As I watched and listened to the Gonzales hearing on C-Span 3, I got to thinking of all the congressional hearings I have watched over the years, starting with the Army-McCarthy hearings in the 50s. I've seen a lot of hearings over the last 50 plus years but never in my life have I seen anything as preposterous and pathetic as yesterday's clown show before the Judiciary Committee.

This is the guy that all the federal pros
ecutors report to? This is the guy that the FBI reports to? This is the guy in charge of protecting the civil rights of Americans?
What does it say of George W. Bush that he put such a man in charge of the Department of Justice? What does it say about George W. Bush that that told the nation that he was "very pleased" with Gonzales' wholly incredible testimony?

Surely, Gonzalez' testimony, more than anything else, has strengthened the suspicion that the firings had everything to do improper partisan abuse of federal prosecutorial power and nothing to do with legitimate management concerns. This was a classic cover up at a very high level. It wasn't Sampson, Battle, and the others at DOJ who determined who made "the list" and who didn't, it was Karl Rove and his minions, including Harriet Miers. The purpose of the replacements was not to remediate problems of the past but to gear up for the next election in key swing states. Why would Rove want one of his own political deputies in the US attorney's office in Little Rock in the period leading up to the next national election? Because he's "very well qualified" as Gonzales testified, or to have the power of a federal grand jury to harass Hillary Clinton?

Gonzales' torment by the senators was so embarrassing that there were times when I almost felt sorry for him. When those feelings started to surface, I reminded myself that this is the guy who routinely blew off clemency appeals when he was the Decider's pardon counsel in Texas and who provided the torture opinion that let Bush and Rumsfeld bring shame upon the nation "under advice of counsel." Berto/Gonzo/Fredo has so much blood on his hands, I'll save my sympathy for his many, many victims. Any honor that attended his name is long gone. Good riddance. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Posted by: P. Bosley Slogthrop | April 20, 2007 07:00 AM

Gonzalez' testimony was so unenlightening that it leaves me with no reasonable doubt that the impetus for these firings originated and was maintained not in the Department of Justice, but in the White House with the Bush-Cheney-Rove axis of evil. The issue was never the administration of justice or management skills, but the preservation of executive power and regaining of legislative power, i.e., the 2008 elections and using the powers of federal prosecutors to further Republican power interests. Recall the DOJ memo about preparing for the political firestorm that would predictably result from the firings. These folks would not be willing to trigger the expected negative fallout from the firings if the only gain were increased managerial efficiencies at local US attorneys’ offices or fine tuning prosecutorial discretion on how to allocate prosecutorial resources. Power is the coin of the realm in politics: gaining it, keeping it or regaining it. Power is what the White House mob was after and Gonzales' role was essentially that of the mob lawyer.