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U.S. Attorney General Resigns
willie3204 is one of many to mention that U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has resigned. One of Gonzales' main opponents praised his decision stating that: "'For the previous six months, the Justice Department has been virtually nonfunctional and desperately needs new leadership,' said the Schumer statement. 'Democrats will not obstruct or impede a nominee who we are confident will put the rule of law above political considerations. We beseech the Administration to work with us to nominate someone whom Democrats can support and America can be proud of.'"
Do you have any idea of the duties of the Attorney General? The Attorney General is not the President's private counsel. The Attorney General is the PEOPLE'S COUNSEL. As such, his loyalties are to the People of the United States, NOT the President.
People need to brush up on their civics lessons.
it takes some effort to make john ashcroft look like a brave defender of american's freedoms. and ag ag did that, by acting like some sort of blitzkrieg operative for the extension of capricious and dubious powers. all very shady, all very slick, all very despicable, and forever afterward in my mind ag ag was worthy of not just resignation, but prosecution and punishment
now it looks like, like a previous white house operative (ag was the general counsel of gw bush in texas), that he's just the fall guy for his higher ups. resigning and taking the heat that rightfully should lead to dick cheney, karl rove, and gw bush
i'm not one for impeachment, it's a radical act, but i'm wondering where all the self-righteous a-holes who were ready to pillory clinton for whitewater and getting a blowjob from an intern are on the subject of gw bush, (or iran-contra, for that matter). or is it just a partisan game to get the other team at all costs, regardless of any actual judgment of the scale of wrongdoing?
personally, clinton could have had roman orgies on the scale of caligula in the white house. compared to what bush has done to this country's image in the world, orgies in the white house ranks as an impeachable offense a couple of orders of magnitude below what the shocktroops of chicanery the gw bush team has given us
gw bush: the usa's worst president, ever. he's just a moronic drunk rich kid. he wasn't even rightfully elected by the will of the american people. can you imagine how different things would be on the world stage today if al gore was in the white house?
the 2008 elections cannot come fast enough
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I shouldn't even have to post this, because anyone still spewing the above bullshit obviously already knows the answer and is just blowing smoke, but just in case anyone else was wondering: Replacing all the political appointees as part of coming into office is traditional. Replacing in the middle of a term, only those attorney generals who prosecuted Republicans, or refused to prosecute Democrats is what's scandalous here. The Justice Department had a long history of being largely independant and non-partisan, and that is what was ruined by the Bush administration. That is not normal, nor expected, and that is why morale at the Justice Department is at an all-time low, with scores of senior staff leaving. Allowing that to continue would result in a country without rule of law, only political persecution of the party not in power, by the party in power.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Lets assume for one moment, before he took this position that he was a good lawyer. But to be led by a man who has destroyed so many other reputations is no easy task.
Gonzales has been with Bush since Texas. That's how long his poor judge of character has been in place.
As for him being a good lawyer, that's hard to say. I'm more concerned about whether he's an ethical and moral lawyer, which he is not; and, that didn't start when he took the AG job. Remember that it was Alberto Gonzales that convinced the president that the Geneva Conventions prohibiting torture were "quaint" and don't apply to the U.S. We have the detentions at Guantanamo of "foreign combantants" and the suspension of Habeas Corpus for Americans suspected of ties to terrorism because of him.
Gonzales was amongst the crew strongarming former Attorney General John Ashcroft in the ICU to approve the warrantless wiretapping program. The polital firings of U.S. attorney's is just the last straw on a big pile of straws.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
This is the guy who testified to the Senate that the right to habeas corpus is not guaranteed to US Citizens.
What a strange 6 years we have lived through since 9/11. I'm hoping it will be over soon. At least the Gonzalez chapter is.
It is normal to replace all the USA's when a new president takes office. What made this different was they went after Attorneys that were not partisan enough in the cases they took. Inglesis refused to speed up an investigation to indict a Dem before the election. He refused to be influenced. If you saw the movie "A Few Good Men" Tom Cruise played the part of Inglesis. Yes, that story was about him.
Carol Lam was the one who put Cunningham in prison. She was working her way up the chain of command and was getting too close to the Whitehouse and Pentagon.
One of the new USA's replacing Cummins was the man who crafted the caging lists that denied black soldiers their right to vote in 2004 and 2006. He went to the Pentagon and found what black soldiers were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. They then sent a "do not forward" letter to their stateside post. When the letter was returned, they used that letter as evidence to challenge their votes. vote caging is illegal.
The USA's that remain are to a man, people who enforced caging lists, voter roll purges, and brought politically motivated cases timed for greatest effect at the polls. The calls of voter fraud was just a cover for their own illegal acts.
No matter what side of the political spectrum you my land you should be concerned when the Attorney General's office becomes a political arm of any party.
I want an AG that is loyal to the law, not the president. Even the much maligned Janet Reno was a far sight better than Gonzales. She went after Clinton with the same gusto as a Republican.
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There's an agreement between the president and the Senate Leader Reid to no longer due this. If the President breaks that agreement, it'll upset folks, plus the Senate can be kept perpetually in session by having a senator come in every few days throughout the normal recess. It's not legally binding, of course, but if the President wants to accomplish anything in the next year, I suspect he'll keep his word.
Content aside, that's the funniest misheard/mistyped term I've seen in a while. It's not roarshark, it's Rorschach . I'm normally not a pedant on things like this, but had to correct this one.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
Shit like this really REALLY pisses me off.
Right, Left, Rebulican, Democrat...we are all AMERICANS. When will you people get that through your thick skulls?
There are no "teams" here, people. We are all in this boat together. The more of you that put a letter after your name, the more this country falls apart.
The "team" nature that this country has become obsessed with is the marking of our downfall. People like the person quoted in this post are the EXACT reason why this country is fucked. It's not because he is for the liberals or because he is for the conservatives...it's because he is declaring a "side" as "winning".
The instant you do that, we all lose.
Living With a Nerd
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Actually, the law was written so that it would pass out of effect after the end of the presidential term. They planned to just pass it again after another Federalist became president.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
I'm terrified of the power that any of these goons in office hold. I just wish the government would be drastically reduced.
But where do you think the power will go? It doesn't just go away.
We did the mistake of voting in term limits here in Oregon for legislators. The result has been essentially a transfer of power and influence from legislators to their aids and the lobbyists - who don't get removed after so many terms.
Voter turnout less than 20%? That's what the entrenched parties want. If you can get the middle to be apathetic and not turn out then all you have to do is activate your base more than the other guy. The middle voters are so unpredictable that it's better to keep them at home and unwilling to participate.
Were you around during the Clinton presidency?
No war?
You don't remember Somalia, Kosovo (and the bombing of Belgrade, where the US managed to bomb the Chinese embassy), and the bombings in Iraq (Desert Fox, anyone?), and missile attacks in the Sudan and elsewhere?
And as for terrorism, the WTC bombing in '93, the USS Cole, US embassies in Africa? Where hundreds died?
It's quite true there wasn't a conflict like Iraq, and we didn't lose over three thousand US troops in combat. But thousands died, just most of them weren't Americans.
Yes, the Clinton years were years of relative peace compared to now. But the idea that there was "no war" (and I'm speaking of conflict directly involving the US military; obviously there were a lot of other wars going on) is pretty peculiar.
Go tell the citizens of Yugoslavia, Sudan, Somalia, Kosovo, and even Iraq that there was "no war" in the Clinton years. You might get quite an earful.
Holmwood.
Sorry, but I think that after watching some of the hypocrisy of the past seven years, many Americans now know the difference between substantive policy and "talking things."
Of course, if the Repubs wanted to "co-opt" these issues by regulating business and trade practices, building a better education system, cutting pollution, and ensuring that the citizens of the world's richest country have access to health care, then I'd be all for them, but I somehow doubt that their shareholders...er, major donors want anything to do with it.
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