The Great Unraveling

The Washington Post's editorial page isn't exactly a hotbed when it comes to calling for thorough investigation of the various (and numerous) scandals that have unfolded in the Bush White House. The Post goes so far as to remind us that this is an "account of Bush administration lawlessness so shocking it would have been unbelievable coming from a less reputable source" right in the opening sentence. Here's the meat of the editorial:

The dramatic details should not obscure the bottom line: the administration’s alarming willingness, championed by, among others, Vice President Cheney and his counsel, David Addington, to ignore its own lawyers. Remember, this was a Justice Department that had embraced an expansive view of the president’s inherent constitutional powers, allowing the administration to dispense with following the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Justice’s conclusions are supposed to be the final word in the executive branch about what is lawful or not, and the administration has emphasized since the warrantless wiretapping story broke that it was being done under the department’s supervision.

Now, it emerges, they were willing to override Justice if need be. That Mr. Gonzales is now in charge of the department he tried to steamroll may be most disturbing of all.

The Post is, of course, reacting to the testimony of James B. Comey, "the straight-as-an-arrow" Deputy Attorney General under Alberto Gonzales.

Think Progress has compiled these high-lights of Comey's testimony:

– The high-speed pursuit that took place when Comey learned that Card and Gonzales were on their way to see Ashcroft at the hospital;

– The hospital meeting, in which the seriously ill Ashcroft “stunned” Comey by lifting “his head off the pillow and in very strong terms” rejecting Card and Gonzales’ effort to have him reauthorize the spying program;

– Comey’s admission that he believed he had “witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man, who did not have the powers of the attorney general because they had been transferred to me”;

– Andrew Card’s subsequent “very upset” call to Comey, in which Card claimed that he and Gonzales had visited Ashcroft “just…to wish him well”;

– The White House’s eventual agreement to suspend the warrantless spying in the face of a threat of mass resignations, including from FBI Director Robert Mueller and Attorney General Ashcroft

The New York Times has a full account.

This scandal is setting up to be a long, drawn out unraveling of the Bush Administration. The fact that Alberto Gonzales was deeply involved in 'unsavory' activity at the White House before being put in charge of the Justice Department means that the subject of his constant testimony before congress will become more far ranging - and more damaging - as time goes on.

One would assume that the Bush White House would 'encourage' Gonzales to resign simply to stop the bleeding. They haven't. It doesn't appear likely that they're going to any time soon.

Why?

If there's one thing (only thing?) that the Bush Administration is good at, it's at playing the political 'game.' You could argue that Bush doesn't want go through the confirmation process for a new Attorney General right now. It's a legitimate reason to hold onto Gonzales but I think the real reason Gonzales is still in the Administration is to protect Rove.

As long as Gonzales is in between Congress and Karl Rove, 'Bush's Brain' feels safe.

The Bush White House has decided that damage of the slow bleed resulting from keeping Gonzales around for the next 18 months is better than what can only be assumed to be catastrophic damage that would result from any sort of investigation getting near Karl Rove.

This tells us a couple of things. First, it tells us that Bush has given up on regaining any kind of positive standing in the polls. There will be no attempt to 'dump' the scandal and move on. That means that the Republicans will go into the 2008 elections burdened with a President whose approval ratings are struggling to stay out of the twenties. If congressional GOPers don't feel like they're going to be getting any help from the White House, they're unlikely to feel any great loyalty to the person that may cost them their seats. As long as Bush's numbers continue to slip away, expect Republican support for his agenda in the congress to slip away as well. Lastly, the fact that Gonzales is still running the Justice Department tells us that things within the Bush Administration must be bad. BAD. The Nixon kind of Bad. No administration would make these kinds of political sacrifices to keep people from seeing inside a clean, even clean-ish, administration.

Alberto Gonzales Karl Rove Bush Administration Attorney-gate Republicans 2008 Elections

Deputy Attorney General "Quits"

From the New York Times:

Paul J.McNulty, the deputy attorney general whose Congressional testimony in February provided a spark that turned a smoldering issue over the firings of federal prosecutors into a raging inferno, announced his resignation on Monday.

McNulty, Alberto Gonzales' second in command, appears to have been "[telling] friends for weeks that he was planning to step aside." Uh-huh. Sure. The fact that this guy got in front of congress and SHOCK! told the truth and made Gonzales and the Bush Administration look like the dirty political hacks that they are had nothing to do with it. I'd imagine that the atmosphere for him at the office was probably pretty noxious.

McNulty blamed himself for failing to resist the dismissal plan when Mr. Sampson brought it to him in October 2006, according to associates. He took one prosecutor off the removal list but acquiesced to the removal of seven others, according to Congressional aides’ accounts of his private testimony to Congress on April 27. […]

Friends of Mr. McNulty said he had tried to be candid about what he knew of the removals. In his private Congressional testimony, Mr. McNulty said he did not realize until later the extensive White House involvement in Mr. Griffin’s appointment or Mr. Sampson’s nearly year-long effort to compile a list.

White House aides complained privately that Mr. McNulty’s testimony gave Democrats a significant opening to demand more testimony from the Justice Department and presidential aides. Several aides said he should have been combative in defending the dismissals.

I thought so. Republicans are pissed because this guy told the truth about the politicization of the Justice Department instead of putting party above country. How dare he take a principled (if belated) stand that would be politically costly for the GOP and the President! Didn't he get Rove's memo that every action that this Administration takes will be with the sole purpose of creating a permanent Republican majority?

We'll probably never know. All of Karl's emails were mysteriously "lost."

* * * * *
While it's nice to see a high level Bush Administration official canned as a result of poor performance, the McNulty saga leaves me feeling empty because it is so typical for BushCo.

First, McNulty wasn't canned because he allowed U.S. Attorneys to be fired for political reasons, he was 'resigned' because he gave the Democrats the in that they needed to expose the fact that U.S. Attorneys were fired for political reasons.

Second, McNulty takes the fall for Gonzales. There are very few things I would work hard to avoid as being a deputy anything in the Bush Administration. I swear, those guys are there specifically to take the fall for their bosses. (Of course Alberto Gonzales is still Attorney General only because it allows Karl Rove to stay out of the cross-hairs for a little while longer.)

Finally, once again we see someone leave the Bush Administration because of a scandal and don't see a single iota of compunction, shame, or remorse.

Paul McNulty US Attorney Firings Alberto Gonzales Justice Department

Shades of the Future

From the Baltimore Sun:

New York Sen. Charles E. Schumer is pressing U.S. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to justify his department's decision not to investigate whether Maryland Republicans purposely misled voters on Election Day by circulating voter guides listing top state GOP candidates as part of a "Democratic Sample Ballot."

"The right to vote is perhaps our most essential civil right, the wellspring of our democracy," Schumer said in a letter sent yesterday to Gonzales. "Unfortunately, the mid-term elections held on November 7, 2006, were tarnished by countless dirty tricks and ugly tactics. The ploy used in Maryland stands out for its sheer cynicism and brazenness."

Campaign committees for Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and Lt. Gov Michael S. Steele, then a U.S. Senate candidate, jointly sponsored the sample ballots. African-Americans were bused in from Pennsylvania to distribute those fliers and others at polling locations in Prince George's County and Baltimore. First lady Kendel Ehrlich reportedly welcomed the volunteers to Maryland.

Several politicians who were erroneously listed on the literature as endorsing Ehrlich and Steele, such as Prince George's County Executive Jack B. Johnson and former senatorial candidate Kweisi Mfume, criticized the campaign tactic. Johnson, a Democrat, called it a "dirty trick."

An Assistant U.S. Attorney General has already written a letter to Schumer stating that "insufficient legal basis to initiate a formal investigation" existed.

Uh-huh. And the fact that the investigation would be of a GOP candidate had nothing to do with that.

With any luck, investigations like this, into specific malfeasance, will be common in the future. Just imagine Committees, lead by Democrats, with subpoena powers!

Chuck Schumer Alberto Gonzales Bob Erlich Michael Steele Sample Ballot Dirty Tricks

This is Scary...

The AP:

WASHINGTON - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who is defending
President Bush's anti-terrorism tactics in multiple court battles, said Friday that federal judges should not substitute their personal views for the president's judgments in wartime.

He said the Constitution makes the president commander in chief and the Supreme Court has long recognized the president's pre-eminent role in foreign affairs. "The Constitution, by contrast, provides the courts with relatively few tools to superintend military and foreign policy decisions, especially during wartime," the attorney general told a conference on the judiciary at Georgetown University Law Center.

"Judges must resist the temptation to supplement those tools based on their own personal views about the wisdom of the policies under review," Gonzales said.

And he said the independence of federal judges, who are appointed for life, "has never meant, and should never mean, that judges or their decisions should be immune" from public criticism

Explain to me, please, why BushCo's spending billions of dollars a week trying to spread democracy to the Middle East while the very same people are trying so hard to end it in the United States?

Alberto Gonzales Judiciary Supreme Court Fascism

The AG's Story

Alberto Gonzales admitted to Wolf Blitzer that his grandparents might have been illegal aliens. Movie.

BLITZER: Give us your — tell our viewers who aren’t familiar your personal story, how you got to where you are, your grandparents, your parents. They struggled, they came here. I don’t know if they came here legally or illegally. But give us the story.

GONZALES: Well, three of my grandparents were born in Mexico. They came to Texas. My parents — both my parents were born in Texas extremely poor. My mother…

BLITZER: When they came to Texas, were they legally documented, were they un-legally documented?

GONZALES: You know what? It’s unclear. It’s unclear.

And I’ve looked at this issue, I’ve talked to my parents about it and it’s just not clear.

But in any event, my mother had a 2nd grade education — my father had a 2nd grade education, my mother had a 6th grade education. And my father worked construction.

And so, for me, my life has — represents the American dream.

With these guys, the hypocrisy makes your head spin. And how soulless does somebody have to be to be the Attorney General for the President of a Party that is actively trying to keep Latinos out (legal or illegal) when you are only two generations removed from illegal Latino immigrants?

This isn't the AG fairly enforcing the laws as they exist. If it was, I could accept that. I'd be proud of a public servant that could put the law above his own emotions. But it's not that. This is the AG being a part of an effort to use immigration as a wedge issue to win elections. This is being a cog in a machine that uses racism to get votes. This is about crafting NEW laws that are designed specifically to keep certian populations from becoming citizens of the United States.

Finder's fee to ThinkProgress.

Alberto Gonzales Immigration Hypocrisy

You Knew This Was Coming

The New York Times reports that Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales "suggested" on Thursday that the President has the authority to order wiretaps for calls made between parties within the United States without wiretaps.

"I'm not going to rule it out," Gonzales said when asked about that possibility at a House Judiciary Committee hearing.

The attorney general made his comments, which critics said reflected a broadened view of the president's authority, as President Bush offered another strong defense of his decision to authorize the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without warrants on international calls and e-mail messages to or from the United States.

Bush, in an appearance in North Carolina, told a questioner who attacked the program that he would "absolutely not" apologize for authorizing it.

"You can come to whatever conclusion you want" about the merits of the program," Bush said. "The conclusion is I'm not going to apologize for what I did on the terrorist surveillance program."

At the House hearing, Gonzales faced tough questioning from Democrats and Republicans but declined to discuss many operational details.

He will tap your phones without a warrant, arrest you without charge, hold you without counsel, and imprison you for life without trial. This man has no concept of Constitutional Democracy, Rule of Law, or International law.

This should frighten everybody. Right-wing, Left-wing, it shouldn't matter. This is exactly what conservatives have been railing against for decades, the creeping power of the federal government. Yet now that it's here, they cheer and paint all those who speak out against it as traitors.

Canada is a great country, but with its close proximity, how can I be sure that if I move there, George Bush won't bring democracy to Canada?

Alberto Gonzales Wire Tapping George W. Bush

Warrantless Physical Searches

U.S. News & World Report has a story that you just knew was coming.

President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to begin conducting electronic eavesdropping on terrorism suspects in the United States, including American citizens, without court approval. Meeting in the FBI's state-of-the-art command center in the J. Edgar Hoover Building, the lawyers talked with senior FBI officials about using the same legal authority to conduct physical searches of homes and businesses of terrorism suspects--also without court approval..

Even the FBI wasn't too keen to go down that road. FBI Director Robert Mueller was "alarmed" that the FBI would, for the first time conducted "physical searches of any location without consent or a judicial order."

Amendment IV - Ratified 12/15/1791.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Seems pretty clear to me, but I'm not Alberto Gonzales.

But in a little-noticed white paper submitted by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to Congress on January 19 justifying the legality of the NSA eavesdropping, Justice Department lawyers made a tacit case that President Bush also has the inherent authority to order such physical searches. In order to fulfill his duties as commander in chief, the 42-page white paper says, "a consistent understanding has developed that the president has inherent constitutional authority to conduct warrantless searches and surveillance within the United States for foreign intelligence purposes."

If warrantless eavesdropping created a fuss, I expect warrantless searches of people's homes to cause a furor. Any real conservative will see this power grab for what it is, an extra-constitutional attempt by the Executive Branch to strip rights away from American Citizens.

Bush Alberto Gonzales Warrantless Searches

Gonzales' Firm Stand on Torture

From Think Progress:
Alberto Gonzales, 12/8/05:

[W]ith respect to torture, the question is easy: We do not torture. The U.S. policy -— not only is it policy, it is the law. We have a domestic law, domestic legal prohibition. We have an international prohibition against torture. For this president, his position has been consistent all the way through with respect to torture. United States policy and our legal obligations are no torture.

Alberto Gonzales, in The Guardian, today:

We do not render individuals where we believe it's more likely than not that they will be tortured.

MORE LIKELY THAN NOT? If you had asked me 5 years ago whether the use of torture by Americans would be a campaign issue, I would have laughed in your face. The degree to which thecretinsins have destroyed my nation's credibility in the international community is astounding.

There was a time when, even if a Frenchman or an Indian or a Kenyan disagreed with the policy of the United States, there was an understanding that America was on the side of Human Rights, Peace, Freedom, and working for the advancement of all people. This is no longer true. The sad thing is, even if that level of good will is reached again, (I doubt it) it certainly won't be within my lifetime. To many people in my generation, all around the world, have watched what Bush and his Republicanist, sycophantic Congress have done.

Torture Alberto Gonzales Bush

It's Bigger Than He Admitted

My local rag, the Washington Post, has something today that I could have predicted months ago...

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales appeared to suggest yesterday that the Bush administration's warrantless domestic surveillance operations may extend beyond the outlines that the president acknowledged in mid-December.

This is standard practice for kids admitting to their parents that they screwed up. Break it to them easy - admit to a small part of your offense. Fill in the details later after the anger has subsided. Bush would probably know this strategy pretty well.

In a letter yesterday to senators in which he asked to clarify his Feb. 6 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales also seemed to imply that the administration's original legal justification for the program was not as clear-cut as he indicated three weeks ago.

At that appearance, Gonzales confined his comments to the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program, saying that President Bush had authorized it "and that is all that he has authorized."

But in yesterday's letter, Gonzales, citing that quote, wrote: "I did not and could not address . . . any other classified intelligence activities." Using the administration's term for the recently disclosed operation, he continued, "I was confining my remarks to the Terrorist Surveillance Program as described by the President, the legality of which was the subject" of the Feb. 6 hearing.

Oh, so by 'clarifying' you mean you want to change your testimony so you don't get caught having essentially lied to Congress if the rest of this shit comes out? I thought so.

n his letter, Gonzales revisited earlier testimony, during which he said the administration immediately viewed a congressional vote in September 2001 to authorize the use of military force against al-Qaeda as justification for the NSA surveillance program. Bush secretly began the program in October 2001, Gonzales's letter said.

On Feb. 6, Gonzales testified that the Justice Department considered the use-of-force vote as a legal green light for the wiretapping "before the program actually commenced."

But in yesterday's letter, he wrote, "these statements may give the misimpression that the Department's legal analysis has been static over time."

Fein said the letter seems to suggest that the Justice Department actually embraced the use-of-force argument some time later, prompting Gonzales to write that the legal justification "has evolved over time."

Evolution is a great thing when it involves warantless domestic spying, but shouldn't be taught in our classrooms. Gotcha.


Domestic Spying Alberto Gonzales Bush

Re: Alberto Gonzales, A.G.

Our esteemed Attorney General, Alberto Gonazales, spent yesterday spinning excuses for President Bush's Domestic Warrantless Spying program. The whole program seems like it should be illegal. I find it alarming and unsettling. That said, I'm not an attorney. My studies of the U.S. Constitution is limited to an A.P. U.S. Government course in High School.

Filius Nullius at Democratic Underground has a wonderful and scholarly explanation of Why Bush has no constitutional power for warrantless surveillance. Go read it.

Also, Pres. Jimmy Carter has weighed in on the situation.

"Under the Bush administration, there's been a disgraceful and illegal decision — we're not going to the let the judges or the Congress or anyone else know that we're spying on the American people," Carter told reporters. "And no one knows how many innocent Americans have had their privacy violated under this secret act."