Doin' It For The Kids

Let's give a big welcome to America's next Mr. Rogers, a man who loves children and just wants to help them, Abu Gonzales:

GONZALES: I’m not going to resign. I’m going to stay focused on protecting our kids. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done around the country. The department is responsible for protecting our kids, for making our neighborhoods safe, for protecting our country against attacks of terrorism, to going after gangs, going after drug dealers. I’m staying focused on that.

"Hello kids, and thanks for coming over to Mr. Gonzales' Neighborhood! It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for detainees with hoods, would you be mine, could you be mine, won't you be my neighbor?

Today, kids, we're going to talk about loyalty. Can you say that? LOY-AL-TY. Loyalty means you protect your friends and do anything for your friends and make sure your friends know that they're special. I'm going to tell you about one of my special friends. His name is George W. Bush. I met him when I was working as an Enron and Halliburton lawyer, and he brought me to work for him. My special friend liked me because I hated his dad as much as he did..."

Five years later, he was approached by the son. "I first got on his radar screen because I had turned his old man down for a job," Gonzales recalled...

"My special friend made me Secretary of State and then helped me become a judge! And I helped my special friend out too. That's what being loyal to a friend is all about!"

Gonzales's most surprising answer may have come on a different subject: his role in helping President Bush escape jury duty in a drunken-driving case involving a dancer at an Austin strip club in 1996. The judge and other lawyers in the case last week disputed a written account of the matter provided by Gonzales to the Senate Judiciary Committee. "It's a complete misrepresentation," said David Wahlberg, lawyer for the dancer, about Gonzales's account.

Bush's summons to serve as a juror in the drunken-driving case was, in retrospect, a fateful moment in his political career: by getting excused from jury duty he was able to avoid questions that would have required him to disclose his own 1976 arrest and conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) in Kennebunkport, Maine—an incident that didn't become public until the closing days of the 2000 campaign. (Bush, who had publicly declared his willingness to serve, had left blank on his jury questionnaire whether he had ever been "accused" in a criminal case.)

(Travis County Judge David) Crain—along with Wahlberg and prosecutor John Lastovica—told NEWSWEEK that, before the case began, Gonzales asked to have an off-the-record conference in the judge's chambers. Gonzales then asked Crain to "consider" striking Bush from the jury, making the novel "conflict of interest" argument that the Texas governor might one day be asked to pardon the defendant (who worked at an Austin nightclub called Sugar's), the judge said. "He [Gonzales] raised the issue," Crain said. Crain said he found Gonzales's argument surprising, since it was "extremely unlikely" that a drunken-driving conviction would ever lead to a pardon petition to Bush. But "out of deference" to the governor, Crain said, the other lawyers went along.

"My special friend sure got out of that one!

In Texas I also learned that loyalty means telling your friend what he wants to hear."

During Bush's six years as governor 150 men and two women were executed in Texas—a record unmatched by any other governor in modern American history. Each time a person was sentenced to death, Bush received from his legal counsel a document summarizing the facts of the case, usually on the morning of the day scheduled for the execution, and was then briefed on those facts by his counsel; based on this information Bush allowed the execution to proceed in all cases but one. The first fifty-seven of these summaries were prepared by Gonzales, a Harvard-educated lawyer who went on to become the Texas secretary of state and a justice on the Texas supreme court.

Gonzales's summaries were Bush's primary source of information in deciding whether someone would live or die. Each is only three to seven pages long and generally consists of little more than a brief description of the crime, a paragraph or two on the defendant's personal background, and a condensed legal history. Although the summaries rarely make a recommendation for or against execution, many have a clear prosecutorial bias, and all seem to assume that if an appeals court rejected one or another of a defendant's claims, there is no conceivable rationale for the governor to revisit that claim. This assumption ignores one of the most basic reasons for clemency: the fact that the justice system makes mistakes.

A close examination of the Gonzales memoranda suggests that Governor Bush frequently approved executions based on only the most cursory briefings on the issues in dispute. In fact, in these documents Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence.

"Now, one day my friend George moved to a big white house. And you know what, he took me with him! He made me his personal lawyer. I got to protect and defend my special friend as part of my job! Another way to do that is to find out what your special friend likes to do, and then make sure he's allowed to do just that!

"The nature of [a "war" against terrorism] places a high premium on ...factors such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors ... and the need to try terrorists for war crimes... [t]his new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners..." He also believed the determination "...eliminates any argument regarding the need for case-by-case determinations of POW status." The determination, Mr. Gonzales said, also reduced the threat of domestic prosecution under the War Crimes Act (18 U.S.C. 2441). His expressed concern was that certain GPW language such as "outrages upon personal dignity" and "inhuman treatment" are "undefined' and that it is difficult to predict with confidence what action might constitute violations, and that it would be "...difficult to predict the needs and circumstances that could arise in the course of the war on terrorism." He believed that a determination of inapplicability of the GPW would insulate against prosecution by future "prosecutors and independent counsels."

"And that brings us to today's lesson, boys and girls. It's about lying. Now, a lot of people would say that lying is wrong. And that's true. But as long as you're being loyal to your special friend, you can lie to other people some of the time. OK, all of the time!"

GONZALES: And so let me publicly sort of preempt perhaps a question you’re going to ask me, and that is: I am fully committed, as the administration’s fully committed, to ensure that, with respect to every United States attorney position in this country, we will have a presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed United States attorney.

I think a United States attorney who I view as the leader, law enforcement leader, my representative in the community — I think he has greater imprimatur of authority, if in fact that person’s been confirmed by the Senate.

"We're running out of time, boys and girls. So let's think about what we've learned today. We've learned that special friends are very important - and when you have one, you should do whatever they say no matter what. You should break the law to make them happy, you should stop people from doing their jobs if it angers your friend, you should make it easy for your friend to do whatever he wants to other people, and in the end, everything will work out great! I'm going to finish with a song for my special friend, George W. Bush."

It's such a good feeling, to know you're employed
It's such a happy feeling, as long as you avoid
All of those nasty people, who want you to go
But your special friend George, he'll just decide no!
It's such a good feeling, a very good feeling, the feeling you know...
that I'll be back, when the day is new, and I'll lie more to Congress for you.
And you'll have prisoners you want to torture, I... will... too.

You know, you always make me feel so special. You know how you do that? By just your being you! Bye! Bye, boys and girls!"




(side note: Abu Gonzales is not a "General". He may be the Attorney General, but I've never heard anyone refer to any prior head of the Justice Department as a "General." Yet the CNN reporter does this on a couple occasions in this interview. It's of the same piece as the President constantly calling himself "commander-in-chief." These people are not military officers, they're would-be tinhorn dictators who wear the military shibboleths the same way Saddam or Hugo Chavez wear military uniforms.)