Loyalty Is The Only Game In Town
I see that Attorney-General Alberto "Speedy" Gonzales was dragged before the Senate Judiciary Committee again for another gang beating:
1) The Judiciary Committee's "senior Republican" is "Snarlin' Arlen" Specter, who has never passed up a chance to "go maverick" and screw over conservatives in general and GOP administrations in particular. Like his Donk colleague Chucky Schumer - heck, quite a few of his Donk colleagues - he never met a microphone and a camera he didn't like.
2) Of course Gonzales was relentlessly personally attacked by Committee Dems - that's what he was there for. That and to lay the groundwork for another anti-White House windmill tilting (more on that later). That he "struggled" in the face of all that abuse isn't all that difficult to understand, frankly.
3) James Comey's testimony about Gonzales and Andy Card bullying an ailing John Ashcroft is on a par with the New Republic's "Scott Thomas" libeling of American soldiers in Iraq - a ludicrous horror story told to a disgustingly eager audience. That Speedy called it BS (in so many words), again, cannot be seen as any big surprise.
Now, the above being said, I also must reiterate what I've said about this topic before, just as a refresher: Alberto Gonzales is a Bush Texas crony clearly out of his league on the national stage, a walking, talking, living personification of the Peter Principle who, certainly in retrospect, should never have been put in so visible a position as head of the U.S. Department of Justice. Good Lord, can you imagine if he'd been put on the Supreme Court? He'd have cut and run to the oligarchists faster than....no, on second thought, he'd probably have never made it out of confirmation hearings before this very committee, if his recent excursions to the Hill are any indication.
Admiral Morrissey, our esteemed channel commander at Blog Talk Radio, still has a boner for Speedy and still believes in retroactive hindsight:
Wrong, wrong, a thousand times, wrong. The President does not have the political luxury of firing Gonzales. If Ed thinks "this bleeding" is bad now, just wait until Dubya throws Speedy's professional corpse into the water, and watch the feeding frenzy then. It'd be the political equivalent of cutting & running from Iraq - the momentum against the Administration would become overpowering. It would create a rout, a complete unraveling that started with, don't forget, the sacking of Don Rumsfeld at Defense, a concession that didn't exactly slow the anti-war momentum of triumphant Democrats.
It wouldn't stop there, either, another little detail Ed forgets. Next they'd go after Karl Rove (again) and then Dick Cheney, and finally the President himself. With the plug poised to be pulled on the war in a matter of weeks, I don't think it would take as long as some might think, either. Once the boss starts tossing underlings under the bus, the underlings realize it's every man for himself. God knows there's been enough of the latter in this Administration as it is. No wonder Dubya is so loyal to his inner circle.
What impression does such a White House panic create? That there really is criminal wrongdoing, somewhere - another incentive for the Donks to press that much harder. What does that do to what's left of the President's thus-far successful counter-terrorism policy, of which Gonzales has been a staunch advocate? It effectively criminalizes it, certainly in public relations terms, as the A-G's dismissal would become the Dems' latest tabula rasa "proof" of every fever swamp/nutroot conspiracy theory of the past six years. An impression that Democrats and RINO finks like Specter cannot create absent the sort of obsequious White House cooperation that Ed is demanding.
As the Admiral himself concedes, for all these Gonzales reamings (Makes it awfully tempting to play the race card against the Dems, doesn't it?) and blizzards of subpeonas and such on the US attorneys-firing non-scandal, the NSA terrorist surveillance program "controversy," etc., the DisLoyalists haven't come close to even hinting at any law-breaking, much less a "smoking gun" that would be the Holy Grail of a Watergate sequel. That is, of course, because there isn't any. So why should the President voluntarily stick his head in the other side's propaganda noose by heaving his A-G overboard? Particularly when the confirmation hearings for Speedy's successor would simply re-plow the same damn ground with much greater publicity and public attention.
Lastly, there is the matter of the separation of power issue, protecting the prerogatives of the Executive Branch against the rapacious encroachment of a hostile Legislature. A matter which came to the fore before the day was even out:
You're damned right, they will. What the Democrats are attempting to do is no less than criminalize the entire functioning of the Executive Branch when under Republican control. The whole point of Executive Privilege is to ensure that the President's advisors can give him honest, candid advice about public policy issues and decisions. If those private, confidential conversations can be legally compelled to be aired out in congressional "oversight" hearings, presidents in times of divided government will be substantially less likely to receive that honest, candid advice for fear that the advisors will become an opposition punching bag or flaming effigy, their lives, reputations, and careers destroyed in the process. Hell, even staffing the Executive Branch might become prohibitive, as persuading talented, capable people to serve in Republican adminstrations has already become more difficult over the past generation. And without that internal give & take, presidential decision-making will be correspondingly impaired, and presidential independence from legislative bullying correspondingly curtailed.
No president, much less a staunch traditionalist like George W. Bush, would ever consent to such a congressional raping and pillaging of Executive power. And that is why he is not going to get rid of Alberto Gonzales. Doubtless personal loyalty is also a factor, but in this pointless game of constitutional "chicken," the President knows he's got the upper hand when these contempt citations go before the Supremes. If he were to pink-slip Speedy, he could bellowingly insist up and down that the dismissal was for "incompetence," or "a desire to spend more time with his family," or a diagnosis of the heartbreak of psoriasis and the creepin' crud, and it wouldn't matter, because the Dems and the Enemy Media would shriek from the rooftops that it was the first visible "smoke" wafting out of the "hidden gun."
One of the cardinal rules of life is that you never have to explain what you never said - or did. Alberto Gonzales may be an incompetent boob, but there is far more to be lost from remaining stuck with him than to let "good government" myopia set loose the dogs of partisan chaos.
UPDATE: The ASSociated Press sends its dispatch on Gonzales' testimony from the Left's acid-fueled alternate reality.
The Senate veered closer to a contempt finding against the White House on Tuesday after an acrimonious appearance by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, with the Judiciary Committee’s senior Republican offering options for taking the Bush Administration to court.A few thoughts are in order at this point.
Gonzales struggled under a verbal battering from senators that grew unusually personal as the hearing wore on. Several Democrats directly suggested that the besieged attorney general had lied to the committee, indicating they would scour the record for evidence of official perjury. …
Meanwhile, Gonzales sparked the ire of several Judiciary panel members by appearing to reverse himself on the controversial 2004 hospital visit he made to his predecessor, John Ashcroft. In May, former DoJ #2 James Comey shocked the Hill by testifying that the ill Ashcroft was pressured to approve the National Security Agency’s warrantless domestic eavesdropping program by Gonzales, then White House counsel, and Andy Card, then White House chief of staff.
Not only did Gonzales dispute Comey’s account, but at first he attempted to convince senators that the hospital fight occurred over an entirely different intelligence program. …
Under further questioning from Feinstein and Schumer, Gonzales reversed himself again and agreed that Comey’s testimony was correct in its reference to a legal dispute over the domestic eavesdropping of suspected terrorists without a court order.
1) The Judiciary Committee's "senior Republican" is "Snarlin' Arlen" Specter, who has never passed up a chance to "go maverick" and screw over conservatives in general and GOP administrations in particular. Like his Donk colleague Chucky Schumer - heck, quite a few of his Donk colleagues - he never met a microphone and a camera he didn't like.
2) Of course Gonzales was relentlessly personally attacked by Committee Dems - that's what he was there for. That and to lay the groundwork for another anti-White House windmill tilting (more on that later). That he "struggled" in the face of all that abuse isn't all that difficult to understand, frankly.
3) James Comey's testimony about Gonzales and Andy Card bullying an ailing John Ashcroft is on a par with the New Republic's "Scott Thomas" libeling of American soldiers in Iraq - a ludicrous horror story told to a disgustingly eager audience. That Speedy called it BS (in so many words), again, cannot be seen as any big surprise.
Now, the above being said, I also must reiterate what I've said about this topic before, just as a refresher: Alberto Gonzales is a Bush Texas crony clearly out of his league on the national stage, a walking, talking, living personification of the Peter Principle who, certainly in retrospect, should never have been put in so visible a position as head of the U.S. Department of Justice. Good Lord, can you imagine if he'd been put on the Supreme Court? He'd have cut and run to the oligarchists faster than....no, on second thought, he'd probably have never made it out of confirmation hearings before this very committee, if his recent excursions to the Hill are any indication.
Admiral Morrissey, our esteemed channel commander at Blog Talk Radio, still has a boner for Speedy and still believes in retroactive hindsight:
The reversals, the constant reclarifications, and the lack of any sense of personal control by Gonzales at Justice makes him appear to be one of the more incompetent Cabinet officials in recent memory. No one made any case for corruption at yesterday’s hearing, but a lack of criminality should not be the base qualification for remaining at the head of the DoJ — especially during a time of war. As Gonzales continues to flounder in a sea of his own contradictions, one has to wonder why the White House continues to allow this bleeding to continue.
If the White House is shrinking from a confirmation hearing on a replacement for Gonzales, it should remember that the DoJ serves the nation, and the nation deserves a competent and capable chief for this critical point in history. If Bush clings to Gonzales out of a sense of loyalty, then he should consider the damage that personal loyalty has done to his own credibility and the credibility of federal law enforcement. Gonzales is a mistake he can rectify, and Bush should do so immediately.
Wrong, wrong, a thousand times, wrong. The President does not have the political luxury of firing Gonzales. If Ed thinks "this bleeding" is bad now, just wait until Dubya throws Speedy's professional corpse into the water, and watch the feeding frenzy then. It'd be the political equivalent of cutting & running from Iraq - the momentum against the Administration would become overpowering. It would create a rout, a complete unraveling that started with, don't forget, the sacking of Don Rumsfeld at Defense, a concession that didn't exactly slow the anti-war momentum of triumphant Democrats.
It wouldn't stop there, either, another little detail Ed forgets. Next they'd go after Karl Rove (again) and then Dick Cheney, and finally the President himself. With the plug poised to be pulled on the war in a matter of weeks, I don't think it would take as long as some might think, either. Once the boss starts tossing underlings under the bus, the underlings realize it's every man for himself. God knows there's been enough of the latter in this Administration as it is. No wonder Dubya is so loyal to his inner circle.
What impression does such a White House panic create? That there really is criminal wrongdoing, somewhere - another incentive for the Donks to press that much harder. What does that do to what's left of the President's thus-far successful counter-terrorism policy, of which Gonzales has been a staunch advocate? It effectively criminalizes it, certainly in public relations terms, as the A-G's dismissal would become the Dems' latest tabula rasa "proof" of every fever swamp/nutroot conspiracy theory of the past six years. An impression that Democrats and RINO finks like Specter cannot create absent the sort of obsequious White House cooperation that Ed is demanding.
As the Admiral himself concedes, for all these Gonzales reamings (Makes it awfully tempting to play the race card against the Dems, doesn't it?) and blizzards of subpeonas and such on the US attorneys-firing non-scandal, the NSA terrorist surveillance program "controversy," etc., the DisLoyalists haven't come close to even hinting at any law-breaking, much less a "smoking gun" that would be the Holy Grail of a Watergate sequel. That is, of course, because there isn't any. So why should the President voluntarily stick his head in the other side's propaganda noose by heaving his A-G overboard? Particularly when the confirmation hearings for Speedy's successor would simply re-plow the same damn ground with much greater publicity and public attention.
Lastly, there is the matter of the separation of power issue, protecting the prerogatives of the Executive Branch against the rapacious encroachment of a hostile Legislature. A matter which came to the fore before the day was even out:
The House Judiciary Committee voted today to issue contempt citations for two of President Bush's most trusted aides, taking its most dramatic step yet towards a constitutional showdown with the White House over the Justice Department's dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys.
The panel voted 22-17, along party lines, to issue citations to Joshua B. Bolten, White House chief of staff, and Harriet E. Miers, former White House counsel. Both refused to comply with committee subpoenas after Bush declared that documents and testimony related to the prosecutor firings were protected by executive privilege. ...
Republicans on the panel argued strongly today against issuing contempt citations, and Democrats shot down two proposed GOP amendments before voting for the contempt findings."I believe this is an unnecessary provocation of a constitutional crisis," said Representative F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-WI). "Absent showing that a crime was committed in this process, I think the White House is going to win an argument in court."
You're damned right, they will. What the Democrats are attempting to do is no less than criminalize the entire functioning of the Executive Branch when under Republican control. The whole point of Executive Privilege is to ensure that the President's advisors can give him honest, candid advice about public policy issues and decisions. If those private, confidential conversations can be legally compelled to be aired out in congressional "oversight" hearings, presidents in times of divided government will be substantially less likely to receive that honest, candid advice for fear that the advisors will become an opposition punching bag or flaming effigy, their lives, reputations, and careers destroyed in the process. Hell, even staffing the Executive Branch might become prohibitive, as persuading talented, capable people to serve in Republican adminstrations has already become more difficult over the past generation. And without that internal give & take, presidential decision-making will be correspondingly impaired, and presidential independence from legislative bullying correspondingly curtailed.
No president, much less a staunch traditionalist like George W. Bush, would ever consent to such a congressional raping and pillaging of Executive power. And that is why he is not going to get rid of Alberto Gonzales. Doubtless personal loyalty is also a factor, but in this pointless game of constitutional "chicken," the President knows he's got the upper hand when these contempt citations go before the Supremes. If he were to pink-slip Speedy, he could bellowingly insist up and down that the dismissal was for "incompetence," or "a desire to spend more time with his family," or a diagnosis of the heartbreak of psoriasis and the creepin' crud, and it wouldn't matter, because the Dems and the Enemy Media would shriek from the rooftops that it was the first visible "smoke" wafting out of the "hidden gun."
One of the cardinal rules of life is that you never have to explain what you never said - or did. Alberto Gonzales may be an incompetent boob, but there is far more to be lost from remaining stuck with him than to let "good government" myopia set loose the dogs of partisan chaos.
UPDATE: The ASSociated Press sends its dispatch on Gonzales' testimony from the Left's acid-fueled alternate reality.
posted by JASmius at 4:33 PM
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