An Unsuitable Steward of the Law

Now here are some conservatives one could imagine sitting in the same car with….

“Dear Mr. President and Attorney General:

We, the undersigned co-founders of the American Freedom Agenda, urge the Attorney General to submit his resignation and the President to accept.

Mr. Gonzales has presided over an unprecedented crippling of the Constitution’s time-honored checks and balances.

He has brought the rule of law into disrepute, and debased honesty as the coin of the realm.

He has engendered the suspicion that partisan politics trumps evenhanded law enforcement in the Department of Justice.

He has embraced legal theories that could be employed by a successor to obliterate the conservative philosophy of individual liberty and limited government celebrated by the Founding Fathers.

In sum, Attorney General Gonzales has proven an unsuitable steward of the law and should resign for the good of the country.

The President should accept the resignation, and set a standard to which the wise and honest might repair in nominating a successor, who will keep the law, like Caesar’s wife, above suspicion.

Sincerely,

Bruce Fein, Chairman Richard Viguerie David Keene Bob Barr John Whitehead”
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Interrogations: Unsettling

Now here’s something to make your scalp tingle. Twice.

Out of the documents being turned over to Congress while looking into the firings of the United States Attorneys comes the news that one of the firings was related, in time at least, to requests by that USA to record all interrogations of all suspects by any federal law enforcement officer — a request which was strongly opposed by representatives of the FBI, the DEA, the ATF, the US Marshall’s service, and more.

Why would these upholders of the law oppose an audio or video recording of their interrogations? Well — it might not look good to a jury!

Law enforcement interrogation techniques (although completely legal) may still be unsettling for some jurors in video and audio form.

See Glen Greenwald at Salon for more. If FBI interrogation techniques of US citizens in US jails might unsettle US jurors, don’t even imagine what Guantanamo, Bagram, the USS Peleliu, interrogations were like. It will be very unsettling.

Attorney Firings Began in White House

As early as the opening months of 2005 the White House legal counsel, Harriet Miers (yes that one), was inquiring about firing all 93 US Attorneys. The compromise, reached almost two years later, was to fire 8 of them.

White House Involved in Firings

Monday, Kyle Sampson, the Chief of Staff of Attorney General Gonzalez, resigned.

Sampson left his post after acknowledging that he did not tell others in the department about the extent of his communication with the White House on the firings, leading them to give incomplete information to Congress.
Sampson played a key role in putting together the list of eight U.S. Attorneys who were fired last year.


Resignation of Native Son

By the way, “In 2002 Mr. Sampson, a Mormon, told the Brigham Young University news service that he admired Mr. Bush because the president recognized that politics and religious beliefs could not be separated.”

Senator Schumer is on CNN calling again, and more heatedly, for the resignation of Gonzales — who either didn’t know what his Chief of Staff was doing, or because he did.

“I had not idea how high it went… there has been unprecedented breech of trust, abuse of power and misuse of the Justice Department.”

The NY Times lead editorial yesterday referred to Gonzales as “consigliere to Mr. Bush’s imperial presidency,” and called for his replacement.

State Secret: The Invisible Cloak

In all juvenile fiction the dream of the hero is to get hold of a cloak of invisibility — something that will prevent the bad guys from seeing their nemesis arriving. Of course the bad guys have their invisible cloaks too. Money is the traditional means to make invisible the malfeasance — a bribe here, a buy-out there. Calls to loyalty work, too; black-listing, death threats. When all that fails there is now the super impenetrable, can’t be broken, ripped or torn cloak of invisibility — no matter how horrific the crime: State Secrets! The Bushes are not the first to wear it but they are the first to make it their everyday casual wear.

Here is a man abducted and tortured, very likely by agents of the United States of America, beacon of freedom and justice around the world until just a few years back, and he can’t hold anyone accountable: State Secrets!

Appeals Court Upholds Dismissal of Suit

Habeus Corpus: Not in My Constitution

In one of the more astounding –though it should not have been– revelations about his intellectual, historical and moral reach, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), who had voted for the Gonzalez confirmation, that “the Constitution doesn’t guarantee habeas corpus.”

For plenty a comment on this see ThinkProgress, Crooks and Liars, The Blue State. For the definitive take on Mr Gonzales you could check in on Steven Colbert.