Stop The Insanity

The Gonzales testimony has been moved to Thursday. If the Attorney General had any sense, he'd resign between now and then. Because it's not going to go well. Abu G has clearly lied to Congress, it's going to be nearly impossible for him to unshit the bed.

WASHINGTON, April 16 — The former top aide to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has told Congressional investigators that Mr. Gonzales was “inaccurate,” or “at least not complete” in asserting that he had no role in the deliberations about individual United States attorneys who were later dismissed, a Democratic senator said Monday [...]

In his interview, Mr. Sampson said under oath that Mr. Gonzales took part in discussions last fall about David C. Iglesias, who was removed as the United States attorney in New Mexico, as well as in a June 2006 meeting that addressed concerns about Carol C. Lam, the United States attorney ousted from her job in San Diego, said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. Mr. Sampson made similar statements in public testimony to the Judiciary Committee on March 29, but appeared to offer more specifics in the interview.

Gonzales' alibi for this, seriously, is that he doesn't remember the conversation and only recalled it "based on what others had told him, not his own memory."

If this is the kind of crackerjack logic we can expect on Thursday, honestly we should just dispense with the hearing and move right on to the confirmation for the new Attorney General. Top conservatives have abandoned Abu G. Dick Cheney won't even go to bat for him. Paul McNulty, one of his senior deputies, is putting out job feelers. The guy in charge of all the US Attorneys, the one who actually executed the firings, Michael Battle, told Congress that there were no performance problems which motivated the firings.

I mean, if this was a fight, it'd be called.

And the most damning bit of information that's come out recently is today's McClatchy article, because it again implicates the President as being involved in the decision-making process:

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Gonzales' former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, told congressional investigators on Sunday that Gonzales remembered talking to Bush last October about concerns with then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias of New Mexico.

Iglesias was forced out last December. While the White House has said Bush passed along complaints to Gonzales last October about voter fraud in three states, including New Mexico, the White House cast it as a broad conversation, not a discussion about an individual.

Gonzales has maintained that he doesn't recall the conversation with Bush - a position contradicted by Sampson's statement to congressional staff.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Monday she knew of no conversation between the president and Gonzales about Iglesias. "The president has a vague recollection" of passing on to the attorney general "complaints he'd been hearing about prosecution of voter fraud cases, including in New Mexico," she said.

And with Monica Goodling likely to get immunity in this case, Gonzales' fate is even more sealed. Of course, he's slowly being turned into a fall guy here, when this appeared to be a policy coming out of Karl Rove's office and not the Justice Department. Alberto Gonzales is a cipher. But he's a lying cipher, and you can't have that person be the nation's top law enforcement official.