gonzales as he has some views that don't jibe with theirs. W should sacrifice Gonzales, but he won't because W does what he wants even though doing so gets him into trouble. The article "Bush Reaffirms Confidence in Gonzales Amid New Disclosures" at
describes how the White House was involved in the firings and that Gonzales lied about his role also. It states "Bush used his weekly radio address, taped before the latest documents were released Friday night, to back Gonzales, his loyal aide of a dozen years, and the decision to install "new leadership" in some U.S. attorney offices. He accused Democrats of attempting to "waste time and provoke an unnecessary confrontation" by seeking sworn testimony from White House aides about the dismissals... Gonzales also learned Friday that Sampson will testify publicly on Thursday.ï ¿ ½ Sampson worked with the White House for nearly two years to orchestrate the dismissals of the federal prosecutors and has pointedly disputed Gonzales's explanation for his resignation last week."
Gonzales is making up lies and as time goes by he and W will be backed into a corner as ""I knew my chief of staff was involved in the process of determining who were the weak performers," Gonzales said. "But that is, in essence, what I knew about the process. I was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on. That's basically what I knew as the attorney general." But the new documents show that Gonzales reviewed the plan at the Nov. 27 meeting in his conference room... The e-mails also underscore how closely White House political aides were monitoring the project, which by that time had already resulted in the transfer of a Rove aide to Arkansas to replace a prosecutor there.ï ¿ ½ In an e-mail on Dec. 3, four days before the firings, Rove aide J. Scott Jennings asked Sampson, "Does a list of all vacant, or about-to-be vacant, U.S. attorney slots exist anywhere?" Sampson provided the list the next day, according to another e-mail previously given to Congress that listed the offices of the targeted prosecutors."
http://www.buffalonews.com/180/story/37623.html
regarding the e-mail on Dec. 3 states "Internal e-mails from the Bush administration show that the Justice Department postponed the firings for nearly three weeks late last year while awaiting White House approval. The final approval came Dec. 4, four days after Bush returned from an overseas trip, once several senior White House aides signed off on the plan. It's not known whether Bush did."
The e-mail on Dec. 3 further stated "We're a go for the US Atty plan," White House lawyer William Kelley, Miers' deputy, told the Justice Department. "WH leg, political and communications have signed off and acknowledged that we have to be committed to following through once the pressure comes." "WH leg" apparently refers to the White House legislative affairs office, the president's liaison to Congress. Rove heads the political office.ï ¿ ½ "Communications" is under the purview of presidential counselor Dan Bartlett."
Snow remembers that his predecessor Scott McClellan was lied to about Libby as well as in other matters and is not being forthright as "White House spokesman Tony Snow said Bush does not recall seeing the list of prosecutors, and the internal e-mails do not help resolve the question. Bush was out of the country or celebrating Thanksgiving at Camp David, Md., for most of the time that the firing plan was on hold.
"This is a decision that was made at the U.S. Department of Justice," Snow told reporters Wednesday. "The president has no recollection of this ever being raised with him."
The buck stops with W in this matter and eventually he'll admit his responsibility but not admit to any wrongdoing, but "The power to fire U.S. attorneys rests with the president, but Bush administration officials have downplayed Bush's role in the controversial firings. The Justice Department, after initially saying that the White House was not involved, backed away from that assertion when internal e-mails showed otherwise."
Sampson might be this scandal's version of John Dean whose article "New
Developments in the U.S. Attorney Controversy: Why Bush Refuses to Allow Karl
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