Alberto Gonzales cannot remain in office as attorney general. He also cannot leave the office of attorney general. The scandals continually mounting, both from his current tenure, and his tenure as White House counsel, continue to mount. With James Comey's incredible testimony yesterday, including testimony that he as acting A.G., then Attorney General John Ashcroft, and at least two other officials threatened to resign over the illegal NSA warrantless wiretapping scheme -- new questions are being asked by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee about whether Gonzales told the truth when he testified that there had been no such serious concerns about warrantless wiretapping by top officials at Justice. Not to mention the fact that Gonzales killed a probe into that very subject. (In the wake of Comey's testimony, Chuck Hagel has now joined the congressional chorus calling for Gonzales' ouster.)
But George W. Bush -- curiously, and in contradiction to predictions I and others have made -- has not begun the process of pushing Gonzales out. Why?
Writing in The Weekly Standard, Tod Lindberg, a Fellow at the Hoover Institution, says Gonzales's departure would be a "catastrophic defeat" for the administration. How so?
Democrats with good memories, such as former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, who served on the House Judiciary Committee when it voted to impeach Richard Nixon in 1974, recall with precision the sequence of events that led to the resignation of the 37th president of the United States.
In brief: Then-Attorney General Richard Kleindienst resigns, giving way to Eliot Richardson, confirmed by a steely-eyed, Democrat-controlled Judiciary Committee, under the condition that he appoint a special prosecutor to look into Nixon administration wrongdoings. Enter Archibald Cox, and the rest is ... well, you know.
[Holtzman] is hardly alone among Democrats in slavering over the prospect of a new "independent counsel"-style investigation of the Bush administration -- one that would succeed where Patrick Fitzgerald failed by finding and charging a conspiracy and coverup all the way to the top,, writes Lindberg.
Oh, and "breaking news": the DOJ has released a whopping TWO Karl Rove emails (to him, not from him) related to the firings of the Gonzales Eight.
More on Rovegate from TPMM, including a "stern letter from Pat Leahy."
<%
dim done
done = request.form("done")
if done = "" then
done = "No"
%>
Tell a friend
<%
Else
if request.form("done") = "Yes" then
'sets variables
dim email, sendmail
email = request.form("email")
Set sendmail = Server.CreateObject("CDONTS.NewMail")
'put the webmaster address here
sendmail.From = "webmaster@aspbasics.com"
'The mail is sent to the address entered in the previous page.
sendmail.To = email
'Enter the subject of your mail here
sendmail.Subject = "Check out this website"
'send a specific page or send a site url
dim url
'url = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
url = "http://www.aspbasics.net"
'This is the content of the message.
sendmail.Body = "Site recommendation from a friend!" & _
vbCrlf & vbCrlf & "A friend has sent you this email and thought you would should check out this site." & _
vbCrlf & url & vbCrlf
'this sets mail priority.... 0=low 1=normal 2=high
sendmail.Importance = 1
sendmail.Send 'Send the email!
response.redirect Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
'Response.write ("Sent to ") & email
End if
End if
%>
"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
