NYT: Gonzales Must Go
The New York Times published an editorial entitled, “The Failed Attorney General,†on Sunday morning that criticized the nation’s top law enforcer, Alberto Gonzales, as serving the interests of President George W. Bush and not the American people.
During the hearing on his nomination as attorney general, Alberto Gonzales said he understood the difference between the job he held — President Bush’s in-house lawyer — and the job he wanted, which was to represent all Americans as their chief law enforcement officer and a key defender of the Constitution. Two years later, it is obvious Mr. Gonzales does not have a clue about the difference.
He has never stopped being consigliere to Mr. Bush’s imperial presidency. If anyone, outside Mr. Bush’s rapidly shrinking circle of enablers, still had doubts about that, the events of last week should have erased them. [emphasis added]
Citing the prosecutor purge and Gonzales’ “lame op-ed†that defended it as an “overblown personnel matter,†the FBI’s abuse of the USA PATRIOT Act in obtaining information using security letters and his roles in President Bush’s warrantless domestic surveillance program, the administration’s usurpation of the Geneva Conventions, and approval of the Georgia voter ID law.
On Thursday, Senator Arlen Specter, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, hinted very obliquely that perhaps Mr. Gonzales’s time was up. We’re not going to be oblique. Mr. Bush should dismiss Mr. Gonzales and finally appoint an attorney general who will use the job to enforce the law and defend the Constitution. [emphasis added]
It took a midterm election that destroyed the Republican Congress for the resignation, or firing, of Donald Rumsfeld as the Secretary of Defense. If history serves as a model, Bush will dismiss Gonzales from his post sometime in the first 1,000 days of his Democratic successor.
(Hat tip: David Kurtz, Talking Points Memo)
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