A quantum of umbrage: Wait – Alberto Gonzales is still alive?

Seriously?

It seems like not that long ago that he was the former Bush AG (who made his bones reading death penalty appeals to the reading-disabled Governor of Texas and who later became famous for claiming "I don't remember" under oath more times than Ronald Reagan, who, unlike Gonzales, probably didn't), and who couldn't find work as a practicing lawyer because no law firm, now matter how sleazy and connected, would bring him on. After which, he had to struggle to find a publisher for his <airquotes>tell-all book</airquotes> about his good times with Dubya.

But now -- rumors to the contrary notwithstanding -- Alberto is back, to hump the leg of whoever's in charge now, with this offer that he's still for sale. 

As CNN’s Jake Tapper points out during the interview, Trump’s position is pretty much the epitome of racism. That, however, didn’t stop former George W. Bush administration Attorney General Alberto Gonzales from trying to defend Trump in a Washington Post op-ed published Saturday.

Gonzales’ argument rests on largely ignoring Trump’s own words and inventing new reasons for Trump’s objection that, even if true, seem irrelevant. He discusses Curiel’s affiliation with a San Diego-based Latino lawyers group and suggests that association might render him unable to render a fair judgment.

“If judges and the trials over which they preside are not perceived as being impartial, the public will quickly lose confidence in the rule of law upon which our nation is based,” Gonzales writes. “For this reason, ethics codes for judges — including the federal code of conduct governing Curiel — require not only that judges actually be impartial, but that they avoid even the ‘appearance of impropriety.'”

The unforgiving minute

As I've argued for years, it was always unlikely in the extreme that whoever followed Bush the Younger into the Oval Office would be inclined to roll back the extraconstitutional powers that Ashcroft, Gonzales, Yoo, and the rest had ginned up for the president -- powers that would have made even John Adams nervous. Presidents, and the people around them, just don't do that. Maybe a few ornamental changes, but serious reversals? Nope.

Instead they look for ways to push the envelope farther.

Gentlemen, Madam Secretary: Your suite in The Hague is waiting

Gleaned from among the 100,000 pages of Bush administration documents pried loose by the ACLU's Accountability for Torture project FOIA lawsuit:

On January 25, 2002, then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales advised George W. Bush in a memo to deny al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners protections under the Geneva Conventions because doing so would "substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act" and "provide a solid defense to any future prosecution."

Two weeks later, Bush signed an action memorandum dated February 7, 2002, addressed to Vice President Dick Cheney, which denied baseline protections to al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners under the Third Geneva Convention. That memo, according to a recently released bipartisan report issued by the Senate Armed Services Committee, opened the door to "considering aggressive techniques," which were then developed with the complicity of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Bush's National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and other senior Bush officials.

Reading: "God kinda goes, No, I really don’t think so."

Reading Vanity Fair's oral history of the Bush White House is a necessary act of political masochism, in a "those who don't are doomed to repeat it" way.

The experience feels like having stitches removed by pulling them knot-side through, and it's curiously silent on the outing of CIA covert operative Valerie Plame as political payback in 2003, but otherwise it's compelling. Once you start reading, you won't be able to stop until you reach the end.

You'll be relieved that in 20 days Bush and his cronies will finally be out of the White House; and you'll be angered all over again at the damage to our nation already done and the damage yet to show itself--and the fact that they'll emerge largely beyond the reach of the law for their long list of offenses.

"Farewell to All That: An Oral History of the Bush White House" is going on the Readings list in the sidebar.

The unforgiving minute

Who knew that Alberto Gonzales would wait to make the soundest legal decision of his career until about two months after he resigned as Attorney General?

(And am I the only one who finds it odd that Newsweek chose to run that story under the heading "Terror Watch?")

Minute's up.

When Jon Stewart gets a cold, the world sneezes

I mentioned it in passing on Monday--the idea that the Gonzales resignation followed the usual calendar strategy of the Bush administration: Start it on Friday, and get as much of it over with as possible during the weekend news cycle.

It was a slight variation on the basic gambit, since the leak was on Friday but the resignation itself came up on very short notice the following Monday morning. But I think the Friday Rule still applies.

And of course, Andy Card first explained the First Rule of Bush Propaganda several years ago:

"From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August."

White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card in 2003, explaining why "Project Stampede America Into Iraq War II" was introduced in September.

So: A Friday in August as the day--one of only five days out of 365--on which to leak the resignation story on Gonzales. There's no more precise calculation than that, is there?

Is there?

Maybe. Because, of all the Fridays in all the Augusts in all the world, they picked this one:

So, was Gonzales’ resignation yesterday specifically timed to happen just as the Daily Show started a two week hiatus? Inquiring (and very disappointed) minds would like to know. Not even to mention the revelations about Larry Craig’s bathroom misdemeanours. It’s very suspicious that the court judgment should have been handed down on August 8 – but that Roll Call should only have published the details yesterday. I seem to recall that the last time the Daily Show went on holiday, there was a similar outbreak of political scandals (the Libby case judgement etc).

Behold the power of "The Daily Show."

Gonzales resigns; vows to spend more time lying to family

The rumor began last Friday (ah yes, Friday, the day when most Bush Administration bad news makes contact with the air), but most of the blogosphere had its doubts throughout the weekend.

But here I sit, listening to MSNBC reporters vamp on the Michael Vick plea in the dogfighting charges while waiting for Gonzales's press conference. Draw your own conclusions about that coincidence.

(The difference between the two cases, of course, is that many observers think Vick might help prosecutors bring his crooked pals to justice.)

On MSNBC, Senator John Cronyn (R - Pluto) just decried this situation as a failure of PR on the part of the Justice Department, and an example of the reason that Congressional approval ratings are so low. Attendants were on hand to administer Cornyn's medication before he could say anything more delusional.

Some observers speculated that Bush would be pressured to replace Gonzales with someone with prosecutorial experience and a reputation for nonpartisan commitment to the rule of law.

Nonsense.

There are numerous cases in which the Bush administration, after one of its officials has been forced to resign--or a nominee forced to withdraw his or her name--because of incompetence, corruption, ideological extremism, or scandal. How many instances can you name where Bush nominated anyone in their place who wasn't just as bad--although perhaps less well-known and a little more media polished? Alberto Gonzales, after all, was the replacement for John Ashcroft. Partisanship aside, Bush won't back off, if only to prove that no one's the boss of him.

Oops! There it was--his statement lasted a whopping 2 minutes and 2 seconds:

To sum up: Gonzales will be leaving office on September 17th. He has "lived the American Dream." As the first Latino Attorney General of the United States he was able to trample on laws and Constitutional safeguards that his father could only dream of trampling. And so on.

Now we'll see if Leahy and the rest of the Senate Judiciary Committee will be sufficiently able to multitask to keep the pressure on for a special prosecutor for Gonzales while trying to prevent someone just as dreadful from being confirmed in his place.

But meanwhile, Alberto, we don't want you to leave empty handed: This bumper sticker's for you.

Mainstream

SurveyUSA reports that over 70% of Americans (including 49% of Republicans) think Congress should definitely be investigating Alberto Gonzales.

Nicely mirroring this trend, Loaded Orygun reports that 80% of Oregon's US House delegation (but including 0% Republicans) have co-sponsored the call for the impeachment of Gonzales.

Sad to see that Greg Walden (R- Fishkill) isn't joining his Oregon colleagues, but that's why they call it "being out of the mainstream."

Hats off to LO, by the way--they've been on fire over there lately.

p3 Euphemism Watch

From a syndicated story picked up on the front page of today's Oregonian, concerning the possibility of perjury charges against the Attorney General:

"Democrats said an intelligence official's statement about a classified surveillance program was at odds with Gonzales's sworn testimony."

"Democrats pointed to the Negroponte letter yesterday in an effort to portray Gonzales's remarks as misleading. They said Gonzales is trying to conceal the existence of a dispute between White House and Justice Department lawyers that involved the surveillance program, which many Democrats have criticized as an illegal or unjustified abuse of executive-branch authority."

"Several Democratic lawmakers … have strongly disputed other Gonzales characterizations of the meeting."

Hmm. What is it that everyone's dancing around here? They seem to be getting a little closer with this:

"The panel's members openly attacked Gonzales's credibility on a variety of matters."

And here:

"Gonzales's troubles with his depiction of the NSA spying program began in February 2006…."

Getting warmer . . .

"A Justice official conceded during a background briefing for reporters this week that Gonzales's 'linguistic parsing' has caused some confusion…."

Warmer . . .

"In June, Gonzales veered briefly from his own account when he said at a news conference that the dispute described by Comey centered on the NSA program. But Roehrkasse told The Washington Post several days later that Gonzales misspoke."

Warmer still . . .

"But Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), a critic of Gonzales on the Judiciary panel, said: 'It seemed clear to just about everyone on the committee that the attorney general was deceiving us . . . and this letter is even more evidence that helps confirm our suspicions.'"

Ooh! So close!

You know, if someone had built as many bridges in the last few years as Gonzales has "misspoken," etc., no one would hesitate to call that person a "bridge builder."

But the highest law enforcement officer in the country can lie to Congress over and over, and still no one seems to be able to use the "L-word" to describe him. It's the damnedest thing.

Lieberman helps bury Gonzales "no-confidence" resolution

September 3, 1988: Senator Joe Lieberman (technically a Democrat), addressing the Senate regarding President Clinton and the Independent Prosecutor's report:

The President's intentional and consistent misstatements may also undercut the trust that the American people have in his word, which would have substantial ramifications for his presidency. Under the Constitution, as presidential scholar Richard Neustadt has noted, the President's ultimate source of authority, particularly his moral authority, is the power to persuade, to mobilize public opinion and build consensus behind a common agenda, and at this the President has been extraordinarily effective. But that power hinges on the President's support among the American people and their faith and confidence in his motivations, his agenda, and ultimately his personal integrity. As Teddy Roosevelt once explained, "My power vanishes into thin air the instant that my fellow citizens who are straight and honest cease to believe that I represent them and fight for what is straight and honest; that is all the strength I have."

Sadly, with his deception, President Clinton may have weakened the great power and strength of which President Roosevelt spoke. I know this is a concern that many of my colleagues share, that the President has hurt his credibility and therefore, perhaps, his chances of moving his agenda forward. But I believe that the harm the President's actions have caused extend beyond the political arena. I am afraid that the misconduct the President has admitted may be reinforcing one of the most destructive messages being delivered by our popular culture --namely that values are essentially fungible. And I am afraid that his misconduct may help to blur some of the most important bright lines of right and wrong left in our society.

June 11, 2007: Senator Joe Lieberman (technically an Independent), voting on cloture for the no-confidence resolution regarding Alberto Gonzales (the complete text of which reads: "It is the sense of the Senate that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales no longer holds the confidence of the Senate and of the American people."):

No.

As Raw Story spells it out:

Only seven Republicans voted with their Democratic colleagues to express their disappointment with the firing of 8 US Attorneys and other controversial matters in Gonzales's administration of the Department of Justice: Norm Coleman (MN) Susan Collins (ME), Chuck Hagel (NE), Gordon Smith (OR), Olympia Snowe (ME), Arlen Specter (PA), and John Sununu (NH).

Senator Joseph Lieberman, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, voted with the Republicans. The vote tally was 53 in favor of invoking cloture, and 38 voting to continue debate. One senator voted 'present.'

Explain this to me again: What possible purpose can there be, other than a sapheaded obedience to the most false kind of collegiality imaginable, that prevents Senate Majority Leader Reid from stripping Lieberman of his seniority (and with it, his committee rank)?

Gonzales has gutted the Justice Department and placed the hollowed-out remains in the service of his master, George Bush, turning the chief law-enforcement agency of the land into nothing more than "a political arm of the White House".

He should be strung up by his sweaty little thumbs, but at least a vote of no confidence would have been a start.

Of the seven Republicans who voted for cloture on the resolution, five (including Oregon's own faux-centrist junior Senator) are sweating bullets over their re-election next year.

But even Arlen Specter, who as chair of the Judiciary Committee putatively charged with oversight of Gonzales' Justice Department never failed to collapse like a wet taco when it was time to put his professed outrage into action, found the gumption to support the no-confidence resolution.

Not Joe, though. All that high-minded talk of "the American people and their faith and confidence" their leaders' "motivations," "agenda," and "personal integrity" sits poorly on the lips of a man who makes a routine practice of selling out his own party and caucus for the cameras.

The most dangerous place in Washington is between Lieberman and a TV camera where he can demonstrate his loyalty to the Bush agenda.

Fight fiercely, Harvard!

Honestly, could Tom Lehrer himself have scripted this much better?

From the Harvard Crimson:

Fifty-six members of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' graduating class at Harvard Law School signed a quarter-page open letter in yesterday's Washington Post excoriating their former classmate for his "cavalier handling of our freedoms."

The letter stops short of calling for Gonzales's resignation, even as the attorney general comes under rising heat on Capitol Hill. But it is a stinging rebuke to Gonzales, just two weeks after the Law School Class of 1982's 25th reunion. [...]

Though the letter criticized the attorney general's views towards domestic wire-tapping and torture, the signatories insisted that it was not intended to be a personal attack against Gonzales.

"I'm sure he is a very fine fellow, but it's really troubling what he is standing for and what the administration of George W. Bush is standing for," Winn said. "We couldn't stand by this any longer."

They find his pursuit of domestic wire-tapping and torture "troubling," but are "sure he's a very fine fellow." And heaven forbid they call for his resignation--those fellows must be keenly aware of how difficult it is today to land a good job.

My graduating class should be as rough on me if my time ever comes.

Honestly, can't you picture Niles and Frasier, sitting in overstuffed leather chairs at the club, drafting that letter over snifters of brandy?

Sing it with me, alums:

Let's try not to injure them,
But fight! Fight! Fight!
(Let's not be rough, though!)
Fight! Fight! Fight!
(And do fight fiercely!)
Fight! Fight! Fight!

This just in: "The Pinhead Defense" gains popularity throughout Bush administration

Exhibit 1: Director of Space Flight for NASA, testifying before the Senate subcommittee on Science and Space:

SENATOR: Sir, in your capacity as Director of Space Flight, I assume that you have given serious thought to the question of gravity. Would that assumption be correct?

DIRECTOR: I don't--Senator, can you be a little more--I'm not familiar with the subject of your question.

SENATOR: Gravity, sir. I'm referring to the attractive force that all massive bodies are theorized to exert on each other. It holds the earth together, keeps it in its orbit around the sun . . . ? One of the four basic components of any possible Unified Field Theory? Surely you are familiar with this?

DIRECTOR: I would have to say this is not a topic on which I've been fully briefed.

SENATOR: "Fully briefed?" Sir, if your pencil rolls off your desk, does it land on the floor?

DIRECTOR: [Looks thoughtfully at the pencil on the table in front of him.] Senator, I would have to get back to you on that.

Exhibit 2: Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testifying before the House subcommittee on Public Health:

REPRESENTATIVE: Sir, I would like to draw your attention to the process known as Pasteurization, and--

DIRECTOR: Congressman, I have to interrupt for a moment. What was--what was that word again?

REPRESENTATIVE: . . . Pasteurization?

DIRECTOR: Yes. Pasteurization. Could you use that in a sentence?

REPRESENTATIVE: [Long pause.] Well, sir, I believe I was just doing that.

DIRECTOR: I see.

REPRESENTATIVE: Sir, are you telling me you don't know what Pasteurization is? The process of heating milk to kill dangerous organisms, then chilling it again for transportation or storage? Sir, this is simply--we are talking about one of the greatest advances in public health since the adoption of public sewer systems! And you're saying you've never heard of it?

DIRECTOR: Not a clue. They heat the milk?

REPRESENTATIVE: Yes. Named after Louis Pasteur?

DIRECTOR: [Shrugs.] Nope. I got nothing. Congressman, do--[Lowers voice, leans closer to mike.]--do the Russians know about this?

Exhibit 3: Attorney General, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee:

SHERMAN: Now, are there any U.S. citizens being held now by foreign governments or foreign organizations, without access to attorneys, as a result of rendition, where agents of the administration have taken people into custody and then given them up to foreign officials?

GONZALES: I don’t — Congressman, I don’t know if I have the question to that question either. It’s something I would have to look at.

SHERMAN: Wouldn’t you, as the chief officer responsible for protecting our civil rights, want to know?

GONZALES: Yes. And I’m not suggesting that that is occurring — It’s just — quite frankly, I hadn’t thought about this.

Note: To the best of our knowledge here at p3, only one of these has actually happened.

So far.

The moment Gonzales knew he'd have to resort to the "pinhead defense"

When Attorney General Gonzales testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month he claimed some variant of "I don't recall" some sixty or seventy times in six hours, in response to the committee's questions.

In his interview with Bill Moyers, taped only a few days after Gonzales' performance, Jon Stewart likened the moment to a crucial scene in American Mob Mythology:

JON STEWART: And by the way, that was all just — that was a game, and he knew it, and the guys on the committee knew it. And for the President to come out after that and say, "Everything I saw there gave me more confidence in him," that solidified my notion that, "Oh, it's because what he expected of Gonzalez was" it's sort of like, do you remember in GOODFELLAS? When Henry Hill got arrested for the first time and Robert DeNiro met him at the courthouse and Henry Hill was really upset, 'cause he thought Robert DeNiro would be really mad at him. And DeNiro comes up to him and he gives him a $100 and he goes, "You got pinched. We all get pinched, but you did it right, you didn't say nothing."

BILL MOYERS: Gonzales said nothing.

JON STEWART: Right. And "you went up there and said nothing. You gave them no legal recourse against you, and you made yourself a smart man, a self-made man look like an utter pinhead on national television, and you did it for me."

Even for a man as servile as Gonzales, as pliant to the will of his patron Bush, those six hours had to sting at least a little. I mean, yes, he's servile--but that servility had elevated him to the job of the chief law enforcement official in the nation. Was the 'pinhead defense" really his best option?

Well, whether his performance can be written off to shamelessness, or (more likely) to the realization dawning in the rodent mind of a Harvard-degreed lawyer that the game was up, we can now pretty much pinpoint the moment when Gonzales knew he was going to have to sandbag the Judiciary Committee--and he was not pleased by the prospect:

When the Roehrkasse e-mail came to light, he told the press that Gonzales had been upset because he believed that “Bud Cummins’ removal involved performance considerations.” But on April 15, Congressional sources tell TIME, Gonzales’ former chief of staff Kyle Sampson told a different story. During a private interview with Judiciary Committee staffers Sampson said three times in as many minutes that Gonzales was angry with McNulty because he had exposed the White House’s involvement in the firings — had put its role “in the public sphere,” as Sampson phrased it, according to Congressional sources familiar with the interview.

That was the moment he knew. That was the moment he realized to his dismay that ritual self-mortification would be the next logical move for him.

Maybe you, like me, spent some time over the last seven years wondering if the key players of Team Bush were genuinely criminal-minded, or simply not very good at their jobs. (Except for Cheney, of course; that question was settled in his case before Nixon boarded the helicopter.)

Little moments of clarity like this make it increasingly clear we no longer need to wrestle with that distinction, and never did. Gonzales might be a toady, but he's a toady who understood precisely the moral, legal, and constitutional lines he was crossing on behalf of the team. And if that meant being a coast-to-coast pinhead, that was a small price to pay considering some of the alternatives.

Bush and Cheney may well prove to be too big to prosecute. But there's some precedent for the notion of AG's going to the slammer. It can be done.

Perhaps that's why it took Gonzales such an embarrassingly long time to "prepare" for his Judiciary Committee testimony: Maybe he wasn't trying to get his stories straight, as many pundits (and bards) speculated.

Maybe he spent that time in front of the bathroom mirror, practicing different ways to deliver his message:

"I don't recall."
"I don't re-call."
"I don't re-call."
"I don't recall."
"I don't recall."

And so on. After all, even the "pinhead defense" goes down a little better with some artistic variation.

(Hat tip to Think Progress.)

Bush's week

At least by some measures, last week would have to be considered an on-again-off-again time to be George Bush.

On the one hand, you could argue that Gonzales's pounding before the Senate Judiciary Committee, while unpleasant to watch, served two important positive functions from Bush's point of view:

First, of course, better that anyone face the consequences of Bush's policies than Bush himself, even if it means a long-time friend and loyalist must be hung out to dry while the nation watches. Painful, yes, but from that angle Bush still probably counts it as a win. (And of course, since he doesn't watch or read the news and gets his information about the outside world from tiptoeing loyalists inside the White House, it's entirely possible that Bush doesn’t yet know, may never know, that the AG took a six-hour pounding for the team.)

Second, whatever civics-class pageantry might have seemed to play out during the hearings, there's certainly a reasonable case to be made that, because Gonzales got flogged but nothing essential changed after it was over, the hearings will have no significant effect on Bush's continued anti-Constitutional plans to expand executive branch power at the expense of the legislative (and the judicial, when not otherwise useful). Such exercises would, by that calculus, simply be silly dog-and-pony shows that he must occasionally allow in order to keep unchecked power--not unlike a feudal monarch condescending to attend some rustic harvest celebration in the village before returning to the castle and continuing his plans of war, land, and treasure.

But, on the other hand, Bush did take something of a vigorous cuffing about the head and upper body last week when it came to satirical multimedia lists:

From Olbermann: Top 10 Bush administration excuses for being unable to produce important paperwork.

From the Daily Background: Top 15 most embarrassing photos of George W. Bush.

From Letterman: Top 10 favorite George W. Bush moments.

And yet . . . and yet . . . . One is reminded of Tom Lehrer's ironic musical comment on the Spanish Civil War: "Though he may have won all the battles, we had all the good songs!"

Biting video compilations are nice, don't get me wrong. And these are all pretty amusing, even if a little well-worn. And I wouldn't have the satirists lower their weapons for a moment in the days to come.

But do I think it's about time to see the subpoenas get sent to the White House, move this all to Federal Court, and get down to business. Shall we?

Alberto's tell

Between getting ready for work and coming in on the MAX, I listened to about 90 minutes (not counting going through the Sylvan Tunnel) of Gonzales's testimony this morning.

I've decided that the way you know he's been asked a question he feels confident and ready for is that he begins his answer, "Senator, I think that's a fair question . . . "

(The questions for which he doesn't feel prepared and confident--and there are many--are, by inference, low-down cheap shots.)

If you're in an open-minded workplace, you can listen to the live stream here (click the Listen Live button on the left--ugly redesign of the site, guys). And the video is streaming on C-SPAN 3, for those who live in heaven.

If you're not, they're live-blogging it over at FDL. It's worth the trip just for the picture.

Reprise: The most beautiful sound I ever heard

It's been a tough week to be Alberto Gonzales--never a situation you'd really want to find yourself in anyway, I'd think, but worse now than usual.

Gonzales and his people have pretty evidently been lying to Congress under oath. Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, knows this. Gonzales knows Leahy knows. Everyone in Washington knows Gonzales knows Leahy knows.

Thus the almost unbelievable sight of a United States Attorney General spending the month of April desperately, and none too successfully from the sound of it, cramming like a hungover sophomore for his Senate testimony tomorrow--testimony where, if he and his department are as Simon-pure as the administration claims, he should have nothing more challenging to do than tell the truth.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has retreated from public view this week in an intensive effort to save his job, spending hours practicing testimony and phoning lawmakers for support in preparation for pivotal appearances in the Senate this month, according to administration officials.

After struggling for weeks to explain the extent of his involvement in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, Gonzales and his aides are viewing the Senate testimony on April 12 and April 17 as seriously as if it were a confirmation proceeding for a Supreme Court or a Cabinet appointment, officials said.

Ed Gillespie, a former Republican National Committee chairman, and Timothy E. Flanigan, who worked for Gonzales at the White House, have met with the attorney general to plot strategy. The department has scheduled three days of rigorous mock testimony sessions next week and Gonzales has placed phone calls to more than a dozen GOP lawmakers seeking support, officials said.

Gonzales is seeking to convince skeptical lawmakers that he can be trusted to command the Justice Department after the prosecutor firings, which he initially described as an "overblown personnel matter." Subsequent documents and testimony from his former chief of staff have shown that Gonzales was regularly briefed on the process, revelations that have led to calls for his resignation.

Justice officials and outside experts said the effort is further hampered by legal conflicts among Gonzales and his senior aides. Top Democrats have also accused department officials of misleading Congress in previous testimony, leading Justice lawyers to insist on limiting contact between key players to avoid allegations of obstructing a congressional investigation, officials said.

Digby notes that, with two days still to go before Gonzales has to testify, he's already publicly rehearsing saying "I don't recall" to questions he hasn't been asked yet.

And, while we're on the general subject, Karl Rove's getaway to Oregon last weekend probably didn't do much to help him forget his troubles, either. Rove, you might recall, is at the center of a story involving five million missing emails sought by congressional investigators, emails that are most likely covered by the Presidential Records Act of 1978:

A lawyer for the Republican National Committee told congressional staff members yesterday that the RNC is missing at least four years' worth of e-mail from White House senior adviser Karl Rove that is being sought as part of investigations into the Bush administration, according to the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

GOP officials took issue with Rep. Henry Waxman's account of the briefing and said they still hope to find the e-mail as they conduct forensic work on their computer equipment. But they acknowledged that they took action to prevent Rove -- and Rove alone among the two dozen or so White House officials with RNC accounts -- from deleting his e-mails from the RNC server. Waxman (D-Calif.) said he was told the RNC made that move in 2005.

His own people had to specifically prevent Rove from deleting his email records? Should we conclude that direct instructions from a Special Counsel not to do so just, you know, slipped his mind?

And--alas for the White House--the story doesn't stop there, since the don't-delete-the-emails instructions date back to the beginnings of the Scooter Libby Plamegate investigation.

And if the U.S. Attorneys scandal leads straight to Gonzales's door, and the missing documents problem points directly and personally at Rove, the Libby trial was always a load of birdshot aimed directly at the Vice President's face.

Representative Henry A. Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, yesterday sent a letter to Gonzales asking that all nongovernment e-mails sent by White House officials be preserved.

Waxman cited media reports alleging that Rove has sent 95 percent of his e-mails via a nongovernment account, and expressed concern that many of those e-mails apparently were not preserved.

Waxman said his committee would examine whether e-mails were deleted in violation of the Presidential Records Act.

The fact that e-mails are missing was noted -- but not widely and publicly noticed -- in the perjury trial of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

In January 2006, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald sent a letter to Libby's lawyer that noted that "we have learned that not all of the e-mail of the Office of the Vice President and the Executive Office of the President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process of the White House computer system."

And how do we know what fragmentary bits we do know about Gonzales's stretchers, Rove's fast ones, and Cheney's schemes?

I'll give you a hint:

It's an eight-letter Latin word that can be translated as "under pain."

One of my best bits of parody in the last couple of years--and most from the heart, I might add--got lost in the post-election roar last November. I'm reprinting it here, with a slightly-updated title (because when I published it originally, it wasn't clear that the Dems had recaptured the Senate). I'm giving it a second outing partly because, unlike some of the other bits of fugacious ephemera I've banged out over the years (to borrow a Lehrer-ism) this one seems to have some staying power in the struggle to keep up with current events. (And partly for the pleasure of remembering the works of Frank Jacobs, another of my literary heroes.)

Without further ado:

A Brief Lyric On The Occasion of the Democrats Recapturing Control of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives After 14 Years of Republican Mismanagement, Incompetence, Corruption, and Dereliction of Duty

The most beautiful sound I ever heard:
Subpoena,
Subpoena, Subpoena, Subpoena . . .

Watch Republicans freak at a single word:
Subpoena,
Subpoena, Subpoena, Subpoena . . .

Subpoena!
The Dems finally get to subpoena,
And oversight will be
So painful for the GOP.

Subpoena!
They'll long for the days of Katrina.
Gonzales will work late,
To get his stories straight,
You'll see.

Subpoena!
Say it loud and Karl Rove starts forgetting,
Say it soft and watch Tony Snow sweating.

Subpoena!
Dick Cheney will choke on subpoenas.

The most beautiful sound I ever heard:
Subpoena.

Bad freakin' luck

When the Republicans' luck turns, it turns in the little things as well as the big, or so it seems.

It comes as little surprise that almost three weeks' worth of documents are missing from the latest load finally surrendered by the Justice Department regarding the fired US attorneys, the Attorney General, and the White House. Such chicanery and evasiveness by the Bush administration have become so nearly routine that it might even have escaped wider public notice.

If only.

If only it had been 17 days' worth of documents missing. Or 19.

But no, just their bad luck that it was 18--a number that invites an easy and obvious historical parallel, the one parallel that Team Bush must surely not want drawn.

Eighteen days worth of documents central to a House investigation of White House wrongdoing mysteriously disappear. The talking point writes itself.

"Has Bush Met His Watergate?" This is the kind of meme-generating headline it's going to take all of the White House topic-changing prowess to drive off the next few news cycles. They could have used that energy for problems closer to home, one imagines.

Like it would have killed the guys in charge of disappearing the evidence to make sure it was any number of days except that number that went missing. The White House that used to arrange photo ops so that Bush's head appeared to be on Mt. Rushmore is losing its famous attention to symbolic detail.

Those who refuse to learn from Ollie North's mistakes are doomed to repeat them

Before he was rescued by, among others, his bête noire the ACLU, Ollie North was in hot water during the Iran-Contra investigation because of emails, many supposed by their authors to have been deleted, that were still rattling around in PROFS, the email system used by the White House at the time.

When Dubya and Unca Dick entered the White House some years later, the rumored dyslexia of the former and the legendary secretiveness of the latter (plus the fact that half the list of Iran-Contra alumni were congaing back into DC right behind them) made it not very surprising that email use was discouraged among the key players.

Which makes it ironic that part of the reason that AG Gonzales is in hot water tonight--not the whole reason, not by a long shot, but a part--is a great big ol' whack of archived emails that House investigators have gotten their hands on. Dan Froomkin of the Post reports:

[I]n spite of the embarrassing revelations contained in the e-mails turned over by the Justice Department to the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, the general rule at the White House is that if it's really sensitive, don't put it in writing -- certainly not in an e-mail.

That stuff gets archived.

The president himself, for instance, never uses e-mail at all.

And it now turns out that some of his aides sometimes avoid using their official White House e-mail accounts -- the ones that get automatically archived.

As I wrote in yesterday's column, Tuesday's document dump -- which initiated from the Justice Department, not the White House -- includes e-mails from J. Scott Jennings, Karl Rove's deputy at the White House, coming from an e-mail address at gwb43.com. That's a domain owned by the Republican National Committee. […]
It's my understanding that the Presidential Records Act covers staff e-mails -- no matter what domain they come from -- as long as they are generated "in the course of conducting activities which relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President."

Ironically, this would appear to be the flipside of the issue that arose during the Clinton administration, when Vice President Al Gore improperly made fund-raising calls from his White House office. Here, rather than having party business being conducted using official resources, you have official business being conducted using party resources.

Mark my words: The only way the next Republican Presidency (whenever that happens) will make it to the end its elected term without bringing scandals like this down upon itself will be an executive order requiring that all White House communications must be written on Fruit Roll-Ups and then eaten. They just don't seem to have it in them to play straight; their only hope is to find a better way to ditch the paper [sic] trail.

Without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion

I sometimes like to imagine a non-existent moment of testimony from a never-going-to-happen Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. In my reverie, it goes something like this:

Senator: Sir, are you familiar with the phrase "a government of laws, not of men?"

Bush Administration Official: Yes, Senator, I am.

Senator: Can you summarize its meaning for us this morning?

Bush Administration Official: [Covers microphone with hand, whispers with staffer, who begins thumbing through briefing books] Uhm, Senator, I . . .

Senator: Sir, let me see if I can help you out. Doesn't it refer to a form of government under which laws are designed to operate honestly and fairly, regardless of who happens to be in charge of executing and enforcing those laws on any given day?

Bush Administration Official: [Looks sharply at staffer, who stares back, frozen in terror] Senator, to the best of-- [Looks at briefing book for a moment]--Senator, I suppose that is a fair interpretation of the phrase. Yes.

Senator: And do you believe that phrase describes the American system of laws and justice?

Bush Administration Official: [Eyes dart from one Committee member's face to the next, find no safe haven, finally returning to the Senator] Yes, I suppose so.

Senator: I'm glad to hear it. Sir, in your testimony today--and, I might add, in your testimony before this Committee on numerous previous occasions--you have asked us to give you unprecedented power to ignore the will of Congress and of the American people, to escape essential Constitutional limitations of the Executive Branch, and to commit acts which are destructive of the fundamental civil liberties enjoyed by Americans, liberties which define our great nation. And you assure us that we may rest comfortably in the expectation that you will not abuse these extraordinary powers, that you will only use them with extreme constitutional caution and only in the most limited and exigent circumstances--that we may rest assured that in giving you these powers we will not soon regret it, because you have given us your word that you would never abuse these powers for personal or partisan advantage. Is that essentially your testimony? Would you say that correctly summarizes your position here today?

Bush Administration Official: I . . . I . . .

Senator: I have good news for you, sir. Because America is the sort of place you've agreed that it is--because it is fundamentally a nation ruled by laws, not men--you are relieved of the burden of offering us your personal assurances on this matter. We have something far better upon which to rely.

No, the guarantee that you will not abuse these powers is not your solemn word that your principles or character would not allow you to do so; it is the fact that the law will swiftly and publicly visit justice upon you if you should attempt it. With that in mind, federal marshals are now passing among you and your staff, distributing subpoenas. I look forward to the pleasure of discussing this matter with you in considerable detail in the near future.

And so on. It's a lovely idyll, isn't it? But then I always wake up.

A year ago, I was finding ample opportunity to mock then-Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee Arlen Specter, who as a Bush loyalist made sure that there was no congressional oversight of the Bush administration's lawlessness, yet always professed shock and dismay at each new round of constitutional fast ones by the executive branch.

A year later, Specter's lost the gavel, but, as Glenn Greenwald points out, he's clearly learned nothing (ad viewing required for link):

Now that even Alberto Gonzales' DOJ has acknowledged that the FBI has been violating the law with regard to its NSL powers, there are some important lessons that one can learn, if one is so inclined, about how our country has operated for the last six years. Let us begin with the fact that the Inspector General's Office which issued this report is merely a mid-level subordinate DOJ office that reports to the Attorney General, and its conclusions (particularly its exculpatory ones) are hardly dispositive. The oversight here is not the Report itself. That is just the start. The oversight is the Congressional investigation which must follow to determine the scope of the wrongdoing and what actually motivated it.

But the good little authoritarians who always reflexively embrace every unchecked pronouncement by the Bush administration as though it is the Gospel Truth -- the attribute which is, at its core, the defining one of a mindless authoritarian -- are (consistent with that mindset) now running around shrilly insisting that the Leader did no real wrong, because the DOJ Report said that nothing was really done with malicious intent here. The DOJ has spoken, and that settles that. With this mentality, these reflexive Bush defenders are exhibiting precisely the profound character flaw that has led to all of these abuses in the first place: namely, blind, gullible, cult-like and distinctly un-American trust in the assurances of the Leader without any demands of scrutiny, accountability, corroboration or oversight. […]

As is so often the case, Arlen Specter enables excellent insight into how this mindset functions. With these revelations of the FBI's lawbreaking yesterday, Specter was strutting around making all sorts of dramatic protest noises, acting as though he is some sort of guardian of checks and balances and civil liberties. In fact, as Judiciary Committee Chairman from 2002 until 2006, Specter eagerly enabled a virtually complete dismantling of the system of checks and balances on presidential power, and did so by blindly and timidly relying upon administration assurances that they were acting properly.

The same Specter who now professes such grave concern over the abuse of the NSLs is the very same one who led the fight on behalf of the administration to re-authorize the Patriot Act by stampeding over concerns about, among other things, the potential for abuse of NSLs. On December 12, 2005, Specter wrote this letter (.pdf) to six Senators (including 3 Republicans) who were resisting renewal of the Patriot Act due to concerns about the potential for abuse by the Bush administration of NSLs.

Specter's letter -- written after publication of Barton Gellman's documented expose of NSL abuses in The Washington Post -- emphatically assured those worried Senators that there was absolutely nothing to worry about, because the administration secretly assured the Intelligence Committee that everything was being handled properly, and that settles that […]

(Read the rest of Greenwald's essay. It's also going onto the Reading list in the sidebar.)

Such was life under the gavel of Specter the partisan hack and Bush button man. And yet, even in Democratic hands, the Judiciary Committee may still prefer to be swindled, and to let Senators like Russ Feingold--who warned a year ago that the fix was in--continue to wander in the desert.

Neologisms and the Attorney General

The Oxford Dictionary has recently added such new words to its collection as:

-adelic
• suffix forming adjectives denoting musical genres or styles that incorporate psychedelic music with another element: sampladelic.
- ORIGIN from PSYCHEDELIC.

backstory
• noun (pl. backstories) a history or background created for a fictional character in a film or television programme: a brief prologue detailing our hero's backstory.

I’m waiting for them to add "upside," as used in this observation over at Crooks & Liars:

Subpoena him. If he doesn't show, find him in contempt and lock him up. It's time to slap these people upside the head; they are not above the law, and if Gonzales wants some serious time in solitary to think over his contempt for the rule of law, it's time it was given to him.

Unfortunately, as the rest of the post shows, it's not going to be that simple to rein in the chipmunk-cheeked Albert Speer of the Bush Reich.

But that doesn't get around the basic point that "upside"--or any word that lets the writer express a similar sentiment about the constitutional offenses of the Bush Administration--is a fine word, although perhaps still a little too Americanized and of-the-people for the ODE.