Mullings An American Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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Gonzales Should Resign

Friday April 20, 2007

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Dear Mr. Mullings

NOTE: The extremely popular feature, Dear Mr. Mullings, which is usually posted on Wednesdays, is available today. It seemed inappropriate to post it on Wednesday.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales spent the day being - as we like to say in Your Nation's Capital - "grilled" by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

At issue is not so much that eight US Attorneys were fired; it was that Gonzales and others in his office made a big deal about how politics had nothing whatever to do with the firings.

In Washington, politics is involved in everything. If you go to the Safeway for milk the woman at the checkout counter will ask you your position on price supports for dairy products.

So, for the political appointees in the Justice Department to claim that there was no politics involved was seen - by opponents and allies alike - as a uniquely ridiculous, and unsupportable, position to take.

By the way, the appointment of US Attorneys is political: They are appointed by the President, very often at the suggestion of a US Senator who is from the state where the vacancy exists and is of the same party - POLITICAL party - as the President.

Should the Dems take over the White House in 2009, one hopes the Washington Press Corps, which is feigning breathlessness over the notion of politics sneaking under the tent at the DoJ, tracks Democratic US Attorney appointments with equal vigor.

This White House and this Congress have not gotten off to the kind of Era of Good Feeling we had been promised in the run up to the mid-term elections last November.

The Democrats in the House and Senate have spent - it seems - every hour of every day looking for some way to (a) Embarrass the President in world opinion and (b) figure out any mechanism by which they can get Karl Rove to appear before any committee to testify about any thing under oath.

All this while (a) getting almost nothing of substance accomplished except (b) raising vast amounts of contribution dollars from the very givers of contribution dollars which led the GOP to the Jack Abramoff scandal(s).

So, here is Attorney General Gonzales trying to explain to an extremely skeptical Senate how it was that either he (let us be kind) mis-spoke when he said he hadn't been aware that there were political overtones to the firings, or he really didn't know and therefore allowed a significant percentage of his top deputies - US Attorneys - to be canned without his knowledge or approval.

In either case, it is not hard to imagine how Republicans would be acting if they controlled the Congress and a Democrat, holding the office of United States Attorney General were sitting before them and trying to sell this story.

Of course the Democrats have been ridiculous in their own right. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt) had the bad taste to say that the DoJ "is experiencing a crisis of leadership, perhaps unrivaled during its 137-year history."

I have two words for Senator Leahy: Janet Reno. I have three words for Janet Reno: Elian Gonzalez; and Waco. That, it seems to me, qualifies for at least an honorable mention in "crises of leadership" at the Justice Department.

Nevertheless, as has been noted in many quarters, many times. All anyone at Justice should have said about any of the firings was:

"They serve - as we all do - at the pleasure of the President. Thank you for calling."

Another part of the spectacle which was the Attorney General's appearance today was the fact that it became widely known that he had spent some considerable amount of time "rehearsing" for this hearing.

Who thought that was a good idea?

It will not be long before some clever defense attorney uses the argument that whatever charges a US Attorney has brought against his client is politically motivated because his boss is Alberto Gonzales.

Even if that argument is disallowed by the judge, it speaks volumes about the state of the DoJ under the current Attorney General.

For all those reasons, it is time for Alberto Gonzales to resign.

On a the Secret Decoder Ring page today: Links to the Washington Times and the Washington Post coverage of the Gonzales hearing. Also a Mullfoto showing how strong the winds were in Washington earlier in the week and a terrific Catchy Caption of the Day.

ALSO the (delayed) Dear Mr. Mullings. New Today!

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