Molly Ivins gives a (darkly) humorous sendoff to our departing Attorney General: Awwww, Ashcroft! WorkingforChange.com 11/15/04.
Awwww, Ashcroft... my man! The one I liked best of the whole Cabinet, the most consistently entertaining, the most the most deliciously inept, the most amazingly wrong-headed. Ashcroft, my personal Bush administration icon. And besides, he's so sexy.
How can we forget the golden moments? The day he covered up the nekkid tit on a statue of the Spirit of Justice in the Justice Department headquarters because we can't have that kind of thing. His fabulous pre-9/11 record, especially the day he finally told his top terror guy he just didn't "want to hear about it."
Joe Conason takes a look at his proposed successor, Alberto Gonzales the Torture Guy: The Gonzales question Salon 11/13/04. Conason talks about his role in the torture scandal. But he focuses more on his role in Bush's busy schedule of executions when he was Governor of Texas.
Advances in criminology and forensic science have forced even politicians and experts who favor the death penalty to admit that innocent men and women have been convicted of capital crimes -- and in some cases wrongly executed. The likelihood that such gross injustice occurred in Texas, where scores of convicts suffered execution while Bush was governor, is high. Research by death penalty opponents is continuing on a number of specific cases where the chances of error appear strongest, not only in Texas but across the country. At least one such case, however, is among those that Gonzales once briefed to Bush.
Phil Carter also looks at Gonzales role in the Texas executions: Loyal to a fault? Slate 11/11/04. But he gives more information about Gonzales' role in the torture scandal:
President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld may not have personally ordered the abuses at Abu Ghraib, but on advice from lawyers like Gonzales, they adopted policies that set the conditions for those abuses and the worst scandal to affect the U.S. government since Watergate. Yet, despite the incredible damage done by this scandal to the nation's political and moral standing in the world, not to mention its prospects of winning hearts and minds in the Middle East, no one of any significance has yet answered for these policies. Indeed, it appears many of the lawyers responsible for Abu Ghraib have been rewarded—OLC chief Jay Bybee now sits as a judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals; Pentagon General Counsel William Haynes II was nominated (but not confirmed) for a seat on the 4 th Circuit; and now Gonzales stands to be promoted, too.
In the days since the presidential election, the conventional wisdom has emerged that President Bush won re-election on the basis of values. And fittingly, he has pledged to govern on the basis of his mandate from the American people to implement those values. But the Gonzales appointment makes clear that the Bush administration prizes certain values—such as personal loyalty as the president's consigliere—over more democratic ones such as accountability and a commitment to the rule of law.
3 comments:
Ashcroft was pure froot loops. His incompetence was our first line of defense against his moral crusade to revoke the Bill of Rights.
Gonzales is another matter. It is clear that he will do whatever Bush wants, and will push through any obstacle of law or precedent or common decency to provide a legal foundation for the foul underbelly of Bush's global crusade. From Gitmo to Abu Ghraib, from suspension of habeus corpus to revocation of the Geneva Convention, from unlawful imprisonment to the bloodlust for Death Row, Gonzales is Bush's man all the way.
The creeps and cronies around Bush comprise one nasty gang of war criminals. Can't wait for the group photo of this Cabinet. Perhaps they should take the picture at Nuremburg.
Neil
Gonzales creeps me out too. Can he get past the Senate??
That Happy Chica,
Marcia Ellen
Unfortunately, yes. The Democrats don't seem intent on trying to filibuster him, unfortunately. They at least need to jam him about the torture memos and the Texas death penalty cases. And they need to get some clear statements out of him about how committed he is to pursuing the Valerie Plame and Iranian espionage cases. - Bruce
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