When Justice is Hospitalized: "Excuse me, it's not SPECULATION."

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: When Justice is Hospitalized
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 18, 2007

By the standards of Washington, where the most exciting development usually involves someone writing a memo or inserting an amendment, what happened with Alberto Gonzales and John Ashcroft is right out of a Hollywood movie. A low-budget B-movie, perhaps, but it has a cinematic quality nonetheless.

The attorney general, seriously ill and hospitalized. The president, wanting to get his secret eavesdropping program authorized by the Justice Department. The White House counsel (Gonzales), rushing to the hospital to try to get the incapacitated Ashcroft to sign the document. The deputy attorney general (James Comey), convinced that the program is illegal, racing to the scene to foil the plan. The weakened Ashcroft refusing to sign. The deputy threatening to quit.

And this is no mere rumor or secondhand account. Comey described the 2004 incident in dramatic fashion in his congressional testimony this week. And that prompted this question yesterday, at the Bush-Blair farewell presser, from NBC's Kelly O'Donnell:

"Sir, did you send your then Chief of Staff and White House Counsel to the bedside of John Ashcroft while he was ill to get him to approve that program? And do you believe that kind of conduct from White House officials is appropriate?

"PRESIDENT BUSH: Kelly, there's a lot of speculation about what happened and what didn't happen; I'm not going to talk about it. It's a very sensitive program."

Excuse me, it's not SPECULATION. It is the sworn testimony of the man you appointed as the second-ranking law-enforcement officer in the land. And while the program may be sensitive--it's no longer secret--the question wasn't about the inner workings of attempts to spy on terrorists. It was about whether the attempt by Gonzales and Andy Card to get the ailing Ashcroft to sign from his sickbed was proper. Bush chose to dodge the question instead....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100587.html?hpid=topnews

[bdamomma]

1. the more I read *'s comments you know very well he's lying,

this guy needs to be thrown out!!!

[Z_I_Peevey]

2. If Howard Kurtz is smelling the coffee now, then we've

definitely got something brewing. It's about time.

[DeepModem Mom]

3. Indeed! nt

[DURHAM D]

4. On the other hand, someone posted on the DU last night

that neither ABC or CBS has mentioned this matter - not on the morning shows and not on the evening news.

[pscot]

5. Comey's testimony was amazing

I would like to hear Ashcroft's wife's version of the story. Maybe the committee could send a staffer out to depose her. That would settle once and for all whether Bush made the call that told her Gonzo and Card were on the way over. That would end the "speculation", and put the decider in the hotseat.