Senator Leahy, dumbass!

What the hell is wrong with our leadership? Isn't this the same guy who thinks torure is hunky dory and that the president has the right to do any damn thing he pleases, well, just because he is the president? And he is going to be our top law enforcer? Heaven help us. I am in some kind of strange, dark nightmare and I will wake up from it. Somebody please tell me that. From the New York Times:

I like him," Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the leading Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said today after a closed meeting with Mr. Gonzales, whom he has known as White House counsel.

"I said jokingly that the president, with the majority he has in the Senate, could have sent up Attila the Hun and got him confirmed," Mr. Leahy said. "But Judge Gonzales is no Attila the Hun; he's far from that, and he's a more uniting figure."


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/17/politics/17cnd-couns.html?hp&ex=1100754000&en=04b325355b896c0f&ei=5094&partner=homepageUn

:grr:

in the way of fighting these thugs that won't give them someone else to blame when the whole thing blows up in their stupid, piggy faces. It's coming. You know it and I know it. We can feel it. And we want to make absolutely certain everybody knows whose fault it really is.

but the press continues to sing his praises, and buries one scandal
after another.
The Repubs on the 9/11 commission know he LIHOP (at least) and they're OK with that.

As long as he has the press, and the Congress, and the courts, and the voting machinez,
which is to say for the forseeable future, nothing can touch him.

Well, maybe if he were caught having sex with Karl Rove :ewww:

> Well, maybe if he were caught having sex with Karl Rove :ewww:

Nahh, it'd be okay as long as they don't try to get married.

Atlant

I guess the Dem leadership is gonna roll over and offer up the vaseline. Problem is we are the ones who get screwed. I'm just sick of this "Let's all get along", crap. Even Clinton today asked " Am I the only person in America who likes GWB and Kerry?" Well yeah! We need leaders who will stand up to W and his yes men , where are those people? All here I guess!


RedTail Wolf

then he can't tell whether Gonzales is no Atilla the Hun

Oh Wait....No it didn't...My bad.

I just don't understand how they think this strategy works. They never obstruct anything and it still doesn't win us elections. Try another strategy! We're gonna be screwed either way.

senate.....and he's far from a dumb ass.

hey, for nothing else, anyone who could get Darth Cheney to lose control on the Senate floor and utter a string of explicatives ...

Well for nothing else ole' Leahy is aces with me and must be working under the radar to drive the Neo-Cons bonkers.

I know my Senator. I spoke to him this summer at a small fundraiser for a local liberal running for the statehouse. (She won) He's opposed bushco for almost four years now, and he intends to keep fighting the good fight, just as he has for 30 years. He is truly one of the good guys. When Gonzalez comes before Judiciary, he'll grill him. He will not lie down and roll over. And when it comes to the all important matter of SCOTUS appointments, he'll absolutely fight. He's said so. I believe him. It's what he's done in the past. I've voted for Pat in 4 elections now. I've never been disappointed.

Attila the Hun is no Gonzales.
A more apt comparison would be Gonzales with Goebels.

Make sure you form a circle when firing though.

THAT'S the key to retaking our government fro the Pepubs:

Ignore our leaders.

Do not allow any variation from the party line.

<snip>

In restructuring his team for the second term, Mr. Bush is also acting well within his rights. As long as he doesn't name his horse as proconsul, a president is traditionally accorded the right to choose anybody he wants in his cabinet, including members of his White House staff. Heading into his second term, Nixon named one member of his staff, Mr. Kissinger, as secretary of state and appointed five members of his staff to sub-cabinet posts; Reagan nominated two members of his staff, James Baker and Edward Meese, to key cabinet spots; and Bill Clinton also promoted a member of his staff, Alexis Herman, to the cabinet. Former members of the White House staff who have been good administrators have generally served well in departments. The ability to speak with their leader's voice has always enhanced their authority.

<snip>

However read the rest cuz it is a doozy:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/19/opinion/19gergen_.html

As far as I know, the only beef that the Dems can have with Gonzalez (other than not liking his conservative philosophy in general) is his comment about the Geneva Convention that got a lot of press and criticism. But mainly he was just ruminating and talking hypothetically so I doubt that will have any serious impact on his confirmation.

Democrats in the minority have to be careful about what issues they choose to stand and fight over. If they are going to nitpick to death every appointment that Bush makes their complaints will be ignored as political hackery and will reflect badly on the party as one solely of obstructionists.

You are now a member of the opposition party. Your job to to oppose the majority party and speak your version of truth to it's power. Do not lay down with these dogs on anything. When it comes time for your re-election they will use your co-operation against you and not allow you to use it for yourselves.

Jay

Leahy, for one, doesn't have to EVER worry about re-election. For cripes sake, he just got re-elected with over 70% of the vote, and the more he opposes bushco, the more popular he is with Vermonters. Leahy has made a career out of opposing the wingnuts. Why do you think Cheney told him to go fuck himself?
As a Senator, you can't oppose everything and everyone. You simply dilute the little power you have.

worry about bing re-elected. Also the post said "Congressional Democrats", not just Leahy. I think he is great. Look at the Repugs; they opposed everything we had to offer and took over Congress. Even after the government shutdown debacle in the 90's. Appeasers never win. But your probably right, I have no idea of what I speak.

Jay

Consider me suitably chastened.

as if everyone is still in a state of clinical shock (myself included) and emotions are running white-hot. I know someone who is being rude when I see them and that was not you.

Jay

It amazes me that the very senators who emerged nauseated and shaken after witnessing the brutal images from Abu Ghraib which were a direct result from a series of events put into motion by Gonzales' counsel to Bush that Bush is essentially above the law and torture's okay, can actually now say "Alberto? Heck of a guy!"

This guy is scum. There I said it. John Dean has a problem with him, too, as he points out in an article from 2003.

White House counsel Alberto Gonzales is said to be on President Bush's short list of potential nominees for the U.S. Supreme Court. Unlike other nominees, such as D.C. Circuit nominee Miguel Estrada, it turns out that Gonzales has left quite a paper trail - in the form of fifty-seven death-penalty memoranda he prepared for then-Texas Governor George Bush.

The memos were initially confidential, meant for the Governor alone. They have not themselves been published. But they have been reviewed by writer Alan Berlow of The Atlantic Monthly, and his report on their contents is disturbing indeed.

The Gonzales execution memos raise serious - and, unfortunately ugly -questions, not because of what they say, rather because of what they fail to say. They also suggest that President Bush's earlier claims about how he, in fact, handled clemency requests as Governor of Texas are less than accurate.

more
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20030620.html

They will never never learn.

I woke up this morning wanting to look up that LEAHY link, but your headline speaks for me.

Yes, (the arguments go) 1) presidents (in this case "presidents") are given leeway in choosing their own cabinets and 2) what-part-of-majority/minority numbers don't we understand. I like better what others have posted, that we are the loyal OPPOSITION, or ought to be.

I media blasted (200) e-mails and got exactly ONE auto-reply, from BIDEN. Anyway, fwiw, the first item is the e-ltr and the second is a neat link, stopalbertogonzales.com that also contains a media blast mechanism.

---------------
The supposed Liberal half of the pundits on CNN’s The Capital Gang (11-13) have already sounded the retreat regarding the nomination of Alberto Gonzalez for Attorney General with the words, “He’s got a great personal story, only one of eight siblings to go to college, and he maintains contact with them!”

While the Republican majority makes it unlikely that the nomination can be blocked, Gonzalez’s record, ideology, and role as Bush waterboy need thorough exposure and opposition. But the Democrats have to stay focused on those things and not allow the process to be framed on the basis of “ethnicity,” as in, “the first Hispanic, blah blah…”

During the ESTRADA hearings the beleaguered Democratic leaders actually stood firm and eventually won a rare victory, perhaps surprising even themselves, although the deciding factor might have been Estrada’s possible personal baggage instead of ideology. And almost all of the Hispanic organizations joined in opposing him based on his ideology.

With Gonzalez, the Republicans are springing yet again their “ethnic“ or “racial” trap that started with George I’s use of Clarence Thomas: Nominating a member of a minority group, perhaps not too bright or accomplished, but who toes the Conservative line, and, most of all, stymies the Democrats by their having to oppose somebody from one of their traditional constituencies. The payload of the “ethnic” gambit is to derail the vetting process, keeping attention away from the nominee’s record and ideological fanaticism.

During the Estrada hearings, Orrin Hatch was all over the media with a Shirley Temple pout, saying innocently, “How can the Democrats oppose this well qualified Hispanic?”

The answer then should have been, as now, “It is NOT about the ethnicity. That would be racism and quotas. It’s about the ideology and his record.”

This link covers his whole career: http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF...

This link covers his role in the torture policy: http://lawofwar.org/Torture_Memos_analysis.htm (Home Page: http://lawofwar.org / )

-------------
Link with e-addy blast list
http://www.stopalbertogonzales.com/

Alberto Gonzales was also the INSTRUMENT that the bush* administration used to OBSTRUCT JUSTICE in TRAITORGATE!

It was Alberto's job to find the TRAITOR in the White House who exposed Valerie Plame (a NOC agent) and singlehandedly destroyed a covert International Network tracking WMDs. This piece of traitorous scum is still lurking in the White House.

I wish some Democrat during the confirmation hearings would say:
"Sure Alberto, I'll vote to confirm you, right after you identify the traitor in the White House. We all know that YOU know who it is."

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2004/11/lest_we_forget_gonzales_appeared_to_obstruct_justice_in_the_plame_affair.html