President (To Win Colorado)
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CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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March 15, 2007 05:23 PM UTC
61 Comments
I did, at 303-455-7500
Ken Salazar took office in January *2005*, not 2006. Gonzales was confirmed a couple of weeks later in Feb. 2005. That’s pretty sloppy on the part of the Rocky.
I’m more than troubled by Gonzales and his shenanigans. I’m mad. Pig-biting mad.
Which was, of course, the only vote that mattered.
It wasn’t well supported by the Dems as a whole. Wasn’t it Kerry who started it from Europe at the last minute? Some Dems rolled their eyes and went along with the filibuster attempt, many didn’t.
Declining to immediately call for his resignation, while simulataneusly saying that Gonzales has brought disrepute onto his office, is hardly the same as “standing by” him.
By not yet calling for his resignation, he plays coy, and let’s this thing bleed and bleed and bleed Bush and Gonzales. The Dems get more play out of it. How’s that bad for Salazar? He looks like a Statesman rather than a rabble-rouser congressman. That’s good for Salazar and good for Colorado. First rate, that’s my Senator!
Yes, and he organized the filibuster about as competently as he ran his ’04 presidential campaign.
He is independent, unpredictable and follows his own conscience. Damm.
He wants to wait for the facts. How dare he. The Republicans need a lockstep democratic response in order to defeat them…..and those dems won’t cooperate….damm, damm, damm.
I agree with Salazar on this point. I strongly disagreed with him on the Patriotic Act…but I respect him.
I’m a Republican and will probably start to bash Salazar as 2010 approaches ;o), but I hardly think that wanting to wait for the facts as Salazar is doing is a bad thing.
The trouble with him is that he is independent, unpredictable and ignores his conscience even when it is screaming in his ears.
this AM on Jay Marvin that if it is proven that politics played the primary role in the terminations of the prosecutors that Gonzalez should resign or be fired.
I, for one, am satisfied with his position on this issue.
I’ve never been much of one for Alice In Wonderland justice.
But Gonzales has at least supposedly been caught in a serious episode of lying under oath before Congress. *That* is a separate issue and worthy in and of itself of impeachment. I personally think Democrats are waiting for the pressure to build so much that Gonzales is forced to resign, relieving the need for impeachment hearings.
It’s the coverup and lying that gets people in trouble…
Rove stepped in in Illinois, MA, WA, and CA with Carol Lam. She just so happened to be going after the Duke Cunningham/Porter Goss/Wilkes/New Watergate Hookers/CIA contracting fraud ring.
How much proof does Ken need?
Salazar would like to see Rove gone, but he is waiting to see how involved Gonzalez was/is. As each hour passes more and more information is coming out.
Frankly, I prefer a person who represents me to be a bit measured, judicious if you will, in their responses to these types of things.
Most Americans don’t pay much attention to political news on the weekends (except ColoradoPols bloggers and their ilk).
nm
that this administration has always been topheavy on loyalty and light on competency. It unamerican and very poor government. Here’s more from the National Review:
Shortly before Attorney General Alberto Gonzales advised President Bush last year on whether to shut down a Justice Department inquiry regarding the administration’s warrantless domestic eavesdropping program, Gonzales learned that his own conduct would likely be a focus of the investigation, according to government records and interviews.
Bush personally intervened (obstruction of justice?…my question) to sideline the Justice Department probe in April 2006 by taking the unusual step of denying investigators the security clearances necessary for their work.
It is unclear whether the president knew at the time of his decision that the Justice inquiry — to be conducted by the department’s internal ethics watchdog, the Office of Professional Responsibility — would almost certainly examine the conduct of his attorney general….
Current and former Justice Department officials, as well as experts in legal ethics, question the propriety of Gonzales’s continuing to advise Bush about the investigation after learning that it might examine his own actions. The attorney general, they say, was remiss if he did not disclose that information to the president. But if Gonzales did inform Bush about the possibility and the president responded by stymieing the probe, that would raise even more-serious questions as to whether Bush acted to protect Gonzales, they said.
Just because SR is the poster, don’t ignore this one. This is quite possibly the nail in Gonzales’s coffin. Gonzales and Bush having a conversation about how to kill off the warrantless wiretapping, knowing that Gonzales was the WH Counsel who advised on the issue before it was implemented, and was the head of one of the agencies implementing it… Can you say “obstruction of justice”? I knew you could.
Link to the very hefty Murray Waas article at National Journal – Aborted DOJ Probe Probably Would Have Targeted Gonzales.
I’m surprised at you PR. My voice has been consistent…pro peace, against corruption, pro democracy, pro environment and pro liberty. I believe I support my positions with facts, not rants. My voice has also been heard very early in this administrations wrong doings, and I have been consistently right. Strident at times, admittedly. But as the bumper sticker says, if you’re not angry, you haven’t been paying attention.
Some people skip over things you write, just because you write them. This is of immediate news importance, and not to be under-estimated. This is the “Article of the Day”, and is getting significant air time.
I just wanted to flag it for the folks that like to gloss over your responses.
Salazar is being prudent. It seems to me that more people should wait to hear all the facts instead of sprinting to the nearest microphone to demand resignations.
now there’s a thought!
Ask questions later.
Verdict afterward!
it were only in Gitmo. How long was Padilla locked up (i.e., “sentenced”) without having seen the inside of a courtroom?
Salazar is doing the right thing morally, but will it hurt him? I’m interested in hearing from you Democrats out there.
The reason why I’m curious is this: moderates run the risk of pissing everybody off. I voted for Salazar instead of my party’s nominee. But when Salazar voted against the President’s qualified judical nominee, and started getting too cozy with left-wing Dems I decided I probably wouldn’t vote for him again.
Now he isn’t being cozy with Dems. Is that going to hurt him? Is he running the risk of loosing support from everybody?
No one will care much about him waiting to see how this plays out. He may see a primary challenge, but it would be for more egregious votes, such as going along with torture.
Attny General Gonzales fired eight US attorneys.
Attny General Janet Reno fired all 93 US attorneys, at once, and admitted that she did so after consulting with the White House.
What am I missing?
It is customary for presidents to ask for the resignations of all USAs, in order to put in their own appointees, when they start their presidency. They all do this.
It is *not* customary for presidents to fire their *own* appointees in the middle of their terms. This is quite unusual and is generally only done if the USA is *way* out of line. I read this morning that Clinton fired two USAs: one who choked a reporter and one who bit a stripper.
George W. Bush fired eight of his own USAs, all at once. None of them did anything out of line. They got good performance reviews. The administration has given conflicting stories as to why. One of them (Carol Lam) was pursuing corruption in Congress and the CIA. Others refused to indict Democrats when they felt the evidence wasn’t there or the case wasn’t ready for filing. It appears very much as though these USAs were fired for political reasons.
All clear now?
And got fired for it?! Thank goodness Mike Tyson isn’t in the federal government.
Bush also fired all 93 Attorneys – at the beginning of his Presidency.
It is typical of Presidents to hire their own attorneys when they come into office – obviously more typical that the entire corps is replaced when there’s a party switch.
What’s wrong here is:
1) Clinton only forced two to resign under pressure during his term – one because they clocked a reporter, and another because he bit an erotic dancer. These are both “good causes”.
2) The Bush Administration specifically decided to use the tidbit slipped into the PATRIOT Act renewal to bypass Congressional approval.
3) The firings were based largely on removal of attorneys who had either (a) been effective in going after GOP corruption, or (b) refused to go after acts that the GOP wanted them to persue. E.g. Carol Lam was the prosecutor investigating the Cunningham/Wilkes/Foggo/Hookergate scandal; David Iglesias refused to time a possible Democratic offical’s indictment for just before the elections.
4) In a number of the firings, GOP Congresspersons were involved in requesting the firing. Rep. Hastings of Washington apparently requested the ouster of John McKay; Rep. Wilson and Sen. Dominici were apparently involved in requesting the ouster of Iglesias.
5) Alberto Gonzales lied under oath to Congress about the motives for the firings. Others have also lied about the reasoning. Most of the fired attorneys received excellent reviews in the recent past, but the reason given was “performance”.
Is that a good start? There’s more, but these are the immediate reasons.
Was Gonzales actually under oath when he talked to Congress about this?
That he wasnt. The reason I think so is that Leahy has said that he wants to get him in front of his committee, under oath, with a subpoena is necessary.
The don’t trust him as far as they can throw him. IIRC, he’s pretty much the only cabinet official they require to be under oath during testimony.
Apparently even lying to Congress not under oath is a felony under 18 USC 1001. Lying under oath is an additional felony under 18 USC 1621.
A short search doesn’t bring up articles that specifically state in the long text that he was under oath. Think Progress has an article with that in the title, but no follow-on text to corroborate it.
In his January 18th testimony (the main subject of which was habeas corpus, not attorney firings, part of the transcript reads:
I’d say that confirms it. Gonzales lied under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
I’ve looked at the USC sections too. They seem to confirm what you say. Gonzales could be in trouble if he made a knowingly false statement to a committee of Congress. OF course, proving such things is always a bitch.
For impeachment, anyway. The volume of evidence weighing in against him in this case is pretty substantial – conversations with Bush, involvement as WH Counsel before moving over to the AG’s office, lists, the involvement of his Chief of Staff…
And that’s just on the attorney firings. Never mind the habeas lies that same day, or his confirmation hearing lies… Gonzales’s credibility isn’t worth a plugged nickel in either chamber of Congress right now.
Too much other stuff going on.
I’m also becoming immune to the reporting about the Administration. If a headline came out that read, “Bush Grows A Second Head”, I wouldn’t be surprised.
I appreciate the update though.
LOL! I think that is already a common perception.
Not sure what you guys do for a living, but I’d hope you could make a little time to read over that old dusty document we call the Constitution. Ken Salazar obviously has. These attornies serve at the president’s pleasure and they can be fired whenever and for whatever reason. If President Bush didn’t like the fact that one wore pink ties, he’s be fully within his bounds constitutionally to fire him. Of course that’s not why these folks were fired. They didn’t do their jobs and like most people, you get fired when you don’t do your job. Again, the Left–and Colorado Pols–tries to strike a match on a soggy log fed to them by the MSM. There’s no there there and while having a discussion like this will whip your loyal liberal readership into a tizzy, you’re playing a wholly unserious game that detracts from what credibility you have with Republicans in Colorado.
You drooled:
Of course that’s not why these folks were fired. They didn’t do their jobs and like most people, you get fired when you don’t do your job.
The evidence to the contrary is astounding. They almost universally received excellent performance reviews only a few months before their firings. Many of them have made significant improvments to their offices during their tenure – both by DoJ evaluation standards and by the standards of the judges they stood in front of and the prosecutors working for them. The AG’s office even agreed to give at least one of them a reference – “no problem”. The Administration was caught admitting that the real reasons they were replaced were political – you just don’t want to admit it.
Ignore them and just spout off total nonsense. After all, it might work. It’s what Goebbels called “The Big Lie” – repeat an obvious lie often enough and people will believe it.
…that DDHGLQ doesn’t think he’s an effective part of the Mighty Wurlitzer, or following in Goebbels’s footsteps. Or, as my wife likes to call him, Gerbils.
You say, “Of course that’s not why these folks were fired. They didn’t do their jobs and like most people, you get fired when you don’t do your job.”
I haven’t done the reading myself, but others (like Phoenix Rising, who has yet to be caught posting something false here) has said that the attorneys all had positive job reviews. So, Dobby, do you care to address that point and maybe revise your statement?
And if you want to press the point that “[According to the Constitution] these attornies serve at the president’s pleasure and they can be fired whenever and for whatever reason. If President Bush didn’t like the fact that one wore pink ties, he’s be fully within his bounds constitutionally to fire him” let me respond that we as a society are governed by more than the Constitution. There are various laws and professional standards in place that say that, no, you can’t fire someone for any old reason. It doesn’t have to be in the Constitution for it to be wrong.
And a final point (one I made elsewhere), it’s the lying, stupid (just paraphrasing, not really calling you stupid). Whenever someone gets sunk in a scandal, the legal action taken is almost always for lying or covering up (see Nixon and Clinton, among thousands of examples). It sure looks like Gonzalez has lied if he said the firings were performance related but all of the attorneys had job performance reviews.
I’m going to have to preview my stuff before I post it when I’m using html… the italics should have ended with Dobby’s second quote.
I’ve posted stuff that’s been wrong before. But I don’t *try* to do that, and I at least attempt to verify with sources other than the blogs and news aggregators.
that that happens… At least you don’t go pulling stuff out of your ass.
Of course it matters WHY they were fired. The president doesn’t have the constitutonal power to fire them for every reason in the world. For example, if he fired them because they were black, that would violate the constitution. And if he fired them because they wouldn’t take his political hackery into court, that would be wrong regardless of whether it’s constitutional. And that would properly be the subject of criticism. Or you do think the president is constitutionally immune from criticism too? Have you been reading the Dick Cheney-annotated tome of executive power again?
They did their jobs too well.
How you could say what you did is absurd. Do you wear red tinted glasses when you watch your Fox “News?”
I think Dobby realized he is completely wrong on this one, hasn’t done his homework, and is too much of a pompous jackass to admit he’s wrong.
In this situation please note he then leaves the conversation thread and posts another of his brain farts elsewhere on the site. It’s a pattern with him.
I find Salazar’s refusal to field serious questions about this, unfortunetly, not surprising in the least. He did the same thing with Lieberman.
This situation stinks to high heaven, and anyone with an ounce of honesty will see that this warrents close investigation. If nothing else the incompetance of Alberto is painfully apparent.
Does Salazar really think that he can basically do whatever he wants and still maintain support from his base? It sure seems that way.
In his statement, he said the situation raises serious questions that ought to be investigated so that we learn all the facts. I don’t see how your description of what he said bears much resemblance to what he actually said.