Thread: Tancredo: Time for Gonzales to 'move on'

http://www.keralanext.com/news/index.asp?id=989171

Tancredo: Time for Gonzales to 'move on'
3/20/07
14 minutes Ago

WASHINGTON - Presidential hopeful Tom Tancredo has joined the growing chorus of lawmakers calling for U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign — only not for the usual reason.

Unlike others criticizing Gonzales over the recent firing of eight U.S. attorneys, the Colorado Republican said the embattled attorney general should go because of "a series of leadership failures" — chiefly his handling of illegal immigration prosecutions.

"Gonzales' legacy at the (Justice Department) has been one of misplaced priorities, political miscalculation, and a failure to enforce the laws which he has sworn to uphold," Tancredo said in a statement Tuesday. "I think that it is time for him to move on."

Gonzales' job security has been in question in recent days as members of Congress from both parties have demanded to know whether the decision to fire prosecutors was a Bush administration purge to install political cronies in plum jobs.

Tancredo said that he doesn't believe Gonzales' handling of the prosecutors' firings alone warrants his dismissal, but "his total mishandling of the affair is simply the latest in a series of leadership failures at the Justice Department."

Tancredo faulted several Justice Department decisions dealing with border crimes, including the prosecution of two border patrol agents for shooting a Mexican drug smuggler and trying to cover it up.

QUOTE:

"I think that it is time for him to move on."

It would be nice if he would take Jonny Sutton with him.

I agree and let's add the whole Bush administration as well.

bush has hired the worst people. All of them are unqualified and don't have an idea or care what the american people want or need. We need to get rid of the whole bunch.

If we would have had at least a two party representitive government with checks and balances instead of one party rule as the Republicans have had for years this country would not be in the mess it is now with the war, immigration, economy, an inept/corrupt administration in the White House, etc....

At least now we are seeing what opposing parties can do. I don't know why they don't go after bush and cheyney directly, but the Democrats are definately widdling away at all of the lies and corruption that is the linch-pin of this administration. This guy gonzalez is nothing more than bushs personal attorney, as he uses every other facet of our government...as his personal playthings to use as HE sees fit.

This is what we used to see when the Republican Congress went after Clinton for everything they could dig up, which in retrospect was nothing compared to the colossal bungling of this administration.
Clintons lies amounted to what someone might tell his wife while stumbling in at 3am.
The lies and bungling of the current band of criminals in the White House has cost thousands of lives at home and aboad, they have lowered the standing of our great country in the eyes of the world, they have allowed the wholesale raping of our economy, and continue to leave our borders open.

The day when ALL of the bush administration are gone can not possibly come soon enough.

Not all of the Wall Street Corporatists are on the side of BUSH and his "cronies"... Here is the rival of the Wall Street Journal... today:

Gonzales: The Last In A Line Of Loyal Hacks
By MARIE COCCO | Posted Tuesday, March 20, 2007 4:30 PM PT

Everything we needed to know about Alberto Gonzales we learned before Feb. 3, 2005. That's the day the Senate, which spent more time in gauzy celebration of Gonzales' Hispanic heritage than it did examining his legal prowess, voted to confirm him as attorney general.

The AG at his confirmation hearing in 2005, when he should have gotten a thumbs down.
We knew Gonzales' chief qualification to be the nation's top law enforcement official was that he had been — to use a phrase that apparently carries great weight inside the current Justice Department — "a loyal Bushie." We knew this because loyalty to George W. Bush really was the only credential Gonzales' public record offered.

We knew that while Gonzales was counsel to then-Texas Gov. Bush, the future attorney general managed to find no death row inmate worthy of clemency — no matter how severe his mental retardation or how incompetently the defendant was represented at trial. The Gonzales memos that would reach the governor's desk before he proceeded to put a convict to death were cursory, at times only three pages in length.

Gonzales remained characteristically void of independent thought after he moved to the White House. There he would become, in effect, the lawyer who approved torture.

The Gonzales seal of approval resolved the dispute between the right-wing legal warriors in the Justice Department and elsewhere in the administration who argued that the Geneva Conventions on the humane treatment of wartime detainees were antiquated relics lacking in relevance to the "war on terror."

This faction was in conflict with Colin Powell's State Department and a good number of senior Pentagon lawyers, who warned that abandonment of international law would lead the U.S. down a trail of shame.

Gonzales sided with those who cleared the way for torture. He even argued that lifting the Geneva Conventions "substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act." Really.

He stated the president could unilaterally waive requirements of international law in place for decades, and so provide absolution in advance for those who might commit war crimes.

Torture memos were the focus of Gonzales' Senate confirmation hearing, a marathon of obfuscation even in a chamber well accustomed to it. When asked if any other world leader could legitimately torture U.S. citizens, Gonzales testified he didn't know what law they would be bound by. The law, of course, is the Geneva Conventions.

Despite a paper trail that tied Gonzales to the legal justifications for the most egregious abuses the Bush administration has committed in pursuing its anti-terrorism goals, he was confirmed 60-36.

Most Democrats took a stand against a discredited nominee. Republicans stood with him, unanimous in their acquiescence to the Bush White House. They vouched for Gonzales by recounting his life story, an up-by-the-bootstraps tale of a dirt-poor immigrant who rose to Harvard Law School and beyond.

"He has lived the American dream!" then-Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee declared.

Since then, Gonzales has been predictably compliant when confronted with all manner of administration affronts to the law. The secret, warrantless surveillance of Americans' phone calls and e-mails comes first to mind. He has stunned even Republicans with his bizarre ignorance of the Constitution — as he did when he testified in January that the right of habeas corpus, which protects Americans from being seized and held without being able to contest their confinement in court, doesn't exist.

"There is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution," Gonzales declared.

To which Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., stammered: "Wait a minute! Wait a minute!"

If the ham-handed firing of U.S. attorneys finally results in Gonzales' departure, it will be as though his record of incompetent obedience to the White House was just fine, until now. It wasn't. Nor was the Senate's ardor for putting him in the nation's top law enforcement job despite his controversial history.

The Gonzales imbroglio is another reminder of this president's propensity to appoint hacks to high public office so long as they pass his loyalty litmus test. We've known this for years, too — heck-of-a-job Michael Brown at FEMA is merely the most famous. So it's doubtful the White House will learn from this. The curve is too steep, the stubbornness too deep.

It's really the Senate that shirked its duty when it confirmed Gonzales. The scandal of this attorney general's tenure is as much theirs as it is his.

© 2007 Washington Post Writers Group

CUUSA wrote:

I agree and let's add the whole Bush administration as well.

DITTO!

I'll second the motion.

Interesting that Sutton was not one of the prosecutors fired. How can anyone doubt that the administration was behind the prosecution of those agents.

Is it any real suprize? We've had to endure the most despotic administration in America's history since King George III.