Oppose Gonzales

Alberto Gonzales duly renounced torture during his Senate confirmation hearings. But, excuse me, this does not erase his frightening record of supporting torture! As the top White House attorney, he opined that our country should not be bound by laws or agreements such as the Geneva Conventions that prohibit torture. This opened the door to the Abu Ghraib disaster.

As if this weren't enough, Gonzales refused under intense questioning to explain his role in the development of the Bush administration's policies on interrogation and torture. That is why yesterday, even under immense pressure from the president and Senate leadership, eight members of the Senate Judiciary Committee voted against recommending Gonzales to the full Senate—just two votes shy of an outright rejection.

Our country can surely find an attorney general whose record is not fundamentally at odds with our values of decency and compassion—and who's willing to answer basic questions about his record.

If you'd like to send a message (text below) to your senators urging them to oppose the Gonzales nomination, and you're a TrueMajority member, just click "reply" and "send" in your e-mail program. If this was forwarded to you or you'd like to customize the message to your senators, click here:

http://truemajority.kintera.org/gonzales-no

Click here for more information on the Gonzales nomination: http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/

Author: Marilyn Bechtel and Tim Wheeler
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 01/15/05
http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/6297/1/247

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The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which represents detainees at the Guantanamo detention center, urged people to sign their online petition calling for a “No” vote on Gonzales.

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Latino civil rights leaders held a press conference in San Francisco Jan. 10 to urge Gonzales’ rejection. The nominee “has a very troubling view of our government’s checks and balances,” said Maria Blanco, executive director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and former senior counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF). She cited Gonzales’ testimony to the Senate that the president, and not the courts, has the right to decide legal issues, including defining torture so narrowly as to allow physical punishment short of death or permanent physical harm.

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“The fact that Mr. Gonzales is a Mexican American who has worked his way out of poverty gains much respect,” said Mercedes Castillo, chair of the National Latina/o Law Students Association and a law student at U.C.-Davis. “However, this is not enough to automatically garner the support of our community.”

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Mexican American Political Association San Francisco chair, Paula Fiscal, presented a statement from MAPA National President Nativo Lopez. “MAPA cannot support the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as U.S. attorney general,” the statement said. “We can only support a candidate who has a demonstrated commitment to the rule of law.”

ive already posted flyers and stuff like that from moveon.org and truemajority around my campus