How You Say It, Lunatic?

I find it wholly inappropriate that the Republican Party has made the desperate decision to throw yet another of their valued apparatchiks onto the tracks merely to distract from bad news and possibly preserve the careening career of a serial-lying felon.

But we have certainly seen this before, ehh?

They must have an endless supply of these robotic volunteers. Kind of brings to mind Germany in the late '30's.

But frankly I'm not that interested in the sordid bathroom behavior details of Idaho politicians. Disgusting, yes, egad, illegal, probably not, hypocritical to the point of critical mass, indeed. But not by a long shot worthy of headlines.

Now Gonzo - that is a different story. I'm assuming that most of you have attended to a modicum of this tale over the last several years. Hopefully, with your tranquility in mind, not with quite my degree of intensity.

Just so you get my groove, right now it's "Kind of Blue" I have going right now. Trying to find middle ground between the early-50's noir pics we watched the last couple nights ("Crime Wave" and "Decoy") and the early-SNL retrospective we just caught on the tube.

My goal here is to proffer some resources that I found helpful in thinking about the Gonzales Attorney-Generalissimoship and its consequences in light of the "resignation" that I had predicted was imminent in June. "Stalwart" suddenly isn't as positive an adj. for me as it once was.

Be warned, some of this is way too kind to Alberto. Hopefully mostly not!

I will be working hard at cut-and-paste discipline, but these are typically exceptionally well-written pieces, making excerpting a challenge. Not to mention my concern that perhaps a couple of you will not click through.

Glenn Greenwald is my starting QB here:

One of the most blatantly dishonest political hacks ever to occupy the position of U.S. Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, has now resigned. This is a real moment of truth for the Democratic Congress. Democrats, who have offered up little other than one failure after the next since taking power in January, can take a big step toward redeeming themselves here. No matter what, they must ensure that Gonzales’ replacement is a genuinely trustworthy and independent figure.

That means that Democrats must not confirm anyone, such as Michael Chertoff, who has been ensconced in the Bush circle. Instead, the DOJ and the country desperately need a completely outside figure who will ensure that the prosecutorial machinery operates independently, even if — especially if — that means finally investigating the litany of Executive branch abuses and lawbreaking which have gone almost entirely uninvestigated, as well uncovering those which remain concealed.

The standard excuse invoked by Democrats to justify their capitulations — namely, that they cannot attract a filibuster-proof or veto-proof majority to defy the President — will be unavailing here. They themselves can filibuster the confirmation of any proposed nominee to replace Gonzales. They do not need Blue Dogs or Bush Dogs or any of the other hideous cowards in their caucus who remain loyal to the most unpopular President in modern American history. The allegedly “Good Democrats” can accomplish this vital step all on their own. They only need 40 Senate votes to achieve it.

It is difficult to overstate how vital this is. The unexpected resignation of Gonzales provides a truly critical opportunity to restore real oversight to our government, to provide advocates of the rule of law with a quite potent weapon to compel adherence to the law and, more importantly, to expose and bring accountability for prior lawbreaking. All of the investigations and scandals, currently stalled hopelessly, can be dramatically and rapidly advanced with an independent Attorney General at the helm of the DOJ.

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And then there is John Nichols at The Nation. As sidelight, this reminds us (well, maybe more productively you of younger and more fertile and vibrant imagination - and courage - than I) to ponder just what shrub will find as a substitute for the pleasuring he so obviously got on a routine basis from the sycophantic rubdowns from his pet hispanic worshiper:

Facing the prospect of increasingly aggressive congressional inquiries into his politicization of the Department of Justice, as well as an energetic House push for his impeachment, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has announced that he will resign effective September 17.

Gonzales, the former White House counsel who made clear during his two-and-a-half-year tenure as the nation’s top cop that he served President Bush rather than the Constitution, is announcing his exit strategy just days before the Congress returns from a summer break during which senators and representatives had gotten an earful about the need to get rid of Gonzales.

A proposal by Washington Democrat Jay Inslee, a respected former prosecutor, to have the House Judiciary Committee investigate whether Gonzales should be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, attracted 27 cosponsors during the current recess and would have drawn many more with the return of the House in early September.

The Attorney General was ripe for impeachment because of a rapidly broadening recognition that he had displayed a blatant disregard for the law since his arrival in Washington in 2001 at the side of his longtime friend and political benefactor George Bush.

Gonzales, whose signature line was a declaration that he served “at the pleasure of the president,” made it his business as White House counsel and attorney general to do just that.

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[keeping you musically synched: I'm now on to M Gaye's classic "What's Going On"]

If you are a truly Good Citizen, this-here excellent series of articles by Andrew Cohen at the Washington Post is what you must make time to digest. I'm unclear what the publication timing was on this series of excellent expositions on the AG legacy, but upon discovery this week, I ravaged it, as you should too.

bring some understanding, as Marvin puts it - ooh - ooh - ooh!

right on

A sadly inadequate but hopefully tantalizing Cohen excerpt-tease might go like this; please check out the whole series:

When historians look back upon the disastrous tenure of Alberto R. Gonzales as Attorney General of the United States they will ask not only why he merited the job in the first place but why he lasted in it as long as he did. By any reasonable standard, the Gonzales Era at the Justice Department is void of almost all redemptive qualities. He brought shame and disgrace to the Department because of his lack of independent judgment on some of the most vital legal issues of our time. And he brought chaos and confusion to the department because of his lack of respectable leadership over a cabinet-level department among the most important in the nation.

He neither served the longstanding role as "the people's attorney" nor fully met and tamed his duties and responsibilities to the Constitution. He was a man who got the job not because he was supremely qualified or notably well-respected among the leading legal lights of our time, but because he had faithfully and with blind obedience served President George W. Bush for years in Texas (where he botched clemency memos in death penalty cases) and then as White House counsel (where he botched the nation's legal policy on torture).

For an administration known for its cronyism, and alas for an alarmingly incompetent group of cronies, Gonzales was the granddaddy of them all. He lacked the integrity, the intellect and the independence to perform his duties in a manner befitting the job for which he was chosen. And when he and his colleagues got caught in the act, his rationales and explanations for the purge of the U.S. Attorneys were so empty and shallow and incoherent that even the staunchest Republicans could not turn them into steeled spin. Devoid of any credibility, Gonzales in the end was a sad joke when he came to Capitol Hill.

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mercy, mercy me

And, if you have made it this far (please say it's so!), maybe this could be a decent punchline, courtesy of TPL (despite my general loathing for Mr. Emanuel):

We're rounding up the reaction to the Gonzales resignation from key figures. Some of the highlights:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV): "Alberto Gonzales was never the right man for this job. He lacked independence, he lacked judgment, and he lacked the spine to say no to Karl Rove."

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And my favorite, from Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL): "Alberto Gonzales is the first Attorney General who thought the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth were three different things."

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I'm a little rummy tonight after attending to the lunar eclipse last night. It was pretty fascinating paying excruciating attention to "that olde moon," realizing for example how quickly it skips across the sky. And what a fascination (and potential horror if you are not expecting it and aware of cause) it can be to see that familiar orb progressively "die."