Well, I’m still trapped in a hotel, with no sign of power to return at home any time soon, so I might as well catch up on the news I’ve missed over the last couple of days.
Let’s start with the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to the post of Attorney General.
My initial reaction is still “Even Torture-is-OK Guy is better than Ashcroft”, but when I think about what this means for America it makes my heart sick. The guy who architected the legal doctrine that led to Abu Ghraib is going to me the Attorney General. The guy who outlined the faux legal reasoning to allow Guantanamo is going to be the Attorney General. It’s enough to make me think there’s something to that Gnostic offshoot that thinks God exists, but he’s insane and hates us.
Of course Gonzales’ appointment is essentially Bush putting the Justice Department even more directly under Executive control–Gonzales’ only source of power is his connection to Bush. And of course, it’s also the Repbulicans courting the Latino vote, and I can just see the Democrats falling into the trap of looking like racists for opposing his nomination.
So, besides writing the toture memos, and expressing the opinion that international laws like the Geneva Convention are “quaint”, what’s Gonzales’ history?
Well, you may know that he was general counsel for Enron. (In the reality-based world, that alone would prevent him from ever holding a post, to say nothing of his thoughts on international law and torture.)
If you are an Atlantic subscriber you can read about Gonzales’ role as the author of death penalty memoranda for Bush during his time as legal counselor to the Governor of Texas at this link. For those of you who aren’t subscribers, here’s a salient quote on what the memoranda were:
Each time a person was sentenced to death, Bush received from his legal counsel a document summarizing the facts of the case, usually on the morning of the day scheduled for the execution, and was then briefed on those facts by his counsel; based on this information Bush allowed the execution to proceed in all cases but one.
In the article the author goes on to describe what he found when he got copies of these memoranda under a Texas freedom of information statute:
Although the summaries rarely make a recommendation for or against execution, many have a clear prosecutorial bias, and all seem to assume that if an appeals court rejected one or another of a defendant’s claims, there is no conceivable rationale for the governor to revisit that claim. This assumption ignores one of the most basic reasons for clemency: the fact that the justice system makes mistakes.
Interesting.
You might be interested in how Gonzales views traditional legal principlesm such as avoiding ex parte communication, or “the rule of law”,
Just in case you don’t check out that last link, here’s the killer paragraph:
The key 50-page memo was written Aug. 1, 2002, by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel for Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel. The criminal law, it stated, “does not apply to the president’s detention and interrogation of enemy combatants pursuant to his commander-in- chief authority.”
(Those interested can read the whole report. Also of interest, a memo from Gonzales to Bush, and Powell’s reply to it. We knew Powell was leaving anyway, but anyone want to take odds that Gonzales’ appointment moved up his exit timetable? )
Not that Ashcroft had any great respect for the rule of law either. (Actually even now Ashcroft is pushing his “questioning the president is treason” line by making speeches to the effect that judges who disagree with the administration are traitors, or terrorists, or open the door for baby-eating foreigners or something.)
Speaking of Ashcroft, there’s a great post at TalkLeft reminding us about Ashcroft’s confirmation process, and discussing the likely course of events for Gonzales’, particularly in light of the pending SCOTUS noms. It’s a good read.
But, back to Gonzales, there’s lots of analysis out there. Newsweek has David Cole, a civil liberties expert and professor at Georgetown, looking at Ashcroft and Gonzales. I’m solidly in agreement with Cole’s assessment of Ashcroft as “one of the worst attorney generals we’ve ever had” (although I like SFGate’s phrase “Ashcroft has been a disaster as the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer.” even better), and I am scared to read that sometimes Ashcroft was the moderating voice compared to Gonzales.
There is also an analysis at Salon.
Me, I’m still thinking that as terrible as some of this sounds, he might still be better than Ashcroft. Yay for lowering the bar so far that anything seems like “the lesser evil”! (I’m crying on the inside). And, I guess, as long as he’s AG we don’t have to worry about Bush putting him on the Supreme Court bench.
Oh, and you should notice the pattern with this appointment, and others recently announced, that Josh Marshall has noticed over at Talking Points Memo:
So is Bush moving to the right or the center in term two?
Wrong metric. He’s moving to exert greater control.
Look at the pattern.
Neither Ms. Rice nor Mr. Gonzales are the neo-cons’ or the conservatives’ choice for their respective offices-to-be.
In each case they’re acceptable; but no more.
What distinguishes each is their connection to the president, their loyalty and their fealty. Neither has any base in the city or standing anywhere else absent their connection to him. And in appointing them he has placed the State Department and the Justice Department under his direct and unmediated control as surely as the various members of the White House staff already are.
Which is certainly a good thing since if there is one thing this president sorely needs it is more yes-men.
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