And the pigs get fatter at the trough.

From a purely political standpoint, the Democrats would be wiser to make this all about Karl Rove and go relatively easy on Gonzalez.

If Jerry Lewis were any more of a crook he'd be running for president alongside the Hamburglar. I'm pretty sure he wore a nylon over his face at all the committee meetings.

Yes he was my representative, and yes he burns my brisket!

And the White House plans to fight Congressional testimony tooth and nail. They plan to go behind closed doors A) So they aren't required by law to tell the truth and B) So the public will never know what is said even if they do.

I loved Jay Leno's joke (for once) about this:

"Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?" "...No."

It's more than hubris, Gonzalez is a sociopath, pure and simple. Lying, torture, executions... he loves being part of it all. What's Spanish for "House (slave)", anyway?

Samson is gonna blow the lid off the whole deal when he testifies. I want those fucking crooks frog-marched out of Washington and into Levinworth.

It just keeps piling up, that's all...illegal wire taps, child molestation, a fuck you to New Orleans, the sacrificing of human lives in a baseless war...gee, what more could they possibly do to destroy America? I like to think the list is pretty much exhausted by now.

But probably not.

"The only difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein

If Gonzales and Rove are complicit, I think that the Democrats should go after both of them.

No one complained when Clinton's administration fired all U.S. attorneys. And I didn't hear Schumer say a word when Clinton replaced the one in charge of the land scandal in arkansas with one of his buddies from law school.

Whomever is within the President's administration and appointed Attorney General, he or she has the right to fire U.S. attorneys for whatever reason. Its allowed, and every President does it. This story is trying to make something out of nothing. Which is nothing new with the media these days.

Fox News is profoundly misrepresenting the significance of these events.

There was nothing wrong with the firings themselves. What was wrong, and illegal, is that at least some the firings (among other things) constituted obstructions of justice by unlawfully interfering with federal investigations and prosecutions for political gain.

Those are the allegations, at least. They may yet prove unfounded, but they're serious offenses.

And no president in my lifetime, not even Nixon, has ever done that.

One of the chief reasons no president has ever done it before is because the appointment of federal prosecutors formerly required confirmation by the Senate, but a probably unconstitutional provision of the Patriot Act waived that requirement, and, once that was done, the White House immediately began contemplating possible actions to exploit that provision for political purposes, as demonstrated in the relevant emails.

This is totally standard for a new US president to do at the start of a term. They get a new attorney general, they get new attorneys. It's normal. Bush fired all of Clinton's people at the start of his term. That's why no one said shit about it.

Someone fired key people who were investigating key areas in the middle of his term which is without precedent, at least within recent history.

Zarth essentially beat me to it, but the difference between President Clinton and President Bush is staggering (and for God's sake, since when in the Republican mind did Clinton doing it equal all legally hunky-dory? If Clinton doing it = legal, then stop using him as a scapegoat for everything wrong about the country; if it isn't, then don't justify your own actions by saying he did it too!). The unofficial rules governing the federal prosecutor's role include the fact that, since you do serve at the lesirure of a President, you offer your resignation at the end of the President's term; he decides whether to retain you or no. This goes for elections when parties switch control and when it doesn't. But in 1992, none of the prosecutors installed by Bush I tendered their resignation, so Clinton dismissed them all. After that, however, Clinton fired exactly one of those prosecutors for gross malfeasance.

In this case, however, Bush fired the prosecutors for what appear to be specifically political reasons. While this in itself is not illegal, the fact that it a) interferes with investigations into political corruption and b) it appears damned well designed to interfere with investigations of political corruption make it de jure obstruction of justice, not to mention what military men might term "conduct unbecoming". In simple terms, Alberto Gonzalez' actions not only violated laws concerning interfering with investigations (obstruction of justice), but it's also a damned plain example of douchebaggery in an office where douchebaggery simply cannot be tolerated. The Attorney General is supposed to be more than the sum of politically expedient calculations, because he also is supposed to serve the interests of justice. Alberto Gonzalez failed this. Ergo, the guy ought to legitemately get shitcanned.

Jesus holy motherucking Christ!

This stupidity again?

This was addressed just yesterday. Must we do it again?