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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.'"
Fortunately for Gonzales, he will probably soon forget he held the position and made a mockery of the judicial system...
The Daily Show starts a 2 week break this week.
Is anyone noticing a trend where resignations seem to occur while The Daily Show is off on break?
How many Alberto Gonzaleses does it take to change a lightbulb?
One, but he'll end up doing it multiple times because he can't recall doing it before.
Actually Gonzo and I were at the same school at almost the same time. No way he could have graduated with such a weak memory, so I've basically been wondering what happened to him. He still has his wits and he's just faking the idiocy? Or was is some kind of mental disease from excessive mental gymnastics and brown nosing?
Anyway, I'm still amazed that Dubya let him resign, even if Chertoff is the replacement (according to rumors). The last thing the neo-GOP wants now is a functional DoJ. Everything is coming unraveled for them.
One more thing. Don't let the door hit ya' on yer way out.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Right now, the opposition party has failed in it's watchdog duties.
Political parties have no duties, only the need and desire to keep themselves in power. Congress (controlled by Democrats) has one of the lowest approval ratings ever at present. They aren't pushing for anything now.
Latewire
Here's another one...the VP also used this "I do not recall..." slogan while under fire. It's about time our constitution was amended to automatically have a senior official resign when the all of a sudden they cannot recall matters so important and held so dear to these United States.
Actually, Ashcroft was a right-wing asshole, with nothing better to do then go after sick people smoking weed (*gasp*, the horror!) but even he had misgivings about the direction this administration is taking civil rights and law enforcement.
I'd take Ashcroft back over Gonzales in a heartbeat.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
For starters, W. will try to put one person forward, the dems will nix them, and W. will appoint in the middle of the next vacation of congress. This person will simply replace gonzales and will ensure that no real investigation occurs until the end of W. time. The dems need to go after after W. AND obtained convictions, then it would make future presidents about doing such actions. But congress, and the dems in particular, have shown that they will allow it to drop. Nixon and reagan were allowed free walks due to the succeeding presidents being republicans. But the next president will almost certainly be a dem. If so, they need to not pardon and allow justice to prevail. Otherwise, we will see that each republican will continue to screw US at will.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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
He's just one disaster in a string of disasters. It's not going to get any better either because basically what people have elected into office is a huge disaster.
Until there are term limits on every office, real congressional districts instead of roarshark tests, and a voting populace with a brain you're not going to see much different.
We've done too good of a job polarizing the two parties. everything they do is boiled down to one issue for that voting block and that is what makes the call. If you're against abortion, you'll vote republican no matter what because the Denmocrats want to open Joe's Abortion Clinic - you rape em we scrape em - on every corner.
If you're gay, well, you're fucked because neither party will support you 100%. However the democrats will at least wave your direction when you walk by but then turn around and tell the other folks you're just being nice to them because you feel sorry for them.
If you like guns, you'll vote republican because no matter what they say the Democrats will take away your gun the first chance they get, don't know how to hunt, or many other problems.
It doesn't matter that the candidate is a closeted gay, child molester, or anything else long as he votes for / against whatever one issue you let decide.
And I don't think this is a new phenomenon, they've just gotten better at it. No one wants to compromise anymore. It's my way or the highway seems to be the prevailing wind. You see that attitude everywhere from open source vs. closed source to civil unions vs. marriages. We wouldn't know what to do with someone who actually tried to work for a solution instead of standing up top going my way or the highway. The one campaign statement that to this day that infuriates me to know end is that over and over Bush said he was a uniter, not a divider. Post 9/11 he is the perfect example of a divisive president. The entire world was ready to invade Afghanistan and destroy anything that looked at you crosseyed after 9/11 and then next thing you know forget Afghanistan and the real issue, let's go to Iraq.
I'm not saying Saddam Hussein was some feel good hippie that just got in the way, he killed a good chunk of people and is up there with some of the bigger bad guys in the past. However the path we took really screwed us, but we can't bail out now or our leaving will kill more people than Saddam did in the first place. It's a culture battle at this point and we're too stupid to realize that. Democracy isn't for everyone, and you can't force it on them any more than you can anything else.
I've gotten to the point where I don't know what we can do. the Democratic party currently isn't offering anything worth looking at as far as the 'front runner' is. By the time my state's primary comes around the decision will already be made for me as to who the candidate is because of our fucked up system of nomination. I truly believe that the primary should be one day, nationwide, in February before the election. It's an IRV ballot where you rank your choices, winner take all. the fact that I believe it is after 'super tuesday' nothing can change the outcome.
It's not like IA, NH, and SC are really representative of the US Population either. Iowa gives whitebread a new meaning, as does NH. SC starts to represent the mix of ethnicity that makes this nation so great, but the real melting pot states aren't until later and receive less focus than any other state.
My $0.02 of ranting.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
That's what Karl Rove and Gonzales are trying to be for Bush and Cheney. I wish to god there was someone in the Democratic party with the balls to bring Rove, Gonzales, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and all the gang to justice. Letting these guys resign and skate away to enjoy the spoils of their crimes is just as deadly to our democracy as the crimes themselves, because our system of checks & balances and faith in the rule of law remain compromised. Impeach, try, and convict. That's the only way to begin to untangle the disaster they've visited on us and the world.
To those who call themselves Republicans and resist this idea, just imagine Hillary Clinton as president with all the powers Bush and Cheney have arrogated to themselves. It should give you screaming nightmares, because it sure does me.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
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.
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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>installed people who are not qualified to do the job
What's really fun/annoying about this is the win/win nature of it for the ones who did it.
They've got their cronies in all of these positions and are tilting the agencies agendas in "loyalist directions" besides. Clearly a WIN.
On the other hand, if those agencies are called upon to fulfill their primary missions, as understood by the rest of the nation...
Those filling the positions are not fully competent to do so, and the agency falls down on its job. How is this a WIN? Simple, the folks selecting the appointees also like to say that they're in favor of smaller government, and that anything that can be privatized, should be. If the agency fails in it's job, it's clear evidence that government is incapable, therefore it should be privatized. Of course you're supposed to ignore the fact that their appointees caused the failure in the first place. It becomes a WIN.
What's truly sad here is the decimation of institutional memory. Some of that may be bad, but not all, and at the very least if the institutional memory is gone, you can't learn from it to improve. The top tier has always been political, but what's happened this time is that the second and third tiers have resigned because they couldn't stomach what the top tier was doing. There's the real problem, the core agency competence has left.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
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
You are doing it all wrong. You should vote. You should just vote for a third party. The reason people are afraid to vote for a third party candidate is that they have been convinced that they are "throwing away their vote". If you are actually advocating literally throwing away your vote, you can double the effectiveness by voting third party. There is little to no chance that the third party candidate will win, so it doesn't matter what the candidate stands for. Besides, they are unlikely to be a bigger problem than either of the two major candidates.
If you think that 20% voter turn out will get the governments attention, just imagine what a 70% turnout would do to them with 30% of the votes going to third party candidates! So, don't encourage your family and friends not to vote at all. Don't try to convince them that they should think a third party will get elected. Just explain that if they are going to withhold/throw away their votes, withhold them from the possible winners by putting them on a third party.
If not voting is supposed to be the death by a thousand cuts, voting for a third party is the salt you rub into the wounds.