Gonzales Out, Shed no tears.

Alberto Gonzales has resigned, and with this one of the more polarizing figures in the Bush administration leaves the national spotlight. I found it remarkable this morning, as both he and President Bush crowed about his many accomplishments that this is an administration that in the face of overwhelming evidence still believes they are above the fray. In spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, both Bush and his DOJ proxy still believe they owe no explanation whatsoever to the American people.

Forget the firing of US attorneys for a few moments, as that is something that the administration absolutely had the right to do. They were under no obligation to disclose why they did it, it could have been for no reason whatsoever, just a “need for new blood.” There were many, many reasons to dislike Alberto Gonzales and find fault with his handling of DOJ matters. Indeed, Gonzales has had a long history of having serious character issues.

While running for the Texas Supreme Court, Gonzales took more than $100,000 in campaign contributions from energy companies, most notably nearly $35,000 from Enron. Once George W. Bush took office as president and Gonzales was part of the White House’s legal team, Gonzales, to no one’s surprise, constructed Vice President Dick Cheney’s arguments regarding the Energy Task Force meetings, in which the new Bush administration, in conjunction with the nation’s leading energy companies (again, including Enron), determined energy policy. Gonzales’s argument was that this fell under executive privilege, and he advised Cheney to keep the information secret. Enron, you’ll recall, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November, 2001 amid accounting fraud and ethics violations.

But Gonzales was not done there. In the immediate aftermath of United States’ so-called “War on Terror,” Gonzales, in a series of memos, outlined his theories about why captured Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters were not entitled to due process, why they were not entitled to humane treatment, and why they not subject to international laws regarding the use of torture. In the latter opinion, Gonzales made his now infamous pronouncement that as the conditions of the war on terror “rendered aspects [of the Geneva Conventions] obsolete…and quaint.” Moreover in the same series of memos (the Bybee memo and the Yoo-Delahunty memo) Gonzales continued to assert (with a straight face apparently) the administration’s position that Afghanistan was a state without a government, although the administration continually referred to the Taliban’s governance of Afghanistan.[i]

Gonzales however, showed what a truly reprehensible human being he was in March 2004. In testimony before congress on May 17, 2007 former Deputy Attorney General James Comey, as acting attorney general, refused to recertify the legality of an NSA program (believed by virtually all to be the NSA’s Domestic Spying program) on March10, 2004. Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was in the hospital with pancreatitis, leaving Comey in charge. At this moment Gonzales and Andrew Card (then-White House Chief of Staff) went to Ashcroft’s bedside to convince him to recertify the program. Ashcroft made a very strong statement, according to Comey’s testimony, regarding why he (Ashcroft) would not certify the legality, then laid back down and stated that it did not matter, as Comey was “the attorney general.” In short, Gonzales and Card attempted an end-around that failed (although the program was renewed the following day without a certification of its legality by the Justice Department). Comey was so offended by Card’s and Gonzalez’s conduct that when Card summoned him to the white house in the very immediate aftermath, Comey refused to meet with Card without a witness present (the Solicitor General), and drafted a letter of resignation. According to Comey’s testimony, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Attorney General Ashcroft planned to resign as well.[ii] The context of this whole thing was that Ashcroft's hospitalization had been so taxing his wife had banned all phone calls and visitors because it was impeding his recovery (see Comey’s testimony for the whole disgusting affair here).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/15/AR2007051500864.html

Indeed the sentiment about Gonzales was so clear that The Nation’s Robert Sheer penned an editorial (January 5, 2004, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050110/scheer0104) entitled “Backing Gonzales is Backing Torture.”

In announcing the resignation today, George Bush spoke glowingly about Gonzales, and made the argument that with Gonzales at the helm, “the Justice Department has made a priority of protecting children from Internet predators, made enforcement of civil rights laws a top priority. He aggressively and successfully pursued public corruption and effectively combated gang violence.” This is all patently ridiculous. The most recent statistics cited have been from a 2001 study, hardly conclusive. Given the infighting regarding the renewal of the Voting Rights Act, and Black voter intimidation in Florida and Ohio in 2000 and 2004 respectively, and the so-called Patriot Act, it simply preposterous to look at Gonzales as a herald for civil rights – ask Blacks in Texas, Mississippi, and Georgia, where Gonzales refused to enforce the VRA. As for the notion that Gonzales has pursued public corruption, that assertion is simply absurd - the Enron fiasco has stained Gonzales, as has the incredibly dishonest Bush regime - he is just as much a part of it as the lying secretaries of state and defense, the CIA-agent outing chiefs of staffs, the shooting-friends-in-the-face vice president, or the insincerely disingenuous president he serves.

Bush has been on the wrong side of history over and over again, most recently in his attempt to draw an analogy between the situation in present-day Iraq and Cambodia following the Vietnam War (see Houston Chronicle, August 23, 2007 http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/5079389.html and Los Angeles Times, August 25, 2007, http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-bacevich25aug25,0,2398496.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail). History will prove him wrong here as well.

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[i] The basis for this apparently was Afghanistan’s dealings with the UN – the Taliban was leery of UN motives, and did not trust them. Since Thomas Bolton, former UN Ambassador, and George Bush have made the same critique of the UN, does this mean the US is a “failed state?”

[ii] In fact, according to Comey, Ashcroft asked Comey to hold off on his resignation until Ashcroft could come out of his illness and resign with him, giving strength to the convictions of Comey and Mueller. Comey assets that only when President Bush intervened, allowing the DOJ to “do the right thing” did he (Comey), Mueller, and Ashcroft decide to hold off their resignations. Comey would subsequently resign in August 2005.

The Scooter Passes Away

PHIL RIZZUTO 1917-2007

"Heaven must have needed a shortstop"
George Steinbrenner

When I was growing up in New Jersey, I was a huge Yankee fan, and one of those who really thought of Phil Rizzuto as just that silly old guy who did the Yankees games. I had just moved from Ohio where I used to listen to the incomparable Marty Brenneman (along with his homer sidekick, Joe Nuxhall), and "Scooter" just seemed silly, but harmless, and on occasion funny.

When I was in high school, there was enormous debate about whether Rizzuto should be in the Hall of Fame, and I confess I was one who thought there was no way. And I'm not sure to this day the Veterans Committee got it right, or whether Yogi Berra, and the rest of the Yankees (and a not so subtle message from Ted Williams of all people) of Rizzuto's day flexed their considerable muscle to get him in. Regardless he's in, and I never thought much about it.

Of course today as I was getting dressed I heard on the news that Rizzuto had died - and I was reminded of the great line (although used in an entirely different context) from Johnny Ola in The Godfather II - "One by one, our old friends are gone." I sort of felt as if one more icon (in the real sense - meaning image or symbol) of my childhood was gone. I puttered through my day, again letting the thought go.

Then I spoke with a co-worker who told me a very touching story, about what fanhood means, and why on some level people who aren't fans of baseball will never get why it holds significance for those who follow it. My friend is Italian, grew up in Northern Ohio, and his father (as he is) was a huge Yankee fan, and his favorite shortstop was Rizzuto - makes perfect sense. He told me his father always believed Rizzuto deserved to be in the Hall of Fame, and was disappointed when year after year, Scooter was turned down. My friend told me that the day he buried his father, the news finally came that Scooter got in - and that was what made him break down that day, knowing his father would have loved the news. And this is why baseball is so important to so many - no matter the changes, the eras, the pace of the game and the world, baseball binds fathers and sons, childhood to childhood memories, it is, as James Earl Jones said in Field of Dreams, "They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again."

Rest in Peace, Scooter

Relaunching the Blog of Clayton Lust

I have been woefully lax in actually maintaining this space, and I am going to relaunch it beginning today. As with the previous incarnation, I will continue the assault on the politics of privilege in the United States. While many attempt to view the U.S. as a place where the "Conservatives" fight against the "Liberals," the fact of the matter is there is only a sliver of difference between the two sides. Neither is worthy of the respect of the average American citizen. Neither actually fights for the interests of the average American citizen. The Republicans have led the United States into a foreign policy fraught with disaster, and while the Democrats claimed to be the "opposition" they did everything they could to facilitate that policy. Now in charge of the legislative process, the Dems have done everything they could to continue as the lap dogs of perhaps the most morally bankrupt regime in American history.

So neither side is innocent in this shamocracy called the United States - they both have blood on their hands, money in their pockets, and ill-gotten trust wrung from the toiling of the American working people and poor. The U.S. will not soon change, but I will do everything within the power of the words I possess to expose the Shamocrats and Corrupticans as the evil, hypocritical, lying repressers of liberty and prosperity they both are.

But since I am also interested in a wide variety ideas, issues, etc., I will also comment on sports, movies, and pop culture, with as much vitriol or praise as is deserved.