http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2007/03/12/gonzales/index.html?source=rssAlberto Gonzales must go
The U.S. attorney general's willingness to serve as the president's ultimate yes man makes him unqualified for the office.
By Joe Conason
Reuters/Larry Downing
March 12, 2007 | So disturbing was the U.S. attorney general's abrupt dismissal of several federal prosecutors for partisan reasons -- and so insulting is his defense of his actions -- that even some of the most docile Republicans sound outraged. To them it is becoming increasingly clear that the explanations offered by Alberto Gonzales, and his chief aide, Paul McNulty, collapse under the slightest scrutiny.
Ethics investigations of three members of Congress who appear to have colluded in the purge should soon be under way, notably including GOP Sen. Pete Domenici, who quickly lawyered up after former New Mexico prosecutor David Iglesias testified about the senator's blatant attempt to intimidate him last fall. Ironically, Domenici hired a lawyer who has represented former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, the California Republican who was sent to prison after his multimillion-dollar bribery conviction by Carole Lam -- another one of the purged U.S. attorneys.
As this scandal unfolds, Senate Republicans are noticing at long last the Bush White House's habitual contempt for the nation's legal and constitutional traditions. They bristled at Gonzales' trespass on their turf, which normally includes consultation on the appointment and removal of U.S. attorneys. And several of them were plainly infuriated when Gonzales blithely claimed in USA Today that the purge was "an overblown personnel matter" rather than a venal exercise in political control over the traditionally independent prosecutors.
They think he and his aides are lying.
Listen to Sen. John Ensign, a Nevada Republican whose voice is rarely (if ever) raised in protest against the Bush administration. He was an enthusiastic supporter of Gonzales when the White House promoted him to head the Justice Department after the president's reelection.
But Ensign is now furious because Daniel G. Bogden, whose appointment he had advocated as U.S. attorney five years ago, was among those dumped by Gonzales, over his objections. Told last December that Bogden was being fired for "performance reasons," Ensign listened incredulously on Tuesday as a Gonzales aide admitted that there were no problems with Bogden's performance of his duties. The next day Ensign told the Las Vegas Review-Journal (via TPM Muckraker):
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