When I was a kid, I tried a few times to use the ‘I forgot’ defense with my parents. It didn’t work too often. So, I was fairly impressed when President Reagan used it with such great effect with respect to the Iran-Contra matter. Unlike the Great Communicator, however, neither I nor Attorney General Alberto Gonzales appear to have Alzheimers.
Gonzales is facing the Senate Judiciary Committee asking questions about whether eight United States Attorneys were fired for political reasons. For example, it has been suggested that the United States Attorney for New Mexico was fired because he would not pursue politically timed and motivated corruption charges shortly before the election there. The reverse seems to have happened in Wisconsin where a U.S. Attorney was retained after pursuing a political corruption charge against Georgia Thompson so baseless the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals decided more or less on the spot to release the accused from incarceration, calling the evidence against her “beyond thin.”
This is part and parcel of the Bush administration’s electoral strategy. As McClatchy News article puts it:
For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates.
The administration intensified its efforts last year as President Bush’s popularity and Republican support eroded heading into a midterm battle for control of Congress, which the Democrats won.
Facing nationwide voter registration drives by Democratic-leaning groups, the administration alleged widespread election fraud and endorsed proposals for tougher state and federal voter identification laws. Presidential political adviser Karl Rove alluded to the strategy in April 2006 when he railed about voter fraud in a speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association.
We heard echoes of this strategy in the state GOP’s successful efforts to pass strict Voter ID requirements for those voters who vote at the polls (not so much for absentee voters, as I recall) championed by Todd “blacks are Democratic Slaves” Rokita.
So back to Gonzales, caught with his hand in the political cookie jar, Gonzales had to explain some of this to the Senate. He went with the “I forgot” defense:
His performance clearly exasperated the committee members, who were angered as he invoked a faulty memory more than 50 times. Republicans did not hold back in going after one of their party’s own. Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, went so far as to call for Mr. Gonzales to resign, a demand made by only one other senator, Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York.
I’m not so interested in Mr. Gonzales’s resignation. I don’t see that the Bush administration has any real interest in appointing competent people to important posts. There is nothing to be done, really, but ride this out and turn over as many of the rocks as possible so people at least know the depth of incompetence.
I’m glad Gonzales is going to be grilled and be on the hot seat but mostly because of he Johnny Sutton and President Bush terrible prosecution of the border agents Ramos and Campeon who were just doing their job when pursuing and shooting in the behind a illegal alien drug smuggler on the behalf of the Mexican government.A drug smuggler who was smuggling 700lbs of pot and later while under immunity was caught with another load the jury never heard about.
As far as I see it what has to be determined with Gonzales and Bush is did they fire these US attorneys because of on going investigations against Republican politicians or just because they wanted to.Because it is within their right to replace these people at their descretion just like Clinton did when he was President.They are political appointees as I understand it.However if they fired them to stop on going or upcoming investigations against Republican office holders such as the Republican Senator from New Mexico Pete Domeneci then they should be held accountable.
There are several problems I have with all of this.
First and foremost, the President should have the right to fire U.S. Attorneys as he sees fit, to have them follow his own political viewpoint. I didn’t care when Clinton did it, nor do I care that “W” has exercised this privilege. No harm no foul.
Secondly, incidents of Democrat__ voter fraud are well documented, and go well beyond our own Lake County or Dems voting from abandoned houses in Marion County. Not that the GOP is against voter fraud per se, but the Dems are so much better (and flagrant).
Thirdly, no President has ever been better at telling (and selling, for that matter) a story than the Gipper. It’s a disgrace for the Democrat__ party that he only had to face Carter and Mondale, one the most inept President in history and the other who never one a contested election in his entire career.
Oh, Scribe, seriously give it up. This administration has put their entire justice department apparatus to work trying to find some, any, instance of voter fraud (at our expense), and they basically have shit to show for it. If it were there, it would be found. As far as Gonzales being incompetent–he isn’t. He accomplished what he was put there to do, which was to make the justice department a branch of the Republican party. The reason he *looks* incompetent is because that’s the best (albeit still poor) defense for what has been revealed in all this. And no, the president isn’t free to fire U.S. attorneys as punishment for prosecuting Republicans. He may fire on a whim–but if he fires in an obvious vendetta, then it is right that he suffer the consequences. Even if the consequences amount to only embarrassment like he is having to put up with now. Furthermore, Scribe, you must be illiterate. The word you were attempting to spell is “Democratic”. A member of the party is a “Democrat”. The party is the “Democratic Party”. It’s never too late to learn, if you try.
Easy on the personal attacks, please.
It’s certainly not an unwarranted personal attack. If he wants to use repeatedly misspelling a political party’s name as a method of attack, he deserves to be called on it.
I’m fine with calling him on the Democrat(ic) thing — I did the same thing myself. It was the “you must be illiterate” that triggered my admittedly somewhat arbitrary personal attack/nanny mode.
Mainly, I just don’t want things to devolve into a “Yo Mama” style flame war around here.
He doesn’t seem to be able to spell certain words very well. I didn’t think it was his mother’s fault, so I left her out of it.
Look, they think they’re cute doing that. It’s a party tactic they’ve used for years. At this point, if they slap, we should punch back.
There wouldn’t be a problem if Bush fired the attorneys because he was just grumpy that day. That’d be kind of arbitrary and not be indicative of very good leadership, but it’d be within his discretion and there wouldn’t be very much to say about it.
But, to my knowledge, we don’t know that Bush was directly involved. If it was one of his underlings, I would hope that he doesn’t give his underlings that much unfettered discretion in the matter.
The real, horrifying problem is the potential that the political arm of the Bush administration was using the Department of Justice as an arm of their campaign machine. If they were trying to engineer prosecutions, the content and timing of which were primarily designed to make political opponents look bad right at election time, that is a horrible abuse of power. If they fired U.S. Attorneys for refusing to play this game, that’s equally bad.
Gonzales doesn’t look credible as he is playing dumb. He looks like he’s covering something up. Given the amount of discretion the President has with respect to the Department of Justice and U.S. Attorneys, it seems like the Bush administration would have to be pretty far out of bounds before things were worth a cover up.
Come on.
Just look at the Carol Lam situation and tell me w/ a straight face that she was fired for not prosecuting border cases.
The e-mails that have been recovered don’t lead one to that conclusion…
There was that article out of Arizona about Senator Domenici calling the President directly about firing the U.S. Attorney. Of course, you would have to get that testimony under oath, then prove they discussed firing him because he wouldn’t indict Democrats. And none of that is going to happen. So right now we’re in that limbo where the administration claims they didn’t do what most reasonable people think they did do, and they’re winking through the whole denial. The net effect will probably be that they do less bad acts in the next two years because they know they’re being watched now.
As an aside… anyone remember what a fit was thrown because the first lady (Hillary) had lost some limited number of billing records from a decade before during her legal career? Those same critics/watchdogs seem to be ok with Hatch Act violations and millions of missing emails of people who are actually currently in the White House, in actual positions of power.
7, I’m literate enough to not require a number for a name, so why don’t we leave it at that. Thanks for showing such a level of class and adding to this reasoned debate.
Also, I’m no Republican and no Bush supporter (need I state for the record that I voted for Clinton twice, and that my first job in the political arena was for the National Democrat__ Party?). I just have a brain and the ability to use it, no party has brainwashed me to the point of thinking that Democrat=Good, Republican=Bad. Independent thinking is something many of us develop as part of the maturation process.
Again, Doug or any other knowledgeable lawyer (not always an oxymoron), I’m still really not understanding the problem here. Is the President not within his powers to fire U.S. Attorneys at his discretion for any reason whatsoever?
Granted, it’s been handled poorly, but name one thing this administration has touched that hasn’t. But there’s no smoke here that I can see, which means there certainly can’t be a fire.
No smoke? OK. Lam goes after a Republican, so she’s fired. The emails lay out a nice timeframe where they discuss, after the decision is made, what reasons to cite. “Why not immigration?” they say, well after the decision was made. No, no smoke there at all. Domenici and Wilson’s calls to the U.S. Attorney pressuring him to indict Democrats before the last election followed by his firing sure couldn’t be any smoke. Nor the suggestion that Fitzgerald be fired. Nor the Wisconsin U.S. Attorney being slated to be fired, but removed from the list after a prosecution of a Democrat that was later tossed on appeal. No, certainly no smoke there.
Also, sorry I didn’t show more maturity. I really must learn to be gracious and accepting while my party affiliation is being insulted. Thanks for that, Scrib_.
Re – literacy: Unfortunately, I think you’ve misread the letter “T” as being the number “7.” The irony.
But, back to more important matters. I think there is a policy problem and a legal problem here. The legal problem is that people, particularly government employees, are required to answer truthfully when Congress asks them questions. It appears that Gonzales and his subordinates did not do this when Congress was investigating the policy issue.
The Congressional investigation was into the policy issue of *why* the United States Attorneys were fired. At the very least, Congress was entitled to an explanation of – “no reason, we just felt like it. That’s just how we roll” if that was the case. That wouldn’t have been illegal I don’t think, but the Bush administration would have had more derision heaped on the already impressive pile.
Instead Congress got a response that said these U.S. Attorneys were fired for poor performance. If that had been the case, it would have been a good reason. More and more, though, this is looking like a fabrication.
If, in fact, the U.S. Attorneys were fired for failing to participate in unwarranted political prosecutions, the firings themselves may not have been illegal, but the attempt to subvert justice very well may have been.
Scribe,
What is generally wrong may not be illegal. For example, the President could tell your local US attorney to spend every hour of every day digging up dirt on you and everyone you know. He could tell him to spare no expense in trying to indict you and the other individuals.
Is this illegal? I don’t think so. But is this what the Justice Department should be doing? No.
Doug, thanks for clarifying. It seems an odd parallel to the Scooter Libby debacle, in the sense that the original “offense” wasn’t illegal at all, just how it was handled. Is that about it?
Jeff, I agree (and I wasn’t trying to defend anyone here, especially “W”). What I see in this case is what the Dem majority is becoming known for, and that’s partisan witch hunts. That’s the part of this that bugs me.
What the hell is the matter with this president? For a guy who graduated from HBS, his management and leadership skills are totally laughable.
T/7, you seriously need to get some thicker skin if you want to play with the big boys. If lil’ ole me is bugging you to that extent, perhaps you should find a better use for your time.
Come on, knock it off. I’ve seen T unload on people before. While entertaining, it can be brutal. Not really what I want for this forum.
Scribe…
You got to do your intentional misspelling as a form of editiorializing thing. I got to push back. You got to call yourself “big boy”. I got to reconsider my skin thickness, and my fitness to survive in the mean backstreets of the masson blog comment section. We’re all winners here. Now cut to commercial, and on to the next topic.