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Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Spineless Dems tacitly approve torture; wuss out on Gonzales
Posted by Jill | 4:09 PM
More reason why someone with balls (see also: Howard Dean) should head up the DNC:

Democrats won’t try to filibuster Alberto Gonzales’ nomination to be attorney general but will hold extensive debates in the Senate over his role in developing the Bush administration’s policies on treating foreign detainees, the Senate’s top Democrat said Tuesday.

There will be an up-or-down vote,” Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada told reporters after the Democrats huddled together for their weekly planning session.

A filibuster, a parliamentary tactic for delaying Senate action, would require Republicans, who hold a 55-44 majority in the Senate, to win over at least five Democrats — or four Democrats plus Vermont Sen. James Jeffords, an independent — to put Gonzales in office.

Democrats were surprisingly united in opposing Gonzales in the Senate Judiciary Committee, something that was not achieved when they voted on current Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Ashcroft was confirmed by a 58-42 Senate vote, the narrowest margin ever for an attorney general.

Democrats’ opposition to Gonzales derives “from the nominee’s involvement in the formulation of a number of policies that have tarnished our country’s moral leadership in the world and put American soldiers and American citizens at greater risk,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said during Senate debate Tuesday.

Gonzales, who served as White House counsel during Bush’s first term, would replace Ashcroft if confirmed. He would be the nation’s first Hispanic attorney general.

A vote by the Senate on Gonzales’ confirmation will not occur until at least Thursday, after Bush’s State of the Union speech Wednesday night, GOP senators said. They said Democrats don’t want to give Bush a success to talk about in his first State of the Union speech of his second term.

“They want the bully pulpit all the way up to and after that to try to taint this nominee with the perceived sins of the Bush administration,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.


But so what? Are they SO afraid that the Republicans will paint them as anti-Hispanic? Do they stand for NOTHING? How many Latino-American soldiers are going to be tortured if they are taken prisoner in this Iraq war as a result of the kind of atrocities the Bush Administration, and this most repulsive of nominees, think is perfectly OK? What does THAT do for the Latino community.

Republicans give lip service to race-blind policies, but THEY are the ones putting ill-qualified people representing minority blocs out there in important posts as if they were cardboard cutouts in a boardwalk game of chance; just daring Democrats to knock them down.

Alberto Gonzales' abysmal non-answers to questions from the Judiciary Committee mean he should NOT be confirmed. And that the Democrats are going to just roll over on this one, thinking that we will be mollified by yet more bullshit talk, is an insult to our intelligence.
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