POLITICS - The Bush Idea of "Administration"

Oh yes, we now have evidence of just what the Bush definition of "administration" is, everything temporary (aka bypass Senate approval).

"Interim Heads Increasingly Run Federal Agencies" by Philip Sheon, New York Times

Excerpt

For now, the most powerful law enforcement official in the federal government is a 47-year-old lawyer little known outside Washington.

Or inside Washington, for that matter.

He is acting Attorney General Peter D. Keisler, who is running the Justice Department until a new attorney general is confirmed by the Senate to replace Alberto R. Gonzales. Mr. Keisler had been in charge of the department’s civil division.

The No. 2 and No. 3 officials are also acting — Deputy Attorney General Craig S. Morford and Associate Attorney General Gregory G. Katsas. More than a quarter of the department’s 93 United States attorneys around the country are “acting.”

At the top of the Department of Homeland Security, there is an acting general counsel, acting under secretary for national protection and acting assistant secretary for strategic plans. At the Department of Health and Human Services, the $600 billion-a-year Medicare and Medicaid programs have had an acting administrator since last fall.

Scholars and other researchers who study the federal bureaucracy say the situation in those agencies is becoming increasingly common elsewhere in the Bush administration.

With only 15 months left in office, President Bush has left whole agencies of the executive branch to be run largely by acting or interim appointees — jobs that would normally be filled by people whose nominations would have been reviewed and confirmed by the Senate. In many cases, there is no obvious sign of movement at the White House to find permanent nominees, suggesting that many important jobs will not be filled by Senate-confirmed officials for the remainder of the Bush administration. That would effectively circumvent the Senate’s right to review and approve the appointments. It also means that the jobs are filled by people who do not have the clout to make decisions that comes with a permanent appointment endorsed by the Senate, scholars say.

While exact comparisons are difficult to come by, researchers say the vacancy rate for senior jobs in the executive branch is far higher at the end of the Bush administration than it was at the same point in the terms of Mr. Bush’s recent predecessors in the White House.

POLITICS - One For the Good Guys

"Federal judge blasts Congress, strikes down part of Patriot Act" by Larry Neumeister, AP, 9/6/2007

A federal judge issued a blistering attack on the USA Patriot Act on Thursday as he struck down a key part of the law, ruling that it runs roughshod over the Constitution and puts Americans in danger of "far-reaching invasions of liberty."

In a ruling remarkable for its numerous pages spent defending the need for judicial oversight of laws, U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero handed the American Civil Liberties Union a major victory in its challenge of the post-Sept. 11 law.

"Congress needs to fix the mess it created when it gave the government overly-broad powers to obtain sensitive information about Americans," said Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., one of the few lawmakers to vote against the Patriot Act.

The judge immediately stayed the effect of his ruling, allowing the government time to appeal. Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said: "We are reviewing the decision and considering our options at this time."

The ACLU had challenged the law on behalf of an Internet service provider, complaining that it allowed the FBI to demand records without the kind of court supervision required for other government searches. Under the law, investigators can issue so-called national security letters to entities like Internet service providers and phone companies and demand customers' phone and Internet records.

.....................

Noting that the courthouse where he resides is several blocks from the fallen World Trade Center, the judge said the Constitution was designed "so that the dangers of any given moment would never suffice as justification for discarding fundamental individual liberties."

He said when "the judiciary lowers its guard on the Constitution, it opens the door to far-reaching invasions of liberty."

In a lengthy opinion, he gave what amounted to an eighth-grade civics lesson, describing why the founders of the Constitution created three branches of government, separate but equal, delegating the judiciary to say what the law is and to protect the Constitution and the rights it gives citizens.

Regarding national security letters, Congress impermissibly crossed its jurisdictional boundaries so dramatically that to let the law stand might turn an innocent legislative step into "the legislative equivalent of breaking and entering, with an ominous free pass to the hijacking of constitutional values."

The article is correct about "eighth-grade civics lesson." That is where I was taught about our Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Particularly about the reason for the 3 branches of government and separation of powers. It is very obvious to me the Bush flunked his civics classes; then again, Emperor Bush may be choosing just to ignore them.

Side issue, Gonzo supported this and should be disbarred and prevented from practicing law in the US.

POLITICS - Retrospect, Gonzo World

Ahhhh, now that he is fading into the sunset.......

"Favorite Memory: Gonzo on Habeas" by Robert Parry, Consortium News

Excerpt

But my personal favorite was his insistence that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t expressly recognize habeas corpus, the great fair-trial principle of English law that dates back to the Magna Carta in 1215.

“There is no expressed grant of habeas in the Constitution,” Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Jan. 18. He did acknowledge, however, that there was “a prohibition against taking it away.”

Gonzales’s bizarre remark left Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a former federal prosecutor and the panel’s ranking Republican, sputtering in disbelief.

“Wait a minute,” Specter interjected. “The Constitution says you can’t take it away except in case of rebellion or invasion. Doesn’t that mean you have the right of habeas corpus unless there’s a rebellion or invasion?”

Gonzales continued, “The Constitution doesn’t say every individual in the United States or citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right shall not be suspended” except in cases of rebellion or invasion.

“You may be treading on your interdiction of violating common sense,” Specter responded, as if confronting the sophomoric comments of a first-year law student who would never make it to a second year.

While the exchange drew little or no attention in the major news media, I found it revealing in several ways:

First, it exposed the narrow, ideological thinking that has pervaded the legal analysis of Gonzales and other Bush administration lawyers.

Neoconservative and right-wing legal operatives have long functioned with the notion that if they could conjure up a clever legal argument – no matter how flimsy – that their argument must be accepted as sound or at least treated with the utmost seriousness. If we can divine a rationale, we must be right.

That self-absorbed thinking has been at the core of the legal theories behind George W. Bush’s treatment of profound issues such as presidential power, government secrecy, and limitations on the inalienable rights of individuals who are not in Bush’s inner circle.

So, no matter how established habeas corpus might be in American legal traditions, Gonzales felt he could put it in question simply with the nit-picking observation that the Founders didn't explicitly spell out the Great Writ when writing the Constitution.

Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution states that “the privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”

The clear meaning of the clause, as interpreted for more than two centuries, is that the Founders recognized the long-established English principle of habeas corpus, which guarantees people the right of due process, such as formal charges and a fair trial.

However, under Gonzales’s constitutional theory not only would habeas corpus not be guaranteed, the American people also would have no assurances about freedom of religion, speech or the press. In the Bill of Rights, all those rights are defined in negative language: “Congress shall make no law …”

There's much more in the full article
Bold emphasis mine

Gonzo sure didn't get the schooling I got. That's where I learned the fundamental difference between a free society and a totalitarian one.

• Totalitarian Society: Citizens cannot do anything unless it is granted by the government


• Free Society: Anyone can do anything not forbidden by law

By Gonzo's logic, America is a Totalitarian Society, we have no Constitutional rights because they are not specifically granted.

I thank "God the Emperor Bush" enabler is going, going, and finally gone. This troglodyte should not be allowed to practice law in America. We should ship him to a country of another dictator to practice there. Like North Korea.

POLITICS - Gonzoland Sinking In the Waves of Deceit

"Conservatives Refuse To Appear On Fox News To Publicly Defend Gonzales" by Matt, Think Progress

On Fox News Sunday this morning, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA) refused to defend Attorney General Alberto Gonzales against accusations that he may have perjured himself before Congress. “It’s very damaging…we badly need an attorney general who is above any question,” said Gingrich. He continued:

• Both the president and country are better served if the attorney general is a figure of competence. Sadly, the current attorney general is not seen as any of those things. I think it’s a liability for the president. More importantly, it’s a liability for the United States of America.

Later in the show, host Chris Wallace revealed that no conservative would willingly defend Gonzales on Fox. “By the way, we invited White House officials and Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee to defend Attorney General Gonzales,” said Wallace. “We had no takers.”

The efforts of right-wingers to distance themselves from Gonzales have reached a fever pitch in the wake of his disastrous Senate testimony last week.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), appearing on ABC’s This Week, said “of course” Gonzales has a credibility problem. On MSNBC’s Hardball on Friday, Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT), the ranking member of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law, squirmed when asked by host Chris Matthews if he thought Gonzales “is a good attorney general?” Cannon refused to answer the question, offering instead, “He’s a good guy.”

National Review Online’s Jonah Goldberg, a reliable partisan defender of the Bush administration, admitted on Thursday that the evidence against Gonzales is compelling. “I think Gonzales has long, long, long outserved whatever usefulness he might once have had,” wrote Goldberg. “And — hey — maybe he actually did perjure himself.”

If Solicitor General Paul Clement fails to appoint a special counsel to look into Gonzales’ “words and deeds,” the New York Times writes today, “Congress should impeach Mr. Gonzales.”

The full article contains a video of the Gingrich interview.

POLITICS - So Called "Patriot" Act

"Patriot Abuse" by Janet Nocek, Countant

Was Gagged By The Patriot Act While The Attorney General Was Free To Tell Falsehoods About It.

When the USA Patriot Act was being reauthorized in 2005, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales claimed that not one single abuse of the "national security letters" provision had been reported.

It must be his poor memory that caused Mr. Gonzales to tell Congress that no abuse had been reported. What else would explain why he did not mention the reports that described abuses and mismanagement of NSLs - which we now discover were in his possession before his testimony?

I was one of four library colleagues who challenged an NSL in the courts around the time of its reauthorization. We were under a gag order because of the nondisclosure provision of the NSL section of the Patriot Act. This happened even though a judge with high-level security clearance had declared that there was no risk in identifying us as recipients of an NSL.

We were therefore not allowed to testify to Congress about our experience with the letters - which seek information, without court review, on people like library users.

It is more than irksome to now discover that the attorney general was giving Congress false information - at the same time that we recipients of NSLs were not allowed to express our concerns. My colleagues and I were lucky to have our gag order lifted eventually, with the help of lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, after the federal District Court found constitutional problems with that section of the Patriot Act. Unfortunately, we were prohibited from speaking to the public - or even to our U.S. senators and representatives - until after the Patriot Act was reauthorized.

A gag order is very difficult to deal with. A person cannot tell her family or friends she has received a demand from the government to turn in information on another person. Whether you agree with the security-letter provision or not, receiving such a letter is an emotionally wrenching experience.

And if the government requires you to compromise your professional and personal ethics, it can be an intensely disturbing experience. You feel like a character in an Orwellian book. You feel trapped in a world that others like you may inhabit, but you cannot reach outside of that world to find out.

Reportedly hundreds of thousands of security letters have been sent out. The recipients remain gagged and can never speak about their experience, under threat of a five-year prison sentence. They can never describe the scope and nature of the information they give to the FBI.

Therefore, it is laughable to assume that no abuse has been made of the security-letter provision. The secrecy under which the provision is administered guarantees a lack of oversight.

I don't believe the FBI is to blame for its reported mismanagement of NSLs. The Patriot Act does not effectively address court and congressional oversight. It follows that abuse and mismanagement are practically a given.

Janet Nocek is director of the Portland library and a member of the Executive Board of Library Connection, a Greater Hartford library consortium that received a national security letter in June 2005.

Fellow Americans, Orwell's book "1984" is not fiction. It is here, now, in America and other nations.

Surveillance cameras on city streets, gag orders without oversight to prevent abuse, electronic surveillance on your phone calls (no matter what the NSA claims), and more. And we seem to accept this as "protecting" us from dangers. This is the classic excuse of every totalitarian government in history, North Korea being a prime example.

All potential, if not real, abuses of government power aggressively protected by a Administration who does not believe in oversight; an Imperial Administration that believes it answers to no one.

POLITICS - Boy! These People Put Tricky-Dicky to Shame

"A New Cheney-Gonzales Mystery" by Michael Isikoff, Newsweek Periscope

A new battle has erupted over Vice President Dick Cheney's refusal to submit to an executive order requiring a government review of his handling of classified documents. But the dispute could also raise questions for embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. For the past four years, Cheney's office has failed to comply with an executive order requiring all federal offices—including those in the White House—to annually report to the National Archives on how they safeguard classified documents. Cheney's hard-line chief of staff, David Addington, has made the novel argument that the veep doesn't have to comply on the ground that, because the vice president also serves as president of the Senate, his office is not really part of the executive branch.

Cheney's position so frustrated J. William Leonard, the chief of the Archives' Information Security Oversight Office, which enforces the order, that he complained in January to Gonzales. In a letter, Leonard wrote that Cheney's position was inconsistent with the "plain text reading" of the executive order and asked the attorney general for an official ruling. But Gonzales never responded, thereby permitting Cheney to continue blocking Leonard from conducting even a routine inspection of how the veep's office was handling classified documents, according to correspondence released by House Government Reform Committee chair Rep. Henry Waxman.

Why didn't Gonzales act on Leonard's request? His aides assured reporters that Leonard's letter has been "under review" for the past five months—by Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). But on June 4, an OLC lawyer denied a Freedom of Information Act request about the Cheney dispute asserting that OLC had "no documents" on the matter, according to a copy of the letter obtained by NEWSWEEK. Steve Aftergood, the Federation of American Scientists researcher who filed the request, said he found the denial letter "puzzling and inexplicable"—especially since Leonard had copied OLC chief Steve Bradbury on his original letter to Gonzales. The FOIA response has piqued the interest of congressional investigators, who note Bradbury is the same official in charge of vetting all document requests from Congress about the U.S. attorneys flap. Asked about the apparent discrepancy, Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the OLC response "was and remains accurate" because Leonard's letter had generated no "substantive work product."

Waxman told NEWSWEEK he now plans to investigate the handling of the issue by Justice as well as Cheney's refusal to comply with the executive order, which he called part of a "pattern" of stonewalling by the veep. Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride said, "We're confident we are conducting the office properly under the law." She also pointed to comments by White House Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino, who said that Bush, not the National Archives, was the "sole enforcer" of the executive order relating to classified information.

Yap, another issue to add to our "straight-forward, I'm not a crook" Bush Administration.

POLITICS - Bush White House Motto, "The Rule of Law Sucks"

"The Return of the 18-minute Gap" by Kagro X, Daily KOS

The undead body of Watergate still lumbers through Republican White Houses. And, it appears, it's a creature of habit.

Via Think Progress, we learn that Henry Waxman's House Oversight committee finds:

• The number of White House officials using RNC e-mail accounts isn't a "handful of officials" as claimed by Dana Perino in March. Nor the "50 over the course of the administration" as she later claimed. Rather, the committee has learned that nearly twice that number, at least 88 White House officials have been using the outside accounts.


• Karl Rove himself is responsible for some 140,216 such e-mails -- at least those which have been preserved. Also accounting for a significant volume of such communications: former White House Director of Political Affairs Sara Taylor (66,018 e-mails) and Deputy Director of Political Affairs Scott Jennings (35,198 e-mails). Fully 75,374 were sent to or received from individuals using official ".gov" e-mail accounts. That's "official business" over questionably secure RNC servers, folks.
  


• Of the 88 officials identified as using such e-mail accounts, 51 of them have miraculously had their e-mail records disappear. Golly! Among the 37 officials for whom the RNC did preserve records, those records evidence "major gaps." For instance, despite the enormous volume of e-mails known to have been sent or received by Rove during certain periods, for others -- like the first term, for instance -- only some 130 e-mails are available.
  


• Finally, it appears that -- surprise! -- the White House Counsel's office under Alberto Gonzales was fully aware of the use of the RNC e-mail accounts, but took no action to preserve them as required under the Presidential Records Act.

All of which is no surprise, when you consider the Bush White House's motto, "The Rule of Law Sucks."

POLITICS - Latest from Gonzo World aka Bush Empire

"Gonzales Hospital Episode Detailed" by Dan Eggen & Paul Kane, Washington Post

On the night of March 10, 2004, as Attorney General John D. Ashcroft lay ill in an intensive-care unit, his deputy, James B. Comey, received an urgent call.

White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales and President Bush's chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., were on their way to the hospital to persuade Ashcroft to reauthorize Bush's domestic surveillance program, which the Justice Department had just determined was illegal.

In vivid testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, Comey said he alerted FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and raced, sirens blaring, to join Ashcroft in his hospital room, arriving minutes before Gonzales and Card. Ashcroft, summoning the strength to lift his head and speak, refused to sign the papers they had brought. Gonzales and Card, who had never acknowledged Comey's presence in the room, turned and left.

The sickbed visit was the start of a dramatic showdown between the White House and the Justice Department in early 2004 that, according to Comey, was resolved only when Bush overruled Gonzales and Card. But that was not before Ashcroft, Comey, Mueller and their aides prepared a mass resignation, Comey said. The domestic spying by the National Security Agency continued for several weeks without Justice approval, he said.

"I was angry," Comey testified. "I thought I just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man, who did not have the powers of the attorney general because they had been transferred to me."

The broad outlines of the hospital-room conflict have been reported previously, but without Comey's gripping detail of efforts by Card, who has left the White House, and Gonzales, now the attorney general. His account appears to present yet another challenge to the embattled Gonzales, who has strongly defended the surveillance program's legality and is embroiled in a battle with Congress over the dismissals of nine U.S. attorneys last year.

It also marks the first public acknowledgment that the Justice Department found the original surveillance program illegal, more than two years after it began.

Red emphases mine

I watched the testimony and was shocked at such behavior from people sworn to uphold our Constitution and self-professed practitioners of ethical behavior (which they have never been).

ABSOLUTE, TOTAL ARROGANCE! The Bush Administration is in fact Fascist Dictatorship, or very close.

Also very childish, like a child going to pop after mom has denied or said "no" to something the child wants.

POLITICS - Today's news from Bushworld and Gonzoland

"New Documents Show Republican Involvement in U.S. Attorney Firings" WorldNow and KRNV Ch 4, Reno Nevada

Newly released documents are shedding light on the dismissal of U.S. Attorney for Nevada Daniel Bogden.

According to the documents, Bogden was told he was being dismissed because the Bush administration had a short window to get others into prosecutor jobs to bolster their resumes.

Bogden said Associate Attorney General William Mercer told him in December that the firings were being carried out so, in his words, "the Republican Party would have more future candidates for the federal bench and future political positions."

POLITICS - King George Speaks

"Bush: Iraq Supplemental Unconstitutional" by Big Tent Democrat, TalkLeft

In his veto message to Congress, President Bush claims the Iraq Supplemental is unconstitutional:

• [T]his legislation is unconstitutional because it purports to direct the conduct of the operations of the war in a way that infringes upon the powers vested in the Presidency by the Constitution, including as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces.

Nonsense. Here is the Iraq language in the bill. Nothing contained therein "purports to direct the conduct of the operations of the war." It purports to condition the deployment of troops in the conduct of the war by requiring the President certify that certain conditions are being met.

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution provides among Congress' powers, the power:

• To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years

This appropriation is a direct and express exercise of that power. It clearly is constitutional.

Ah, yes. Rule by decree. As the King speaks let it be done! NOT!
And it's approved by Gonzo the official non-guardian of our Constitution.

POLITICS - The Obstruction Department of the Bush Administration

"Gonzales’s Justice Department Obstructed Investigation of Republican Congressmen" by Scott Horton, Harper's Magazine

The Wall Street Journal now confirms what we’ve known from the beginning: Alberto Gonzales’s Justice Department put the brakes on criminal investigations targeting a number of Republican congressmen in an effort to insure that no indictments were returned before the November 2006 elections. How did that work? The U.S. attorneys need to get a go-ahead from Washington before seeking indictments of key figures such as members of Congress. As we learned previously in the case involving Randy “Duke” Cunningham and other California congressmen, Gonzales’s Justice Department held this process up inexplicably for many months—with an obvious intention of ensuring that the indictments did not adversely affect the Republicans’ election efforts. Now the Journal tracks what happened in the Rick Renzi case, and finds the same practice of obstruction.

Note the link to the Wall Street Journal article.

POLITICS - Gonzo v. Gonzales

The Capital Times, Madison, WI

Give Attorney General Alberto Gonzales credit. To a far greater extent than many in Washington have even now come to recognize, he acknowledged in an opening statement prepared for his appearance Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the scandal swirling around him involves a lot more than the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

Of course, the acknowledgment came in the form of another self-serving denial of any wrongdoing by the embattled attorney general. "I know that I did not, and would not, ask for a resignation of any individual in order to interfere with or influence a particular prosecution for partisan political gain," Gonzales claimed. "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."

That reference to concerns about whether decisions were being made at the Department of Justice for "partisan political gain" goes to the very heart of what the U.S. attorneys scandal is all about. And there can be little question that, while it surely was not his intent, Gonzales in the course of his tortuously vague testimony confirmed the worst fears about the politicization of decisions made by his department regarding who should serve as federal prosecutors and what they should be prosecuting.

New York Times

If Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had gone to the Senate yesterday to convince the world that he ought to be fired, it’s hard to imagine how he could have done a better job, short of simply admitting the obvious: that the firing of eight United States attorneys was a partisan purge.

Huston Chronicle

Gonzales' testimony did not sufficiently settle the question of whether he directed the reviews and firings, or largely and irresponsibly delegated the firing of chief federal prosecutors to aides acting under the influence of White House political operatives. He maintained that the prosecutors' firings were not improper, but he couldn't seem to articulate how they came to be fired, or why.

However, by leaving so many questions unanswered, Gonzales ensures that the furor over the firings will continue, badly serving the president and the public.

Seattle Times

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales looked like an ineffective, and at times clueless, leader in his testimony before Congress Thursday.

He hemmed. He hawed. He did not recall. He was responding to scathing Senate Judiciary Committee questioning about his role in what has become an imbroglio over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

Scripps News

If the Senate hearing Thursday is any indicator, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should clean out his desk and depart. Dishonesty, incompetence, evasiveness _ every sin in public life _ were all pinned on the nation's top lawman. Quitting, not continuing, is the only option.

Washington Post

Alberto Gonzales's tenure as attorney general was pronounced dead at 3:02 p.m. yesterday by Tom Coburn, M.D.

The good doctor, who also happens to be a Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, made this clinical judgment after watching Gonzales suffer through four hours of painful testimony. The Oklahoman listed the cause of death as management failure and other complications of the Justice Department's firing of eight federal prosecutors.

"It was handled incompetently. The communication was atrocious," Coburn told the beleaguered attorney general. "You ought to suffer the consequences that these others have suffered, and I believe that the best way to put this behind us is your resignation."

CNN

The attorney general has been roundly criticized for his handling of the shakeup and for the shifting explanations Justice Department officials have given for the changes.

Gonzales said more than 60 times that he "couldn't recall" certain incidents. His former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, used that explanation 122 times during his testimony weeks ago.

On Friday, another Republican, Sen Jeff Sessions of Alabama, told CNN that Gonzales should consider leaving office.

"I think the attorney general ought to take the weekend and think about this and ask himself whether he can effectively reconstitute the attorney general's office," Sessions said, "and I'll be thinking about the same thing.

"If he feels like he cannot, then it would be best for the president and the country to resign."

As expected, the Bush-Voice stated that the Administration has full confidence in Gonzales. As if Bush has ever listened to anyone other than the voices in his head, you know, "God told me to do it."

POLITICS - "On the lonely road I'm traveling on"

On the lonely road I'm traveling on
The road that leads nowhere
As the ground and the sky have been wondering why
I'm alone, so alone
I've been rolling on for just two years

I'm Alone, Lyrics by Deep Purple

"A President All Alone" by Robert D. Novak, Washington Post

Two weeks earlier on Capitol Hill, there was a groundswell of Republican demands -- public and private -- that President Bush pardon Scooter Libby. Last week, as Alberto Gonzales came under withering Democratic fire, there were no public GOP declarations of support amid private predictions of the attorney general's demise.

Republican leaders in Congress, who asked not to be quoted by name, predicted early last week that Gonzales would fall because the Justice Department botched the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. By week's end, they stipulated that the president would not sack his longtime aide and that Gonzales would leave only on his own initiative. But there was still an ominous lack of congressional support for the attorney general.

"Gonzales never has developed a base of support for himself up here," a House Republican leader told me. But this is less a Gonzales problem than a Bush problem. With nearly two years remaining in his presidency, George W. Bush is alone. In half a century, I have not seen a president so isolated from his own party in Congress -- not Jimmy Carter, not even Richard Nixon as he faced impeachment.

Republicans in Congress do not trust their president to protect them. That alone is sufficient reason to withhold statements of support for Gonzales, because such a gesture could be quickly followed by his resignation under pressure. Rep. Adam Putnam (Fla.), the highly regarded young chairman of the House Republican Conference, praised Donald Rumsfeld in November only to see him sacked shortly thereafter.

But not many Republican lawmakers would speak up for Gonzales even if they were sure Bush would stick with him. He is the least popular Cabinet member on Capitol Hill, even more disliked than Rumsfeld was. The word most often used by Republicans to describe the management of the Justice Department under Gonzales is "incompetent."

Frankly, I hope that Bush et al feel even lonelier and lonelier for the next two years. The only tragic thing, as I have stated before, we will pay in American lives and dollars until he's gone into oblivion.

POLITICS - Live, From San Diego

"Checked and Balanced" by Mike V.

Note to Bush: This is how it works, Chimp Boy.

When he says that the congress must "accept his offer to have top aides testify about the firings of federal prosecutors only privately and not under oath" the correct answer to that is, "fuck off, asshole". Well, what Leahy said was, "Testimony should be on the record and under oath. That's the formula for true accountability".

Correct.

Thank you, Senator.

It's about fucking time there was some checking going on over White House way.

Genius that he is, Bush muttered: "I'm sorry the situation has gotten to where it's got, but that's Washington, D.C., for you. You know there's a lot of politics in this town."

Wow, talk about insightful..

BTW, for those of you who are yelling about attacks "from the left" on the president (and I think there have been too few attacks) remember this from the news this week:

..the Senate on Tuesday voted 94-2 to strip Gonzales of his authority to fill U.S. attorney vacancies without Senate confirmation. Democrats contend the Justice Department and White House purged the eight federal prosecutors, some of whom were leading political corruption investigations, after a change in the USA Patriot Act gave Gonzales the new authority.

Take that, asshole.

Doesn't mince words, does he.

POLITICS - Gestapo Alberto Gonzales

"A White House Hand in the Firings?" by Adam Zagorin, Time Magazine

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has characterized the controversial firing of eight U.S. attorneys as an "overblown personnel matter." If so, it is a personnel matter that appears to have involved the White House. A spokeswoman for the President revealed the White House's deep involvement in the decision to dismiss the prosecutors, a step that involved former White House Counsel Harriet Miers, Presidential adviser Karl Rove and, apparently, even Bush himself. Meanwhile, Kyle Sampson, chief of staff to Gonzales and the official in charge of drawing up the list of fired prosecutors, has resigned amid continuing allegations that the eight — all Republicans — were ousted for political reasons, including their refusal to bring corruption charges against Democrats in the period leading up to last year's mid-term elections.

As the scandal escalated, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino cast doubt on whether President Bush was personally told about, or shown, a list of the targeted prosecutors. But Perino confirmed that Rove had discussed dismissing all U.S. attorneys after the 2004 election — as proposed by then-counsel Harriet Miers — and argued against the idea. But Bush did speak directly with Gonzales to pass along complaints from Republican lawmakers about prosecutors, according to the New York Times. Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, was among those who complained to the President. Domenici was particularly focused on David Iglesias of New Mexico in the period leading into the 2006 congressional election.

Over the weekend, Allen Weh, a senior Republican official in New Mexico told McClatchy newspapers that he had called Rove to obtain the dismissal of the state's U.S. attorney, David Iglesias. "Is anything ever going to happen to that guy?" Weh said he asked Rove at a White House holiday event. "He's gone," Rove said, according to Weh. But White House spokeswoman Perino is quoted in reports as saying, "White House officials including the President did not direct DOJ to take any specific action with regards to any specific U.S. attorney." In other words, decisions about which federal prosecutors should be fired were apparently made at the Justice Department by Gonzales or his subordinates.

Add even more to the Gonzales' move to an Imperial Presidency.

POLITICS - Nazi "Heydrich" in Our Justice Department

On Mon, 29 Jan 2007 14:31:40 -0800, sdnet.politics, Brian David Smith, San Diego, California

Alberto Gonzales infiltrating prosecutors

During World War 2, Reinhard Heydrich helped Hitler 'dig up dirt' on many political opponents. Later, as the Nazis took over Germany, Heydrich teamed up with Heinrich Himmler. Together not only did they built up the hideous Nazi SS, but they focused on infiltrating civil police forces in Germany.

The same thing is happening today. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is using a loophole in the Patriot Act to transform the ranks of the nation's top federal prosecutors. In Heydrich-like fashion, Gonzales is systematically firing the federal prosecutors and then replacing them with loyalists from the Bush administration's inner circle.

Essentially that is what happened to Carol Lam in San Diego. Obviously putting Republican Randy "Duke" Cunningham in jail did not ingratiate Lam with Bush's modern-day version of Himmler and Heydrich. Perhaps Lam is lucky. She could be wearing concrete shoes at the bottom of San Diego Bay.

Any day now, I expect to see a huge gleaming brass swastika atop the Washington monument just like the one that once stood atop the Nuremberg parade grounds in Hitler's rallying stadium.

It is sad that history repeats itself.

And the GOP Regressives (far Right) salute.