Captain's Quarters -

Gonzales has been ridiculed of late for holing himself up in his office and doing almost nothing but preparation for his Congressional testimony. Critics claim that if he tells the truth, he has no reason to rehearse his testimony. I disagree. First, no one expects that Gonzales will be met with professionalism and a detached objectivity when he heads up the Hill. He's going to take a beating, and deservedly so, for the rinky-dink manner in which his office handled the firings, and perhaps less deservedly for the firings themselves. Second, if Gonzales and his crew had done this kind of preparation from the start - like, say, reviewing the documents in their own possession before making contradictory public statements and testimony -- we wouldn't be here now.

Two excellent points, Ed.

That sums up nicely what's bothering me about this entire eposide: it's the very definition of a tempest in a teapot. Nothing illegal or improper was done, and yet here is Gonzales having to explain yet again to the liberal media and the Democrats (using small words) that what he's done was, in fact, politics.

This entire episode comes down to not just the criminalization of politics, but the criminalization of handling politics badly. It's related to Don Imus's firing and a host of other issues. The Dems and their media lapdogs want the world run just so, and they will attack whomever doesn't fit into their latest five-year plan for how the world should be run. If you cross that line, they turn on you like piranha.

Meanwhile, Sandy Berger and Al Sharpton continue to get a free pass from the liberal media. But that of course is the plan.

First, no one expects that Gonzales will be met with professionalism and a detached objectivity when he heads up the Hill.

Heh, I think that's code for "Gonzalez will be asked questions he doesn't want to answer truthfully."

Also, the reason why they have to "review" the documents now is to concoct a better deception. Please Ed, if all they had to do was tell the truth the first time around, they would have had no problem simply bringing the documents themselves with them back then. The fact that Gonzales and the others didn't do so is telling, and a sign that they didn't want to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to begin with.

Gonzales can write an op-ed to try and spin things his way (one hopes the WaPo would give Leahy equal time tomorrow, but I doubt they will), but the fact is that Congress can ask precisely the questions it likes, not the ones that Gonzales would like them to ask.

I agree that preparation is smart and necessary.

What is telling (or, at least, odd) is that the preparation has taken as much time as it has if the explanation is as simple as Gonzales' WaPo piece (and the DoJ/WH in general) would have us believe.

If it is all so plain vanilla simple, why couldn't he have said something like this a month ago?

As I noted at my site this morning, and have been hammering for a month, if all this is ultimately to be explained away as simply legitimate personnel moves, why in the world are people quitting (Sampson, Goodling), asserting the Firth (Goodling) and otherwise behaving in a way that at least appears suspicious (Gonzales and a host of others)?

Then we have the e-mail situation (both those released and those that may be lost) that certainly create the clear impression that something is going on.

The whole thing has to sum to more than just the President removing people and replacing them.

If it ends up that that is all that happened, then they need to clean house at Justice and in the EOP, because if these people are going to blunder something so simple they oughtn't be trusted with truly important matters, such as the execution of federal law enforcement.

If it's wrong for Mike Nifong to bring a baseless prosecution to help his own election chances, it's wrong for US Attorneys to bring baseless prosecutions to help Republican election chances, wrong to fire them for refusing to do so, and wrong to slander them and give false information to Congress by claiming they were fired for performance reasons. Do we know why they were all fired? Not yet, Gonzales hasn't testified, we don't have the full record from the White House (probably never will now that they've conveniently managed to lose a bunch of email) and Monica Goodling is taking the Fifth (can't really blame here in light of Libby). I certainly see no reason to give this administration the benefit of the doubt on the issue.

I guess SOME PEOPLE on this site can sum up EVERY single republican problem with"its nothing but those damn liberal democrats and the evil mainstream media. It really burns me when the Bush apologists continue to drag out this excuse. I guess if everything can be scapegoated this way, certain republicans will NEVER have to look inward and admit mistakes. Bush can't admit mistakes, is it any wonder his apologists can't? Gonzalez brought this upon himself, ANY MORON could see that. But I guess when you constantly put the blinders on, the republicans can do no wrong. Excuse me while I throw up.

The more I see and hear from Gonzales, the more I'm inclined to wonder what in the hell was going through W's mind when he appointed this boob to be the USAG. What a maroon.

My decision some months ago to privately seek the resignations of a small number of U.S. attorneys has erupted into a public firestorm.

Thanks in no small part to the absolutely incompetent manner in which you and your senior staff handled this shabby affair.

First and foremost, I appreciate the public service of these fine lawyers and dedicated professionals, each of whom served his or her full four-year term as U.S. attorney.

But you obviously don't appreciate them enough to let them keep their jobs, eh?

I apologize to them, their families and the thousands of dedicated professionals at the Justice Department for my role in allowing this matter to spin into an undignified Washington spectacle.

That's it? You s***can them and all you can say is, "Gee, sorry about how this looks. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out."

What began as a well-intentioned management effort to identify where, among the 93 U.S. attorneys, changes in leadership might benefit the department, and therefore the American people, has become an unintended public controversy.

Um, as near as I can tell, there was not much that was well-intentioned, well-managed, or well-executed in this mess.

Let me say again that the president - and, by extension, the USAG - has the right to fire a US attorney at any time, for any reason. But, dammit, I think that the American people expect that there had better be good reasons to fire ANYBODY from ANY job. If Gonzales has a paper trail to show that these attorneys were lazy, incompetent, insubordinate, or just plain dumb, he'd better provide it PDQ. Otherwise, it looks to me like he DID have "improper reasons" to fire them.

While I accept responsibility for my role in commissioning this management review process...

Oh, please spare me that Janet Reno "I'm responsible but not really" crap!

I know that I did not -- and would not -- ask for the resignation of any U.S. attorney for an improper reason. Furthermore, I have no basis to believe that anyone involved in this process sought the removal of a U.S. attorney for an improper reason.

Then, dammit, why WERE they fired??? Are you so blasted incompetent that you DON'T KNOW why you fired them???

And, frankly, why was Karl Rove even involved? To my mind, the ONLY good reasons to fire somebody from ANY job is because of performance issues, insubordination, or serious "personality" issues ("Bob's a smart guy and he works hard, but he's such a dick that it disrupts the organization.). Show me a paper trail to demonstrate that the fired attorneys were let go for cause, or else you deserve everything you get.

While I have never sought to deceive Congress or the American people, I also know that I created confusion with some of my recent statements about my role in this matter. To be clear: I directed my then-deputy chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, to initiate this process; fully knew that it was occurring; and approved the final recommendations. Sampson periodically updated me on the review. As I recall, his updates were brief, relatively few in number and focused primarily on the review process.

The bureaucratic BS is getting really deep. WHY did you tell Sampson do so this? And what do you mean, "focused primarily on the review process"? Didn't you ever discuss WHY he recommended firing some of the US Attorneys? Did he make a recommendation at all? Or were your conversations more along the lines of, "What process will we use to decide who gets the chop? Paper-rocks-scissors, pin the tail on the donkey, or flip a coin?"

During those conversations, to my knowledge, I did not make decisions about who should or should not be asked to resign.

HELP! Now I'm smothering in BS! What the hell do you mean, "to your knowledge"??? Dammit, man, you or somebody decided to fire these people, and you DON'T F***ING REMEMBER????

And if you didn't make the decision, who did???

Either Gonzales is spectacularly stupid or he's lying through his teeth. Sad thing is, we can't rely on Congress to get to the bottom of it. What's even sadder is the idea of trash like Pat "Leaky" Leahy, "Trashcan Chuckie" Schumer, or Teddy "Swimmer" Kennedy passing judgement on ANYBODY else's ethics.

A final note: via Lance at A Second Hand Conjecture (1), I found this article that throws some light on how Gonzales runs the DoJ. It ain't pretty. An excerpt:

But the process of agency functioning, however, became dramatically different almost immediately after Gonzales arrived. No longer was emphasis placed on accomplishing something with the highest-quality product in a timely fashion; rather, it became a matter of making sure that a "consensus" was achieved, regardless of how long that might take and with little or no concern that quality would suffer in such a "lowest common denominator" environment. And heaven help anyone, career or noncareer employee, if that "consensus" did not include whatever someone in the White House might think about something, be it large, small or medium-sized.

In short, the culture markedly shifted to one in which avoiding any possibility of disagreement anywhere was the overriding concern, as if "consensus" were an end unto itself. Undergirding this, what's more, was the sad fact that so many political appointees in 2005 and 2006 were so obviously thinking not much further than their next (i.e., higher-level) position, in some place where they could "max out" by the end of Bush's second term. (2)

Granted, this is one person's view, and it may not be accurate or fair. Nevertheless, if even half of what Metcalfe says is true, Gonzales shouldn't be in charge of a third-rate podunk law firm, much less the DoJ.

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(1) http://asecondhandconjecture.com/?p=816

(2) http://www.law.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/View&c=LawArticle&cid=1176455062969&t=LawArticle

Just when you think it can't get any deeper, it does. From this morning's Albuquerque Journal:

Domenici Sought Iglesias Ouster

Former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias was fired after Sen. Pete Domenici, who had been unhappy with Iglesias for some time, made a personal appeal to the White House, the Journal has learned.

Domenici had complained about Iglesias before, at one point going to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales before taking his request to the president as a last resort. ...

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.

The Journal confirmed the sequence of events through a variety of sources familiar with the firing of Iglesias, including sources close to Domenici. The senator's office declined comment.

Somehow, I don't think Gonzales will be able to decline comment if he's asked: "Did President Bush direct you to fire David Iglesias?"

What a cesspoll DC has gotten when elected officials and political appointees and cabinet officers can't be counted on to simply tell the truth when sworn in to testify ... or that they have to "practice" to tell the truth. This is what happens when you tell 4-5 versions of story, it gets harder and harder to (1) remember the lies you told and (2) remember the truth ... I look forward to seeing Gonzo squirm out of this. Clinton was lambasted and impeached because he lied about sex ... yet Gonzo and the rest of Bush's men and women are not held to the same standards. I guess the GOP figured out the solution, don't testify and when you do only do it NOT under oath and with no transcript.

I hope that he is simply asked under oath if he had any direction from the President, VP or Rove to add the USA in NM to a list that he was not on until the "calls" from the NM GOP elected officials.

I truly do not fathom the Dems' objections to the firing of the USAs. Through innuendo they appear to be painting Gonzalez, the DOJ, and the Bush administration (in the words of Paul Mirengoff) as orchestrating the firings as "an attempt to derail Abramoff-related investigations or to use the Justice Department to aid Republican politicians in New Mexico, then it will resonate (with the public). But it looks like the Dems have no evidence that Gonzales was trying to accomplish these goals."

Isn't the burden of proof on the Senate Judiciary Committee to justify these claims; ie., provide their own evidence that these charges are valid and then ask questions of Gonzalez? It baffles me that it appears that charges are being made without valid justification with presumption of guilt (When did you stop beating your wife?) and that a fishing expedition ("witch hunt") is being conducted to play a semantic game of gotcha.

The self-righteous posturing and objections, for example, about the pressure put on Iglesias by several members of Congress to vigorously prosecute voting irregularities, is indeed contrary to ethics issues. (Another issue altogether, I may add.) However, is it possible to view those concerned members of Congress who voiced concern over Iglesias as whistleblowers over foot-dragging in his prosecutions? Were there, indeed, blatant irregularities not prosecuted by Iglesias in a timely manner? If not, why not?

Will the grandstanding by Committee members, in their attempt to trip up the less-than-articulate Gonzalez, end up diverting attention from the fired USA's lackadaisal prosecution of voting irregularies and illegal immigration cases?

Just wondering...

Comparing Gonzales with Clinton; wow.....

Paul over at Powerline has written a really good piece; here is a taste...

However, Gonzales has several potential advantages. The first is the poor quality of the Dems on the Committee. As was apparent during the Roberts and Alito hearings, they just aren't very good at asking questions. Perhaps for that reason, they prefer to give speeches. That approach tends to take the witness off-the-hook and at the same time win him sympathy. Faced with a less formidable adversary than Roberts and Alito, the Dems may be willing to engage this witness. I wouldn't bet that they'll do it consistently, though.

Second, the fact that the "scandal" has so many supposed facets may conspire in the end against the Dems. The scandals that tend to bring people down usually are about one or two fairly straightforward things. If the Dems successfully can portray this affair as an attempt to derail Abramoff-related investigations or to use the Justice Department to aid Republican politicians in New Mexico, then it will resonate. But it looks like the Dems have no evidence that Gonzales was trying to accomplish these goals. Thus, the Dems probably will resort to a scatter-gun approach. Certainly, they can embarrass Gonzales by pointing to a few instances in which he misspoke about the facts. But once Gonzales apologizes and explains what he really meant, the proceeding could easily lose its focus and its interest to anyone outside the beltway. The Washington Post and the New York Times will have a year's supply of stories picking at various statements by the Attorney General, but the stories may not mean much.

In the end, the Senators to watch are probably the Committee's Republicans, not its Democrats. If enough Republicans come down hard on Gonzales, or show dissatisfaction with his answers, that might be an indication that Gonzales has done sufficiently poorly to be in serious trouble.