I’m listening to the stream on an NPR affiliate .
davidm
April 19, 2007, 3:04pm
302
Good. I’m glad someone is covering it. That still doesn’t excuse the TV networks.
If for no other reason, I think our AG needs to be tossed out because of his memory problems. I’m surprised he even remembers his own name.
(Based on the number of times he’s said “I don’t recall”, or “I don’t remember” in this testimony - so far.)
Do you really expect anything more from that lying weasel?
Apparently, two of the US Attorneys may have been fired because they were “soft on porn” :
Two of the fired U.S. attorneys, Dan Bogden of Nevada and Paul Charlton of Arizona, were pressured by a top Justice Department official last fall to commit resources to adult obscenity cases, even though both of their offices faced serious shortages of manpower. Each of them warned top officials that pursuing the obscenity cases would force them to pull prosecutors away from other significant criminal investigations. In Nevada, ongoing cases included gang violence and racketeering, corporate healthcare fraud, and the prosecution of a Republican official on corruption charges. In Arizona, they included multiple investigations of child exploitation, including “traveler” cases in which pedophiles arrive from elsewhere to meet children they’ve targeted online.
The U.S. attorneys’ doubts about prioritizing obscenity cases drew the ire of Brent Ward, the director of the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force in Washington, who went on to tell top Justice Department officials that the two were insubordinate over the issue. But the obscenity case that Ward pressured Bogden to pursue was “woefully deficient” according to a former senior law enforcement official who spoke to Salon last month. And Charlton’s office was in fact on the leading edge of adult obscenity prosecutions, including a recent case aimed at stopping pornography distributed via SPAM e-mail.
According to Bogden, his office was short eight of its allotted 45 criminal prosecutors when Ward paid a visit last September to present the porn case he wanted handled in Nevada…
Adult obscenity prosecutions are notoriously difficult to win, since prosecutors must show that materials involving and used by consenting adults have violated local “community standards.” In the post-9/11 era, law enforcement experts have questioned whether a focus on federal obscenity cases makes sense, given the massive resources diverted to counterterrorism and the demands of other criminal priorities like gun violence, identity theft and the proliferation via the Internet of sex crimes against children.
“With everything else going on, should they really have FBI agents and prosecutors devoted to sitting around watching dirty movies?” said a senior law enforcement official who attended a national conference on adult obscenity orchestrated by the Gonzales Justice Department in October 2006. “We’re not the policymakers,” he said. “But I guarantee you won’t find any office in any major metropolitan area that would seriously consider this a priority.”
But Gonzales apparently considered it one. After taking the helm of the Justice Department he declared the prosecution of adult obscenity a top priority, launching a new task force devoted to it in May 2005. His renewed war on porn, an agenda that had gathered dust ever since the publication of the obscenely large Meese Report in 1986, was seen by some political observers as a sop to right-wing Republicans who suspected Gonzales wasn’t authentically conservative on social issues. His answer to those doubts was a task force that would pack the punch of four full-time attorneys, a postal inspector, an IRS agent and computer and forensics experts in the Justice Department, and would coordinate with a new Adult Obscenity Squad at the FBI, 10 agents strong.
:sniff: At least somebody’s thinking of the children.
Can someone please fill me in on the purpose of the questions of Senator Hatch? He might as well be asking whether or not Gonzales enjoys the taste of Coca-Cola Zero.
I’m glad to see that not all of the Senators are taking the same route as Hatch. That is, asking softball, non-relevant questions.
If there was anyone who’d look on the bright side of AG’s testimony, it would be the National Review .
They don’t:
It has been a disastrous morning for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. The major problem with his testimony is that Gonzales maintains, in essence, that he doesn’t know why he fired at least some of the eight dismissed U.S. attorneys. When, under questioning by Republican Sen. Sam Brownback, Gonzales listed the reasons for each firing, it was clear that in a number of cases, he had reconstructed the reason for the dismissal after the fact. He didn’t know why he fired them at the time, other than the action was recommended by senior Justice Department staff.
Later, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham returned to the subject. “Mr. Attorney General, most of this is a stretch,” Graham told Gonzales. “I think most of them [the U.S. attorneys] had personality disagreements with the White House, and you made up reasons to fire them.” Gonzales disagreed but had nothing to support his position. Throughout the morning, Gonzales insisted that he is the man in charge of the Justice Department, and accepted responsibility for the firings, but his testimony suggests he had little idea what was going on.
This is the guy President Bush wanted on the Supreme Court.
I think that pretty much sums up the competence of this President.
jayjay
April 19, 2007, 7:16pm
309
I think it’s time for some career Justice to start talking. There have to be HERDS of people in the DoJ who’ve worked their way up for years in the civil service who are completely disgusted by the way things have gone in the last six years. They need to talk to Congress, soon.
Now is it just me or is AG getting his boss in trouble right about now with all this talk about RNC emails and presidential records?
More bad news for AG (from Salon):
Saying that Alberto Gonzales handled last year’s prosecutor purge in a “very incompetent manner,” GOP Sen. Tom Coburn has just added his voice to those calling for the attorney general to resign.
As we noted earlier, Gonzales said today that there is “nothing improper” in firing a U.S. attorney for “poor management, policy differences or questionable judgment, or simply to have another qualified individual serve.” Coburn asked Gonzales whether the same standard shouldn’t be applied to him.
The attorney general said it was “fair question,” but he refused to answer it directly. Coburn did it for him. “It is my considered opinion,” he told Gonzales, “that the exact same standards should be applied to you.”
Gonzales acknowledged making “mistakes” in his handling of the firings but said he’s done a good job of managing the Justice Department overall. Coburn wasn’t impressed. “I believe there are consequences to mistakes,” he told Gonzales, then added: “I believe you ought to suffer the consequences that the others have suffered.”
Double Ouch
El Tostado, “He that is toast”
Caught some of it on the radio, including Senator Coburn’s evisceration, and was struck by how desperately Gonzales kept flailing back to a few canned lines no matter what he was being asked, as if somehow repeating ad nauseam such weaselisms as “I understand mistakes were made” would somehow make the bad things go away.
I think he should be taken out and severely flogged for incessant obfuscatory repetition of “Senator, the American people have to understand that…”
Squink
April 19, 2007, 8:11pm
314
Even toast may serve at the pleasure of the president. From today’s WH presser:
Q So is it fair to say that no matter what the testimony, no matter what the back-and-forth, that the President plans to stick with Attorney General Gonzales?
MS. PERINO: I think – yes. I think the President has full confidence in the Attorney General and whenever that changes for any public servant, we’ll let you know, and I see no indication of that.
Bush is clearly staying the course in his plan to make Justice a wholly owned subsidiary of the Permanent Republican Majority.
You don’t make a career in the DoJ by dabbling in politics. I susepect more of the career types are keeping their heads down and hoping this blows over quick. Maybe they can get someone who’s about to retire, or has a solid job offer somewhere else…
jayjay
April 19, 2007, 9:25pm
316
The thing is that whistleblowing wouldn’t be dabbling in politics, it would be attempting to end the dabbling in politics. The problem for career Justice is that yea, the tar falleth on the just and the unjust. The whole department is being tarnished by this thing. Who was involved? Why didn’t anyone say anything? How many “sleepers” are going to still be installed when the next (hopefully Democratic) president comes into office? Can the justice system be trusted at all now?
Someone (multiple someones, actually) has to come forward and tell truth if the DoJ isn’t to be considered a partisan joke a generation from now.
Squink
April 19, 2007, 11:12pm
317
President Bush Pleased with Attorney General’s Testimony
President Bush was pleased with the Attorney General’s testimony today. After hours of testimony in which he answered all of the Senators’ questions and provided thousands of pages of documents, he again showed that nothing improper occurred. He admitted the matter could have been handled much better, and he apologized for the disruption to the lives of the U.S. Attorneys involved, as well as for the lack of clarity in his initial responses.
The Attorney General has the full confidence of the President, and he appreciates the work he is doing at the Department of Justice to help keep our citizens safe from terrorists, our children safe from predators, our government safe from corruption, and our streets free from gang violence.
This’ll probably all just die down now, what with all the senator’s questions being answered and all. Maybe one last gasp, Max.
Cool.
I’m glad to know that I’m safe from terrorists, my daughter is safe from predators, there is no more government corruption, and my street is safe from gang violence.
He’s the best AG, ever!
-Joe
Do I detect a note of sarcasm?
Nay! Never! Forsooth!
I have never been killed by a terrorist.
My daugther is unpredator’d.
The government is completely corruption free.
I have yet to be sodomized on my street by a roving gang.
Sounds to me like he’s been 100% successful.
-Joe