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Friday, March 09, 2007

Impeach Gonzales first
Posted by Jill | 6:59 AM
The first person in the Bush Administration who should be removed from office, because he poses the most immediate threat to the American people is Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

From attempting to place restrictions on the Freedom of Information Act, to fighting to keep Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force records secret, to drafting the document to allow military tribunals for terrorist suspects, to the USA PATRIOT Act, to advocating torture, to asking Senators to adopt legislation requiring ISPs to monitor and keep records on all web sites visited by all Americans, to stating that Americans do not intrinsically have the right of habeas corpus, to the latest outrage of firing prosecutors who do not fall in line and investigate Democratic malfeasance while leaving Republicans alone, Gonzales has proven that he cares not for the rule of law and the Constitution.

Krugman:

For those of us living in the Garden State, the growing scandal over the firing of federal prosecutors immediately brought to mind the subpoenas that Chris Christie, the former Bush “Pioneer” who is now the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, issued two months before the 2006 election — and the way news of the subpoenas was quickly leaked to local news media.

The subpoenas were issued in connection with allegations of corruption on the part of Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat who seemed to be facing a close race at the time. Those allegations appeared, on their face, to be convoluted and unconvincing, and Mr. Menendez claimed that both the investigation and the leaks were politically motivated.

Mr. Christie’s actions might have been all aboveboard. But given what we’ve learned about the pressure placed on federal prosecutors to pursue dubious investigations of Democrats, Mr. Menendez’s claims of persecution now seem quite plausible.

In fact, it’s becoming clear that the politicization of the Justice Department was a key component of the Bush administration’s attempt to create a permanent Republican lock on power. Bear in mind that if Mr. Menendez had lost, the G.O.P. would still control the Senate.

For now, the nation’s focus is on the eight federal prosecutors fired by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. In January, Mr. Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee, under oath, that he “would never, ever make a change in a United States attorney for political reasons.” But it’s already clear that he did indeed dismiss all eight prosecutors for political reasons — some because they wouldn’t use their offices to provide electoral help to the G.O.P., and the others probably because they refused to soft-pedal investigations of corrupt Republicans.

In the last few days we’ve also learned that Republican members of Congress called prosecutors to pressure them on politically charged cases, even though doing so seems unethical and possibly illegal.

The bigger scandal, however, almost surely involves prosecutors still in office. The Gonzales Eight were fired because they wouldn’t go along with the Bush administration’s politicization of justice. But statistical evidence suggests that many other prosecutors decided to protect their jobs or further their careers by doing what the administration wanted them to do: harass Democrats while turning a blind eye to Republican malfeasance.

Donald Shields and John Cragan, two professors of communication, have compiled a database of investigations and/or indictments of candidates and elected officials by U.S. attorneys since the Bush administration came to power. Of the 375 cases they identified, 10 involved independents, 67 involved Republicans, and 298 involved Democrats. The main source of this partisan tilt was a huge disparity in investigations of local politicians, in which Democrats were seven times as likely as Republicans to face Justice Department scrutiny.

How can this have been happening without a national uproar? The authors explain: “We believe that this tremendous disparity is politically motivated and it occurs because the local (non-statewide and non-Congressional) investigations occur under the radar of a diligent national press. Each instance is treated by a local beat reporter as an isolated case that is only of local interest.”

And let’s not forget that Karl Rove’s candidates have a history of benefiting from conveniently timed federal investigations. Last year Molly Ivins reminded her readers of a curious pattern during Mr. Rove’s time in Texas: “In election years, there always seemed to be an F.B.I. investigation of some sitting Democrat either announced or leaked to the press. After the election was over, the allegations often vanished.”


No one is advocating that malfeasance go uninvestigated. But the highly selective pattern of investigations skewed by party, combined with the documented firings of those prosecutors who refused to toe the Bush party line such as Carol Lam, who put Rep. Randall "Duke" Cunningham behind bars, demonstrates conclusively that Alberto Gonzales has no business being the top law enforcement officer in the country.

If the Democrats want to start investigating this administration, Gonzales would be a good place to start.

And while we're on the subject, anyone seriously considering supporting Joe Biden for the presidency would do well to his immortal words to Gonzales during the latter's confirmation hearing: "I like you, you're the real deal."

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