http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/15/1907/From Katrina to Gonzales: Incompetence Reigns
by Marie Cocco
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Intransigence is endemic to the Bush presidency and so we can predict with some certainty a legal wrangle over the subpoenas that is meant to do nothing more than stonewall the probes until the president repairs to his Texas ranch in 2009.
That is an awfully long time to leave the Justice Department reeling and rudderless. But we’ve long known that President Bush doesn’t care how or whether the federal government functions, so long as his functionaries are cared for and his partisan goals met.
The enduring mystery is why Republicans in Congress continue to play along.
In the argument over the failed Democratic procedural maneuver that attempted to set up the “no confidence” vote on the attorney general, Republican senators rose not to praise Gonzales but to bury discussion of his pathetic and increasingly bizarre performance beneath a diversionary blanket of rhetoric about the Democrats being partisan.
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No one expects Republican lawmakers to be terribly concerned about what is emerging as a clear motive of the Bush Justice Department: using both the criminal and civil rights divisions to tip elections toward Republicans. This is an admission of terribly low expectations.
But they should at least be alarmed that one of the most vital government agencies—one, it must be noted, that plays a pivotal role in the much-ballyhooed war on terror—has been irreparably compromised during Gonzales’ tenure. In the thicket of Watergate, it was Republicans who finally withdrew their support for Richard Nixon and put their duty to the country ahead of allegiance to their party. Why do they not do so now?