Alberto Gonzales: "No Mas!"

[Q, West Coast Style]

Gonzales has quit in the middle of the term!

[Wolfman]

Staff resigntions at the end times of a POTUS term ??
Shocking I say--simply shocking !

[PSUFAN]

He's smart to get out now. Cheney received his shipment of birdshot this morning.

[PSUFAN]

This punt makes Dan Sepulveda look like Ray fucking Guy.

//shank

[Mike the Lab Rat]

About frigging time. I don't think there's anyone on either side of the political aisle who was happy with his performance.

I wonder how long it'll take some Hispanic columnist/activist to go to the "persecuted minority forced to step down" card.

[BSmack]

One can only imagine what sort of cretinous mongoloid will be offered up to replace him. Seriously, who the fuck would want anything to do with that job right about now?

CNN is pimping none other than Michael Chertoff is the likely replacement.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/

[Sirfindafold]

One can only imagine what sort of cretinous mongoloid will be offered up to replace him. Seriously, who the fuck would want anything to do with that job right about now?

Aren't you looking for work?


.

[RumpleForeskin]

I don't get this. Why don't the dems just let things run their course and let these idiots keep their jobs and not force them to resign? Wouldn't this just make the voting decision easier in '08 by letting W's cabinet staay intact? By replacing half his cabinet, someone might come in there do a little good.

[PSUFAN]

Actually, the more rabid Dems wanted AG to stay in the position. I think the repubs were the ones tiring of the burned assmeat stench...

[Terry in Crapchester]

Actually, the more rabid Dems wanted AG to stay in the position. I think the repubs were the ones tiring of the burned assmeat stench...

Actually, the more rabid Dems were considering impeachment proceedings. Gonzales certainly was an easier target, both legally and politically, than either Cheney or Bush would be.

[Dinsdale]

Being a political pinata is not an impeachable offense.

Dereliction of duty certainly is.

Gonzales swore to uphold the US Constitution. Warrantless surveillance is clearly in violation of #5... doesn't take a legal scholar to understand that. Gonzales chose to routinely violate a BoR Amendment, and should not only be out of office, but should serve jail time.

[Terry in Crapchester]

Being a political pinata is not an impeachable offense.

Dereliction of duty certainly is.

Gonzales swore to uphold the US Constitution. Warrantless surveillance is clearly in violation of #5... doesn't take a legal scholar to understand that. Gonzales chose to routinely violate a BoR Amendment, and should not only be out of office, but should serve jail time.

He also counseled the President that the President was within his rights to ignore the provisions of a treaty which the U.S. had signed.

[Dog]

I don't get this. Why don't the dems just let things run their course and let these idiots keep their jobs and not force them to resign? Wouldn't this just make the voting decision easier in '08 by letting W's cabinet staay intact? By replacing half his cabinet, someone might come in there do a little good.

Umm, this doesn't seem like a "democratic forced resignation"

This is a guy who screwed up so badly and probably has an approval rating worse than the president's.

The only way for him to save face now is to get clear the fuck away from teh mess and stay out of the public eye for a few years.

[Dinsdale]

Warrantless surveillance is and has been authorized by the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act for over thirty years.

It's a pity there hasn't been a real American running the country for over 30 years.

The 4th doesn't mince words on the subject(in my last post, I incorrectly hit the "5" key, rather than the 4). "Oath or affirmation." Not "because somebody felt like it."

A "good American" is defined by their commitment to the US Constitution. Not how they wish the Constitution read... but how it actually does read.

Don't like Amendments 1-10?

Fucking move. Fucking cry about it. I don't care. But violate them... and I care a whole bunch.

Revolution isn't out of the question. About time some politicians actually started obeying the laws of this land.

[LTS TRN 2]

Time to hammer babs like the pathetic Rove Monkey he is...

Did you know that a couple of American attorneys, Wendell Belew and Asim Ghafoor, are the only people who can prove they have standing in a suit charging the government of illegally spying on American citizens without a FISA warrant? And how do they know?

They were passed a “top secret” document during disclosure in a case when the government was considering putting their client on the US Treasury watch list for Islamic charities that the government believed are funding terrorists. The document provided positive proof that they were being spied upon by the government because the document contained a record of private phone calls they had with their client.

“Part of our surveillance occurred when the Attorney General advised the president that the program was illegal,” says plaintiff attorney Jon Eisenberg. “That deprives them of the defense they didn’t know it was illegal.”

According to Congressional testimony taken earlier this year, on March 10th, 2004, top Justice Department lawyers and White House officials held a tense showdown over the NSA spying program at the bedside of then-attorney general John Ashcroft in an intensive care unit. Ashcroft’s resolve left the president’s program without the Justice Department’s stamp of approval for about two weeks, as the White House scrambled to tweak the program to meet Ashcroft’s demands.

Attorneys in the al-Haramain case say the plaintiffs were spied on in March and April of 2004, during a period that encompassed that two week interregnum.

Belew knew things were weird when the FBI showed up at his house in 2004 and demanded he give back the document and forget that he ever saw it. When he realized it was part of the NSA spying scandal, he and Ghafoor decided to sue.

Now his case is winding its way through the courts and the document at question is being held under guard by the court in San Francisco and will be used as evidence by U.S. District Court Chief Judge Vaughn Walker who is in charge of the case. Portland Judge Garr King had refused to hand the document over to the FBI when they asked for it so the court still has it (otherwise it would probably have disappeared like Karl Rove’s email).

Wired provided a comprehensive report last March on this bizarre case which could blow apart Bush’s illegal spying if only the courts don’t decide that the executive is all powerful and above the law. (via)

Here’s a story that describes what a lawyer for Belew and Ghafoor is experiencing after taking on their case. As a friend of Brandon Mayfield, the Portland attorney that had been falsely accused of being involved in the Madrid train bombings, Thomas Nelson knew he was stepping into a dangerous case. This is yet another case that reads like a John Grisham novel. From AlterNet:

The Oregonian reported that attorney Jonathan Norling “was sleeping on a couch at their practice early one morning last May, when a man dressed as a custodian tried to enter Nelson’s office. Norling startled the man twice one night in July, when he caught the man trying to enter the locked office.” The man in question had what appeared to be a valid badge for the building. But Norling notes, “This person wasn’t a cleaning crew. I know the cleaning crew. I’ve worked here seven years, and I’ve worked a lot of nights, and I never experienced anything like that until Tom was working (on this case).”

Though Nelson approached the security people at the building, they wouldn’t talk to him. “They were very blunt,” he told AlterNet in a phone interview. He then took his concerns to the building manager. “It was all very disconcerting and inconclusive,” says Nelson. “There was no direct denial. At the end, I said, ‘You probably couldn’t tell me if something was going on anyway.’ He said, ‘That’s probably right.’”

Eventually, the strange happenings followed him to his home. As this AlterNet piece says, the case is exceedingly strange:

The fact that most frustrates Nelson is that no one ever tried to contact him or al-Buthi personally; rather, they resorted to what Nelson thinks must be illegal searches. “In retrospect,” Nelson says, “I think they were trying to get the [leaked FBI] document back. If the searches were pursuant to FISA, it would be interesting to find out what they told the judge to get a warrant — ‘We’ve been conducting this illegal wiretapping program, we’ve embarrassed ourselves, there’s this document out there that Nelson has, will you give us a warrant to get it back?’”

This is the circular logic that lies at the root of the debacle: In order to hide evidence of an illegal search program, the government is taking part in illegal searches.

This really is the last case left that threatens Bush’s illegal wiretapping because none of the objections from earlier appeals decided in Bush’s favor touch it. Here is clear and positive proof that the administration broke the law. Will the courts allow them to get away with it? We’ll know soon. August 15th, the 9th Circuit Court will hear the appeal of whether Judge Garr’s decision to allow this case to proceed was decided correctly.

[LTS TRN 2]

Good. We absolutely should be spying on such people. If we aren't, the government is failing in its fundamental responsibility.

Hermann Goering