So Gonzales Is Out…
…and good riddance, I might say. A flurry of second-term departures have come too late for my taste: Rumsfeld, Rove, and now Gonzales. In truth, Cheney should have joined them, and it should have been a coordinated changing of the guards prior to the 2006 election when it might have made a difference.
Why? Isn’t this rather harsh for a Bush supporter? After all, doesn’t the man in charge take any of the heat?
Sure…but Bush is the President. For better or worse, he was elected to a second term. I supported him in both elections and I have no regrets. It has been clear since at least late 2005, however, that there have been some major policy (and political) failures, and that new blood was desperately needed. Unfortunately, by waiting this long, Bush has done little to head off disasters like the one Robert Bork projects here:
…(T)he problem created by Gonzales’s resignation is likely to spread well beyond the DOJ and hamstring the remainder of George Bush’s administration. The president must soon nominate a successor to Gonzales and Senate Democrats are surely contemplating making the confirmation of that person contingent upon the appointment of a special prosecutor. The appointee will inevitably be charged, among other things, with investigating the firing of eight U. S. attorneys, possible perjury by Gonzales and others who testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and whatever additional matters Senate Democrats’ fertile imaginations can pack into the special prosecutor’s charter. Grand juries will be convened, subpoenas issued, witnesses badgered, documents demanded from the White House, and so on, through the full repertoire of special prosecutors’ antics.
…A special prosecutor with unlimited funds, a soon-developed addiction to publicity, and a broad mandate, will rarely wrap up his investigation quickly and without indicting someone. This means that for the rest of George W. Bush’s term, the administration will be preoccupied with document searches, witness preparation, countering leaks and a bad press. It will also likely have to litigate against the special prosecutor on matters such as executive privilege. At a time when the administration, the press, and the public should be focused on Iraq, Iran, and the worldwide struggle against jihadists, we will instead be preoccupied with furious partisan battles over essentially irrelevant questions.
Yeesh…and I have no doubt that Bork is right. The Democrats have already signaled their complete willingness to continue to use Gonzales as a punching bag. The only thing that might save us from such an ugly spectacle is the heartening fact that the Democrats have proven remarkably incapable of capitalizing on Bush’s unpopularity in any meaningful policy debate…
A punching bag? Seeking the truth about an AG and an administration that have lied under oath and used US Attorneys to wage politics is “us[ing] Gonzales as a punching bag”? Exactly how far off the deep end has the GOP gone here?
I agree with Ryan — Gonzales committed perjury and prostituted his Justice Department into an arm of the Republican party. He and the adminstration which supported him should be a punching bag. Gonzales should also be indicted for perjury: after all, it is a crime.
On a separate issue: what’s the deal with Larry Craig? And why is it that the people who are most vocal about what they consider to be sin — Ted Haggart, Jimmy Swaggert, Newt Gingrich, Henry Hyde, David Vitter, etc. — seem to be committing the sins they are so vocal about?
http://alaskareport.com/news/z46613_larry_craig.htm
Yes, a punching bag. Bush would be wise to leave the interim AG in place through the end of his term. Let the presidency lusting Democrats foam at the mouth over that. Deep end indeed.
Um, Ryan, I’m not “the GOP”, I’m just me. And you needn’t act so shocked that anyone would accuse the Democrats of having ulterior motives. It would be shocking if they didn’t, perhaps…Peter, I ask you in all honesty: isn’t it a wee bit unseemly that Democrats latch onto every story of a closeted Republican homosexual with such glee? Are Republicans the only hypocrites in the world? Just wondering…
Mark, Perhaps I’ve missed something, but your statement that “new blood was desperately needed” was puzzling. Rumsfeld, Rove, Gonzales, and Cheney all served the same President Bush.
I also voted for him twice but now wonder if I knew who the candidate really was.
Peter, I’ll bet that as unfortunate as Sen. Craig’s situation is that the Senator is thanking his lucky stars he’s not Michael Vick.
You know, new blood, different ideas on policy, shake things up, get rid of some of the scapegoats…it couldn’t have hurt anything…
Which policy ideas do you think Gonzo brought to this administration?
As for Senator Craig, I do feel glee (with a small side of sadness) when people who are so hurtful are exposed for hating themselves as much as they do others. The hope of course, is that the very hatred and fear which they used to achieve their power will turn against them. Are Republicans the only hypocrites? No, but they sure are good at it with this issue.
Mark, I guess the idea that President Bush would be receptive to new ideas on policy seemed unlikely in view of his recent inability to hear the voice of so many Americans who did not agree with him on immigration, for example. Shaking things up is often helpful, but at this point it’s hard to see how that can happen if the administration is playing musical chairs (Chertoff rumor).
Yeah, I hear ya on Chertoff…he may be perfectly fine, but it’s not an inspired choice, to say the least, should it come to pass…Scott, I know you’re undoubtably a good guy at heart (you read my blog, after all!), but it’s just unseemly to revel in the misfortune of others, no matter how justified it may seem from the outside…just my two cents…
Mark, we may be attending to different aspects of the Senator Craig issue. Please tell us exactly which aspect of Senator Craig’s situation you view as his misfortune?
I actually see both sides of the Craig issue here. Schadenfreude isn’t exactly becoming, for sure. On the other hand, watching a hatemonger exposed for being the exact thing he hates is a kind of poetic justice. The really sad thing is that it never changes anything. Just as Vitter didn’t use his position to do something for the dignity and freedom of women, I sincerely doubt that Craig will take this opportunity to do anything valuable for the gay community. Instead, he will continue to perpetuate the idea that (his) homosexuality is some kind of deviance.
As for the Democrats, of course they have “ulterior” motives. This is politics. I’m not so crazy that I think anyone really acts without some kind of self-interest (maybe Ron Paul…). The beauty of the system is that pitting everyone’s self-interest against everyone else’s usually gives us pretty good results. That said, we’re the analytical class. We’re supposed to care about truth and actually add something to the politics. I don’t see how we can avoid taking the Democrats’ side in this one. They may be self-interested, but they also happen to be right.
Senator Craig, who plead guilty to disorderly conduct (homosexual perhaps, but it’s not clear from the article how homosexually disorderly the conduct was) is on record in the Senate:
- Voting Yes on constitutional ban of same-sex marriage. (June 2006)
- Voting No on adding sexual orientation to the definition of hate crimes. (June 2002)
- Voting No on expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation. (June 2000)
- Voting Yes on prohibiting same-sex marriage. (September 1996)
- Voting No on prohibiting job discrimination by sexual orientation. (September 1996)
Someone needs to explain the hypocrisy to me. Are you arguing that a gay person, closeted, latent, or otherwise, cannot oppose establishing the government’s recognition of same-sex marriage and amending hate crimes and job discrimination law to include sexual orientation in its definiton?
” watching a hatemonger exposed for being the exact thing he hates is a kind of poetic justice.”
He is a hatemonger because he does not believe in gay marriage or a hate crimes law that would silence pastors in church for speaking out against gays? give me a break his problem is hypocrisy not hate…there is a gay republican group called the log cabin republicans and they don’t espouse either of the above so are they hateful as well? He should have outed himself it is not a crime to be gay and he would have saved his wife and children the embarassment he surely caused them.
On a side note, go back to the article Peter noted and check out the accompanying photo. Too funny.
TMS, I’ll bite. A gay person cannot favor a CONSTITUTIONAL ban on same-sex marriage without being seriously pathological. And wanting to enshrine the destruction of the lives of gay and lesbian couples in the Constitution is hate, plain and simple. I’ll give you a libertarian exception on a lot of the rest, but let’s not pretend Larry Craig is a libertarian either. He’s really a pretty par-for-the-course Republican social neanderthal.
Listen, he may be pathological, he may oppose gay rights legislation out of some sort of psychological deficiency and as a means to deny or suppress his own homosexuality, I don’t know that and neither do you, but it is certainly plausible. I disagree with him completely on same-sex marriage, but still contend that a completely sane gay person might reasonably conclude that government sanctioned same-sex marriage is a bad idea. Their gayness is irrelevant.
Sandy: I think we’re all grateful that we’re not Micheal Vick (not that we’re all dog-killers, either)
Mark: I don’t know whether or not Democrats latched on to the Craig arrest “with glee” — the story broke yesterday — but it strikes me that a gay man voting to amend the Constitution to forbid gay marriage is like a black man voting for Jim Crow laws.
A better answer might be this: people like Craig exploit private sexual morality for political gain. It is inconceivable to me that a closeted gay man would advocate anti-gay legislation because he sincerely believes in it — it seems pretty obvious that his support is based on political considersations and nothing else. He used his political power to deny rights to other gays while pretending he was not gay.
If there is Schadenfreude from the exposure of hypocrites like Craig, so be it.
Or you could say it gives new meaning to “Craig’s List”
To remove the emotional firestorm created by certain words or ideas, what if we substitute the word “smoker” (or pick another word) for the word “gay” in comment #18? We might find Sen. Craig to be a political opportunist rather than a hypocrite – who knows?
I found him to be rather loathsome a few years ago when he was willing to freeze military promotions if he didn’t get certain concessions for his state. This was a bad idea, with even worse timing. I’m voting for political opportunist. Perhaps this linking magic will work:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/12/politics/printable558345.shtml
I know this much from reading that article (and some of the other coverage): I will not be tapping my feet while in a public men’s room. In fact, I pretty much plan to stick to the standard men’s room etiquette of: minimal eye contact, staring straight ahead when standing at a urinal, and NO TALKING. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, just don’t want to give off the wrong signals to cops (or anyone else).
A better analogy would be a black man voting against affirmative action or other preferential treatment for people of his own race, or a closet homosexual voting for an anti-sodomy law.
Right now (and if the federal amendment had passed) homosexuals have every right that heterosexuals have. I’m not defending the FMA by any means — I honestly couldn’t care less if same-sex marriage became legally recognized
Just checking, TMS, since there’s no link, was that all Craig was doing — tapping his feet I mean? I’ve heard that there’s supposed to be some kind of “code” among closeted gay men to signify that they want sex, but I have no clue what exactly it is. If it’s something that simple, then I would say that Craig has a pretty good case for dismissal.
Aaron: He tapped his foot for a couple minutes and then moved it closer to the stall that the undercover cop was in. Then he swiped his hand, palm up, under the divider. He also placed his bag in the front of the stall blocking any view from outside. The cop said these were all signals hes seen before. What do you have to screw up to get airport restroom patrol?
too many steves: Thats the last time I wear my Ipod in a public restroom.
Aaron, that’s crap. He wasn’t voting against gay marriage; he was voting to make it impossible for anyone anywhere at any time to vote for gay marriage. That’s a lot different.
And, while we’re here, show me a gay person who agrees with disgusting comments like yours about “preferential treatment”. Somehow I don’t think you’re going to find very many people who think allowing gays and lesbians to marry the consenting partner of their choice is anything like preferential treatment. I’m pretty sure most of them would call it “equality” or “granting them basic dignity”. If you think the only relevant metric for determining equal rights in this case is that everyone has the right to marry someone of the opposite sex, then God help us all: we’ve replaced civil rights with semantics.
Replace “people” with “gay people”. Obviously you can find plenty of other people who think that. Bigotry is easy when you’re in the majority.
No, the reports said he also brushed his foot against the foot of the person (a police office I believe) in the next stall. The cop was quoted as saying the foot-tapping is a well known signal that indicates you are interested in a hook-up of some sort.
Scott, a little late responding, but I consider his misfortune not to be his gayness or straightness, but rather the fact that he was arrested for lewd conduct…surely an unpleasant experience for anyone…
Getting back to Gonzales:
Micheal Vick had a press conference where he took full responsibility for his actions (“Not for one second will I sit right here and point the finger and try to blame anybody else for my actions or what I’ve done. I’m totally responsible.”)
George Bush had a press conference where he blamed Gonzales’s resignation on “unfair treatment” and “political reasons.” Gonzales is a dishonest boob who lied repeatedly to Congress — there is nothing unfair or political about holding him accountable. As with everything else in his Presidency, Bush refuses to accept responsibility for things which obviously went wrong, and instead blames it on others.
Don’t you find it sad that Micheal Vick seems to have higher moral standards than the President of the United States?
“Jim Crow” laws penalized black people just for being black. They essentially made it a crime to belong to a minority ethnic group. How are homosexuals penalized simply for existing?
What can I do that an otherwise identical homosexual man cannot do? The answer, of course, is nothing (well, nothing aside from joining the military, but I’m all for scrapping DADT, anyway). But go ahead and explain how allowing gay people to marry other people of the same gender is not creating a special right for gay people.
What can Aaron do that gays cannot do?
When a man and a woman are married, they have rights of survivorship, property distribution, parental rights, etc. In addition to being a social institution, marriage is also a legal contract.
This is not creating a special right for gays. It is giving them the same rights as straights.
“When a man and a woman are married, they have rights of survivorship, property distribution, parental rights, etc. In addition to being a social institution, marriage is also a legal contract.”
I don’t see a specification of sexuality anywhere in that sentence. There is the assumption of course, that only a heterosexual man would marry a woman. We know from more than a few examples that this is not what happens in reality — Larry Craig is a clear example of this (if he is, in fact, gay).
“Don’t you find it sad that Micheal Vick seems to have higher moral standards than the President of the United States?”
Yeah. Let’s just ignore the fact that Vick has indisputably been directly involved with what is indisputably a crime while there is a legitimate debate as to whether the Democrats going after Gonzales was just a political witch hunt.
Politics is herding cats, not slaughtering dogs.
Gay marriage is not about the union of a gay man and a woman — it is about the union of two men (or two women). The Larry Craig example is not relevant.
Post 32: Gonzales gave sworn testimony which has been contradicted by numerous others. He perjured himself. Congress is doing its job in holding him accountable. This is not a witch hunt in any sense of the word.
Your suggestion is that Cabinet officers may lie and dissemble and any scrutiny of it is therefore a witch hunt?
Yeah, let’s keep Michael Vick out of this…in fact, the less said about that degenerate the better…
Yeah, heaven forbid we compare someone who personally tortures dogs to someone who orders the torture of human beings. There’s no moral equivalence here.
Oh, give me a break…talk about throwing your red herrings out there…George W. Bush is by all accounts, regardless of your political persuasion, an upstanding man with a genuinely compassionate heart. He has made some giant mistakes, but he’s not the type to just order random torture – he had to face some tough choices in this era of Islamic extremist terrorism, but other perfectly reasonable people have advocated similar positions to the one Bush chose (Alan Dershowitz comes to mind). Let’s keep the debate on a reasonably elevated level and leave out spoiled millionaire criminals who kill dogs that can’t ‘perform’ in barbaric death matches…
Three words:
Karla Faye Tucker.
Jacques, from Wikipedia
Karla Tucker was born and raised in Houston, Texas. When she was 13, she began traveling with the Allman Brothers Band. In her early 20′s she started to hang out with bikers and on June 13, 1983, having spent the day doing drugs with her boyfriend she entered the home of another biker with Danny Garrett and James Leibrant to steal a motorcycle. During the robbery, two people were killed, Jerry Dean was hit numerous times with an axe until he died, as was Deborah Thornton. At one point, a witness entered the bedroom to find Tucker attempting to pull the axe out of Dean by using her foot on him as leverage. After she pulled the axe from his body, she lifted it above her head, smiled at the witness, and swung it into Dean again. Tucker and Garrett then used the axe on Deborah. When Deborah begged for the end to her pain, Garrett embedded the axe in her throat. Tucker later expressed satisfaction about her actions when news of the case was broadcast on TV and boasted to others of her actions. Garrett and Tucker were convicted of committing murder with a pickaxe
Yes, she was a model prisoner in later life…and yes, Bush seemed to mock her pleas for clemency during a time when he was being hounded by the media and all sorts of international figures to pardon her…but let’s not lose sight of the crime here. If you make the case for George W. Bush lacking compassion on carrying out the death penalty imposed by a Texas jury on an admitted ax murderer, well, you’ve got standards few of us could meet…
I’m disinclined to get into the argument about whether Bush has genuine compassion, both to avoid offending our gracious host and also because it’s an unwinnable argument. I find it hard to believe that a truly compassionate person would stand in the way of stem cell research, but this may be due to my own myopia, and it’s not a position I’m willing to defend.
Without excusing what Micheal Vick did — hey, I’m a dog owner too — I was impressed by his speech today. Admittedly, the judge was part of the audience and his contrition may be self-serving. He admitted guilt, blamed nobody but himself, and asked for forgiveness. I think this is in stark contrast to the weaselly remarks which Bush made yesterday in Waco. The buck stops everywhere except the Oval Office.
Well, if you’re going to start keeping score, don’t forget the hundreds of thousands of Africans with AIDS living today because of antiviral medications supplied by the Bush Administration, who contributed far more than any other leader in the world before or since to fight that disease among the world’s poorest, and let’s not forget the women of Afghanistan who were freed from the brutally misogynistic Taliban society…
We were talking about Bush’s character and your assertion that he is, uncontroversially “an upstanding man with a genuinely compassionate heart.” His openly mocking the pleas of a Death Row inmate — particularly, as Governor, whose responsibility it is to consider such pleas — hardly jibes with that characterization.
I wish I could say that I find the incident out of character. The past 6 years have taught me different
Jacques, it’s not his finest moment…but though on a far less eventful stage, I’ve said and done things equally stupid. It was not the proper reaction…but it hardly stands as an indictment of the man’s entire life…
Fair enough.
I could launch into a list of other, more recent instances uncharacteristic of a “man with a genuinely compassionate heart.” But I won’t, because my aim isn’t to try to convince you to change your assessment of his character.
All I was trying to do is point out that it is not uncontroversially evident that he is “an upstanding man with a genuinely compassionate heart.” Many people, of good conscience, can look at the available evidence and come to the opposite conclusion.
Okay, it’s not uncontroversial, I’ll go that far…but I’ve yet to read, at least that I can recall, anyone who actually KNOWS the man who doesn’t remark on his seeming good character…and as a fellow Texan, I’m sure you’ll remember he was actually pretty well-regarded for the most part by Texas Democrats as a pretty decent governor who tried to work across the aisle…
But I get your point…I’ll declare a ceasefire on my side…