I’m thinking that the Dems have made the smart decision to not turn up the heat on Gonzales because they’ve wanted the debate and news coverage to be on the Iraq war.
I also predict Gonzales will probably resign right around the dead news time of Memorial Day weekend.
Two words worry me badly:
Recess Appointment
Source: World Bank - Wikipedia
Then again, considering Bush’s current track record with his nominations, he might be better off breaking tradition and go with a foreigner.
Impeach Gonzales? Why would the Dems do that? They’re content to let the administration slowly bleed to death in the shark infested waters of public opinion while simultaneously attempting to catch the GOP in the morasse. There are also practical considerations, like the fact they don’t have the votes to do it (that’s what happens when you vote in so many ‘centrists’). Then again, that hasn’t stopped them with all these fantasy Iraq withdrawl bills either.
Impeaching Gonzales right now would be like unplugging the slot machine while it’s still paying out. He would resign the minute any serious proceedings began, and the press would play it as the end of the scandal. With new and increasingly ridiculous stories coming every week, and plenty of key players yet to testify, bringing this thing to a close would be a real shame.
Exactly. The real question here is not why the Dems aren’t trying to oust him, but why Bush hasn’t yet thrown him over the side (or why Gonzo hasn’t recognized the damage he’s doing and jumped himself). One explanation is that they just plain don’t like being told what to do, and they think they have a shot at running out the clock, with no nefarious motives beyond stupidity and arrogance. Another explanation is that they’re elbow deep in some truly grotesque shit, the exposure of which would be a scalpel across the throat and an arterial gush compared to the slow hemorrhage they’re currently trying to endure. Either way, the Dems win. No sense trundling their artillery up to the front line while the Bushies are busily engaged in wrapping their own lips around the barrel of a shotgun.
You’ll want to keep a couple of extra shells handy, because these guys could miss.
Article on calls for AGAG’s impeachment.
Website (w/ cool video) where you can sign an impeachment petition.
According to Kos, it now appears that when Gonzalez appointed Tim Griffin as a USA, he backdated the appointment (from 12/18/06 to 12/15/06).
Would that be a crime?
Look, in a normal presidency it would be essentially impossible to impeach a cabinet officer. The second it appeared impeachment was likely, that cabinet officer would resign. There’s really very little precedent for impeaching a cabinet officer, the way things are usually done is simply to hold hearings like these and as embarrassing story after embarrassing story comes out the official will be forced to resign to get them to stop.
However, in this case my guess is that Bush is afraid that if Gonzales resigns, it would be impossible to get the senate to confirm another of his buddies for the post. And the thought of some independent person who isn’t personally loyal to Bush as attorney general keeps him awake at nights. It cannot be allowed to happen. And so the Gonzales story gets bigger and bigger.
Good points, Lemur, but a recess appointment, for which this president is notorious, would negate this fear.
Out of curiosity, if Bush were to make a recess appointment over the Memorial Day weekend, how long would that person be able to serve before Bush would be required to nominate someone through the normal process? My guess is that Bush could drag it out until next fall, when it would be moot. Even if there were some kind of deadline, he could wait until another recess, have his current recess appointment resign, and make another recess appointment.
Also, wasn’t there something in the Patriot Act that allowed Bush to circumvent the confirmation process in some cases? Is that provision still in effect, and would that apply to the AG?
December, 2008. The Constitution says that recess appointments expire at the end of the Senate’s next session, and since this is an intrasession appointment, the Senate’s next session will expire in December of 2008. (The Senate’s current session expires in December of 2007.)
Politics1 reports that Harry Reid will, "“Reid will call the Senate into session [during the summer recess] just long enough to force the Prez to send his nominees who need confirmation to the chamber’” Hopefully, this will eliminate the recess appointment idea.
Unfortunately, that’s no guarantee. Traditionally, only recesses of 10 days or longer have been used to push through recess appointments. Reid is planning to call the Senate into session every 10 days during this recess so that Bush can’t get around the 10-day tradition. But it’s not a LAW that the recess has to be longer than 10 days, just tradition. And we know how revered tradition is to this administration when it can run roughshod over it for its own gain…
Doesn’t this kind of malfeasance make Gonzales’ boss impeachable as well? Not that I think it could succeed; still AFAIK this is the first thng to happen on Bush’s watch that truly is impeachable. All the rest of it, IMHO, is just bad policy decisions made in good faith. You can’t be impeached for that.
You’re not really going to get very far trying to impeach Bush based on a wrongdoing of Gonzales that Bush apparently had nothing to do with. Even with Nixon, they had the tapes of his involvement with the coverup. We can’t even get the White House liaison to admit that she’s spoken to anyone in the White House with this bunch…
What law has been broken?
Drafting the Justice Department into the Administration’s service for partisan political purposes should be illegal, but AFAIK it is not.
Dude, if we can’t impeach Bush over the run up to the Iraq war by itself then we may as well forget about the concept of impeachment. Ditto the fact that every warantless wiretap in violation of FISA is a felony.
It doesn’t matter. A law doesn’t have to be broken in order to impeach. One of the charges against Andrew Johnson was that he:
and another, that he