What is the biggest threat facing the US public?
Osama Bin Laden? Al-Qaeda? Islamic Terrorists? Sponge-Bob SquarePants? Mexicans? Liberals? Gays? Hillary Clinton? Global Warning? Apathy? Ignorance? The MSM? Drugs? Obesity? Bloggers? Bush? Cheney?
To quote the crustiest, angriest talking-head on television (McLlaughlin): WRONG!
It is Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez; our own 21st Century Torquemada, Cardinal Richelieu and Machiavelli all rolled into one.
Whilst George Bush and Dick Cheney have ignored the US Constitution, Gonzalez has been shredding it.
Whilst Bush and Cheney have ignored the law, Gonzalez has been re-writing it.
According to Gonzalez the office of the President (as occupied by George Bush) wields supreme executive power. And thus as the appointed premier “legal authority” of King George, Gonzalez wields supreme legal authority.
When George used the newly-coined phrase “enemy combatant” Gonzalez made it a ‘legal’ term defined solely by the President, to be used exclusively by him. Gonzalez overturned by fiat the US’s legal obligations to the “quaint” Geneva conventions. Without review he re-defined torture as the equivalent to the distress or actual fact of organ failure.
He determined that any law passed by congress could be nullified by the President with a post-it note. Gonzalez has also consistently claimed that his opinions and actions may be revealed to the public or obscured from examination according to his own private judgment which for reasons of self-appointed executive privilege he insists he is not obliged to reveal.
In August of 2006, whilst the public interest was directed to global warming, Joe Lieberman’s political schizophrenia, Israel’s collective military punishment of Lebanon, Mel Gibson’s drunken rant, George Allen’s macaca slur and so on, Gonzalez’s DOJ was busy firing eight state prosecutors for no justifiable reasons.
No matter how powerful you think you are, it’s always best to deliver bad news on Fridays or avoid public notice by appointing unqualified political cronies or conducting political purges in August.
Some six months on, the DOJ’s purge has come to the attention of, yes the Democrats.
Gonzalez has claimed that the prosecutors were fired for “performance” issues. Yet Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) showed that one of those fired, Carol Lam (of San Diego, CA) had received, in August, a favorable performance review from the DOJ.
David Iglesias, State Attorney for New Mexico was also fired for “performance” reasons but as TPMuckraker reports (theyhave been all over this issue):
“… the statistics kept by the Federal Judiciary don't reflect an inability for Iglesias' office to move more quickly on cases -- in fact, quite the opposite. In 2001, when Iglesias took over, the data (pdf) shows a median of 4.6 months for a criminal case in the New Mexico office to move from filing to disposition (dismissal, guilty plea, or trial). In 2005, that time had dwindled to 3.7 months.
And that's a time when Iglesias' office was increasingly snowed under by more cases. His office opened 1,548 criminal cases in 2001; in 2005, the office opened 2,915.
So Iglesias' office was opening more cases and handling them faster than his predecessor. Maybe that's why he received a positive performance evaluation? “
Seattle, Arkansas, Nevada. Arizona have also lost their state attorney’s by the same ‘process’ in the same timeframe and for the same ‘reasons’.
As the House continues to conduct it’s hearings on this matter Gonzalez’s response has been that the attorney’s dismissals “could have been handled better”.
In other words the problem is not that these attorneys were fired based on trumped-up charges of poor performance, but that firing them during August with a major international conflict raging to distract the public from domestic issues simply didn’t provide Gonzalez’s DOJ enough cover to prevent their insupportable actions from going un-noticed.
In itself this purge is bad enough, and Gonzalez’s lame excuses and obfuscation typical. But what is really going on? The geographic distribution of this purge seems rather specific—Washington, California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada; Arkansas is the “odd man out” in this regard.
Now take what you know about Gonzalez (as I crudely summarized in my fifth paragraph) and add that to this attorney purge. Then bear in mind Bush and Cheney’s political standing at the moment and combine that with the current view of Republicans and their policies. And then add this:
"The Bush administration has accelerated its Internet surveillance push by proposing that Web sites must keep records of who uploads photographs or videos in case police determine the content is illegal and choose to investigate, CNET News.com has learned.
That proposal surfaced Wednesday in a private meeting during which U.S. Department of Justice officials, including Assistant Attorney General Rachel Brand, tried to convince industry representatives such as AOL and Comcast that data retention would be valuable in investigating terrorism, child pornography and other crimes
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Only universities and libraries would be excluded, one participant said. "There's a PR concern with including the libraries, so we're not going to include them," the participant quoted the Justice Department as saying. "We know we're going to get a pushback, so we're not going to do that."
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has been lobbying Congress for mandatory data retention, calling it a "national problem that requires federal legislation." Gonzales has convened earlier private meetings to pressure industry representatives. And last month, Republicans introduced a mandatory data retention bill in the U.S. House of Representatives that would let the attorney general dictate what must be stored and for how long."
I think it’s fair to conjecture from past and current actions that Gonzalez is, as discreetly as possible, using his position to subvert the foundations of US law and constitutional government. Whilst he has the power he is ensuring that Bush, Cheney and the entire neocon cabal, including himself, are rendered immune from investigation, let alone prosecution. He twisting the law to serve himself and his colleagues and to suppress the rights and options of the public to determine their own governance and he is doing so in private.
Bush and Cheney can take the public heat until 2008 whilst Gonzalez functions as the faithful lieutenant, manipulating the system to preserve their comfortable and unassailed retirement which Gonzalez himself will also enjoy.
Those who believe in the rule of law and the primacy of the Constitution will feel obliged to uphold them as they reverse their abuses by Bush, Gonzalez who in turn will then, as they already have done, use the very same articles and principles they have abandoned and perverted, to defend themselves and avoid all accountability for their actions and their crimes.
Bush and Cheney will leave office (not soon enough, but soon) but Gonzalez is quietly ensuring that the rights and privileges they have illegally claimed will continue, whilst the public’s rights and privileges will continue to be denied.
Bush and Cheney have crippled America, but Gonzalez is poised to strike the killing blow. It is he, not Bush or Cheney who is the biggest threat this country faces.
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5 comments:
Short of a Democratic House, Senate and Oval Office, there doesn't appear to be much hope for individual citizens. And I'm not so sure that the clock can be turned back. The Patriot Act is one of the most heinous crimes ever perpetrated on the part of the American people - and we have the bush administration manipulation of the 9/11 hysteria to thank for it.
i lament the end of our democratic republic.
IJ...well it seems the egregious conditions in the Patriot Act are getting some deserved attention from the House and the press, which is a start.
But with all the other crap going on it's hard to priorotize one's attention.
I sent an e-mail to Keith Olbermann about this suggesting he essentially do a follow-up special commentary to his excellent demonstration of the eradication of our rights when he crossed out all but two essential amemdments of the Constitution. I hope he'll stay on top of this.
... sensational expose and opinion. I'm a little light on the intake on some of your conclusions,... but then again, I'm light on the intake on a lot of things. Nice posting 5th.
TP--Gonzales has provided Bush with the rhetorical excuses to declare War without Constitutional authority:
Art. I Sect. 8-- Congress has sole power to declare war) and Art. II Sect. 2--"The President shall be the Commander in Chief" are not contradictory nor mutually supportive--they are disntinct and seperate.
Gonzalez and Bush try to claim rights under The War Powers Act--but that demands the President to seek clear approval after the fact of committing troops to combat. Bush neve asked for that approval so he can't claim the "protection" of that Act to justify his actions nor thus Gonzalez's arguments. Ergo in this alone Goninzalez has acted unconstitutionally AND illegally.
Almost everything else he has done has been contrary to the COnstitution or to specific law. He is supposed to uphold the law, not rewrite it independently. He has made himself the law and claims the President is ABOVE the law. And whilst his decisions go unchallenges they remain in effect and can be applied.
This isn't theory, it is fact. As a libertarian you should be worried about the lack of oversight on your personal freedoms--indeed that your freedoms are being eliminated not by "government" but by an individual who answers to no-one.
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