Memo to Gonzales
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, March 16, 2007; Page A21
....Arrogance has been the most consistent hallmark of George W. Bush's presidency. His administration's simple philosophy of government has been consistent: We can do any damn thing we want.
We can invade Iraq. We can blow off the Geneva Conventions. We can listen to your private phone calls, Mr. and Ms. America, and we can read your private e-mails, too. We can arrest anybody we want and hold them as long as we want, and we don't even have to tell them why, much less file formal charges or hold a trial. We can even defy the laws of science -- or at least ignore the ones that annoy us, such as that whole "greenhouse effect" thing. We can use the troops for photo ops when they come back from war grievously wounded and then basically forget about them.
And we don't have to explain ourselves, either. The nerve of anyone to even ask us. Don't you people understand that asking impertinent questions of the White House is exactly what Osama bin Laden wants you to do?
Okay, but even given this kind of world-class arrogance, it's still pretty amazing that barely a month after the nation took a two-by-four to the administration's head in November's midterm election -- delivering a not-so-gentle reminder that the president works for us, not vice versa -- the White House still plowed ahead with a long-brewing plot to fire a few designated federal prosecutors who couldn't seem to get with the "any damn thing we want" program.
Just to be clear, this kind of selective dismissal of a group of U.S. attorneys is highly unusual. It's bad enough that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales misled Congress about the firings; the specific truths his falsehoods obscured -- that the White House was involved in the firings and that partisan political motivations may have been involved -- are much worse....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/15/AR2007031501877.html?nav=hcmodule