This is in GD because it is not a Pitting, just genuine curiosity about something I remembered minty green saying in a past thread about then AG-nominee Alberto Gonzales, and it’s at least somewhat likely that the discussion could be beyond the scope of IMHO or MPSIMS.
In this thread, from June 2004, minty green notes:
Truthfully, I’m not even sure I’ve seen minty posting for a while, so I don’t know if he’s still here at all. But if you are here, minty, can you comment on this and, given recent events and testimony before Congress, tell us if Gonzales’s actions in service to this administration have surprised you, given the experience and knowledge you cited in that thread?
Not “the worst”, but “a worse”. Thread title limitations kept it from being “a worse AG than John Ashcroft”. I do think that AGAG’s recent testimony before Congress has demonstrated a contempt for the Constitution that he and his boss both swore to defend and uphold, more so than any of Ashcroft’s actions ever did. Ashcroft tended toward the silly stupid (like covering Justice’s boob). Gonzalez started with pooh-poohing the Geneva Conventions and torture and had nowhere to go but down from there.
minty stated in another thread on the subject around the same time that the memo in which the Geneva Conventions were described as “quaint” was written for Gonzalez, not by him, implying that it wasn’t how he really felt on the subject but rather something that a staffer injected. It’s my opinion that AGAG has amply verified that the general tone of the memo was his through his testimony.
*Testimony may be the wrong term, as I don’t believe anyone’s been questioned under oath yet. Not sure what the correct technical legal term would be for unsworn interrogation.
Okay. I don’t see anything to choose, really. Gonzalez may be more of a principle-free toady, Ashcroft more inclined to put religious zealotry above the Constitution, but this thread is like debating if smallpox or bubonic plague was the worse disease.
If there was a follow-up explanation, it wasn’t omitted from my OP intentionally. I just missed it when I was mining the search function for the posted quote.
You might have quoted my explanation in posts 104 & 105 of that thread:
Still sounds mostly right to me, particularly the “deal with the devil” bit. However, I completely retract the “fundamentally decent person” comment. The depths of unabashed evil that the Bush Admin has embraced, with Gonzalez’s rubber-stamp blessing, makes that comment fully inoperative.
Gonzales is, above all else, Bush’s legal water-carrier. As such, he has given pseudo-legal cover to every single thing that Bush has wanted to do. Ashcroft did the exact same thing, if you recall. The difference is that Gonzalez is not simultaneously pursuing a fundamentalist nutcase agenda of his own. Apart from the bullshit associated with the alleged “war on terror” and the Rovian ideological purges, the DOJ has functioned relatively well under Gonzalez’s tenure, with far fewer distracting crusades on fundie/wingnut pet causes.
Didn’t even know we have private messages, much less how to find them. I was just passing through on the way to see if there was a new BSG thread in Cafe Society.
Well, now you’ve got them turned off, so I can’t send you one to tell you that you are now also able to EDIT your posts within 5 min. of making the post.
I just hate his smirk as he explains to yet another congressman nor senator that he is not telling them a damn thing. His we are above you and you can not question us attitude ,pisses me off. I am far from being able to be reasonable about him. He has a staff spending thousands of man hours looking for loopholes to justify his squishing of any boundaries which fairness and precedence may have set. He has no sense of shame .
“He is an advocate for his client, and that is something he enjoys doing.”
“Gonzales is, above all else, Bush’s legal water-carrier. As such, he has given pseudo-legal cover to every single thing that Bush has wanted to do.”
I don’t see the job of Attorney General of the US as the President’s legal lap dog. The Attorney General represents the United States and the US Constitution, not some fantatical PResident with delusions about the extent of his power. In that role, Gonzalez has been atrocious. His stance on torture and the NSA program especially prove to me he is unconcerned with the actual Constitution and law, and more concerned with being Bush’s lickspittle.
