From a New York Times editorial, 6/11/07:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/11/opinion/11mon2.html?ex=1339214400&en=ee0b2ce47da2c017&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
A Test of the Senate
The Senate has scheduled a no-confidence vote today on Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales.
No one who has followed the news needs to be told why it is necessary.
Mr. Gonzales is the Michael Brown of the Justice Department, smilingly
presiding over incompetence, chaos and malfeasance, while President
Bush insists that he is doing a heck of a job.
Today’s vote should get the support not only of Democrats, but of
every Republican senator concerned about the American justice system.
The list of Mr. Gonzales’s misdeeds is long and serious.
The Justice Department has enormous power to put people in jail,
destroy reputations and affect the outcomes of elections.
It must enforce the law impartially, but Mr. Gonzales has allowed
political partisanship to drive his department.
He appointed underqualified, ethically challenged ideologues, and let
them run amok.
Monica Goodling, a former top Gonzales aide, admitted that she crossed
the line — and most likely federal law — by hiring lawyers for
nonpolitical jobs based on their politics.
The purge of nine United States attorneys last year was also clearly
politically motivated.
Talented, respected prosecutors were fired because they didn’t do the
Republican Party’s bidding.
Mr. Gonzales’s response has been shockingly deficient.
He claimed that he was not in the loop on the firings.
That would have been extreme dereliction of duty, since the fired
attorneys were nearly 10 percent of his top state-level prosecutors.
But it now seems clear that he was not telling the truth when he said
it, which does not make him look any better.
The Justice Department is in shambles.
Top officials have left under a cloud and have not been replaced.
Morale is said to be terrible.
And the department’s credibility is shot.
The public has every reason to suspect that if a United States
attorney brings an indictment with political overtones — or fails to
indict — the reason is politics, not the law.
Senator Charles Schumer, the New York Democrat who pushed for today’s
resolution, rightly says that if senators voted their conscience, it
would be unanimous.
The vote is a test, in particular, for Republican senators who call
themselves independent — like Arlen Specter, Norm Coleman, Susan
Collins and Olympia Snowe — and who will have to choose between the
president and the public interest.
James Comey, a respected former deputy attorney general, testified
that if prosecutors have been hired based on politics under Mr.
Gonzales, “I don’t know that there’s any window you can go to to get
the department’s reputation back.”
A strong majority of the Senate voting no confidence in Mr. Gonzales
is an important place to start.
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Republicans will demonstrate that they continue to support criminal
behavior in their administration.
Harry
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