Alberto Gonzales pens the most intellectually insulting editorial in the history of the English language. Perhaps the second most annoying thing about the Bush administration (after their unquenchable lust for human blood) is their refusal to fire people promptly for being assholes. Read it and then express your outrage. I cannot believe this guy is planning on testifying before Congress on Tuesday as a current employee of the U.S. Government, and that he expects his perjury and obstruction of justice will somehow save his job.
This is like G. Gordon Liddy testifying before the Watergate committees and expecting to keep his job as a plumber…on the public payroll. It’s impossible to think of a greater insult that could possibly be perpetrated on the American public.
Resign already, before we have to put you in chains.
Apparently, Gonzales’ perjury prep sessions haven’t been going well. I’m not sure if that’s true or is a way to lower expectations of what I’m sure will be a faulty memory.
Regardless, there’s got to be some way to get rid of him.
So asking your own office staff to assure the American people “of what I believe” isn’t a conflict of interest? Attorney General Gonzales, do the right thing and resign before your hypocrisy catches up with you.
Money talks, bullshit walks.
I’m, uh, a proper citizen. What I do is proper–Kenneth Dalhberg
I know that I did not – and would not – ask for the resignation of any U.S. attorney for an improper reason.
–Alberto Gonzales
Just saying..
Unless he is confronted by evidence at the hearing with his fingerprints on it, the hearing will consist of overwhelming circumstantial evidence that very “improper” things happened and Gonzales repeating either “I don’t recall,” or “I didn’t do it.” No one will believe that ultimate blame resides down the chain with McNulty, Sampson, or Goodling. Rather, Gonzales’ defense will shine a spotlight up the chain to….ROVE!
Yet more proof that consistency is not necessarily a virtue.
Clearly Gonzo has decided that while no human being involved in politics can ever possibly tell the truth 100% of the time, he’s decided that lying 100% of the time is easy.
Ergo, Zandar’s Theory Of Modern Government: Your percentage chance of success in the Bush Administration is directly related to the percentage of the time that you lie.
Also, the Josh Marshall Corollary: The percentage of the time that any Bushie tells the truth increases the risk of getting busted for all the lies exponentially.
Needless to say, Gonzo’s recent decision to go from 90% bullshit in January to asymptotically approaching 100% bullshit with this editorial must be seen as what he feels he has to do in order to save his job.
That’s the scary part.
I know the real strength of America. It lies in our Constitution, our people and our collective unyielding commitment to equal opportunity, equal justice, common decency and fairness.
And that’s why he’s hell-bent on destroying all of the above.
Gag me.
Gag me twice.
At first, I thought that BooMan’s claim of the “most intellectually insulting in the history of the English language” might have been overblown.
Oh, no. This is it. The British Museum in London should be cc-ed.
Translation: The stonewall failed, and it’s my ass
Translation: I went to work, and lied to Congress about what I did when I went to work. Then Sampson, whom I supervised on this personnel matter, told the truth.
I went to Maryland Law, which is considered a respected but hardly top-flight law school. Gonzales went to Harvard Law, which must have been where he got his stones from. And where he learned that habeas corpus is not a Constitutional right. Pity that I did not get a better education.
i think I just figured out your username.
yeah, I am tbrucegodfrey over at … other locations.
Just a note to Booman and other blogosphere folks: A-Gonz didn’t write an editorial; he wrote an op-ed column. Only WP editors can write editorials, which speak (supposedly) for the paper. Everybody else, including WP employees, write columns, signed with their names, if their pieces appear on the edit page.
I’ve seen this mischaracterization in a number of other places, and it always grates a bit, being an edit writer myself.
Granted, the WP’s institutional opinions written by Fred Hiatt are bad enough. But, so far at least, the Bushies aren’t actually speaking for the Post. At least not all the time.
what does op-ed stand for?
Well, according to the folks at Wiki: “An Op-Ed is a piece of writing expressing an opinion. Such items are often found in a full newspaper page, containing such articles by columnists, letters to the editor, and other points, rather than news or facts. It is primarily an American term.” And that’s how we view it at our paper.
Op-Ed doesn’t equal editorial. An editorial, which, as I noted above, is generally (although not always) unsigned and speaks for the paper, not for an individual’s opinion. Or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work. As I noted, since Fred Hiatt’s in the Bush neocon bag for Iraq, it’s not always true, but…
The next sentence?
“The two terms are often used interchangeably.”
Op-ed doesn’t stand for opinion. It stands for ‘opposite editorial’, meaning ‘on the page opposite from the editorial page.’
Which means, roughly, editorials by people other than the editorial board.
In the New York Times these distinguish between editorials and opinion pieces, leading some to think Op-ed means ‘opinion-editorial’. It doesn’t.
Abu wrote an editorial that can classified an either an opinion piece or an opposite-editorial.
If you want to nitpick, at least get the terms straight. And op-ed is merely a subgroup of editorials (as the name suggests).
I’m not picking nits; I’m saying we need to agree to common terms so that we can have a civil and accurate discussion.
Each day I check out the opinion pages of the NY Time, Wash Post, LA Times, Boston Globe, Baltimore Sun, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Philly Inquirer, Chicago Trib, and Chi Sun-Times. On each of them, editorials are clearly marked and kept separate from opinion pieces by others, whether they be letters to the editor or weekly columns, or special columns by people like A-Gonz. Occasionally, there will be a “guest editorial,” but it’s always clearly marked as such to differentiate it from real editorials, which as I’ve noted several times above are the opinions of the newspaper itself, and not any one single person.
The problem arises when editorial page editors like Fred Hiatt write opinion columns as well as editorials. That shouldn’t be allowed for ethical reasons, as far as I’m concerned. He gets his shot several times a day; he doesn’t need another bite at the opinion apple.
The problem with confusing editorials with individual opinions is that is blurs the line between an institutional voice and that of an individual. In recent years, I’ve watched with dismay as editorial pages of major papers like the Post and the Wall Street Journal have become opinion voices that are often separate from the institutional knowledge of the papers in which they appear. How many times have edits by Hiatt been at direct odds with the reporting–sometimes on the same day–that appears in the news pages of the Post? The same with the WSJ. Granted, editorial pages are supposed to be independent, but that is supposed to include the responsibility to accurately reflect what’s actually reported as news in the same publication.
With all these lines blurring, I think we all need to make sure we’re accurately describing who is saying what and for what reason. A-Gonz is not speaking for the Post today, at least I hope he’s not; his piece appears under the “Columns” tag. The pieces listed under “Today’s Editorials” are, however speaking collectively for the Post. It’s an important distinction.
You can write what you want; heck, it’s your blog. I’m just saying there is a significant difference between editorials and other opinion pieces and that it’s fair–sometimes vital–to acknowledge it.
And now back to the DOJ lies and the lying liars who tell them…
Just one criticism of the posting– A big no to-“resign already”. Not before he comes clean. This bloody liar needs to be picked clean of everything that he has been part of! Remember all- this piece of garbage knows a ton.
Ya know how Padilla has been destroyed mentally- That is what should be the final result of the interrorgation that the Senate should put him through.
Now, if that sounds too harsh- just think about all of the dead folks out there that owe their death to Alberto Gonzales!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I do believe however that the “civility” of the Senate will not allow that to happen.
Civility my ass- they don’t have the balls!