Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Gonzales Before Congress
My man Driftglass brought this article to my attention today, and a grim little article it is.
As Alberto Gonzales sits in front on the Judiciary Committee, not under oath (per the wishes of the republican majority vote), and wheels out the flimsy excuse of the “authorization to use force,” Karl Rove takes the republican committee members aside and threatens to wage war on them if they don’t rule the right way.
I love it. This is pure, sweet, undiluted Rove: a distillation of all the criminal things that we hate about the Republican Party. Yes, I said WE. 59% of respondents in an ABC News poll from last November think Rove should resign. From South Carolina in 2000 to Plamegate, there’s just something about the guy…a vague, sickening stench….
So go ahead, Drinky! Keep turdblossom in there! You know, the guy you said you’d fire way back when…we haven’t forgotten, have we? Rove is a big, fat, balding, leprous lodestone around the neck of this administration and the more they exercise his fat ass the more we’re reminded of just how riddled with criminals they are.
This is what the administration has become: they’re no longer concerned with image anymore. At this point they are nakedly breaking the knees of the jurists and screaming, red faced, at everyone within earshot that they will destroy anyone who crosses them, spittle flying from their mouths as they speak. This is like the ultimate scene in Scarface, when Tony Montana, manic from a Herculean cocaine binge, storms out of his office with an M-16 and a grenade launcher and just unloads, roaring challenges to an army of attackers.
I heard some encouraging criticism from republicans on the judiciary committee, but I fear what they may see as a solution. This is not the time for a slap on the wrist. I have already quoted many congressmen’s pious declarations about the sanctity of the law and the high moral standard to which they must hold the president when they voted to impeach Bill Clinton.
What angers me about this isn’t the intrusion into the privacy of many people, though that is galling. What angers me is the blatant disregard for the law this administration has evinced. When Bill Clinton was up for impeachment I was ambivalent: I didn’t consider the president’s personal life and lies about his personal life to be very important, but perjury is perjury. This wiretapping scandal is far worse, and has far more dangerous implications if the president is not reined in.
The right wing media is far more concerned about Muslim riots in Lebanon and Syria than they are about this wiretapping scandal, from what’s I’ve heard. The talking points must say something like “focus on the Middle East.” Many courageous bigots have even cited this as proof that Islam is a fundamentally violent religion, a belief they have had for years.
I won’t defend Muslim fanatics, and I especially won’t defend Syria’s government, who have suppressed freedom in that country for decades but were somehow unable to protect the Danish and Norwegian consulates from being torched. Syria has been a gangster-run dictatorship for longer than I’ve been alive, and the despotisms in the Middle East have always been eager to let their people vent about anything except the state of their government in a desperate attempt to siphon off some of the anger of their oppressed people at a target other then themselves. I think some monetary reparations are in order, to say the least.
Another thing I won’t do is use this opportunity to generalize about hundreds of millions of people scattered across the globe and slander their religion. I also won’t use this as an opportunity to focus the debate on anything but the wiretapping scandal.
We saw this before. The riots in France led Victor Davis Hansen and other conservatives to somehow equate the violence there with the inferior social system of socialist France. Please.
So back to the wiretapping. Gonzales wheeled out the rusty national security shield and scare tactic of “the terrorists are listening.” So we can’t talk about it.
Jesus Christ. Wrong in so many ways. First: that’s what closed hearings are for. Second: terrorists have known for decades that the western countries of the world can listen in on phone conversations. The 9/11 Commission Report detailed how Al Qaeda, in the years before 9/11, flew couriers from Pakistan to Germany and back because they didn’t even trust the mail. Third: anything we reveal about this program doesn’t mean there aren’t other programs gathering information in other ways that the terrorists have to be wary of.
Listening to Gonzales weave back and forth was painful: FISA is a “wonderful tool.” FISA is “cumbersome and burdensome.” Then Gonzales wouldn’t speculate on hypotheticals. Then he demanded a closed session to discuss the details.
Slate has a great article here. So far we have learned nothing, and the committee isn’t exactly going after this issue aggressively. As Emily Bazelon noted: “No witnesses other than Gonzales. No new details of the National Security Agency spying program that the committee was supposed to be inquiring about. No request for the Justice Department's internal legal memorandums about the legality of the NSA program.”
People concerned with truth can only hope that the spying program is so egregious a breach of the law that it will drop, like overripe fruit, into the lap of the meek and self-effacing senators. Their opponent, the Bush Administration, is not so dispassionate, equable, or gentle.
# posted by BitterHarvest @ 4:04 PM 
