What would YOU say to this man?

August 30th, 2007

This is an interactive post — and I’d love to have you participate, if you’d like … read on.

Our Dubby is given to occasional snipes at, demeaning commentary to, the press [we don't have the privilege of watching him with staff, which I'm sure would be thunderously revealing] and I think this snottiness truly reflects his personality; he’s got that Cancer “everyman” thing going for him, which the public assumed was commonality with them rather than a limited capacity for thoughtful humanhood; combine that with an inflated, carefully-staged Leo rising ego and a Moon in Libra conjuncted to Chiron playing out in subconscious wounding — figure in his twelfth house Sun and we’ve got us a whiny, vengeful, temperamental ass of a president. [Some of us read that chart in 1999 and swallowed our tongues! That should be heads-up enough for astrological nay-sayers.]

Dubby’s recent Gonzales speech was just astounding, I thought … insulting and pandering to the public sensibility … and reflecting his authentic thoughts, I’m sure — but extraordinary in its gracelessness. Talk about lowering the bar on political discourse! If this is the president we deserve, then it’s time to rethink who we want to be when we grow up!

This is as close to public tantrum as George has come lately — we’d pissed in his Cheerio’s and he hoped we were happy now! [We were.] It was the equivalent of Nixon’s Checkers speech, minus the raised spectre of dogs and grieving children; actually, the Checkers speech, while transparently manipulative and self-serving, was more cleverly “victimized” by miles. The Dubby cast himself, again, in the “displeased Daddy” role to give the Liberals a piece of his mind.

OY on GWB as our Daddy! On that note, I was amused to find that the Bush daughters not only share my birthday but my birth hour — I’ve always had a kind of “I know who you are” affinity with these girls, and now I know why. I can guarantee you that they “handle” Daddy much as they’d deal with a beloved but annoying pet and laugh all the way to the day spa! Which is exactly what we should have learned to do — if we’d recognized earlier that the Pretender to the Throne of US President was NOT larger than the sum of his parts, we might have minimized the damage. George is representative of the density in the collective that we’re all trying to grow past — he’s also the guru that showed us everything that needed transformation about the American system.

We should understand, as well, that his isolation has grown by leaps and bounds in the last weeks — his loyalist’s are fleeing the mess at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and finding safe harbor elsewhere. Bush is a man whose defensiveness at abandonment [sister dying, disengaged mother, Pappy never there, yadda] has marked his entire life … a man who speaks so often of love [conditional to his prerequisites, and linked in his mind to approval] that it is obviously a signature issue in his psyche … and a man whose track-record as president will follow him to his grave and beyond, to the history that he dreams of/fears for. He’s got to be vibrating like a tuning fork! And take note, because whatever comes next will be a direct result of his escalating unease in his skin.

So here’s my proposition — if you would like to write a short response to our Decider’s recent message to us all [in full, below] I will be glad to collect and post them, and we’ll link them to the Planet Waves cover page; here’s your opportunity to get it off your chest … but remember the assignment: what would you say to this man? This unconscious, subconscious disaster of a man. If he was [God/dess forbid] your son or your father, what would you like him to know? If he was the twitchy, defiant guy on the psychiatrists couch and you were trying to help, what would you tell him? If he was the man who held the well-being of your son or daughter in his hands [he does,] what would you want him to understand?

For those of you who are paranoid, there’s no danger here — just opportunity. You can give me just a first name, if you’d like, and a specific or general location along with your “letter to Dubby” and we’ll post without links. Free speech is still our right — use it or lose it. And since I do all the talking, here, it would be grand to hear what YOU have to say! Will you play with me, Wavers? You count among the most intelligent and thoughtful folks I know … will you share your wisdom?

Below — a collection of Fredo ‘toons and snips — George’s actual speech — and a collection of very well-written and interesting reads from The Department of Gonzo But Not Forgotten.

Jude

Ben Sergant ‘toon

Ann Telnaes ‘toon

Here’s a collection of Fredo ‘toons — I like the Barney one

This Just In: President Bush Names New Attorney General
Youtube posted by Steve Young, Smirking Chimp
Aug 29 2007

Remarks by President Bush on the Resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales

WASHINGTON, Aug. 27 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The following is a transcript of remarks by President Bush on the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales:

TSTC Airport
Waco, Texas
10:50 A.M. CDT

THE PRESIDENT: This morning, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced that he will leave the Department of Justice, after two and a half years of service to the department. Al Gonzales is a man of integrity, decency and principle. And I have reluctantly accepted his resignation, with great appreciation for the service that he has provided for our country.

As Attorney General and before that, as White House counsel, Al Gonzales has played a role in shaping our policies in the war on terror, and has worked tirelessly to make this country safer. The Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act and other important laws bear his imprint. Under his leadership, the Justice Department has made a priority of protecting children from Internet predators, and made enforcement of civil rights laws a top priority. He aggressively and successfully pursued public corruption and effectively combated gang violence.

As Attorney General he played an important role in helping to confirm two fine jurists in Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. He did an outstanding job as White House Counsel, identifying and recommending the best nominees to fill critically important federal court vacancies.

Alberto Gonzales’s tenure as Attorney General and White House Counsel is only part of a long history of distinguished public service that began as a young man when, after high school, he enlisted in the United States Air Force. When I became governor of Texas in 1995, I recruited him from one of Texas’s most prestigious law firms to be my general counsel. He went on to become Texas’s 100th secretary of state and to serve on our state’s supreme court. In the long course of our work together this trusted advisor became a close friend.

These various positions have required sacrifice from Al, his wife Becky, their sons Jared, Graham and Gabriel, and I thank them for their service to the country.

After months of unfair treatment that has created a harmful distraction at the Justice Department, Judge Gonzales decided to resign his position, and I accept his decision. It’s sad that we live in a time when a talented and honorable person like Alberto Gonzales is impeded from doing important work because his good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons.

I’ve asked Solicitor General Paul Clement to serve as Acting Attorney General upon Alberto Gonzales’s departure and until a nominee has been confirmed by the Senate. He’s agreed to do so. Paul is one of the finest lawyers in America. As Solicitor General, Paul has developed a reputation for excellence and fairness, and earned the respect and confidence of the entire Justice Department.

Thank you.

END 10:54 A.M. CDT

GONZALES V. UNITED STATES
A Torturer Takes a Victory Lap
Ted Rall, Yahoo
Wed Aug 29

NEW YORK–Al Capone served six years at Alcatraz–for tax evasion. The true Original Gangsta was never held to account for the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre that left seven men cut in half by machine gun fire. Or the two disloyal wiseguys he ordered beaten to death with baseball bats. Or the corruption and mayhem his gangsters inflicted during the years he terrorized Chicago. Eliot Ness was cute, but the justice system failed. Capone won in the end.

Like Capone, Alberto Gonzales has gone down for a mere misdemeanor: firing U.S. attorneys for investigating Republican politicians. What led to his resignation as attorney general was his smearing them as incompetent. Hell hath no fury as a man fired without a positive recommendation. (Gonzales, a buffoon on his best day, perjured himself in spectacularly inept style in testimony about domestic wiretapping before Congress–an outfit that has forgotten more about lying than lesser lights will ever know.)

Gonzales’ crime was a doozy: He created the legal framework for American fascism. No punishment could suffice for America’s Eichmann, author of infamous pseudolegal rationales for torture and the end of habeas corpus. And none will he face.

“Fredo” (Bush’s nickname for him) quit over a procedural personnel matter. If he ultimately faces justice, it will be for mere perjury. Even his critics don’t care about his monstrous role as the legal architect of our post-9/11 gulags–proof positive that the master corrupter of democracy has triumphed, that we Americans are not a decent people.

“Are we being forward-leaning enough?” Gonzales used to ask his colleagues. “Forward-leaning” was Bush Administration jargon for toughness in the war on terror. It didn’t mean bending the rules. The Bushies were radicals. Trashing centuries-old constitutional protections–the right to an attorney, to face your accuser in a court of law, not to be tortured–wasn’t enough for our suburban Robespierres. They longed for an American Rome ruled by a harsh, omnipotent emperor over legions of troops standing ready to destroy all who challenged them, foreigners and Americans alike. They said 9/11 had changed everything. The new order required new laws.

One of the first steps down the road to perdition was a January 25, 2002 legal memorandum advising Bush to deny legal rights to Afghan POWs. “There are reasonable grounds for you to conclude that [the Geneva P.O.W. Convention] does not apply…to the conflict with the Taliban,” wrote Gonzales, then working as White House counsel. Deploying his characteristic blend of ignorance, arrogance and illogic, he called the Geneva Conventions–which have saved the lives of thousands of captured American soldiers–”quaint.” He then argued “that the Taliban and its forces were, in fact, not a government but a militant, terrorist-like group.” Actually, the Clinton and Bush Administrations had treated the Taliban regime as a government, negotiating with its leaders over oil-pipeline transit fees and subsidizing it with millions of U.S. taxdollars. U.S. allies, including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, had embassies in Kabul. History was collateral damage in the war of terror.

Having denied captured Afghan soldiers POW status–”detainees,” newspapers began calling them–the Bush Administration looked for “forward-leaning” ways to abuse them. Children as young as 12 were beaten, shipped in shackles, their heads shaved and covered with gunny sacks, to Guantánamo Bay. Years have passed; they’ve grown up in Camp Delta. These kids–rural conscripts who couldn’t have attacked the U.S. even if they’d thought of it–still haven’t been allowed to see a lawyer or their parents.

Worried that the American people might someday return to its senses and prosecute them for their monstrous crimes against humanity, the Bushies again turned to their affirmative-action poster child–this time for a C.Y.A. memo validating torture. The CIA wanted permission to use six “pressure techniques” against prisoners. Mock burial, Gonzales and his legal staff thought, was a mite “too harsh.” The medieval practice of waterboarding, on the other hand, was OK. Another practice, “open-handed slapping of suspects, drew much discussion,” reported Newsweek. The idea was “just to shock someone with the physical impact,” one of Gonzales’ staffers said, with “little chance of bone damage or tissue damage.” Gonzales approved it.

The discussion resulted in an August 1, 2002 memo to Gonzales, which he passed on to Bush. The CIA and U.S. soldiers were free to subject prisoners to “cruel, inhuman or degrading” treatment. All they needed was permission from the Emperor. “Those committing torture with express presidential authority,” The Washington Post reported about the memo, “were probably immune from prosecution.” Abu Ghraib followed.

Slippery slopes are usually cited as cautionary tales. Gonzales saw post-9/11 fear as an opportunity to be exploited. He pushed for the USA Patriot Act. Foreign detainees, he decided, would get military kangaroo courts. Using Gonzales’ advice as back-up, Bush signed an executive order authorizing himself to declare any U.S. citizen an “enemy combatant” and have him assassinated. Next came the terrifying Military Commissions Act, which allows a president to declare martial law, seize control of the National Guard from the states, and throw U.S. citizens into concentration camps for the rest of their lives.

But no one objected to any of these attacks on our freedom. Not the news media. Not the Democrats–they voted for them.

After Torturer-in-Chief Gonzales announced his departure, Ted Kennedy slammed him–for perjury. “He has exhibited a lack of candor with Congress and the American people and a disdain for the rule of law and our constitutional system,” said the liberal stalwart. “The rampant politicization of federal law enforcement that occurred under his tenure seriously eroded public confidence in our justice system,” added House speaker Nancy Pelosi, focusing, like everybody else, on the fired U.S. attorneys. The word “torture” didn’t come up.

Gonzales will be remembered as corrupt and intellectually deficient. Nevertheless, his legal legacy will likely remain in place for the foreseeable future. Torture isn’t in the news because it isn’t news. It’s normal.

The monster dragged the rest of us down to his level. We are all Alberto Gonzales.

EPIPHANIES, BUSH, AND GONZALES
Norman Horowitz, HuffPo
August 28, 2007

As I watched our President announce the resignation of Attorney General Gonzales, I was amused, bewildered, angered, saddened, and after a while I began to wonder what was in fact behind his irrational words.

In my later life, as a fan of words, before putting fingers to computer keyboard to write this, I used dictionary.com to determine the exact meaning of epiphany. It is: “a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.”

Of course, most epiphanies turn out to be wrong, but what the hell.

In recent months I watched Attorney General Gonzales testify before the Senate and the House, and came to the conclusion that:

Had he told the truth, he would have created a national crisis.

Had he lied and committed perjury, he could have faced time in prison.

Had he chosen not to remember, he could be ridiculed, and nothing more could happen to him.

I now realize that there is an even more frightening explanation.

I have edited the Presidents remarks about Gonzales resignation in a “fair and balanced way.”

“This morning Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced that he will leave the Department of Justice after two and a half years of service to the department.

Al Gonzales is a man of integrity, decency and principle, and I have reluctantly accepted his resignation with great appreciation for the service that he has provided for our country.

After months of unfair treatment, that has created a harmful distraction at the Justice Department, Judge Gonzales decided to resign his position and I accept his decision.

It’s sad that we live in a time when a talented and honorable person like Alberto Gonzales is impeding from doing important work because his good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons…”

Here is my “epiphany.” Just suppose for a moment that Attorney General Gonzales was, to the best of his ability, telling the truth. Now that is an unlikely scenario, but let us assume that it is correct, or at least possible.

Let us for the moment; assume that the President was being honest in his perception of the Gonzales “treatment,” also unlikely, but nevertheless possible.

The scariest and most frightening conclusion that could be drawn from these events is: A usual drum rolls please:

Attorney General Gonzales and President Bush really believed what they have said.

HOW SCAREY IS THAT!

Toady No More
Brian Morton, Smirking Chimp
Aug 30 2007

Of all the useless hacks, venal tools, and odious suck-ups who have leeched money from the government in their efforts to prove that the government that works best is the government that doesn’t work, Alberto Gonzales tops the list. More so that Condoleezza “No one could have foreseen 9/11″ Rice, more so than Michael “No one could have foreseen Katrina topping the levees” Chertoff, and even more so than even Michael “Heckuva job” Brown.

No, Gonzales takes the nod because of what he did to the ideals of the United States. Sanctioning torture, undermining the rule of law, lying to Congress at every opportunity–Democratic Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel couldn’t have said it better when he opined, “Alberto Gonzales is the first attorney general who thought the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth were three different things.” If you or I forgot as much as Gonzales did about how to do our jobs, nobody would trust us with pitching out old coffee grounds, much less running the Justice Department.

Gonzales took a nation that used to wave its banner as a beacon of freedom, truth, and democracy and in a short time made it stand for torture, extraordinary rendition, Abu Ghraib, indefinite detentions, and the gulag of “black” CIA sites–all of which were enabled by legal reasoning wrenched out of any semblance of human conscience.

The departure of the attorney general means that for the near future the Cabinet agency devoted to law enforcement is being run by a symphony of empty desks. Gonzales–gone. His chief of staff Kyle Sampson, gone. White House liaison Monica Goodling, gone. Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, his chief of staff Michael Elston, civil-rights division head Wan Kim, voting-rights section chief Bradley Schlozman–all gone. The only good thing to say about all these departures is that they can’t do the country any more harm than they’ve done already.

Unfortunately, filling any of those desks in the coming term might be harder than it appears. While some Democrats have shown they will ask the Bush administration hard questions (questions the Bushies have felt they have every right to ignore), most Dems have shown they can be cowed into submission nearly any time the president and his cronies start waving their arms while yelling “National security!” Rep. Henry Waxman and Sen. Patrick Leahy have both built very deliberative cases of Bush administration wrongdoing and pushed for contempt citations at an almost glacial pace (even knowing in advance the Bush strategy of “running out the clock”). But we have to question whether or not they have the backbone to be as aggressive and innovative in the seeking of justice as the administration is devoted to obstructing it. It would be interesting to see how the administration would react if suddenly the Senate sergeant-at-arms appeared at the doors of Gonzales and Karl Rove and placed them under arrest for their willful disobedience of congressional subpoenas and contempt citations–powers that are well within the rights and authority granted in the Constitution to the legislative branch, unlike the concept of “executive privilege.”

The disturbing possibility is that the president will name Gonzales’ successor as a recess appointment–possibly after naming someone else as intransigent, corrupt, or dishonest as Gonzales. Names like John Yoo, the original crafter of the Bush torture memo, or David Arrington, Dick Cheney’s right-hand legal henchman, come to mind. The reasons George W. Bush would do this are several: The president lives to antagonize the opposition party, and someone with impeccable legal credentials and yet with such venal opinions as Yoo or Arrington allows him to paint the Democrats as unfair and obstructionist. After a bitter confirmation fight and a rejection, Bush could simply install the offender with a recess appointment, and for the first time in history, a president would have as his top law-enforcement official for the remainder of his tenure someone specifically rejected by the Congress. This is very much the Bush modus operandi–if you need any evidence of this, go back and recall the fight over John Bolton’s nomination to the post of United Nations ambassador.

The Democrats must also not cave in to the belief that without Rove and Gonzales the need to find answers to questions about the politicization of the Justice Department and the warrantless surveillance of Americans has ended. There still needs to be a full accounting of what possible illegal actions and overstepped boundaries have come under this president, in order that future presidents don’t take the opportunity to claim these events as precedent to do even worse.

For now, it appears that we may be on the road to real Justice in America. But, as usual, there remains a real possibility that, under this president, the light at the end of the tunnel might still be an oncoming train.

American nightmare: Gonzales “wrong and illegal and unethical”
Greg Palast
Aug 29 2007

“What I’ve experienced in the last six months is the ugly side of the American dream.”

Last month, David Iglesias and I were looking out at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island where his dad had entered the US from Panama decades ago. It was a hard moment for the military lawyer who, immediately after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales fired Iglesias as US Attorney for New Mexico, returned to active military duty as a Naval Reserve JAG.

Captain Iglesias, cool and circumspect, added something I didn’t expect:

“They misjudged my character, I mean they really thought I was just going to roll over and give them what they wanted and when I didn’t, that I’d go away quietly but I just couldn’t do that. You know US Attorneys and the Justice Department have a history of not taking into consideration partisan politics. That should not be a factor. And what they tried to do is just wrong and illegal and unethical.”

When a federal prosecutor says something is illegal, it’s not just small talk. And the illegality wasn’t small. It’s called, “obstruction of justice,” and it’s a felony crime.

Specifically, Attorney General Gonzales, Iglesias told me, wanted him to bring what the prosecutor called “bogus voter fraud” cases. In effect, US Attorney Iglesias was under pressure from the boss to charge citizens with crimes they didn’t commit. Saddam did that. Stalin did that. But Iglesias would NOT do that - even at the behest of the Attorney General. Today, Captain Iglesias, reached by phone, told me, “I’m not going to file any bogus prosecutions.”

But it wasn’t just Gonzales whose acts were “unethical, wrong and illegal.”

It was Gonzales’ boss.

Iglesias says, “The evidence shows right now, is that [Republican Senator Pete] Domenici complained directly to President Bush. And that Bush then called Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General, and complained about my alleged lack of vigorous enforcement of voter fraud laws.”

In other words, it went to the top. The Decider had decided to punish a prosecutor who wouldn’t prosecute innocents.

All day long I’ve heard Democrats dance with glee that they now have the scalp of Alberto Gonzales. They nailed the puppet. But what about the puppeteer?

The question that remains is the same that Watergate prosecutors asked of Richard Nixon, “What did the President know and when did he know it?”

Or, to update it for Dubya, “What did the President know and how many times did Karl Rove have to explain it to him?”

During the Watergate hearings, Nixon tried to obstruct the investigation into his obstruction of justice by offering up the heads of his Attorney General and other officials. Then, Congress refused to swallow the Nixon bait. The only resignation that counted was the one by the capo di capi of the criminal-political cabal: Nixon’s. The President’s.

But in this case, even the exit of the Decider-in-Chief would not be the end of it. Because this isn’t about finagling with the power of prosecutors, it’s about the 2008 election.

“This voter fraud thing is the bogey man,” says Iglesias.

In New Mexico, the 2004 announcement of Iglesias’ pending prosecution of voters (which he ultimately refused to do) put the chill on the turnout of Hispanic citizens already harassed by officialdom. The bogus “vote fraud” hysteria helped sell New Mexico’s legislature on the Republican plan to require citizenship IDs to vote - all to stop “fraudulent” voters that simply don’t exist.

The voter witch-hunt worked. “Wrong” or “insufficient” ID was used to knock out the civil rights of over a quarter million voters in 2004. In New Mexico, that was enough to swing the state George Bush by a mere 5,900 votes.

So what is most frightening is not the resignation of Alberto Gonzales, the Pinocchio of prosecutorial misconduct, but the resignation of Karl Rove. Because New Mexico 2004 was just the testing ground for the roll-out of the “ID” attack planned for 2008.

And Rove who three decades ago cut his political fangs as chief of the Nixon Youth, is ready to roll. To say Rove left his White House job under a cloud is nonsense. He just went into free-agent status, an electoral hitman ready to jump on the next GOP nominee’s black-ops squad. The fact that Rove’s venomous assistant, Tim Griffin, was set up to work for the campaign Fred Thompson, is a sign that the Lord Voldemort of vote suppression is preparing to practice his Dark Arts in ‘08.

It was Rove who convinced Bush to fire upright prosecutors and replace them with Rove-bots ready to strike out at fraudulent (i.e. Democratic) voters.

Iglesias, however, remains the optimist. “I’m hopeful that I’ll get back to the American dream. And get out of the American nightmare.”

Dreams. Nightmares. I have a better idea for America: Wake up.

With Alberto’s ouster, why things could get even worse (if you can imagine that)
p m carpenter
August 29, 2007

What made the news coverage of Alberto’s departure worth reading, and finally commenting on, was less his departure than the far-ranging observations offered on the lessons to be drawn from his squalid tenure. We’ve had controversial attorneys general resign in disgrace before, but none quite like Alberto.

From the 20th century’s Harry Daugherty to John Mitchell, the injudicious sort seemed to flock to Justice. From their tenures we learned valuable lessons, of course — so naturally quite early in the 21st century we suffered capo-regime Fredo.

But I don’t really blame Alberto Gonzales. He was a small man with narrow aims — the aggrandizement and protection of his patron — too innately small not to be overwhelmed. One telling observation was this: “Former colleagues say that what they originally took for discretion, when Mr. Gonzales would say little in major policy meetings, they later concluded was disengagement.”

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn from historians years from now that Alberto really didn’t know, for instance, who slated various U.S. Attorneys for removal, or why. Like a good little crime-family captain, he just took orders, and he was delighted he ever made it that far.

As Daniel Marcus, a Clinton-administration Justice official and now a constitutional law professor, said, “He was not the intellectual father of those positions [of unitary-executive supremacy], but he shaped and articulated them at the White House, and he continued to take a very strong position on executive power as attorney general.”

From this Mr. Marcus concluded “What this whole episode illustrates”: that of the “problem of having a close confidant, a close friend of the president — particularly someone who worked first in the White House — going over to the Justice Department to serve as attorney general in the first place.”

I disagree profoundly. Other presidents have had close confidants serve as their attorneys general (hell, one was the president’s brother), yet those personal connections were not the responsible agent or catalyst for the launching of lawlessness. That starts at the top, and you-know-what runs downhill.

For my money, Stanley Brand, the “ethics lawyer” (no oxymoronic jokes here), summed things up the best: “You can’t just change government through strong-willed policy. People who ride into Washington on a high horse of ideology or ignorance” — or, in Mr. Bush’s case, ignorant ideology — “are inevitably headed toward a blow-up.”

Call it overconfidence, call it karma, call it whatever you like, but Alberto’s downfall was as inexorable as Bush’s collapse. Given the man at the top’s willful ignorance, ideological hubris and inner corruption, Al’s days were numbered from the start.

I have a hunch, however, that we haven’t yet seen the worst of Mr. Bush & Co., even as the White House empties itself of some very bad boys. And it was Mr. Bush’s bizarre, otherworldly reaction to Alberto’s departure that leads one to this frightful suspicion.

Political scientist Calvin Jillson set the scene: Newer and less personal White House advisors could now lead Bush to “more of a middle ground … but whether he has the mental and ideological flexibility to take advantage of that chance, I’m quite skeptical of that.” Said the professor: “If you just listen to what he said … in defense of Gonzales [the day of the resignation], his back is so up and his heels are so dug in, I’m not sure he can do it.”

Well, professor, I’m sure he can’t. I’d bet money on it. The president is a mental infant with a child’s emotions. He won’t let this go, he won’t let it drop. He’ll throw a monstrous temper tantrum in the form of … something monstrous … just to show Congress and the press that no one can kick George W. Bush around.

Favorite Memory: Gonzo on Habeas
Robert Parry, ConsortiumNews
Aug 29 2007

Everyone has their favorite memory of departing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales: his endless “do not recalls”; his quibbling definitions of torture; his dismissive attitude toward the “quaint” and “obsolete” Geneva Conventions.

But my personal favorite was his insistence that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t expressly recognize habeas corpus, the great fair-trial principle of English law that dates back to the Magna Carta in 1215.

“There is no expressed grant of habeas in the Constitution,” Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Jan. 18. He did acknowledge, however, that there was “a prohibition against taking it away.”

Gonzales’s bizarre remark left Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a former federal prosecutor and the panel’s ranking Republican, sputtering in disbelief.

“Wait a minute,” Specter interjected. “The Constitution says you can’t take it away except in case of rebellion or invasion. Doesn’t that mean you have the right of habeas corpus unless there’s a rebellion or invasion?”

Gonzales continued, “The Constitution doesn’t say every individual in the United States or citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right shall not be suspended” except in cases of rebellion or invasion.

“You may be treading on your interdiction of violating common sense,” Specter responded, as if confronting the sophomoric comments of a first-year law student who would never make it to a second year.

While the exchange drew little or no attention in the major news media, I found it revealing in several ways:

First, it exposed the narrow, ideological thinking that has pervaded the legal analysis of Gonzales and other Bush administration lawyers.

Neoconservative and right-wing legal operatives have long functioned with the notion that if they could conjure up a clever legal argument – no matter how flimsy – that their argument must be accepted as sound or at least treated with the utmost seriousness. If we can devine a rationale, we must be right.

That self-absorbed thinking has been at the core of the legal theories behind George W. Bush’s treatment of profound issues such as presidential power, government secrecy, and limitations on the inalienable rights of individuals who are not in Bush’s inner circle.

So, no matter how established habeas corpus might be in American legal traditions, Gonzales felt he could put it in question simply with the nit-picking observation that the Founders didn’t explicitly spell out the Great Writ when writing the Constitution.

Negative Rights

Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution states that “the privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”

The clear meaning of the clause, as interpreted for more than two centuries, is that the Founders recognized the long-established English principle of habeas corpus, which guarantees people the right of due process, such as formal charges and a fair trial.

However, under Gonzales’s constitutional theory not only would habeas corpus not be guaranteed, the American people also would have no assurances about freedom of religion, speech or the press. In the Bill of Rights, all those rights are defined in negative language: “Congress shall make no law …”

Gonzales was wrong in another way, when he cited the lack of specificity in the Constitution’s granting of habeas corpus rights. Many of the legal features attributed to habeas corpus are delineated in positive language in the Sixth Amendment, which reads:

“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed … and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; [and] to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses.”

But Gonzales’s knock on habeas corpus was indicative of the Bush administration’s overall attitudes. Presumably, during White House “bull sessions,” the principle of habeas corpus routinely gets disparaged.

The Gonzales comment exposed the Bush administration’s continued hostility toward some of the fundamental rights that traditionally define the American Republic. Gonzales was treating habeas corpus as an optional right, subordinate to President Bush’s executive powers during “a time of war.”

Denying Habeas

Just months earlier, the Republican-controlled Congress had pushed through the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that effectively eliminated habeas corpus for non-citizens, including legal resident aliens.

Under the new law, Bush gets to declare any non-citizen an “unlawful enemy combatant,” putting the person into a system of military tribunals which offer defendants only limited rights. Critics have called the tribunals “kangaroo courts” because the rules are heavily weighted in favor of the prosecution.

Some language in the new law also suggested that “any person,” presumably including American citizens, could be swept up into indefinite detention if they are suspected of having aided and abetted terrorists.

“Any person is punishable as a principal under this chapter who commits an offense punishable by this chapter, or aids, abets, counsels, commands, or procures its commission,” according to the law, signed by Bush on Oct. 17, 2006.

Another provision in the law even seems to target American citizens by stating that “any person subject to this chapter who, in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United States, knowingly and intentionally aids an enemy of the United States … shall be punished as a military commission … may direct.”

Besides allowing “any person” to be swallowed up by Bush’s system, the law prohibits detainees once inside from appealing to the traditional American courts until after prosecution and sentencing, which could translate into an indefinite imprisonment since there are no timetables for Bush’s tribunal process to play out.

The law states that once a person is detained, “no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any claim or cause of action whatsoever … relating to the prosecution, trial, or judgment of a military commission under this chapter, including challenges to the lawfulness of procedures of military commissions.”

That court-stripping provision – barring “any claim or cause of action whatsoever” – would seem to deny American citizens habeas corpus rights just as it does for non-citizens. If a person can’t file a motion with a court, he can’t assert any constitutional rights, including habeas corpus.

Other constitutional protections in the Bill of Rights – such as a speedy trial, the right to reasonable bail and the ban on “cruel and unusual punishment” – would seem to be beyond a detainee’s reach as well. [For more on the Military Commissions Act, see our new book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush.]

Stretching Language

Gonzales’s habeas comment was noteworthy, too, because it demonstrated how far Bush administration lawyers will go in stretching legal language to benefit their positions.

If Bush’s Attorney General can construct an argument that the Founders didn’t mean to grant the right of habeas corpus (because they phrased it in a negative way), what does that portend for the loose language in recent laws passed regarding the “war on terror”?

Besides the Military Commission Act and the earlier Patriot Act, what about the Protect America Act of 2007, which appears to grant the administration broad powers to engage in warrantless wiretapping and other domestic spying.

Though the administration claims it only wants to intercept calls of foreign terror suspects, the language of the Protect America Act applies to anyone who is “reasonably believed to be outside the United States” and who might possess “foreign intelligence information,” defined as anything useful to U.S. foreign policy.

That means that almost any American engaged in international commerce or dealing with foreign issues – say, a businessman in touch with a foreign subsidiary or a U.S. reporter sending an overseas story back to his newspaper – is vulnerable to warrantless intercepts approved on the say-so of two Bush appointees, the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence. [See Consortiumnews.com's "New Spy Law Broader Than Thought."]

The reassurances from government officials and some commentators that the Bush administration would never abuse these new powers might wisely be viewed in the context of Gonzales’s strange opinions about habeas corpus and the Constitution.

After all, the flexible approach to law and the Constitution – demonstrated by Alberto Gonzales – is sure to outlive his last days at the Justice Department.

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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