Joe Conason: Impeaching Alberto Gonzales

[marmar]

from Truthdig:


Impeaching Alberto Gonzales


Posted on Aug 2, 2007
By Joe Conason

While politicians of both parties have repeatedly denounced Alberto Gonzales for public mendacity and abuse of office, a few of them finally have stepped up to do what must be done. On July 31, Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., and several colleagues—including four former prosecutors—filed a resolution directing the House Judiciary Committee to open an impeachment investigation of the attorney general.

The logic of Inslee’s initiative is inescapable to anyone who has been listening to the congressional complaints about Gonzales. If legislators from both branches and both parties believe that the attorney general has repeatedly deceived Congress and the public about matters of importance, if they believe that he has committed those deceptions under oath in the Capitol, and if they believe that the president will do nothing to remedy these wrongs, then impeachment is their only serious response.

So far, the Democratic leadership—and the Republicans who likewise suspect the attorney general of grave offenses—have carefully sidestepped this obligation. Instead they urge the appointment of a “special counsel” to probe the accusations of perjury against him.

For anyone who remembers the awful excesses of the Clinton impeachment and the punishment inflicted on the Republicans in the next election for their pernicious zealotry, such caution is understandable. But the burden of confronting the attorney general’s abuses cannot be shifted onto the White House. George W. Bush will take no action against his old pal “Fredo,” who retains his confidence (and who knows far too much about this president and this administration to be discarded anyway).

Despite Democratic reluctance, the prospect of a Gonzales impeachment has loomed for months and has only become more urgent with every prevarication he utters—and every new revelation of the partisan misuse of the Justice Department under his command. It is the culmination of a process that began with his confirmation hearings in January 2005. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070802_impeaching_alberto_gonzales/