ABU GONZALES: Next Stop, Impeachment?

CANCELED DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA: The Senate could hold a no-confidence vote as early as today.The resolution is non-binding and symbolic, but it will put Senators on record and send a strong message to President Bush. Make sure your Senators know you want them to support the no-confidence vote: Senator Bob Casey (202) 224-6324 Senator Arlen Specter (202) 224-4254 RELATED: ImpeachGonzales.org PREVIOUSLY: Bring Me The Head Of Abu Gonzales THANK YOU JOE LIEBERMAN*: “My vote against going ahead with more debate on this no confidence resolution is not an expression of confidence in Attorney General Gonzales. It is an expression of […]

NY TIMES: BRING ME THE HEAD OF ABU GONZALES

UPDATE: “I think for the sake of the nation, Attorney General Gonzales should resign.”–Sen. Charles Schumer NEW YORK TIMES Editorial The Failed Attorney General 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 […]

ABU GONZALES: Senators Probe Top Cop, Invasive Procedural Deflected By Impenetrable Congeniality

BY GLENN GREENWALD This is what I have learned so far: All of the Senators are very “concerned” and sometimes even “disturbed” about many things, almost all of them different for each Senator. Gonzales definitely shares their concerns about everything, and assures them he takes it very seriously and he is happy to sit down with them and explore ways to fix/improve/think about it. For any information the Senators want, Gonzales does not have it, but he will definitely endeavor to get it for them. When pointed out that he has made the same promises many times before and told […]

THE WAGES OF TORTURE: Zero Terror Plots Were Foiled By The Waterboard Confessions Of Abu Zubaida

WASHINGTON POST: When CIA officials subjected their first high-value captive, Abu Zubaida, to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, they were convinced that they had in their custody an al-Qaeda leader who knew details of operations yet to be unleashed, and they were facing increasing pressure from the White House to get those secrets out of him. The methods succeeded in breaking him, and the stories he told of al-Qaeda terrorism plots sent CIA officers around the globe chasing leads. In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida’s tortured confessions, according to […]

ROUGH JUSTICE: Attorney General Gonzales Resigns

CRAWFORD, Texas — Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has resigned, ending a months-long standoff with Republican and Democratic critics who called for his ouster over the Justice Department’s botched handling of FBI terror investigations and the firing of U.S. attorneys, officials said Monday. The likely temporary replacement for Gonzales is Solicitor General Paul Clement, who would take over until a permanent replacement is found, according to a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity. Two administration officials speaking on grounds of anonymity said that Gonzales had submitted a resignation letter last Friday.These officials declined to be identified because the […]

NY TIMES: No One Expected The Spanish Inquisition!

WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 — When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations. But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales‘s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency. The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization […]

SCHLOCK THE VOTE: HOW JOHN EDWARDS DISARMED THE WEAPONS OF MASS DISTRACTION

First came this video… To which the Edwards campaign responded with this video… And finally, this video… After Nixon’s 1968 Peace Feint, Watergate, Willie Horton (or the toned down version where the scary black man that will rape your wife and kill your family if Michael Dukakis is elected was merely implied, not explicitly shown) Gennifer Flowers, the Great Swiftboat Slander — is anybody starting to notice a pattern here? A lattice of coincidence? A vague constellation of recurrence, perhaps? Happens about every four years…always to the detriment of one party and the benefit of another…Is this ringing a bell? […]

HECKUVA JOB TIERNEY: Why Is THIS Man Bloviating About Supreme Court Replacements In The Inquirer?

[Illustration by KENT BARRET] JOHN YOO IN THE INQUIRER: Obama’s nominee will keep the liberal pack intact. But liberals want more. They want a progressive thinker who can challenge Scalia and Thomas and their revolutionary ideas for modern constitutional law. While a witty man and elegant writer, Souter did not pen any landmark opinions that will be remembered in the decades to come. The liberal wing of the court has yet to produce a worthy heir to the mantle of Chief Justice Earl Warren or Justice William Brennan. Obama promises something different. In 2007, candidate Obama declared that his judges […]

YOU ARE BEING WATCHED: You Cannot Hide

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Two FBI workers are accused of using surveillance equipment to spy on teenage girls as they undressed and tried on prom gowns at a charity event at a West Virginia mall. The FBI employees have been charged with conspiracy and criminal invasion of privacy. They were working in an FBI satellite control room at the mall when they positioned a camera on temporary changing rooms and zoomed in for at least 90 minutes on girls dressing for the Cinderella Project fashion show, Marion County Prosecutor Pat Wilson said yesterday. Gary Sutton Jr., 40, of New Milton, and Charles […]

WANTED: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Ordinarily, I would say this sort of thing was recklessly inflammatory, wildly irresponsible and patently offensive to many. Ordinarily. * THE LAST HURRAH: As he said to the WSJ, he wants to spend more time with this family. Of course, this is a load of horse puckey — if he had wanted to spend time with his family, he surely would have done it before his son went to college… So it’s quite possible that Rove is leaving just three steps ahead of one of the many sheriffs that have him in their sights. These include: The Abramoff […]

Dems Drop Soap In GOP Shower, Constitution Raped

“Congressional Democrats redefine spinelessness with the new FISA law.” SLATE: BY PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE In an editorial last year, the New York Times likened the Bush administration’s efforts to retroactively make its warrantless wiretapping program legal, to a person caught speeding who persuades the legislature to raise the speed limit. The new surveillance bill President Bush signed into law Sunday takes this analogy to its logical extreme: Where government surveillance is concerned, the new law eliminated speed limits altogether. The infrastructure this nation established following Watergate to govern domestic spying has died many little deaths in the years since 9/11. […]

Cadre Of Credible Conservatives Demands Attorney General Resign ‘For The Good Of The Country’

The two-page letter, written on stationery of the American Freedom Agenda, a recently formed body designed to promote conservative legal principles, is blunt. Addressed to both Bush and Gonzales, it goes well beyond the U.S. attorneys controversy and details other alleged failings by Gonzales. “Mr. Gonzales has presided over an unprecedented crippling of the Constitution’s time-honored checks and balances,” it declares. “He has brought rule of law into disrepute, and debased honesty as the coin of the realm.” Alluding to ongoing scandal, it notes: “He has engendered the suspicion that partisan politics trumps evenhanded law enforcement in the Department of […]

Inky & DN Join Phawker In The National Chorus Of Editorials Calling For Attorney General To Resign

INQUIRER: He should resign Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales should resign. If he ever does, the nation could take it as a clear sign that President Bush finally grasps the need to preserve core civil liberties while guarding against terrorism. It would also be a sign that the president grasps that the Justice Department is at least one part of the government that should be free from the all-politics-all-the-time approach of his Karl Rove-led White House team. Until the day Gonzales does the right thing — or it’s demanded of him — Americans must assume that their president doesn’t get […]