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Monday, January 24, 2005

I love the smell of Schadenfreude in the morning, but...
Posted by Jill | 10:59 AM

...let's not let old Bush scandals distract us from the myriad of new ones, with more coming up every day.

It seems that Al "Boner 4 Torture" Gonzales may have "saved Bush's bacon" in 1996, keeping the latter's DUI arrest a secret on a jury duty form:

Senate Democrats put off a vote on White House counsel Alberto Gonzales's nomination to be attorney general, complaining he had provided evasive answers to questions about torture and the mistreatment of prisoners. But Gonzales's most surprising answer may have come on a different subject: his role in helping President Bush escape jury duty in a drunken-driving case involving a dancer at an Austin strip club in 1996. The judge and other lawyers in the case last week disputed a written account of the matter provided by Gonzales to the Senate Judiciary Committee. "It's a complete misrepresentation," said David Wahlberg, lawyer for the dancer, about Gonzales's account.

Bush's summons to serve as a juror in the drunken-driving case was, in retrospect, a fateful moment in his political career: by getting excused from jury duty he was able to avoid questions that would have required him to disclose his own 1976 arrest and conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) in Kennebunkport, Maine—an incident that didn't become public until the closing days of the 2000 campaign. (Bush, who had publicly declared his willingness to serve, had left blank on his jury questionnaire whether he had ever been "accused" in a criminal case.) Asked by Sen. Patrick Leahy to describe "in detail" the only court appearance he ever made on behalf of Bush, Gonzales—who was then chief counsel to the Texas governor—wrote that he had accompanied Bush the day he went to court "prepared to serve on a jury." While there, Gonzales wrote, he "observed" the defense lawyer make a motion to strike Bush from the jury panel "to which the prosecutor did not object." Asked by the judge whether he had "any views on this," Gonzales recalled, he said he did not.

While Gonzales's account tracks with the official court transcript, it leaves out a key part of what happened that day, according to Travis County Judge David Crain. In separate interviews, Crain—along with Wahlberg and prosecutor John Lastovica—told NEWSWEEK that, before the case began, Gonzales asked to have an off-the-record conference in the judge's chambers. Gonzales then asked Crain to "consider" striking Bush from the jury, making the novel "conflict of interest" argument that the Texas governor might one day be asked to pardon the defendant (who worked at an Austin nightclub called Sugar's), the judge said. "He [Gonzales] raised the issue," Crain said. Crain said he found Gonzales's argument surprising, since it was "extremely unlikely" that a drunken-driving conviction would ever lead to a pardon petition to Bush. But "out of deference" to the governor, Crain said, the other lawyers went along.


Now, I'll grant you, this is the kind of nice, juicy example of people pulling strings for C-Plus Caligula that warms the cockles of the hearts of, well, no one. At this point, yet another instance of someone pulling Bush's ass out of the fire is about as interesting and novel as the emergence of another Paris Hilton sex tape. The fact that it's Bush's pick for attorney general gives it slightly more relevance, but let's face it: It's still a 1996 incident.

Now, if Gonzales has lied to Congress under oath about the incident, that, in a reality-based world, would be grounds not to confirm. But forget about 1996. Gonzales' more recent history of endorsing torture is what we really should be focusing on, especially since in the minds of the Administration and their cronies, pulling strings to get out of trouble is the birthright of the wealthy and powerful in America.
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