Conservatives to Bush: Fire Gonzales
Monday, Apr. 16, 2007
By ADAM ZAGORIN/WASHINGTON
In what could prove an embarrassing new setback for embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on the eve of his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, a group of influential conservatives and longtime Bush supporters has written a letter to the White House to call for his resignation.
The two-page letter, written on stationery of the American Freedom Agenda, a recently formed body designed to promote conservative legal principles, is blunt. Addressed to both Bush and Gonzales, it goes well beyond the U.S. attorneys controversy and details other alleged failings by Gonzales. "Mr. Gonzales has presided over an unprecedented crippling of the Constitution's time-honored checks and balances," it declares. "He has brought rule of law into disrepute, and debased honesty as the coin of the realm." Alluding to ongoing scandal, it notes: "He has engendered the suspicion that partisan politics trumps evenhanded law enforcement in the Department of Justice."
The letter concludes by saying, "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..." It is the first public demand by a group of conservatives for Gonzales' firing. Signatories to the letter include Bruce Fein, a former senior official in the Reagan Justice Department, who has worked frequently with current Administration and the Republican National Committee to promote Bush's court nominees; David Keene, chairman of the influential American Conservative Union, one of the nation's oldest and largest grassroots conservative groups, Richard Viguerie, a well-known GOP direct mail expert and fundraiser, Bob Barr, the former Republican congressman from Georgia and free speech advocate, as well as John Whitehead, head of the Rutherford Institute, a conservative non-forit active in fighting for what it calls religious freedoms.
Fein, speaking for the signatories, told TIME that Gonzales' planned testimony to Congress tomorrow, the text of which has been released by the Justice Department, was a "terrible disappointment" that left unanswered key questions on which his job may now depend. "Gonzales testimony before the Judiciary Committee resorts to a truly Clintonesque defense of his own previous false statements," says Fein. "In fact," he says, "Gonzales' latest declarations really do call into question the forthrightness and honesty indispensable for America's chief law enforcement officer."
In testimony to be delivered before the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow ?- and in an op-ed in Sunday's Washington Post ?- Gonzales says he has "nothing to hide," and that there were no political motives for seeking the resignations of any U.S. attorney involved in the current controversy. He acknowledges that he made various mistakes in the controversy and apologizes to the U.S. attorneys and their families.
"I also have no basis to believe that anyone involved in this process sought the removal of a U.S. attorney for an improper reason," Gonzales asserted. "I firmly believe that these dismissals were appropriate." But he did not offer specifics about any of the firings, and specifics seem likely to dominate Tuesday's Senate hearings. Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the top Republican on the committee, said yesterday that Gonzales has a "steep hill to climb" to keep his job, noting that, "He's going to be successful, in my opinion, only if he deals with the [specific] facts."
Signers of the letter says that it is also aimed at fellow Republicans ?- and especially GOP members of Congress ?- whom they hope to encourage to call for the attorney general's ouster, a step they argue is crucial to ending damage to the Department of Justice, as well as GOP standing on Capitol Hill.
Conservatives have long distrusted Gonzales, but until now many hesitated to criticize him publicly in the current controversy out or respect for the broad latitude they believe a President should have in selecting his cabinet. Behind the scenes, however, their opposition helped dissuade Bush from nominating Gonzales to the Supreme Court and, over the years, they have regularly disparaged him as too soft on key issues such as affirmative action and abortion. But as the President's popularity and political clout continue to decline, the group's assault on the Attorney General is designed to rally a growing number of Republicans who seem to hope that Gonzales will finally step aside. His testimony, however, gives no indication that he intends to do so.
Former Attorney General and Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson gave a speech in 1940 in which he warned that "[t]he prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America. His discretion is tremendous. He can have citizens investigated and, if he is that kind of person, he can have this done to the tune of public statements and veiled or unveiled intimations." Jackson added that "the citizen's safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes. ..."
I was reminded this morning again of just how powerful a Federal Prosecutor is. From the always informative Dahlia Lithwick of Slate:
Quote:Former Attorney General and Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson gave a speech in 1940 in which he warned that "[t]he prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America. His discretion is tremendous. He can have citizens investigated and, if he is that kind of person, he can have this done to the tune of public statements and veiled or unveiled intimations." Jackson added that "the citizen's safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes. ..."
Here is the whole speech LINK
Joe(They dare to fill these positions with toadies?)Nation
I wonder if you agreed with this investigation MM?
Quote:The Justice Department announced Thursday it has opened a criminal investigation into how the White House failed to review thousands of e-mails that may have been under subpoena.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_20000324/ai_n13849722
Since everything should be equal, when will the DoJ open its criminal investigation into the Bush WH missing emails?
If the DoJ decided that there was enough evidence to investigate Gore,then yes I agree with it.
No,I did NOT agree with the investigations concerning the Clintons,and I have said so publicly on here and other forums.
parados wrote:I wonder if you agreed with this investigation MM?
Quote:The Justice Department announced Thursday it has opened a criminal investigation into how the White House failed to review thousands of e-mails that may have been under subpoena.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_20000324/ai_n13849722
Since everything should be equal, when will the DoJ open its criminal investigation into the Bush WH missing emails?
If the DoJ decided that there was enough evidence to investigate Gore,then yes I agree with it.
If the DoJ decides that a criminal investigation is warranted in the Bush e-mail case,then yes I agree with it.
mysteryman wrote:
If the DoJ decided that there was enough evidence to investigate Gore,then yes I agree with it.
mysteryman wrote:
No,I did NOT agree with the investigations concerning the Clintons,and I have said so publicly on here and other forums.
The Justice Department responded to the hearings by immediately launching a criminal
investigation of the White House's actions. At issue was the White House's response when
officials learned in 1998 that an archive had not been kept. "The core of this is we may have
subpoenas issued that were not fully complied with and people who may have been threatened
with retaliation to hide it," said a Justice Department official. "It's not the kind of thing you
should take lightly. And we don't" [6].
Janet Reno had to be the worst Attorney General ever in history. And one of her top priorities was obviously to protect the Clintons.
Clinton authorized 31 senior aides to testify under oath before Congress on 51 separate occasions. I testified before both House and Senate committees, and for each of my appearances, I went into a public hearing room, in front of television cameras, with a full transcript being kept; I raised my right hand, I swore to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth
The e-mail suggested that Gonzales supported in concept a plan to remove Lam if she didn't go along with changes in immigration enforcement in her district.
The letter from special counsel Emmet T. Flood to the RNC's lawyer, Robert Kelner, said the White House must have an opportunity to review the documents to learn whether they must be preserved as part of the Presidential Records Act, but also to determine "whether the executive branch may need to take measures necessary to protect its other legal interests."
Since the day he arrived at the Department of Justice in February 2005, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has "shattered" the department's tradition of independence and politicized its operation more than any other attorney general in more than 30 years.
Under Gonzales, though, almost immediately from the time of his arrival in February 2005, this changed quite noticeably. First, there was extraordinary turnover in the political ranks, including the majority of even Justice's highest-level appointees. It was reminiscent of the turnover from the second Reagan administration to the first Bush administration in 1989, only more so. Second, the atmosphere was palpably different, in ways both large and small. One need not have had to be terribly sophisticated to notice that when Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey left the department in August 2005 his departure was quite abrupt, and that his large farewell party was attended by neither Gonzales nor (as best as could be seen) anyone else on the AG's personal staff.
Third, and most significantly for present purposes, there was an almost immediate influx of young political aides beginning in the first half of 2005 (e.g., counsels to the AG, associate deputy attorneys general, deputy associate attorneys general, and deputy assistant attorneys general) whose inexperience in the processes of government was surpassed only by their evident disdain for it.
Having seen this firsthand in a range of different situations for nearly two years before I retired, I found it not at all surprising that the recent U.S. attorney problems arose in the first place and then were so badly mishandled once they did.
But the process of agency functioning, however, became dramatically different almost immediately after Gonzales arrived. No longer was emphasis placed on accomplishing something with the highest-quality product in a timely fashion; rather, it became a matter of making sure that a "consensus" was achieved, regardless of how long that might take and with little or no concern that quality would suffer in such a "lowest common denominator" environment. And heaven help anyone, career or noncareer employee, if that "consensus" did not include whatever someone in the White House might think about something, be it large, small, or medium-sized.
In short, the culture markedly shifted to one in which avoiding any possibility of disagreement anywhere was the overriding concern, as if "consensus" were an end unto itself. Undergirding this, what's more, was the sad fact that so many political appointees in 2005 and 2006 were so obviously thinking not much further than their next (i.e., higher-level) position, in some place where they could "max out" by the end of Bush's second term.
Q: In your view, what needs to be done to repair the department?
A: Based upon my experience, it's very hard to imagine how the department can viably move forward now without a Watergate-style repair. By that I mean the appointment of a new attorney general, one who by reputation, background, and temperament is well-suited to at least begin the process of restoring the department's previous reputation for political independence and the reliably even-handed administration of justice.
