Categories

open all | close all

Sponsored By:

Republican Attorney General Gonzalez Is A Dead Man Testifying

Read more articles on Politics and Law and Legal Issues.

April 16, 2007

Posted by neillevine

About This Editor: I am a writer. Have been writing for other sites, but expect to do most of my future work HERE! My expertise extends from the esoteric such as burning hydrogen to the unpredictability of the stock market and my writing makes me a jack of all trades and exasperated master of none. I have had some influence over national wildfire and water policy and there are hints of a change in energy policy, BUT as Samuel Goldwyn once said, "A verbal promise is not worth the paper it is written on."

         

The highest profile investigation in this country at the current moment is the Democratic Congressional inquiry into the replacement of eight U.S. attorneys for what appears to be political reasons by the current White House.

Since the Department of Justice is part of the Administration, the good men and women who get these high profile jobs are considered political appointees, serving at the pleasure of the President. There was unhappiness in Republican circles with some aspects of their job performance and somebody decided to replace some of them to better reflect the President’s policies, that is, Republican policies. The Democrats being of a different persuasion find this unacceptable and, since they won the recent election, are using their majority to investigate. Since the replacement of political appointees is a regularly recurring happening in Washington, the important question to ask is why are the Democrats so intent on this investigation.

Basically, it boils down to partisan politics. They are Democrats. They are investigating the Republicans. Translated into one big serving of political partisanship. Their demographics, translated to mean, groups of people of a certain age or ethnic background or economic level, are different from those of that other party and they want to emphasize their differences in this fashion. It should be emphasized that settled law and elective demographics are two entirely different things.

So Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez is going to walk the plank because replacing U.S. Attorneys to better reflect the President and his party’s policies is not acceptable to the Democrats. Neither he nor his aides are going to be able to testify to the Congress about what they did since the members of the Majority Party are not going to like what he says.

What I find ironic and most cynical is that Mr. Gonzalez’ immediate predecessor, one John Ashcroft, former Republican Senator from Missouri, who lost his last election to a dead man, the late Governor of Missouri Mel Carnahan, was not investigated for what was widely known he was, a peculiarly prejudiced man. When the Senate race was about inclusion and you had Ashcroft’s record, despite the advantage of being an incumbent and the lack of an active opponent (remember, dead men tell no tales), Ashcroft lost for good reason and no one in the Senate raised an eyebrow.

But now we have the Democrats focusing on the importance of the Attorney General and, with past practice as a guideline, seeking to give his replacement new, improved marching orders in line with whatever demographics they currently find important.

The bottom line is how cynical can this get? I find the entire matter to be utterly stretching incredibility even though, sad to say, it is true.