Great commentary on Gonzales from the WashPost (of all places)

[Hamlette]

"There are times in the life of a "beat journalist"--my "beat" being the law--when the knowledge and experience you've gathered over the years--in my case, 10 years-- tells you that something is so horribly off-kilter with a particular person, institution, or practice that it cries out for a different kind of coverage, a different level of analysis; a different depth of commentary. And when that time comes, it seems to me, the commentator has a responsibility to explain forcefully and with passion why what is occurring is so different from and so much worse than what has occurred before.

And so it was for me with Gonzales. His tenure as Attorney General, on matters of both substance and procedure, was so atrocious and beneath contempt to the men and women who care deeply about the Justice Department that I felt it necessary to stridently defend them at his expense. His lack of independence from the White House on critical matters of constitutional law--say, the legality of the domestic surveillance program, for example--was so glaring and destructive that I felt it needed to be highlighted for you so that you might be roused from your slumber into outrage. His utter lack of leadership at the Department--not knowing which federal prosecutors were to be fired, he says--was so unacceptable that I felt the typical "he-said/she said" analysis would not have been able to do credit to the incompetence at work in the corridors of power.

I took no joy in going after the Attorney General the way that I did and I take absolutely no satisfaction now that he is gone. That's because there are no winners in this story. There are only losers. Because the damage he caused to the Justice Department, and to the rule of law, and to the Constitution itself is so vast that it will take years to mend. And also because I cannot help but think about how different things might be today if only President George W. Bush had selected a qualified attorney general in 2005 (there were and are plenty of Republican candidates) instead of selecting his buddy, the hack crony, whose only qualification for the job was that he would willingly do the White House's bidding."

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2007/08/at-last.html (quoting Cohen but link is a little different)

When historians look back upon the disastrous tenure of Alberto R. Gonzales as Attorney General of the United States they will ask not only why he merited the job in the first place but why he lasted in it as long as he did. By any reasonable standard, the Gonzales Era at the Justice Department is void of almost all redemptive qualities. He brought shame and disgrace to the Department because of his lack of independent judgment on some of the most vital legal issues of our time. And he brought chaos and confusion to the department because of his lack of respectable leadership over a cabinet-level department among the most important in the nation.

He neither served the longstanding role as "the people's attorney" nor fully met and tamed his duties and responsibilities to the Constitution. He was a man who got the job not because he was supremely qualified or notably well-respected among the leading legal lights of our time, but because he had faithfully and with blind obedience served President George W. Bush for years in Texas (where he botched clemency memos in death penalty cases) and then as White House counsel (where he botched the nation's legal policy on torture).

For an administration known for its cronyism, and alas for an alarmingly incompetent group of cronies, Gonzales was the granddaddy of them all. He lacked the integrity, the intellect and the independence to perform his duties in a manner befitting the job for which he was chosen. And when he and his colleagues got caught in the act, his rationales and explanations for the purge of the U.S. Attorneys were so empty and shallow and incoherent that even the staunchest Republicans could not turn them into steeled spin. Devoid of any credibility, Gonzales in the end was a sad joke when he came to Capitol Hill.

snip

Because we all benefit from a Justice Department that is fair, impartial, nonpartisan and filled with the best and brightest legal professionals the nation has to offer, we all suffer when it falls short of those ideals. The Justice Department under Gonzales was a miserable failure -- it never even came close to those lofty goals -- and now, finally, it is gone. Good riddance to it.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/benchconference/2007/08/post_48.html?hpid=topnews

Cohen has a great 4 part series from last spring which is at the link above.

[wiggs]

1. THAT'S the way to talk about WH misdeeds...with honesty and vigor. nt

[dajoki]

2. K&R

:kick:

[Jack Rabbit]

3. Boy, does Gonzo ever take the cake

Every president in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries who presided over a crooked administration has had a crooked Attorney General.

Harding had Harry Dougherty, Nixon had John Mitchell and Reagan had Ed Meese.

George W. Bush, who deserves a special place in the history of political corruption, had Alberto Gonzales.

The Harding scandals were just instances of good, old fashioned corruption, such as Interior Secretary Fall taking kickbacks for leasing Teapot Dome to oil developers at bargain basement rates; Nixon subverted the rule of law and checks and balances; Reagan had trouble keeping the hands of his underlings out of the cookie jar or knowing what his own National Security Adviser was doing, but he could depend on his Attorney General to investigate because almost everything that came up constituted a conflict of interest involving Mr. Meese.

Bush's administration has had it all. Conflict of interest, cronyism, subversion of the Constitution, suppression of civil liberties, outright law violations, flagrant treaty violations and an unnecessary war based on a pack of lies. Alberto Gonzales has been at the center of much of this.

It would be so nice to say "good riddance" and consider it over, but that just won't do. Gonzales and all the people whose asses he's been covering belong in the slammer. The problem is that without an honest or competent administration is how we're going to put them there.

By resigning now, Gonzales has perhaps saved himself the indignity of impeachment and removal from office. That should not be said for Bush, Cheney and others, but they not only had Gonzales covering them, but congressional Democrats as well.

Impeach. Indict. Imprison.