His snarling puppeteer, otherwise known as the 43rd president, said despite utter lack of support anywhere else, that he backs Attorney General Gonzales and that Democrats are on “a partisan fishingggg expedittttiiiion.”President Bush believes that there was nothing wrong with trying to oust eight very good conservative Republican federal prosecutors in order to shut down their investigations, install friends in their place and send an obedience signal to the other U.S. attorneys.
There was nothing illegal about what Bush did. It was all political. But the attorney general runs one of the few federal agencies that ought to be above politics, and for that reason there is a bipartisan tradition that when presidents run for re-election, four Cabinet officers are not even asked to engage in partisan campaigning: The secretaries of state, defense, treasury and the attorney general.
Firing U.S. attorneys who did not do the presidents venal bidding in contested elections or in throwing a corrupt Republican congressman in jail would be as bad as firing a general for purely partisan reasons instead of insubordination.
Oh, yeah. They already pulled that one back in ’03 when Bush sacked Gen. Eric Shinseki for telling Congress the military would need three times as many troops in Iraq as the president had been told to say by the terrorist-enabling Donald Rumsfeld.
The Senate and House Judiciary Committee, with Democratic majorities, want to get to the bottom of the torrent of e-mails already subpoenaed showing that the White House was deeply involved in the unprecedented firings. See, the president said, “There’s a lotta politics in D.C. … Score political points.”
If there was nothing illegal about what he did, then what he did was also just “a lotta politics.” It’s like revealing intelligence secrets that endanger national security and people’s lives is a crime when Democrats do it but part of the war against terrorism when Republicans do it. This president would have you believe he never engages in “a lotta politics.” Doesn’t have to. He just steals elections and calls his opponents traitors.
What the Democrats want is to subpoena presidential henchpersons Karl Rove and Harriet Meiers to tell the public why they inserted political considerations into the prosecution of wrongdoers. Bush thinks the Democrats should be satisfied with his deal of letting committee leaders ask Rove and Meiers questions privately.Would they be under oath? No. Would there be a transcript of what was said? No.
Some deal! The Democratic committee leaders could get the same deal by calling 202-456-1414 and asking for Karl or Harriett.
This ersatz compromise was proposed by Bush’s new counsel, Fred Fielding. Older readers may remember him as the deputy legal counsel to another president. Richard Nixon. Nixon, you younger readers may not recall, resigned in disgrace after not listening to his lawyers. Fielding also was Bush’s stooge on the 9/11 commission. (Fielding has a chance at the Guinness Book of World Records if he winds up serving as legal counsel to TWO presidents run out of town.)
So, there is a battle brewing that could result in Congress issuing contempt citations to Rove and Meiers, and under law they could be prosecuted in federal court. By a U.S. attorney, of course.
But it won’t get that far. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court, both packed with Bush monkeys, would set things straight and Rove and Meiers would fly away, along with convicted liar Scooter Libby. You remember Libby. He’s the man without a memory who was indicted and convicted at the urging of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald whose day job is – you guessed it – U.S. Attorney! And a U.S. Attorney chosen by the same Gonzales Justice Department to be the special prosecutor despite having already rated him “not distinguished.” Maybe they thought this “not distinguished” U.S. attorney was so bad he couldn’t convict a ham sandwich, much less Dick Cheney’s accessory after the fact.
So, to repeat, what the administration did was within the law, but only because Gonzales had sneaked new dictatorial powers into renewal of the Patriot Act. Yes, the Patriot Act, the one Bush said was necessary to fight terrorism by usurping Senate powers and civil liberties.
But today, the Senate voted to repeal the Gonzales judicial putsch.
The vote was 94-2.
Wow. I'm sure you could hardly contain your outrage back in 1998 as well.
ReplyDeleteJustice Bork explained it back then:
http://tinyurl.com/342atk
Since a google search doesn't reveal Ira's rant about Janet Reno firing *all* the prosecuters, I'm sure you can link me up through your personal archives.
Or perhaps you can't.
I wasted a good hour of my time responding to you this morning, and through a blog glitch or my incompetence, it never posted.
ReplyDeleteBut I am happy to waste another one to expose every one of your presumed arguments as last week's talking points.
A few questions, first. Can you find more than two Republican senators who want Gonzales to stay after he tried to fuck them in a way no A.G. ever has before?
Why did Bush say this situation was mishandled?
Why did Bush claim that a subpoena would prevent him from getting advice when he said no one advised him on this matter?
You totally misunderstand what this is about. This is about the tampering with the justice system of this country and the smearing of eight conservative Republican loyalists because they investigated things Bush didn’t want investigated or didn’t investigate things he wanted.
This is about a Nazi-like move to assume dictatorial powers under cover of night and under cover of law.
You wanna talk executive privilege? Well, it has been upheld by courts only in cases of national security. You reference my lack of outrage in 1998. I do remember a few things from 1998, including the 31 Clinton administration officials forced to testify despite claims of executive privilege. And about what? About a blow job.
In 1998, Tony Snow – now speaking for Bush -- said that Clinton’s assertion of executive privilege “would make it impossible for citizens to hold a chief executive accountable for anything. He would have a constitutional right to cover up.”
Get your facts right and your stories straight and face up to the fact that sometimes your guys fuck up but instead of admitting it or fixing it, they smear people, blow smoke and change the subject
There is written evidence – except for the missing e-mails from Nov. 15 to Dec. 6 – that the prosecutors were sacked for purely political reasons. At first, Gonzales said it was simply Bush’s prerogative. Then he said the U.S. Attorneys in question were not competent. Then he said they were. Then Rove came up with “Clinton did it, too.”
It must be really depressing for you to remember that Clinton has not been president for over six years and you can’t find any problem in this world not attributable to him. Even worse, you propagate the Big Lie.
Clinton removed all 93 U.S. attorneys, as did W. The only difference is that it took Bush a few months to do it. When Bush came in, one-third of the Clinton prosecutors had already submitted their resignations. Then-Attorney General John “Wesson Oil” Ashcroft put out a press release saying the White House and the Justice Department “have begun
to schedule transition dates for most of the remaining United States Attorneys to occur prior to June of this year."
Another difference is that Clinton did not clean house after the first term. Another difference is that Clinton actually fired several prosecutors in mid-term for cause: choking a TV reporter (although I could look the other way on that one); biting a topless dancer; and failing to get along with the judges in his district (which could harm the government’s cases.) In the latter case, Clinton filled the opening with a high official in the Justice Department under the first President Bush. A Republican you may have heard of. Robert Mueller. He is the head of Junior's FBI.
Now, about your “Justice Bork,” manifestly the worst judicial temperament since Roy Bean. First of all, he makes my very argument: executive privilege is a farce. (Or is that only for blow jobs but not for mugging the Constitutional separation of powers? Maybe you think it was all about perjury in 1998. If so, then let's talk about Gonzales' perjury in January of this year. Not to mention Scooter Libby's. Not to mention the pardoned-liar Elliott Abrams who remains in power propagating the Iraq disaster.)
Secondly, Bork suggests somehow that the Branch Davidians were victims of Clinton’s attorney general, despite the fact they violated firearms laws even the nutsy-cuckoos don’t oppose and they fired upon federal agents serving a legal warrant. That you take your judicial guidance from someone who condones terrorism makes you a terrorist, too. Remember, when you salute your tinpot Texas fuehrer, that “you are either with us or you are against us.”
And, psst – he doesn’t even agree with you! It must suck to be so far out on a limb you don't even know when the tree has moved.
Ira wrote:
ReplyDelete"It must be really depressing for you to remember that Clinton has not been president for over six years and you can’t find any problem in this world not attributable to him. Even worse, you propagate the Big Lie."
It must be really depressing to you asshole, that Bush actually won in 2000. One can read your whiny bullshit day after day after day about a stolen election, without you ever once addressing the fact that every single vote was counted, and when the media 'consortium' went and actually physically counted every single vote in the state of Florida, Bush won.
Read it once more dickwad, Bush won.
So, next time you want to point out the fact that I enjoy laughing at Clinton's follies and your lack of perspective on that, just laugh at the fact, FACT, that Bush won.
Stolen election my ass.
Now, want to get back to the topic? Or do you want to change the subject one MORE time?
Since it is the perogotive of the President to choose who serves with him, who gives a shit why the prosecutors were fired? It matters not. You just like to fucking whine. You said it yourself, there's nothing illegal. So what's the BFD on the hill? Another witch hunt? Find someone else to not remember something and then prosecute them for lying about another non-crime?
Whine about this bullshit after you're done whining about Janet Reno.
Don't change the subject yet again.
Have a nice day. :-)