Friday, April 20, 2007

From yesterday's LA Times editorial, why Gonzales must go:
Today's hearing could be illuminating about what Gonzales knew and when he forgot it. But it can't "make or break" the attorney general because his credibility is already broken, and his fate is a question of politics, not law.

....Gonzales will couple unambiguous denials of any personal wrongdoing with hedged defenses of what was done in his name. For example, he says in his prepared opening statement that "based upon the record as I know it, it is unfair and unfounded for anyone to conclude that any U.S. attorney was removed for an improper reason." That's just the sort of careful language one would expect from an attorney general who subcontracted his decision-making to a meddlesome White House at one end of the process and a hatchet-man chief of staff at the other.

Congress should continue to untangle the sequence of events that led to these firings, and Gonzales' testimony might prove helpful. But nothing will rehabilitate his reputation as the under-qualified attorney general who was AWOL when a harebrained White House scheme to sack all 93 U.S. attorneys morphed into a narrower hit on targets that included two prosecutors whose decisions had embarrassed the Republican Party.
Hmm, Gonzales' "credibility is already broken" -- likewise applies to his boss GW. As Joan Vennochi asked yesterday, "Can the public ever get a straight answer from anyone in the Bush administration? The answer appears to be no." It's what they do.

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