The Long Arm

Nice news from Spain. Bush Administration torture leaders Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, Douglas Feith and (my personal favorite due to his intolerable smugness level) David Addington may be on the road to j-u-s-t-i-c-e:

A Spanish court has taken the first steps toward opening a criminal investigation into allegations that six former high-level Bush administration officials violated international law by providing the legal framework to justify the torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, an official close to the case said.

Judge Garzón, however, has built an international reputation by bringing high-profile cases against human rights violators as well as international terrorist networks like Al Qaeda. The arrest warrant for General Pinochet led to his detention in Britain, although he never faced a trial. The judge has also been outspoken about the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay.

Spain can claim jurisdiction in the case because five citizens or residents of Spain who were prisoners at Guantánamo Bay have said they were tortured there. The five had been indicted in Spain, but their cases were dismissed after the Spanish Supreme Court ruled that evidence obtained under torture was not admissible.

Right on right on. Because not only were these War Crimes and betrayals of American tradition and reputation, these were ineffective, harmful measures:

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 former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida -- chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates -- was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said...

...Abu Zubaida was not even an official member of al-Qaeda...

The massive incompetence of the Cheney Administration is matched only by it's venality and corruption, Okay, that's two things it's matched by. It was a very, very dark time, and it only ended a few months ago.

It's crucial that these villains be prosecuted so that the story stays alive. Let no one forget what was done by these men and the thieves they enabled, at the highest levels of our democracy, at a time when we need righteous action instead. And, as I've often said, when the deeper truth(s) of that Bizarro administration finally come to light, it will be worse than you've imagined so far.

Or me.

Or anyone.

Job Hunt

As one who has had some job searches of his own over time, I hate to criticize an unemployed person looking for work, or to point out their difficulty getting hired.

However, in the case of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, I'll make an exception:

Mr. Gonzales, the former attorney general, who was forced to resign last year, has been unable to interest law firms in adding his name to their roster, Washington lawyers and his associates said in recent interviews.

He has, through friends, put out inquiries, they said, and has not found any takers. What makes Mr. Gonzales’s case extraordinary is that former attorneys general, the government’s chief lawyer, are typically highly sought.

Odd, that! Is it gross incompetence, cronyism, toadyism and lying before Congress that is hurting his employability? Could one say, perhaps, his "laughingstockishness" would be an impediment to any serious law firm hiring Alberto?

“Maybe the passage of time will provide some opportunity for him,” said one Washington lawyer who was aware of an inquiry to his firm from a Gonzales associate. “I wouldn’t say ‘rebuffed,’ ” said the lawyer, who asked his name not be used because the situation being described was uncomfortable for Mr. Gonzales. “I would say ‘not taken up.’ ”

Wow. Nice burn. Can we all start using the euphemism, "Not taken up?"

Even after all this, it's a little surprising. Gonzales is connected with certain people currently in power and likely to be big in their (oil and private defense) industries afterwards. And I'm guessing that these big money law firms aren't exactly virgins when it comes to some of the more twisted machinations of power.

But maybe there's a real deal-killer at the heart of it all:

His conduct is being investigated by the Office of the Inspector General of the Justice Department, which could recommend actions from exonerating him to recommending criminal charges. Friends set up a fund to help pay his legal bills.

That's right. What law firm in its right mind would risk hiring someone who could blemish their practice and possibly be disbarred within the first year at work? Unfortunately for Alberto, the high-powered law firm of O'Moron & Imbecilirig doesn't exist.

Ah, well. Let none ever say that the Cheney(/Bush) Administration hasn't hired the brightest, say, for National Security Advisor.

President Pain

Has there ever been a U.S. Presidency as sadistic as that of Richard Bruce Cheney/George Walker Bush Jr.?

Yes, it is finally revealed, Cheney and his henchman David Addington got then-Attorney General Alberto "I Don't Remember" Gonzales to author a -- this makes me sick -- secret order authorizing torture.

SECRET.

Like...double secret probation...only for administering unbearable pain the bodies and psyches of other human beings in your custody to elicit information that is more often than not rendered unreliable due to the damaging methods. Without due process.

You know, fascism:

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 to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it.

Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and former officials said. The Justice Department document declared that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard.

It's perjury, it's bad faith, it's just plain evil when applied to, say, Jose Padilla in our country's name.

It's SECRET -- not just from us, the citizens, we accept some of that from our government, like secret nuclear codes and backdoor peace negotiations. But this was secret from any other branch of government, from all our other elected officials at the highest levels of our representative government.

Per Digby -- "Sociopathic Governance":

When Bush said, "a dictatorship would be easier --- as long as I'm the dictator" he wasn't joking. They simply do not believe that they have to adhere to the rule of law --- it's awe-inspiring in its pathology. And the rest of us are like a bunch of frightened townspeople, hovering behind the curtains just hoping these drunken louts will pass out or leave town before they take a match to the place.

I am still stunned that we are talking about the United States of America issuing dry legal opinions about how much torture you are allowed to inflict on prisoners. Stories like this one are the very definition of the banality of evil --- a bunch of ideologues and bureaucrats blithely committing morally reprehensible acts apparently without conscience or regret.

It's like some sort of Gilded Age gathering of wealthy Robber Baron sadists, or the repulsive fetishistic power-trippers in Pasolini's Salo. They don't love the children -- they love their children, and provide amply for them alone.

They're too busy vetoing child healthcare legislation (SCHIP) to protect their private insurance companies and their enabling ideology:

He said the bill's funding level would have expanded the health program beyond its original intent and taken a step toward government-run health care.

"The policies of the government ought to be to help people find private insurance, not federal coverage," Bush said.

"I happen to believe that what you're seeing when you expand eligibility for federal programs is the desire by some in Washington, D.C. to federalize health care. I don't think that's good for the country," he added.

That's Bush's legacy, cutting off children because their parents are merely struggling, not completely poverty stricken. And now all of the top ranked Republican Presidential contenders -- Giuliani, Romney, Thompson, McCain -- have gone on the record backing him up.

After what this country has been through, each and every one of them is a joke candidate.

All that history will remember Bush, Cheney and their whole gang for is pain.

This is Why (I Love John Edwards)

So Gonzo joins Karl not so coincidentally today. Is it the Federal Prosecutor scandal or is it the Hatch Act violation? If the People ever get to the emails and depose the perpetrators, there would be jail time for sure. Or more pardons.

Here's Democratic Presidential nomination frontrunner Hillary Clinton's statement on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' "resignation":

This resignation is long overdue, and so is the appointment of an Attorney General who will put the rule of law and our Constitution above partisan politics.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales took an oath to uphold our Constitution and respect the rule of law, but time and time again, he demonstrated that his loyalties lie with the President and his political agenda, not the American people or the evenhanded and impartial enforcement of our laws. In his actions and inaction, from warrantless wiretaps to the firing of U.S. Attorneys, his loyalty was to the President, not the American people.

The Department's hardworking lawyers, law enforcement officers, and staff are trusted to defend our Constitution, not one Administration or political party. That trust is central to the sanctity of the rule of law and the vitality of our democracy. Because he betrayed his obligations and the trust of the American people, I welcome today's announcement that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has resigned his post as Attorney General of the United States.

My hope is that the President will select a new Attorney General who will respect the rule of law and abandon partisanship, who will serve the American people and not the President's political ideology, and who will answer to the Constitution and not political operatives. It is past time to clean up this mess and restore non-partisan accountability and competence to the Department of Justice.

The second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is one more reminder that the President must appoint someone to lead the Department of Justice with the leadership and competence necessary to defend the Constitution.

Here's lead fundraising Democratic Presidential nomination candidate Barak Obama's statement:

"I have long believed that Alberto Gonzales subverted justice to promote a political agenda, and so I am pleased that he has finally resigned today. The President needs to nominate an Attorney General who will be the people's lawyer, not the President's lawyer, and in an Obama Administration that person will first and foremost defend and promote the rights and liberties enshrined in our Constitution."

Here's Democratic Presidential nomination candidate John Edwards:

"Better late than never."

People wonder why Democrats can't simplify their language to get to the heart of the matter in a way everyone can understand. There you go.

At least one of the candidates has a sharp, pithy sense of humor.

And he's dead right.

Power is Taken

There's a crazy load of news today:

- Legendary, historically pivotal Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman (b.1918) dies at age 89.

- The vacation home of Sen. Theodore Fulton "Ted" Stevens (R-AK, b.1923), at age 83 the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, is raided by the FBI looking for corrupt links to the Alaskan oil business.

- Ground-breaking late night talk show host Tom Snyder (b.1936) dies of leukemia at age 71 in San Francisco.

- Brand new Chief Justice John Glover Roberts Jr. (b.1955) has his second publicly known seizure while on at his summer home in Maine.

- The move to impeach Attorney General Albert Gonzales (b. 1955) begins, not appearing to having been initiated by the leadership, but rather Congressman Jay Inslee (D-WA). It is no longer inconceivable that he could be impeached. As of tomorrow, it will be underway.

Is there any hope for the current generation, i.e. those leaders born in the 1950's?

The only Presidential candidate in the Democratic Party that is strictly about speaking truth to power is Senator John Edwards (b. 1953), and there's video of him doing twice, publicly, this past week.

He did it first at the CNN YouTube debate. He said the words regular American need to hear:

If you listen to these questions, they all have exactly the same thing, which is how do we bring about big change? And I think that’s a fundamental threshold question. And the question is: Do you believe that compromise, triangulation will bring about big change? I don’t.

I think the people who are powerful in Washington -- big insurance companies, big drug companies, big oil companies -- they are not going to negotiate. They are not going to give away their power. The only way that they are going to give away their power is if we take it away from them.

He did it again, with some added kick, in a smalltown gathering in New Hampshire:

I believe America needs change in the worst kind of way. And I don't mean little change, I mean big change. And I don't believe that change is going to come from negotiation and compromise. I think there are powerful interests in Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C. is broken. It does not work. The entire system is rigged, and it's rigged against you...the insurance companies to drug companies to oil companies, those people run this country now...

I think you've got to take them on and beat them, I don't think you can sit at a table and negotiate with them. The idea that they're going to voluntarily give up their power, that's a fantasy, and that will never happen.

And we will never be able to have universal health care, be able to change the way we use energy and tackle global warming. The big issues that face this country. They are standing in between and the change that we need. It's that simple.

Be still my heart. Truth, so rare, so liberating.

What is there to really disagree with in here? Of course, he's right! Power never yields just because you wish it would, that it would make great sacrifices to take care of you. It only yields when forced to. And the corporate powers he speaks of are some of the richest in the span of human history.

Is it any wonder that the media just wants you to think about haircuts? They may not be scared of Edwards yet, but they're clearly invested in stopping him. And well they should be.

More here.

Next

The New York Times tells it like it is:

As far as we can tell, there are three possible explanations for Mr. Gonzales’s talk about a dispute over other — unspecified — intelligence activities. One, he lied to Congress. Two, he used a bureaucratic dodge to mislead lawmakers and the public: the spying program was modified after Mr. Ashcroft refused to endorse it, which made it “different” from the one Mr. Bush has acknowledged. The third is that there was more wiretapping than has been disclosed, perhaps even purely domestic wiretapping, and Mr. Gonzales is helping Mr. Bush cover it up.

Democratic lawmakers are asking for a special prosecutor to look into Mr. Gonzales’s words and deeds. Solicitor General Paul Clement has a last chance to show that the Justice Department is still minimally functional by fulfilling that request.

If that does not happen, Congress should impeach Mr. Gonzales.

Bingo.

Cooking Geese

Two or three more nails in the coffin of the Cheney/Bush Administration today, depending how you count them. Are the contempt of Congress indictments approved out of committee for vote in the House of Representatives one nail as they came together, or two, as one is for current White House Chief of Staff John Bolton, while the other is for Former Supreme Court Nominee Harriet Miers.

Both Mr. Bolton and Ms. Miers decided they could ignore a Congressional subpoena. Unless we let them get away with it, they can't, it's like getting a subpoena to appear in court. And Ms. Miers is no longer even working for our government -- CheneyBush's claim of Executive Privilege is moot.

You can always come and refuse to answer questions under the Fifth Amendment, at which point you can be investigated. You're not supposed to come and just lie -- as in court, that's perjury, and that is against the law. Even for Republicans. Even for Attorney Generals. Just because the Attorney General does it, that doesn't make it legal.

Which is why Alberto Gonzales wasn't just funny yesterday, he committed clear and actionable perjury:

Documents indicate eight congressional leaders were briefed about the Bush administration's terrorist surveillance program on the eve of its expiration in 2004, contradicting sworn Senate testimony this week by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

The documents underscore questions about Gonzales' credibility as senators consider whether a perjury investigation should be opened into conflicting accounts about the program and a dramatic March 2004 confrontation leading up to its potentially illegal reauthorization.

A Gonzales spokesman maintained Wednesday that the attorney general stands by his testimony.

I give him a week. Oh, but what henchman could CheneyBush possibly get to replace him -- both continue to cover up their crimes and get confirmed by Congress?

And if you can't fill the top job at Justice, are you even operating as a President anymore?

I hear goose is a little gamy, but if you cook it just right...

Funnyman

Somebody should make a sitcom based on Alberto Gonzales' misadventures as Attorney General for Mister George W. Bush. "Make Room for Gonzo" could work. Or, "Everybody Hates Alberto." Or maybe, "Leave it to Liar."

Alberto went up to Capitol Hill on Tuesday and was even funnier than his last appearance. This time his brick wall act was made comical by how threadbare it's become, even less of a pas a deux of question, evasion, delaying than in the past with both sides knowing what he was doing but the Senators being frustrated.

This time he thought he could coast and didn't prepare, kind of like his boss does with warfare. This time they're not only itching to indict him for perjury, he practically begging them to. This time his lies seem like mean little middle school trick, only now those questioning him have moved on to college, and Gonzo is not, whatever his cock-eyed fantasies, going to ride this out. They even talk to him like he's a child.

He's a loser. Only today, for the first time, he started to sense it.

Dense little liar.

The thing to remember about all liars is that first and foremost they're lying to themselves. Think of it: most times when we lie we have to take at least a moment to convince ourselves that it's all for the best and we won't get caught. So Gonzales is not only lying to the country, he's living a lie. The Big Lie that is Bush, Cheney and the GOP scourge they still ride astride.

Ha, ha, Gonzo, you laughed at us after your last appearance. But America thinks you suck, and now you know it. You will become pariah once you are forced out of office. That could be funny, too. Or dramatic. Branded.

Oh, and just in case you're wondering why Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is actually not all that funny in person but more just repulsive and scummy, it's because he's a torturer.

Cribnotes

Happy Monday, and to start off the week, here's a memory jogger for all those reasons you want our current Executive Federal leadership impeached.

Amazing how far back some of this footage goes. Hard to believe most of these criminals are still in office.

Tell your Senator and Representative what you'd like them to do about it.

Inaccurate Gonzo

Monica Goodling, under immunity, nails Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' coffin shut.

More details including damning White House involvement from Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-MI) on Kos in what he so accurately calls "Goodling Testimony Revealing (Except to Republicans)":

Third, we learned the White House was intimately involved in the process of terminating the US Attorneys, from the beginning through final sign off, and Ms. Goodling believes Mr. Rove was involved in the process.

Crimes, crimes, crimes.

Today it was announced that Rove's, I mean Bush's General Services Administration chief Lurita Alexis Doan committed a huge crime by violating the federal Hatch Act which makes it illegal to use government workers in partisan political activities, like when she did a big presentation where she allegedly asked GSA political appointees during a January briefing how they could "help our candidates" win the next election.

Like an good Republican lawbreaker getting caught, she's attempting character assassination on her accusers.

And Bush's candidate for head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, senior lobbyist for the National Association of Manufacturers (you know, corporations that hate regulation) Michael E. Baroody, pulled his name from consideration today, avoiding facing a certain Senate vote against him. Reasons why Baroody was a choice only the Bush/Cheney/Rove gang would make:

His nomination began to founder after the disclosure last Wednesday that he would be receiving a $150,000 special payment from the association, and that the severance package was amended by the association in January, shortly after he was identified as the top candidate for the post.

You know, bribery.

But even with all these GOP criminals, the biggest excoriation of the day was Keith Olbermann's merciless shredding of Democratic Congressional cowardice in the face of Bush's veto. I'm assuming the end of this one is the Congressional Republicans lining up behind the weak new bill, while progressive Dems and politically savvy ones vote against it, a squeak by with a divided Dem party.

I can only hope for some ju-jitsu, in the offing, like the bill actually goes down in flames. But it is, indeed, a dark hour.

Leadership. Needed.

Epics

So the Senate testimony of former Deputy Attorney General James Comey against the perjurer Gonzales, the stuff about the hospital visit to semi-comatose Attorney General John Ashcroft to get his signature on the Bush/Cheney/Rove Triad's Constitution-breaking has surveillance crimes has already been translated into the fairly deft little video, Godfather IV.

What the heck, at just over a minute, it's already better than the third movie. And any excuse to see Sterling Haydn hit a man...

Speaking of organized crime, I won't go deep into this week's Sopranos episode, 3rd to last of the series, but I will point out that it felt like the most depressing episode in ages (coming down off the peyote high in Vegas?) as well as having a very lucid and pivotal film quote that I've seen neither of my episode-analysis gurus, Alan Sepinwall or Matt Zoller Seitz, recognize yet.

SPOILERville.









In scene near the end of the episode where Tony and Little Carmine are turned away by Butch at Phil Leotardo's doorstep, the framing of the doorway confrontation, with the action of a third party blocking a consummation between the visiting party, and someone hidden and unheard upstairs somewhere in the house, is direct echo of the turning point scene in Orson Welles' ill-fated second feature film, The Magnificent Ambersons.

You can see a few moments of the original at the end of this trailer clip. (From a really great unofficial Ambersons site.)

In Welles' adaptation of Booth Tarkington's novel, self-made man Joseph Cotten is blocked from continuing his blossoming middle-aged relationship with his childhood love, once the richest girl in town, by her spoiled, angry son, played by Tim Holt. From that point forward the would-be lovers never meet again, not even on her deathbed.

The standoff with Butch is shot basically the same way, albeit if these mob characters in The Sopranos always end up turning everything they touch into shit, the same thing kind of happens when Phil starts yelling down from the attic as Tony and Little Carmine head back to their cars. It would be comic save for the violence we're sure will follow, but Phil's hollerings are essentially a shit on the Ambersons theme, the f.u. punk rock version, irreverent but dumb. Perfect for the series.

If Tarkington's/Welles' tale is essentially about the passing of an age, from the landed aristocracy with their assumptions of permanence and dwindling relevance, even insult to American social health, then cannot one make the same case for Chase's epic?

The episode starts with the asbestos Tony is ultimately responsible for disposing of safely, instead dumped in New Jersey wetlands to wisp over the natural landscape like a pestilence. Cut to Tony in plush bedcovers, his affluence paid for by our collective loss, a thieving inflicted upon all of us. Cut to his son in bed, same affluence. Same source.

There's the pain of it. Either Tony survives and we pay for it, or maybe it really is like the Ambersons, the sweep of this series being the contemporary decline of the historical 20th century power of the American gangster, at least the European side of it.

The spoiled son looking for his comeuppance is A.J. this time. The lover denied is Phil. (Think of his brutal homophobic murder last season as overcompensation.)

Then, like the Amberson family, shall the House of Soprano reveal its rickety foundations, aging without replenishment, long gentle arcs then the sudden storm that leaves them without what they thought they had. A new and more relevant class replacing them, one not shackled in the values of some previous century.

A change that leaves them as bereft and forgotten as Johnny Sacramoni's family.

Impeachable

President Bush refused to give a straight answer to NBC News' Kelly O'Donnell when she asked him if he had engaged in an action which, if he indeed did, would likely constitute and impeachable offense.

We're all used to the Bush deflection and dodge, the turning back of a question with a talking point delivered with macho bravado, a fratish insult to a reporter disguised as a wink. This time seems different -- check it out:

O'Donnell: There's been some very dramatic testimony before the Senate this week from one of your former top justice department officials, who describes a scene that some Senators called stunning about a time when the warrantless wiretap program was being reviewed. Sir, did you send your then chief of staff and White House counsel to the bedside of John Ashcroft, while he was ill to get him to approve os that program and do you believe that kind of conduct from White House officials is appropriate?

Bush: Kelly, there's a lot of speculation about what happened and what didn't happen and I'm not going to talk about it…It's a very sensitive program…

Whatever happened to, "No."?

The short version of the story seems to be that then Attorney General, the arch-Conservative John Ashcroft was actually against the illegal Bush/Cheney spying program, because spying on American citizens -- tapping their phones, reading their mail, reading their emails -- requires a warrant. And one that's not particularly hard or long for the intelligence services to get. But under El Presidente, his henchmen didn't even bother getting those fig leaves.

Ashcroft had just had major surgery when Bush appears to have sent over his personal attorney, current Attorney General (but not for very long anymore) Alberto Gonzales and then Chief-of-Staff Andrew Card, to the hospital get Ashcroft to sign off that the program was somehow legal -- give the blessing of the Department of Justice.

The whole argument was based on some dubious legalese written by authoritarian scholar John Yoo, a man who seems to think the Constitution has granted royal powers to George W. Bush. Even Ashcroft didn't buy it, and despite his wife's protestations to lay off, Gonzales and Card hit the hospital room where the drugged up, recovering Ashcroft still refused to bless this lawbreaking.

I've long said that those who underestimate Bush's awareness, involvement and even direction of his Administration's crimes will later learn how bad things really have been. So when El Presidente ducks a question about his involvement, if he indeed did make the phone call that sent Card and Gonzales to Ashcroft's bedside, even the previously Administration-friendly Washington Post editorial page is flipping out:

Yes, Mr. Bush backed down in the face of the threat of mass resignations, Mr. Ashcroft's included, and he apparently agreed to whatever more limited program the department was willing to approve. In the interim, however, the president authorized the program the Justice lawyers had refused to certify as legally permissible, and it continued for a few weeks more, according to former deputy attorney general James B. Comey's careful testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Under the Constitution, the president has the final authority in the executive branch to say what the law is. But as a matter of presidential practice, this is breathtaking.

The blogosphere is, as usual, more direct. Per Digby:

In any case, Bush was deeply involved. He met with both Comey and Mueller on the issue after they all said they'd resign. The spinners are trying to say that their Dear Leader finally overruled others who had nefarious intentions , but his refusal to answer the question today should put that to rest. There's no reason for him to launch into such outdated 2003 gibberish about enemies lurking who "would like to strike" if he didn't order it. It's obvious that he did.

This has come to a head after former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey revealed the story in blockbuster Senate testimony yesterday. Everyone is D.C. is still getting a grip on it. The upshot is that since Gonzales is putting his body in the way of El Presidente and probably Karl Rove, the next attempt to shame him into resigning will be a Senate "no confidence" vote.

It's more and more likely to pass as Republicans turn against Gonzales every day. In fact, per the Evans-Novak report, the GOP now wishes that this Administration would just go away.

This was the turning point for disgraced President Richard Nixon, leading to his ignominious resignation. When your own Party finds you such a weighty liability, when you've shredded the Constitution long enough and can't hide behind the scraps of it anymore, you're toast.

Most prophetically of all, the question that may just signal the beginning of the end of Bush and Cheney and Rove's reign of torture, illegal spying on Americans, felonious cronyism and oil-thirsty war, happened during a Rose Garden press conference featuring visiting British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Blair ruined his once brilliant career by backing Bush in invading Iraq, and has now been forced by his own Labour Party and leaden public polls to resign effective June 27th. As Dana Milbank writes, also in the WaPo:

For President Bush, the sensation must have been akin to watching his own funeral.

Listen; can you hear the bell toll?


Crossposted to The Daily Reel.

Roast Gonzo

The appearance of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales before the Senate Judiciary Committee will go down as the most humiliating such testimony by an appointee to that office in the history of our United States.

Don't take my word for it -- there's plenty of clips collected on TPMmuckraker where, under damning questioning by both Democratic and Republican Senators, Gonzales makes a fool of himself and a mockery of the great office he holds. Personal favorites:

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) coolly takes Gonzales apart over his inability to say who drew up the list of Federal Prosecutors to fire.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) throws Gonzales under a bus.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) takes Gonzales apart over he so-called reasons for firing Carol Lam, who was following up on convicted GOP Congressman Randall "Duke" Cunningham's corruption connections.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) tells Gonzales to resign.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) tells Gonzales to resign.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) tells Gonzales to consider resigning, and if he chooses to stay for his boss to consider firing him.

There were protesters in the hearing as well, one actually keeping track of the number of times Gonzales responded to a question with, "I don't recall." At the end of the hearing, "protesters began singing 'Hey, hey, goodbye' from the 1970s hit song by Steam."

Per The New York Times editorial on Friday, "Mr. Gonzales came across as a dull-witted apparatchik incapable of running one of the most important departments in the executive branch."

There's the rub. As an apparatchik, a political hack, he serves one master, a guy who is more likely to keep him the more he is told to let him go. Per Glenn Greenwald in Salon:

This President does not fire people under pressure. When political pressures are exerted on Bush, he does the opposite of what is demanded of him -- for no reason except to defy the requests of others...

...Bush fires those who are disloyal. Those who are subservient and loyal are never fired, no matter their level of incompetence or corruption...

...That is how Bush works. If someone demands that Bush take action, he will petulantly refuse simply to demonstrate that he does not comply with anyone else's will. He is The Decider, nobody else, and nothing is more important than for him to demonstrate that.

As a reminder of the level of quality in this boss of bosses who holds Alberto's pink slip in his hands, here's your President speaking today, stumbling in front of a hand-picked audience while Gonzo fried. Best quote from his disconcertingly disconnected ramble:

"There are jobs Americans aren't doing. ... If you've got a chicken factory, a chicken-plucking factory, or whatever you call them, you know what I'm talking about."

There's an old saying about hiring people for a job. It goes, "A's hire A's and B's hire C's," meaning that the best people are smart enough to know they should hire the best people, while the mediocre, either mistakenly or by fear of being overshadowed, hire worse workers.

So who do C's hire?


Crossposted to The Daily Reel.

Getting Away With It

Gwen Ifill was slimed by Don Imus ten years ago, and she weighed in on his firing today on Meet the Press. What's striking about Ifill's appearance is that she actually calls out Tim Russert and David Brooks, one being the show's host and the other a fellow guest at Russert's table, and while that actual face-to-face call for responsibility is rare enough in today's media, she goes on to delineate the central political issue of our time:

You know, it’s interesting to me. This has been an interesting week. The people who have spoken, the people who issued statements and the people who haven’t. There has been radio silence from a lot of people who have done this program who could have spoken up and said, I find this offensive or I didn’t know. These people didn’t speak up. Tim, we didn’t hear from you. David, we didn’t hear from you. What was missing in this debate was someone saying, you know, I understand that this is offensive. You know, I have a 7-year-old god daughter. Yesterday she went out shopping with her mom for high-Thetop basketball shoes so she can play basketball. The offense, the slur that Imus directed at me happened more than 10 years ago. I would like to think that 10 years from now, that Asia isn’t going to be deciding that she wants to get recruited for the college basketball team or be a tennis pro or go to medical school and that she is still vulnerable to those kinds of casual slurs and insults that I got 10 years ago, and that people will say, I didn’t know, or people will say, I wasn’t listening. A lot of people did know and a lot of people were listening and they just decided it was okay. They decided this culture of meanness was fine — until they got caught. My concern about Mr. Imus and a lot of people and a lot of the debate in this society is not that people are sorry that they say these things, they are sorry that someone catches them. When Don Imus said this about me when I worked here at NBC, when I found out about it, his producer called because Don said he wants to apologize. Well, now he says he never said it. What was he apologizing for? He was apologizing for getting caught, not apologizing for having said it in the first place.

Ah, Gwen. And on the day when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had published maybe the most qualifier-laden guest pieces ever to appear on The Washington Post editorial page. As one of Josh Marshall's readers reminds us, the heavily-rehearsed Gonzo is headed to Capitol Hill this week to lie, and everybody knows it:

As far as I can tell, this is a universal assumption. The Republicans are rooting for Mr. Gonzales to be successful in his perjury, to tell a coherent story that his enemies cannot break down. The Democrats are rooting the other way, off course. They’re hoping that their ace interrogators will be able to shoot enough holes in Mr. Gonzales’ story that they can destroy his credibility. But nobody seems to find it shocking or tragic that the Attorney General of the United States is going to lie to congress. . .

For all their jibberjabber about personal responsibility, the Republican Party takes absolutely none of it, especially the Bush/Cheney gang and their network of henchmen. Anything to protect the absolute power of three baroquely corrupt men, Richard Bruce Cheney, Karl Christian Rove and, most crucially for their cause, George Walker Bush Jr. They either destroy or conceal evidence of involvement. While Karl Rover burns the email evidence, El Presidente's fingers never touch a keyboard -- he does only verbal. You know, like a mafia boss at the "club."

I've already started beating the drum for dusting off the old Nixon question, a.k.a. "What did the President know and when did he know it?", now look and see, he's right there at the center of the Prosecutor Purge, putting out the hit as deniably as possible, the Don of America, for Sen. Peter Domenici (R-AZ):

In the spring of 2006, Domenici told Gonzales he wanted Iglesias out.

Gonzales refused. He told Domenici he would fire Iglesias only on orders from the president.

At some point after the election last Nov. 6, Domenici called Bush's senior political adviser, Karl Rove, and told him he wanted Iglesias out and asked Rove to take his request directly to the president.

Domenici and Bush subsequently had a telephone conversation about the issue.

The conversation between Bush and Domenici occurred sometime after the election but before the firings of Iglesias and six other U.S. attorneys were announced on Dec. 7.

Iglesias' name first showed up on a Nov. 15 list of federal prosecutors who would be asked to resign. It was not on a similar list prepared in October.

Will W. himself get away with it? Maybe, just maybe, not so fast. As Josh Marshall himself writes:

No one disputes that Domenici's call to Iglesias was at best inappropriate. But there's been a lack of direct evidence that Iglesias's refusal to bow to political pressure led directly to his firing. Now we have that evidence. And it's not Kyle Sampson or even Alberto Gonzales whom Domenici went to to get sign off for Iglesias's ouster. It was right to the president. And the available evidence now points strongly to the conclusion that the final decision to fire David Iglesias came from the President of the United States.

Doesn't it seem, like, the least coincidental programming of all time that The Sopranos' final nine episodes just kicked off?