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January 25, 2005

The Senate should reject Gonzales as AG

The Senate will soon be debating on whether or not to confirm Alberto Gonzales as the next Attorney General of the United States. They must reject his confirmation and tell President Bush that Gonzales is unacceptable as this nation's top law enforcement officer.

As noted by The Daily Kos:

In January 2002, Gonzales advised the President that the United States Constitution does not apply to his actions as Commander in Chief, and thus the President could declare the Geneva Conventions inoperative. Gonzales's endorsement of the August 2002 Bybee/Yoo Memorandum approved a definition of torture so vague and evasive as to declare it nonexistent. Most shockingly, he has embraced the unacceptable view that the President has the power to ignore the Constitution, laws duly enacted by Congress and International treaties duly ratified by the United States. He has called the Geneva Conventions "quaint."

In addition, there have long been questions about the effectiveness of his counsel during George Bush's term as Governor of Texas in regards to memos he authored about convicts seeking clemency from the death penalty. Many of these memos were little more than simple overviews of the case and left out important factors that the Governor should have been allowed to consider in making his decision on whether an execution should commence or not. As the Washington Post recently noted:

Several other attorneys for convicts executed in Texas during Bush's tenure -- who recently reviewed the memos for the first time at the request of The Washington Post -- complained that Gonzales provided unfair or incomplete summaries of evidence and mitigating circumstances. They said the missing information might have influenced Bush's decisions had he been aware of it.

During Bush's term as Governor, he granted only one request for clemency and one 30-day reprieve. All other requests were denied. In the case of the one clemency, Gonzales' memo had failed to mention that an investigation had been done by the Texas Attorney General's office in 1986 and had concluded that the prisoner not only had not commited the murder he was to be executed for, but that he had also lied in confessing to several other murders, ostensibly in order to create confusion about the murders he actually DID commit. The clemency was only granted after the prisoner's attorney has taken the situation public during his unsuccessful campaign to become the state Attorney General.

In the last week, questions have also arisen about whether Gonzales was truthful with the Senate committe in his written account of how he represented then-Governor Bush when he was called for Jury Duty. Newsweek summarizes Gonzales' response:

Asked by Sen. Patrick Leahy to describe "in detail" the only court appearance he ever made on behalf of Bush, Gonzales—who was then chief counsel to the Texas governor—wrote that he had accompanied Bush the day he went to court "prepared to serve on a jury." While there, Gonzales wrote, he "observed" the defense lawyer make a motion to strike Bush from the jury panel "to which the prosecutor did not object." Asked by the judge whether he had "any views on this," Gonzales recalled, he said he did not.

The magazine then goes on to note that while this "tracks with the official court transcript", according to the judge, the defense attorney and the prosecutor, it is not the whole story. In separate interviews, each of them noted that Gonzales requested an "off-the-record" meeting in the judge's chambers where he requested that Bush - who had been making a lot of noise about how prepared and ready he was to serve on a jury if need be - be excused from Jury Duty as he might some day have to review the case for a possible pardon. While the judge felt that quite unlikely, since the case was a DUI, he went ahead and agreed, and when the defense attorney then requested that Bush be excused during the selection process, he was.

This may not sound like a serious matter, but, in fact, it is. First, by getting out of Jury Duty on the DUI case, Bush was able to avoid revealing his own DUI conviction when he was younger, which did not then come out until near the end of the 2000 election season. In addition, the written statement is considered to be part of Gonzales' official, sworn testimony to the Senate and if it is not truthful, he is open to charges of perjury.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has filed a complaint with the Texas Bar Association regarding this issue. They claim:

CREW's complaint alleges that by misstating the facts surrounding the conversation in the judge's chambers Gonzales may have violated 18 U.S.C. §1001, which makes it a federal crime to make false statements to a congressional committee. The complaint further alleges that Mr. Gonzales has violated two Texas Rules of Disciplinary Procedure: 8.04(a)(2) which prohibits lawyers from committing crimes that reflect adversely on their honesty or trustworthiness; and 8.04(a)(3) which prohibits lawyers from engaging in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.

If it is found that he is in violation of these Rules of Disciplinary Procedure, it is possible that he could be disbarred, which should preclude him from serving as Attorney General. Of course, if the charges are true, then given that the Republicans felt it was necessary to impeach President Clinton for lying under oath, it would be rather hypocritical of them to turn around and confirm as Attorney General a man who also lied under oath.

Any one of these issue should be sufficient to rule Alberto Gonzales out as Attorney General. Taken together, it is amazing to me that anyone is even remotely serious about confirming him.

His view that the President, as Commander-in-Cheif, is neither bound by our laws or our treaties is dangerous in the extreme. His slipshod work and incomplete information to then-Governor Bush when advising him on whether or not to take a person's life is intollerable. And if, as it appears, he did commit perjury on the stand, it is inexcusible.

Gonzales must not be confirmed. This country deserves better.

Update: A copy of this post has been send to Kansas Senators Brownback and Roberts.

Posted by thorswitch at January 25, 2005 11:58 PM

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