NYT: The Failed Attorney General

[maddezmom]

The Failed Attorney General
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Published: March 11, 2007
During the hearing on his nomination as attorney general, Alberto Gonzales said he understood the difference between the job he held — President Bush’s in-house lawyer — and the job he wanted, which was to represent all Americans as their chief law enforcement officer and a key defender of the Constitution. Two years later, it is obvious Mr. Gonzales does not have a clue about the difference.

He has never stopped being consigliere to Mr. Bush’s imperial presidency. If anyone, outside Mr. Bush’s rapidly shrinking circle of enablers, still had doubts about that, the events of last week should have erased them.

First, there was Mr. Gonzales’s lame op-ed article in USA Today trying to defend the obviously politically motivated firing of eight United States attorneys, which he dismissed as an “overblown personnel matter.” Then his inspector general exposed the way the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been abusing yet another unnecessary new power that Mr. Gonzales helped wring out of the Republican-dominated Congress in the name of fighting terrorism.

The F.B.I. has been using powers it obtained under the Patriot Act to get financial, business and telephone records of Americans by issuing tens of thousands of “national security letters,” a euphemism for warrants that are issued without any judicial review or avenue of appeal. The administration said that, as with many powers it has arrogated since the 9/11 attacks, this radical change was essential to fast and nimble antiterrorism efforts, and it promised to police the use of the letters carefully.

more:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/opinion/11sun1.html

[Erika]

1. He was an attorney for the GOP Bush

and that was it. It comes very close to being one on the plantation of W.

[ReadTomPaine]

2. It's time to purge Alberto.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x386690

[KT2000]

3. Janet Reno

served the US not Clinton (sometimes to his dismay) but she knew what her job was about.
Guess it takes character - something that Gonzales does not have.