Joe Hack

Hot on the heels of Karl Rove (Bushs Brain) quitting and ‘Scooter’ Libby being handed a jail sentence there is breaking news that Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez is also deserting the sinking ship. Long gone also are Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. It looks like the whole rotten neo-con pack of cards is finally starting to collapse around Bushs ears and for that the American people can only be thankful.

Gonzalez (who notoriously seemed to justify the use of torture by American troops) has resigned ending a months long standoff with critics who questioned his honesty and competence at the helm of the Justice Department. Republicans and Democrats alike have demanded his resignation over the botched handling of FBI terror investigations and the firings of U.S. attorneys, but President Bush had defiantly stood by his Texas friend until accepting his resignation Friday. It is understood that Solicitor General Paul Clement will be acting attorney general until a replacement is found..

Gonzales served more than two years as the nation’s first Hispanic attorney general but other lawmakers voiced doubts about his truthfulness in combative and often evasive testimony to Congress. Although Democrats most fiercely questioned Gonzales’ stewardship of the nation’s law enforcement establishment, several Republicans in Congress criticized him too.

For his part, Bush steadfastly, and often with his characteristic belligerence when questioned, refused to give in to critics, even from his own GOP, who argued that Gonzales should go. Earlier this month at a news conference, the president grew irritated when asked about accountability in his administration and turned the tables on the Democratic Congress. “Implicit in your questions is that Al Gonzales did something wrong. I haven’t seen Congress say he’s done anything wrong,” Bush said testily.

Reacting to Monday’s developments, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said that Gonzales’ department had “suffered a severe crisis of leadership that allowed our justice system to be corrupted by political influence.” He said that Gonzales’s resignation “reinforces what Congress and the American people already know—that no Justice Department should be allowed to become a political arm of the White House.”

A frequent Democratic target, Gonzales could not satisfy critics who said he had lost credibility over the Justice Department’s handling of warrantless wiretaps related to the threat of terrorism and the firings of several U.S. attorneys. As attorney general and earlier as White House counsel, Gonzales pushed for expanded presidential powers, including the eavesdropping authority. He drafted controversial rules for military war tribunals and sought to limit the legal rights of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, prompting lawsuits by civil libertarians who said the government was violating the Constitution in its pursuit of alleged ‘terrorists’.

There were indications that the development came suddenly. Bush normally handles Cabinet resignations with efficiency, only allowing news of them to leak when a successor has been chosen and appearing with both the person departing and the replacement when the public announcement was made. That was not to be the case this time, the official said.

Lawmakers said the dismissals of the federal prosecutors appeared to be politically motivated, and some of the fired U.S. attorneys said they felt pressured to investigate Democrats before elections. In other words they were being asked to act as hatchet-men for Bush which, if true, is the most heinous subversion of the American justice system and would warrant the impeachment of any President who had any knowledge of such activities. Gonzales has maintained that the dismissals were based the prosecutors’ lackluster performance records but his denials have not been widely believed.

Thousands of documents released by the Justice Department show a White House plot, hatched shortly after the 2004 elections, to replace U.S. attorneys. At one point, senior White House officials, including Rove, suggested replacing all 93 prosecutors. In December 2006, eight were ordered to resign. In several House and Senate hearings into the firings, Gonzales and other Justice Department officials failed to fully explain the ousters without contradicting each other. U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president, and can be removed. But congressional Democrats said politics played an unusually critical role in the ouster of several prosecutors.

In 2004, Gonzales pressed to reauthorize a secret domestic spying program over the Justice Department’s protests. Gonzales was White House counsel at the time and during a dramatic hospital confrontation he and then-White House chief of staff Andrew Card sought approval from then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was in intensive care. Ashcroft refused.

The White House subsequently reauthorized the program without the department’s approval. Later, Bush ordered changes to the program to help the department defend its legality. The domestic surveillance program was later declared unconstitutional by a federal judge and since has been changed to require court approval before surveillance can be conducted.

Similarly, Gonzales found himself on the defensive in early March for FBI’s improper and, in some cases, illegal prying into Americans’ personal information during terror and spy probes. On March 9, the Justice Department’s inspector general released an audit showing that FBI agents, over a three-year period, demanded telephone and Internet companies to hand over their customers’ personal information without official authorization.

The damning audit also found that the FBI had improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances, and concluded that it underreported to Congress how often it used national security letters to ask businesses to turn over customer data. The letters are administrative subpoenas that do not require a judge’s approval.

We’re into the endgame now, folks. Gonzalez is gone. America is a better place today for that. But it is just another small step towards the bigger clean-out thats essential to restore any pride to the nation. Gonzalez was just the puppet of a corrupt and desperately un-American regime. The big task remains .

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Justice ! Free and fair. Equal and available for all. The bedrock of any civilized society. Not in America ! For over four years the American judicial system has run its course in the case of , former chief of staff for the Vice-President Dick Cheney. At last, after the most painstaking and mericulous review of the facts by the FBI and by a grand-jury hearing Libby was convicted on five counts of felony and sentenced to two and a half years in jail. A relatively mild punishment, many would think, for acts that endangered the security of the nation and bordered on treason. Immediately the sentence was announced, however, up popped Libby’s former paymaster, George W Bush, to use his presidential power to reject the courts verdict and decree that Libby should not spend a single day in jail. This, you will recall, is the same George W Bush who favours tougher sentencing and enthusiastically suports the death penalty. But of course thats only for folks like you and me. Not for his cronies. Oh hell no !

This is the most extreme and shocking act of disrespect to the American legal system that any of us can ever remember. Sure previous presidents, including Bush senior and Clinton, had granted dubious pardons but this outrageous act of cronyism goes far beyond any of those. It is fundamentally different. Libby was convicted of lying to the court and obstructing justice.  Lets recall the circumstances. Bush decided to wage war on Iraq on the basis of lies, in particular the false assertion that it had ‘weapons of mass destruction‘. One of the few people to expose that lie was a former US ambassador, Joseph Wilson.  Bush’s cronies, as part of a smear campaign of revenge on Wilson for telling the truth, leaked to the media that Wilson’s wife was a covert CIA operative, thereby putting her life at risk. Libby was a key player in this shameful episode and lied to cover it up. What he and bush’s aides did was to break all previous conventions regarding the naming of CIA operatives and thereby put at risk the life of a government employee. It was reckless, deeply nasty, and as close to treason as you can get. By any standards it was a very, very serious crime. Thats what ‘Scooter’ faced jail-time for, although of course he was just the monkey and the organ-grinders - who should have faced the courts were Bush and Cheney.

So what is the result of Bushs breathtaking intervention ? Well for a start this decision makes a mockery of the basic principle of the seperation of power between the executive and the courts. The sentencing guidelines of the US courts have been disregarded. Prospective CIA operatives will think twice, knowing that they can be publically outed for political reasons by any whitehouse aide with a grudge. The American public, bar a few far-right headbangers, is outraged, with 67% recently being oppoosed to any form of pardon for Libby. Bush is now, according to polls, the most unpopular president *ever*, with ratings for unpopularity that have set completely new records. However as one Bush aide dismissively said , ‘the President can take the heat’. Thats a measure of just how contemptuous and arrogant this administration has become.  The real damage though is not to Bush. He’s a lost cause anyway.

The real damage is to America. The cancer of corruption has been starkly exposed in a government that is now rotten to the core. The rest of the world looks on in disbelief that a nation which so prides itself on its systems of justice and fairness should have sunk so low. No-one outside America can possibly take seriously anything the present American government says about ‘freedom‘ or ‘democracy’ or ‘justice’. The Libby case demonstrates yet again that in Bush’s eyes he and his cronies are above the law. Public tolerance for that kind of arrogance has ebbed though, washed away by the bloody mess of the middle east and the increasingly obvious corruption in government. Its just not fixable as things are. The hard fact is that when you have a cancer it has to be removed for there to be any chance of survival.   So lets hope the shame that this latest episode brings America will not be a totally negative thing.  Lets hope this will be the final outrageous act of corruption that signals the beginning of the end.

The nation under Bush has become deeply sick. Lets all hope for a speedy recovery, but first the cancer must be legally removed so that the healing can begin.  Impeachment anyone ?Tags:administration America arrogance Bush chief of staff CIA operative Clinton convicted corruption crime death penalty Dick Cheney FBI felony freedom George W Bush government Impeachment Iraq jail Joseph Wilson judicial system justice legal system legally Lewis Scooter Libby Libby media middle east obstructing justice outrageous pardon pardons Political Rants punishment ratings security shame society treason unpopular president unpopularity US courts weapons of mass destructionadministration, America, arrogance, Bush, chief of staff, CIA operative, Clinton, convicted, corruption, crime, death penalty, Dick Cheney, FBI, felony, freedom, George W Bush, government, Impeachment, Iraq, jail, Joseph Wilson, judicial system, justice, legal system, legally, Lewis Scooter Libby, Libby, media, middle east, obstructing justice, outrageous, pardon, pardons, Political Rants, punishment, ratings, security, shame, society, treason, unpopular president, unpopularity, US courts, weapons of mass destruction

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