Liberal College Kid

Well I guess the White House has officially run out of excuses. F.B.I. head, Robert Muller testified yesterday that Alberto Gonzales’s testimony on Tuesday, regarding the purported controversy inside the Justice Department over the secret NSA wiretapping program was, at the very least, not entirely forthcoming. A little background is necessary in order to illustrate the complete ineptitude of the Bush Lie Team at present and explain why the Judiciary Committee is pushing for an investigation into Gonzales’s actions.

In 2004, when Gonzales was White House Counsel and John “I Don’t Dance” Ashcroft was the A.G., Gonzales and Andrew Card went to the sick bed of Ashcroft for a meeting about the program. If you listen to Gonzales then the meeting was run by Ashcroft while Gonzo and Card simply briefed him on both the Terrorist Surveillance Program and the Presidents wishes for the reauthorization of the program. If you listen to former Ashcroft deputy James Comey, though, you get a different story. According to Comey, Ashcroft and Card went into Ashcroft’s hospital room after he has endured gallbladder surgery and was still heavily sedated to try and “take advantage of a very sick man” by getting him to reauthorize the NSA wiretapping program (which he had refused to do until substantial changes were made to it) and head off a Justice Department revolt, presumably (and I’m just spitballing on this one folks) because they felt it was illegal.

Flash forward to Tuesday when Gonzales was questioned about Comey’s accusations in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. When asked if it was the NSA wiretapping program which prompted the threat of mass resignations in the Justice Department and required Gonzales and Card to rush off to Ashcroft’s sick bed Gonzales said that it was another secret program which caused the uproar. Because of the classified nature of this “other” program though, Gonzales couldn’t talk about it.

Apparently Team Bush has run out of good lies and are now pulling ideas from Top Gun out of their back pockets in order to evade Congressional oversight. Isn’t it just the tiniest bit convenient that Gonzales can simply fall back to an excuse of “that’s classified, I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you” in order to sidestep the repercussions of his actions? At this point the Bush administration is simply engaging in a high level shell game where they attempt to bury lies and misconduct under the guise of national security, and it’s worked so far. With Muller coming out against Gonzales, however, this could quickly change.

Gonzales is in enough hot water as it is over the firings of U.S. attorney’s and, as Senator Arlen Specter (a Republican) said, his “credibility has been breached to the point of being actionable”. Now with the head of the F.B.I. coming out and saying that Gonzales lied to the Congress, coupled with the White House’s refusal to let former aides testify in front of the Judiciary Committee things could rapidly unravel for Gonzo. There will no doubt be a plethora of individuals calling for Gonzales’s resignation; enough to make the prior uproar over the U.S. attorney fiasco look tepid.

What is even more interesting about this situation, though, is that it illustrates how detached the Bush administration has become from reality, and how long the break between Rove & Co. and the rest of the world has existed. As far back as 2004 Bush had already decided that he was going to do what he damn well pleased and no one was going to stop him. The fact that there were as many as 30 top DOJ officials ready to resign after news of the Ashcroft visit spread (separate from the resignation talks in regards to the wiretapping program itself) alone should show that Bush has isolated himself from the government he installed. Even more shocking is the fact that Ashcroft, who is about as conservative as you can get, refused to extend the program unless it was changed in order to make it something that approached legal. This was all the way back in 2004, just imagine how much more isolated and stagnant Bush has become now.

This is why Gonzales will never be forced out by Bush, why it will take a criminal indictment (or something of that caliber) to get him out of his post. The only people who will go along with Bush’s insane ideas are those who feel personally obligated to remain loyal to him. If Ashcroft refused to endorse the President’s version of the wiretapping program just think about how much trouble Bush would have getting illegal programs OK’d by a Justice Department headed by an individual approved by a Congress led by Democrats. Bush will fight for his buddy Alberto to the end because he knows that without Gonzales at the helm the Executive branch would no longer be able to run roughshod over things like the Constitution and civil liberties. He also realizes that he wouldn’t be able to circumvent the law via signing statements either. Gonzales is Bush’s last line of defense between both what he hopes to do before leaving office as well as covering up everything he has done while President thus far.

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The Senate today voted not to vote.  The vote came out 53-38 in favor of voting on whether or not the Senate still had confidence in the Attorney General.  Unfortunately for Senate Dems they needed 60 votes in order to voice their dismay in vote form.  Bush said of the vote, “[the senate]’s not going to make the determination about who serves in my government.”  Because, you know, he’s the decider.

-I’m rubber you’re glue…

All the Senate can do to remove cabinet officials is the power of impeachment, so I actually think the Bush administration is right (shock!!) in calling this a political move.  That’s exactly what it is, and frankly I’m glad the Democrats are continuing to force the issue, even if they couldn’t directly vote on it.

The Democrats have been making concessions left and right since regaining a majority on the Hill in 2006.  The US Attorney scandal, however, has actually shown the Dems strong side as they are finally standing up to the White House.  Even if it is just one issue seeing some semblance of strength in the party should bode well come election season.  Sure they won’t be able to say they came into office and changed course in Iraq, which is what they were elected to do… But they will have a talking point about how they stood up to the big mean bully Republicans in Washington.  Oh, if only that were enough.

Gonzales doesn’t seem phased in any way, and really he has no reason to be.  The President has repeatedly stated that he has no plans of replacing the AG and that Gonzalez has his full support.  Of course, that is pretty much exactly what he was saying right before he fired Rumsfeld.  The thing is, firing Gonzalez probably wouldn’t help the President at all any way.  Bush has become the prodigal lame duck and it seems that virtually nothing he does these days has any impact on what people think of him.  The percentage of people who still approve of his decision making are always going to because they’re crazy.  I mean, with the exception of oil and defense industry CEO’s I can’t think of any other group of Americans who have actually benefited by the Decider’s Presidency.  The only other thing I can come up with as to why these people blindly support the President is the whole facade of faith.  The idea is that since the President is a man of faith he is justified in all that he does in our nation’s highest office.  Thinking like this is downright frightening.  The very notion that people think, in a democracy, that a person’s faith should supersede and forgive them of any wrong doing is ridiculous.

We are not a Christian nation, and in fact our founders made great efforts to protect us from becoming a Christian nation.  As Al Gore’s new book points out, under John Adams, congress actually passed a bill expressly stating that the country was not founded as a Christian nation.   Jefferson and Franklin, were both Deists believing in a creator but not in the divinity of Jesus. To argue that their intent was to create a nation founded on Christian principles is simply incorrect and it’s time we on the left start reminding the “moral majority” about it.

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The Senate is preparing to make a vote of no confidence, according to DailyKos, in regards to Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. I have several reactions.

- I do not recall…

First, what took so long?! And second, will this actually have any tangible impact? The Senate votes to confirm the AG, but if the President wants him to stay on and the fact that no one likes him any more doesn’t bother him in any way, well we’re kind of stuck with him.

The case of James Comey has emerged as what may become even more controversial then the eight US Attorneys who were fired. For those that have no clue who Comey is here is my own brief run down:

So this guy James Comey used to be the Deputy Attorney General under John Ashcroft. He was second in line, and when Ashcroft was hospitalized and unable to fulfill his Attorney General duties, Comey was the acting Attorney General. Anyway, the government had this sketchy wire tap program in place where they could listen in on people without the need for warrants. Then White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez and then chief of staff Andrew Card entered Ashcroft’s hospital room and told him to sign off on the continuation of the wire taps. He told them that Comey was the acting AG and did not sign.

The two men, according to Comey, completly ignored Comey’s presence in the room. Comey never did sign off on the wire taps, they were simply kept as law without the Department of Justice’s approval. Comey resigned a couple months later.

Then, Alberto Gonzalez, the man who tried to force the Attorney General to sign an illegal warrant-less wire tap program, became the Attorney General himself! Just like that, no more problems right? I’m sure if Gonzo is ever questioned about this he will respond with his obligatory “I do not recall,” and so we’ll probably never really know the extent of these kinds of dealings going on within the Bush cabinet.

A vote of no confidence is not necessary at this point, everyone and their mom thinks Gonzalez should step down. That is, everyone except the Decider and I’m not sure what his mom thinks on the matter. What the Senate needs to do is a complete investigation into what Gonzo’s been doing for the last six years. Putting someone on trial and convicting them, in my opinion, is a very good way of removing someone from office.

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