[Newsbot]

<strong>Filibuster Cartoon</strong>
<strong>Title: </strong> <a href="http://www.filibustercartoons.com/archive.php?id=20070403" target="_blank">Embattled Alberto </a> (click to view)
<strong>Date: </strong> April 03, 2007

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is facing increasing pressure to resign. It\'s all part of some lingering controversy over the firing of several high-ranking lawyers within the White House, allegedly for no other reason than their disloyalty to the President. <br> <br>I don\'t really know much about the issue, but I do know that the degree in which Bush has been supporting Mr. Gonzales is ominously reminiscent of his support for a certain other embattled cabinet member. <br> <br>Discuss it more in the forums!

[Rhoffman]

Nice comparison, though Gonzales doesn't have the convienence of waiting for an election in order to quit/be canned. I still kinda doubt that anything will happen though, as the Bush Administration is probably looking at just about anything as a way to show that they can still hold their own against the Democratic Congress.

[Calbeck]

Eh, lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. What's not getting reported (much) is the fact that EVERY Administration for most of US history has done this. All the posts in question are appointments, and since Andrew Jackson was Prez the "spoils system" has held solid sway in government.

That's not to say it's popular, of course, and it's that unpopularity that has the Dems suddenly turning around and renouncing the system they themselves thoroughly embraced (and defended --- ala "Travelgate" and other shenanigans) during the Clinton era. At least Bush isn't simply trumping up unsupportable charges of crimes against the people he's firing, as Clinton's people did to the Travel Office staffers.

Elect a Democrat as President, and you'll see any number of excuses why the same stunts are perfectly justifiable when the tables are turned.

I tells ya, the hypocrisy in this country makes me consider more and more every year the notion of resettling up in the Northwest Territories...

[Pitchfork]

Calbeck wrote:

Eh, lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. What's not getting reported (much) is the fact that EVERY Administration for most of US history has done this. All the posts in question are appointments, and since Andrew Jackson was Prez the "spoils system" has held solid sway in government.

I agree. I haven't followed the "scandal" well. I think Gonzales asked eight federal District Attorneys to resign or something like that. I read when President Clinton took office in '93 he asked all the federal DAs to resign.
They are political, appointed posts.
As a conservative I'm not a fan of Gonzales. I think he's wishy washy. I'm sure he's no better than his boss on immigration, and I think he's an affirmative action supporter, and I'm not sure how committed he is to the @nd Amendment. But this is mostly a contrived scandal.

[squidhills]

OK, here is the skinny on the story from south of the Great Lakes...

Yes, every administration fires these appointed people. However, unlike what Fox news is reporting, they don't usually get fired in mid term, and certainly not by the person who appointed them.

Yes, Clinton fired Bush the 1st's appointees at the *start* of his term, replacing them with his own.

Yes, Bush the 2nd fired Clinton's appointees at the *start* of his term, replacing them with his own.

Nothing newsworthy there.

But now Bush fired his own appointees in the middle of his term. *That* has never happened before. That is what makes the story unusual.

Unusual doesn't mean newsworthy, however. So far, its just odd... but dig a little deeper with me here...

All 8 people were given very good job reviews (or their federal equivalent) on their most recent reviews, yet when fired, they were told it was because they were doing a bad job. OK, that's a wrongful termination suit, but still not particularly newsworthy...

Oh wait, they were all instructed by the administration to target Democrats and Democrat groups for what amounts to judicial harrassment. And they refused. And *then* they were fired. That's newsworthy, right there.

Everyone knows these appointees are picked to put an appropriate party slant on whatever they do. Judges and prosecutors in this administration are expected to apply a conservative slant to cases they sit in on. Judges and prosecutors in a Democratic administration would be expected to apply a liberal slant. We know this and accept it (grudgingly sometimes, but whatever)... And it seemed that these appointees were doing their conservative jobs in applying their conservative slant. And I don't have a problem with that.

The problem is that these people were asked to do more than "slant"... they were asked to attack. One man was told to investigate and prosecute voter fraud in his area. He told his bosses that he couldn't find any evidence worth prosecuting on (ie; there was none). The bosses wanted, I mean, really really wanted that investigation (the stink of a court case alone might sway independants back towards the Republicans) but he said there was nothing worth prosecuting, and he wouldn't pursue a case without merit.

BAM! Fired!

Repeat 7 times...

THAT is what this is all about. These people were fired for failing to attack/harrass the enemies of the administration.

And before you say "everyone does that", I'd like to say "NO they don't".

Slanting is one thing. Harassing is another. And these 8 REPUBLICAN appointees, who were very, very good at the slanting, recognized that the harrassment was just that, and of questionable legality, and refused to play ball. So they were canned.

Now admittedly, this is just a case of wrongful termination of employment. Really. It's politically motivated termination, yes, but its pretty small-potatoes compared to everything else this administration has done (torching the Geneva convention, raping the Constitutuion, dragging civil liberties out back and having them shot, etc)... Still, its worth it if it gets Gonzales out of office, since he is one of the men resposible for many of the administration's repeated constitutional violations, and whatever gets him out of the job is good for America.

~Squid Hills

[Scape]

If the 8 that were fired for political reasons then were the rest retained for the same reason? Would that not fundamentally undermine the authority of the judicial if it becomes a political witch hunt? Rove was shown to have requested that all 93 U.S. attorneys in early January 2005 so why were they retained?

[squidhills]

Presumably the othe 95 or so who weren't fired had not been asked to do questionable things, or had been asked and done them so as not to raise the ire of the administration.

My money is on "they weren't asked", because the 8 were operating in areas of the country that were considered "politically sensitive" ie; they could swing from Republican control to Democratic control during an election... which is precisely what happened in many areas. Which may also have contributed to the firings... It's possible that the administration was looking to blame someone for the widespread losses they suffered during the 2006 midterm elections, and (rather than blame their own actions and policies for turning the country against them) these people were given the boot... But that last bit is just speculation on my part.

~Squid

[Kjorteo]

I'll admit that this scandal is a little weak as far as scandals go...which is actually really sad. It's wrong on just about every moral and ethical level and definitely shady in the legal realm, but compared to what else this administration has done, it's nothing. I think that says more about the administration than it does about this particular scandal. Man...that's sobering.

Anyway, the important thing to me is that there is a scandal. At this point, I don't care if he gets "embattled" over what he had for dinner last night; I just desperately want Alberto Gonzales to lose his job, because I hate him.

(No doubt this is the same mindset that led to somehow making a grand Constitutional crisis out of a simple extramarital hookup last time, but hey....)

[Sucros]

I think the big problem is the hand in the cookie jar. I'm pretty sure the thing that precipitated the scandal was an email that said "We are firing these people because they aren't obeying us." An idiotic thing to put in writing, if that's what you're going to do.

But separation of the judiciary from executive influence is a cornerstone of democracy. Presidents and Prime Ministers can appoint whoever they damn well please to judicial posts, but once they *are* appointed, the executive is supposed to have absolutely no influence over the jucidiary. It's an important bulwark against extremism, and is a separation of power used even in parliamentary democracies, where responsability to the people is supposed to take the place of separation of powers in congressional democracies.

While appointing political extremists to the judiciary and attempting to influence the sitting judiciary ammount to the same results, the latter sets a dangerous precedent if unchecked. They're the kind of steps that errode the barriers between those that make the laws, and those that ensure the laws are applied equally. If the barrier erodes, it opens any country, no matter how strong a democratic tradition, to the potential of legal authoritaniarism.

[Scape]

Sucros wrote:

If the barrier erodes, it opens any country, no matter how strong a democratic tradition, to the potential of legal authoritaniarism.

[CanadianJeff]

meh with how much Bush obviously cares nothing about human rights or the constitution it only makes sense he has these kind of folks close at hand.

Personally I hope Bush is brought to trial for his crimes against world peace and executed like he's earned. He's proven time and time again that even spying on his own people is ok as long as it's in his best interest for "the war on terror" (read subtitle: the war on anything not of the Anglican faith")

[Psudo]

squidhills wrote:

its pretty small-potatoes compared to everything else this administration has done (torching the Geneva convention, raping the Constitutuion, dragging civil liberties out back and having them shot, etc)...

Given your obvious dislike of the administration in general, do you have some source demonstrating that your take on the sackings consists of the facts of the case rather than merely your critical editorial on the issue?

Kjorteo wrote:

I just desperately want Alberto Gonzales to lose his job, because I hate him.

Hate isn't relevant. Not morally, not legally, not rationally. If he loses his job, it had better be over something substantially wrong (like the blurring of the separation of powers that Sucros alleges), not just this kind of partisan opposition.

I honestly haven't followed this issue at all, I'm just being skeptical of anything based on the assumption that Bush is evil and thus any criticism of his administration is actual, factual truth. Everything else I've investigated based on that assumption has turned out to be partisan disagreement instead of objective moral failure.

[Kjorteo]

The problem is that Bush is evil, and that makes it nigh-impossible to have a serious debate regarding anything his administration does. Any other figure should be a complex individual, someone who has some policies you agree with and some you don't, and some personal character aspects that are inspiring and some character flaws. If Snidely Whiplash for President actually happened, though, this would be it. I was neutral-to-cautiously supportive of invading Afghanistan ("Well, if they're harboring the ones responsible for 9/11, then I guess that makes sense,") and I think our immigration policy could stand to be a little less all-around xenophobic, but those are literally the only issues that have come up in which I don't strongly disagree with the President in the entire six years he's had to raise issues. The problem is that it's easy to stereotype and dismiss knee-jerk Bush-is-evil ranting, missing the point that he really is that bad. His cartoon supervillain antics have managed to successfully lower the bar for modern political discourse in general.

As for Gonzales, I'll concede that the main reason I oppose him is more policy disagreement than law-breaking. He's everything John Ashcroft was as far as overbearing anti-obscenity censorship stuff--the only things missing are the crazy Messiah complex and terrible singing voice. However, that's just the main reason. There are plenty of ways to look at this from a legal standpoint: the NSA wiretapping thing, "enemy combatants" and black site prisons, and now this. Sucros is right: bullying and firing prosecutors over loyalty issues is blatantly wrong and very very bad, and it's truly depressing to think that the only reason this is a "minor" scandal is because this administration has literally outdone themselves with much bigger ones before. (See also: Paragraph 1)

[Psudo]

Kjorteo wrote:

The problem is that Bush is evil [. . .] His cartoon supervillain antics have managed to successfully lower the bar for modern political discourse in general.

Cartoon supervillain antics? You can't be serious...

The problem is that he's not anything that bad. If you can't name some 'character aspects that are inspiring', it suggests your bias more than his evil. Someone that around a third of the US Population respects cannot be utterly unworthy of respect in every capacity. Or can it? Do you think there are 100 million evil or brainwashed people in the USA?

I can name skills and respectable qualities Bill Clinton possessed, despite him being one my least favorite President not connected to slavery advocacy.

Someone thought Ghandi was evil, believed it deeply enough to shoot him to death. And it wasn't a madman, at least not in the sense of diminished capacity for rational thought, because he articulated his reasons very rationally in the trial. Yet he was wrong, was he not?

(No, I'm not suggesting Bush is morally similar to Ghandi. I'm suggesting that believing a man is evil does not prove him evil.)

I know Bush is susceptible to error. I can name some of his errors, despite my general policy agreement with him. Do you know that he is susceptible to correctness? Can you name things he's done right despite your general policy disagreements? If not, consider the possibility that you're understanding of the man is shallow or biased.

I don't think your half-hearted support for his actions on Immigration and in Afghanistan constitute things you think he's really done right. Your description was "neutral-to-cautiously supportive of". Has he really done nothing that is respectable or inspiring in your eyes? Nothing that you were fully supportive of?

Kjorteo wrote:

the NSA wiretapping thing, "enemy combatants" and black site prisons, and now this.

You make patterns out of things that sound evil and scary but, when you find out the details, are on-the-line, gray area kinds of things rather than real, way-past-the-line evil. You know, real evil like concentration camps, mass starvations, or using chemical weapons on your own people. (That's Hitler, Stalin, and Saddam respectively, if that wasn't clear.)

The NSA wiretapping thing was only for international calls made by or to terrorism suspects. Out of the 300 million people in the USA, how many are terrorism suspects? Maybe a three digit number? Then what proportion of their calls are international? You're looking at something like 1 call in tens or hundreds of millions. Add to that the extreme evidence we had of a national security threat that our existing surveillance couldn't touch, and the search for something more becomes clearly reasonable. It is symbolic of an invasion of privacy and I'd hate for it to actually follow a slippery slope, but to assume it amounted to a concrete, large scale attack of innocent civilian privacy or is a step down an inevitable slippery slope is pure biased assumption. Given the foreign policy state of affairs that led to it, it's far more reasonable to believe it was an emergency (over)reaction to an emergency national security situation. Coincidentally, this is what they claim it was, too.

It fits your political ideology to believe the worst of it, so you do. That's not evidence, however. It's bias. Repeat that process a couple times, and you see a pattern of evil where it is, in fact, a pattern of ideological bias in your assessment.

Even if your political ideology turns out to be objectively correct, he's crappy for a US President rather than objectively evil, comparable to Buchanan rather than Hitler. And that's giving your side all the benefit of the doubt possible.

[squidhills]

Psudo said:

Given your obvious dislike of the administration in general, do you have some source demonstrating that your take on the sackings consists of the facts of the case rather than merely your critical editorial on the issue?


Well, far be it from me to drown this forum in hyperlinks, but just cruise on over to any US news agency's website that *isn't* FOX News (who are the only ones trying say that this happens all the time, by conveniently overlooking the fact that these people were fired in mid-term, which hasn't happened before...), and follow the story there. They are all pretty much saying the same thing. Wrongful termination situation seems to have politically-motivated origins, as all 8 people had glowing reviews right up until they were asked to do something of dubious morality (and possibly dubious legality) and refused.

And before you start in about "liberal media bias", the only bias the media has is towards ratings. Scandals are good for ratings, so they follow the scandals. It doesn't matter who the scandal is about. I recall a lot of "liberal" media outlets reporting on Clinton's mis-deeds and questionable antics, as well as those of his appointees and nominees. Whoever is in power will suffer the attentions of the media, whether they are conservative or liberal.


Psudo again:

Someone that around a third of the US Population respects cannot be utterly unworthy of respect in every capacity. Or can it?


Oh, yes he can. I don't have exact figures, but I'm sure Hitller enjoyed better than 30% popularity at some point during his reign. And I'd like to think that he is someone that is totally unworthy of respect in every capacity.

However, just because I mentioned Hitler does not mean that I am equating Bush with him. I don't believe that Bush is "evil" as some people want to say. I believe some of the people advising him are evil, and that he's just a thick-headed idiot who consistantly listens to bad advice from bad people. And while his popularity is now around 30%, bear in mind that it was once much, much higher, and that it has been going steadily down since the Iraq invasion. And I do believe he is utterly unworthy of respect in any capacity. He is the leader of the "conservative" movement in this country, but he has no idea what "conservative" means. He and his followers have made every effort to circumvent, undermine, or ignore the Constitution, the one document that most conservatives hold as sacrosanct. Liberals are the ones that keep trying to meddle with the Constitution through the Bill of Rights, always trying to "fix" the Founder's "mistakes". Conservatives are supposed to protect those documents because they know that the smartest men who ever lived wrote them, and that constantly meddling with them on a whim would undermine and weaken the system of government that we have; the system of government that has served us for over 200 years.


Another one from Psudo (I'm not picking on you; honest...)

I can name skills and respectable qualities Bill Clinton possessed, despite him being one my least favorite President not connected to slavery advocacy.


Really? That's funny, because I *can't* name any skills or respectable qualities he posessed. And I'm a Liberal. In all honesty, while I believe that Bush's presidency is far more harmful to America than Clinton's was, I believe that Bush is, himself, a better human being than Clinton. Sure, he's an idiot, but he's an honest one. He truly believes that he is doing the right thing, he truly believes that his advisors aren't using him to undermine the foundations of our government, and he holds firm to the idea that when you shoot a gun, democracy can come out the other end.

Clinton on the other hand was a sociopath. He believed in whatever was convenient or beneficial at the time, he has no concept of right or wrong (at least in how it applies to his own actions), he cried crocodile tears when faced with other people's suffering (if the tears aren't genuine, don't cry 'em... stoicism is better than false sympathy), he lowered the bar for presidential behavior by arguing the meaning of "is" before congress (with a straight face, no less)... I could go on, but I really don't want to waste any more time on Clinton than I have already.


Psudo, again... sorry to keep on you like this... coincidence, I swear.

The NSA wiretapping thing was only for international calls made by or to terrorism suspects. Out of the 300 million people in the USA, how many are terrorism suspects? Maybe a three digit number? Then what proportion of their calls are international? You're looking at something like 1 call in tens or hundreds of millions. Add to that the extreme evidence we had of a national security threat that our existing surveillance couldn't touch, and the search for something more becomes clearly reasonable. It is symbolic of an invasion of privacy and I'd hate for it to actually follow a slippery slope, but to assume it amounted to a concrete, large scale attack of innocent civilian privacy or is a step down an inevitable slippery slope is pure biased assumption.


The wiretapping was only for calls made by suspects is what they said *after* they were caught with undeniable evidence. At first, they denied it was happening. Once caught, they claimed it was just for terrorism suspects. But they had lied once before, so...

And there is no such thing as a national security threat that our surveillance can't touch. We have a law, conveniently ignored by the Bush administration, that *allows* for warrantless wiretapping of suspects, as long as *after* you place the tap, you contact a judge within 72 hours and get them to review & approve it. So the adminstration's claim that they didn't have time to seek warrants is bunk, as they didn't have to get the warrants first, they could have done so after they started tapping calls. But they didn't. They placed their taps, and told the judiciary to get stuffed.

Now, when a law exists to give the government exactly what it wants (the ability to tap without a warrant) and the government BREAKS THAT LAW ANYWAY, then I find myself unable to trust anything said by that government. Sure, they say that they were only tapping terrorists, but they only copped to that after they were caught red-handed. And that was after they broke a law that they had to actually go out of their way to break.

And when yo add in the fact that many administrations have abused their power and had law enforcement agencies spy on their domestic enemies (Clinton with those FBI files on Republicans mysteriously turning up in the White House, Nixon with... well, with everything he ever did, etc) I don't trust this administration, or any other, do do *anything* without a warrant.

And you know what? Neither did the Founding Fathers. That's why they wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights the way that they did. They didn't trust our government either, and they were the ones creating the thing!

It's not "symbolic" of an invasion of privacy, it's not "symbolic" of a slippery slope of lost civil liberties, it is the FIRST STEP (first steps are always small ones, after all) down that slope, it is the first boot kicking in the door of your privacy. Sure, they claim that they are going after terrorism suspects. And that may even be true. Today, at least... But how long until those who disagree with the government (any administration) are classified as "terrorists"? In Bush's own rhetoric "If you aren't with us, then you are with the terrorists.."

Well, I'm not with you Mr Bush... but I sure as hell ain't with the terrorsits. I want them dealt with as much as anyone else. But I don't want to sacrifice the rights and liberrties that make America America to do it. That would defeat the purpose of fighting the terrorists, after all.

As far as a "over-reaction" to the terrorist crisis... I will grant that the Patriot Act was an over-reaction. It was rushed through Congress, nobody read it too closely, and they all just wanted to pass it so that they could show that they were fighting terrorists. A few of the things in there are also good ideas. Many are not. But it was pushed through very quickly, without much scrutiny, because everybody wanted to do *something*... It was an over-reaction...

The NSA wiretapping is not. Every time the administration gets caught doing something like that, they claim its just for terrorists... there is a public outcry about the Constitutional legality of it, the administration claims they won't do it anymore... then they go on to get caught doing something else. They keep reaching further and further, pushing deeper and deeper into our privacy and civil liberties. The first time they got caught and hit with an outcry, they should have reviewed their other questionable programs and evaluated them in a Constitutional light. If they didn't then they cannot claim "over-reacting" since the panic has largely worn off, and now people are clearly questioning the actions being taken in their name... If they *did* review them, then that is even worse because it shows a calculated disregard for the protections the Founders put into the Constituition.

On the one hand, the government is lazy or incompetant. On the other, it is possibly criminal. In either case, I don't trust that government, whether Democrat or Republican...

~Squid