Specter Puts On The Kneepads Again

by Steve

The Washington Post runs a Page One today wherein they report that there have been doubts about Alberto Gonzales’s truthfulness for over a decade, stretching all the way back to the days when he was Bush’s attorney in the Governor’s Office. How convenient for the Post to finally do some reporting now and tell us that the man has either been inept or a liar for his entire public life. The Post would have been responsible and doing its job if it had the guts to run this story before Alberto’s confirmation vote back in 2005, but alas the Post didn’t.

As for that 60-36 confirmation vote back in February 2005, there were six (6) Democrats who voted to confirm Gonzales. They were:

Mary Landrieu
Joe Lieberman
Bill Nelson
Ben Nelson
Mark Pryor
Ken Salazar

We know that Lieberman would support Gonzales to the end, no matter what. But I wonder how the rest of them feel now, and if any of them have come out in favor of impeaching Gonzales, like the NYT did over the weekend should Justice reject a Special Prosecutor? Hopefully they know that impeachment is a constitutionally-allowed alternative, and have better staff than Democratic representative Ellen Tauscher of California, who apparently told a constituent by mail that impeachment wasn’t allowed with Gonzales.

The sad development in this story is the willingness of most of the Senate GOP, including Arlen Specter, to allow a serial liar like Gonzales to occupy the chief law enforcement position in the land. Keep in mind that Specter is willing to allow Gonzales to stay in office if he simply admits he "misspoke" once again in his most recent testimony, which confirms that Specter feels that Gonzales' previous lies are acceptable. Yet many of these same GOP senators spent the 1990’s bellowing about integrity and demanding Janet Reno resign for resisting calls for independent counsels to investigate the latest right wing fishing expedition, when there was no indication of lying or illegality at the outset. Here, a documented record shows Gonzales has routinely lied to Congress and the American people, and yet Trent Lott, Mitch McConnell, and Specter are against even a congressional perjury investigation.

As I have said before, the GOP only screams about the “rule of law” when there's a chance to screw Democrats and immigrants.