AG Gonzo Goes, GOPers Grouse

Well I thought it was too soon for Alberto Gonzales to up and quit. I thought he was going to hang in there until the Texas primary. Give Bush a chance to save the Texas junior senate seat by appointing John Cornyn to serve out the rest of the AG's term. Give Rick Perry the chance to appoint the next Senator from Texas. Someone not so joined at the hip to George Bush. So maybe it was just getting too hot in the AG’s kitchen. Or maybe Gonzo finally showed Bush the pictures he had of him and Bush didn’t care anyway.

All I can say is good riddance to bad rubbish.

Frontrunner Democratic US Senatorial Candidate Lt. Col. Rick Noriega issued the following brief statement on Gonzales’ resignation:

“It's about time. Our country's interest should come first. This appears to be a political decision. Hopefully this can put an end to the politicization of the Justice Department.”

John Cornyn was far more verbose and issued a multi-paragraph pity party on the resignation of Lyin’ Al. Only the last part is worth quoting as it is precious to see Cornyn, or any Republican, for that matter, say this after the years and years of Republican partisan politics through which we Americans have had to suffer. Said he:

“The American people deserve and demand bipartisan action on the many important issues facing our country today. It is my hope that the poisonous and partisan atmosphere that has surrounded this Congress will be lifted and my Democratic colleagues will work with Republicans in the best interests of the American people.”

I still favor the idea that John Cornyn will be appointed Gonzales’ successor. It solves so many problems for the Republicans on so many levels.

Besides, Cornyn is one of them. He’s a senator being appointed to AG that has to be confirmed by the senate. He’ll have 49 solid votes for confirmation. But then I probably give the Bush Regime too much credit. They’ve screwed up just about everything else in this country.

Why not give this obvious fix a pass as well?

Analysis: Why Does AG Gonzales Stay?

I signed a digital petition demanding that AG Alberto Gonzales resign. I have no expectations that he will, although I have no idea why he stays.

Even Newt Gingrich says that he should resign, that AG Gonzales has issues with saying the truth, and that it is “a liability for the president”. On the same piece an APB was sent out for White House officials and Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee to defend Gonzales on the show: “we had no takers”.

But I have to ask myself, if Gonzales is so obviously a “liability for the president” why then does Bush tolerate his continued presence? Is he stupid? Is he stubborn? Why won’t he listen to anyone? Gonzales is completely marginalized.

There are those who say that Gonzales is staying put because Bush is waiting for Congress to go on vacation. Or that he is staying because Bush doesn't think he can get another one confirmed by the Senate. Indeed, I have said that he is waiting until next year when he can move Texas Senator John Cornyn into the job so that he can replace Cornyn with a stronger candidate - and add to that, that this would be done after the March primary.

All of these are possible.

Having seen Gonzales face questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, Gonzales very much looked like someone who would rather be doing just about anything else. Very clearly he is being asked to stay in the job.

Bear with me, I’m just looking for a pattern. The only pattern that emerges is one in which the Bush Regime will do just about anything to upset as many people as they possibly can: friends and foe alike. This is strange to us because we haven’t seen anything like this in almost a century and a half.

The last time we had a president who bent over backwards to piss everybody off was when we had a man named Andrew Johnson in the White House. History is very kind to Johnson, and he is usually painted as the guy in the right battling a radical congress. In truth, Andrew Johnson had a sour disposition and went out of his way to offend everyone.

They even impeached him.

So for whatever reason, for the time being Gonzales is staying. But mark my words if and when he goes the last thing you will see is a Bush Regime that appears to be backing down.

That's just not their style.

Justice Department Widens Its Investigation of Attorney Firings

You can bet it was the sworn testimony of Monica Goodling that Justice Department investigators are now expanding their probe into the inner workings of the Attorney General’s hiring practices.

"We have expanded the scope of our investigation to include allegations regarding improper political or other considerations in hiring decisions withinthe Department of Justice," Inspector General Glenn A. Fine and H. Marshall Jarrett, head of the Office of Professional Responsibility, wrote in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee today.

Doubtless, it was the self-admitted culpability on the part of Monica Goodling, that she had “crossed the line” in asking potential hires about party affiliation. But so what? Apparently it was her policy, and she admitted to it after gaining immunity.

Is this just more smoke and mirrors? You have to ask yourself, how can the Justice Department investigate itself? And why investigate a self-admitted criminal who has federal immunity?

Don’t we need a special prosecutor who answers to the Legislative Branch of government?

Just asking.

The Rise and Fall of Monica Goodling

How does a young upwardly mobile conservative Christian woman find her way from a nice office in the Justice Department, an aide to the top law enforcement official in the nation, to pleading the 5th in a Senate hearing on her and her colleagues' acts, and finally to reclusion; out of sight if not out of mind of people who want to know the truth?

Only in George Bush’s America is this possible.

It was her first job out of law school. Monica Goodling graduated with a degree in law and public policy from Pat Robertson’s Regent University in 1999. She and 149 fellow Regent graduates filled 150 niches in Bush’s new government. She rapidly rose in the ranks through a display of a combination of hard work and willingness to force talented experienced people out of Justice so that they could be replaced with young Christian conservatives.

Alan Cooperman at the Washington Post uncovered an anecdote on Goodling that sheds some light on her people skills:

“When a college intern in the Justice Department whined that all he was doing was filing and answering phones, Monica M. Goodling took him aside. If he wanted to do ‘substantive work,’ she told him, he was going to have to prove himself first. The intern walked out of the office in a huff, and when he returned an hour later, Goodling took him aside again. ‘You're fired,’ she said.”

Goodling took her devotion to the Bush Administration as seriously as her devotion to Jesus, perhaps mixing the two up from time to time, and required that devotion in her underlings.

Her rapid descent, fueled by releases of emails and documents demonstrating her intimate involvement in the planning and execution of the 7 US Attorney dismissals, brought her and her lawyer to a US Senate Hearing on the firings, where she informed the panel that she would be following her lawyers advice and invoke her constitutional right not to incriminate herself.

Now, let me get this straight. This constitutional right is a right not to incriminate yourself. That is, if you break a law, you have the right not to admit it.

So there was a law broken? Monica broke the law?

I don’t think she as much broke the law in what she was doing as she broke faith with our system of justice. She was merely doing to the 7 US Attorneys what she had been doing within the Justice Department in DC. Carrying out her orders to make the Bush government look more like the government of Jesus.

I may be wrong here, but I don’t think people can invoke the 5th Amendment when they simply don’t want to expose the misdeeds, but not criminal misdeeds of herself and her colleagues. You can’t invoke the 5th Amendment to prevent yourself from being charged with a crime that has not yet been committed. My guess is that the crime that Monica Goodling had in mind, was going to be the crime of perjury that she would be committing when she gave testimony.

I don’t think you can do that.

I think the Senate Judiciary Committee needs to call her back in, now that there is no conflict between herself and her former colleagues.

I think Jesus would want her to do this, too.