Oh yah, now I remember

RawStory

Attorney General helped cover up Bush drunken driving conviction

Alberto Gonzales’s difficult relationship with the truth has led to calls for a special prosecutor to investigate claims that the attorney general perjured himself during Senate testimony. But as the Washington Post points out Monday, Gonzales and honesty have had a shaky relationship stretching back more than a decade.

“Whether Gonzales has deliberately told untruths or is merely hampered by his memory has been the subject of intense debate among members of Congress, legal scholars and others who have watched him over the years,” report the Post’s Dan Eggen and Amy Goldstein. “Some regard his verbal difficulties as a strategic ploy on behalf of a president to whom he owes his career; others see a public official overwhelmed by the magnitude of his responsibilities.”

Gonzales’s apparent willingness to dissemble in order to protect himself or President Bush stretches back to at least 1996, when he intervened to prevent then-Gov. Bush from serving jury duty in Texas, the Post notes. Not until its second-to-last paragraph, however, does the Post article remind readers that by not serving jury duty in the drunken driving case Bush was able to keep his own drunken driving conviction a secret for several more years.

“He’s a slippery fellow, and I think so intentionally,” University of Texas public affairs professor Richard L. Schott told the Post. “He’s trying to keep the president’s secrets and to be a team player, even if it means prevaricating or forgetting convenient things.”

Questions about Gonzales willingness to protect Bush in relation to the drunken driving case were first raised last year by Newsweek investigative reporter Michael Isikoff. If Bush had served on the jury he would have had to reveal his own past conviction, but Gonzales convinced the defense attorney to ask that Bush be kept from the jury on the grounds that he may be called on to pardon the defendant.

It is nice to know that the top law officer in America, the one that we trust to enforce the law is a compulsive Liar, and knowingly liked to congress.

From Reuters

Embattled U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales faced a new firestorm on Tuesday sparked by a report he may have misled lawmakers in 2005 about civil liberty violations by the FBI.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, responded by promising that Gonzales would face tough questions about this and other matters at a hearing planned by his panel later this month.

And Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat who chairs a House Judiciary subcommittee, renewed calls for Gonzales to resign and called for the appointment of a special prosecutor to determine if he had misled Congress, “a serious crime.”

But President George W. Bush brushed off the flap about his longtime friend, who earlier served as White House counsel.

“The president has said repeatedly that he has great faith in the attorney general, and that has not changed,” said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel.

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that Gonzales assured Congress in 2005 that the FBI had not abused powers granted under the anti-terror USA Patriot Act despite having received reports of potential violations.

If you think things are getting hot in Washington, you have not seen anything yet. Remember that Bush as hired 9 new lawyers in the last 10 days, and now it is time to them working.

From US NEWS

US lawmakers Wednesday ordered two former top aides to President George W Bush to testify in an inquiry into the firings of eight federal prosecutors, which majority Democrats allege were politically motivated.

The subpoenas against Bush’s former chief legal adviser Harriet Miers and former White House director of political affairs Sara Taylor step up a confrontation between Congress and Bush over the administration’s running of the Justice Department.

Democrats, who won control of Congress in November elections, charge that Republican operatives at the White House, including Bush’s top political strategist Karl Rove, were involved in the process of forcing out the eight US attorneys last year.

Bush has offered to let top White House aides answer lawmakers’ questions behind closed doors, but Democrats have pressed for public hearings in Congress. A subpoena orders a witness to testify or face legal penalties.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, which is seeking Taylor’s testimony, also demanded additional documents from the White House on the prosecutor firings. Miers was subpoenaed by the House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee.

Well it is being reported that the White House is looking for a new Attorney General, the one they have now may need to go soon, and if we are luck it will incluse some jail time.

From McClatchy

The White House began floating the names of possible replacements for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Monday as the Justice Department released more internal documents related to the firings of eight U.S. attorneys last year.

One prominent Republican, who earlier had predicted that Gonzales would survive the controversy, said he expected both Gonzales and Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty to resign soon. Another well-connected Republican said that White House officials have launched an aggressive search for Gonzales' replacement, though Bush hadn't decided whether to ask for his resignation.

Support for Gonzales appeared to be collapsing under the weight of questions about his truthfulness and his management ability. White House spokesman Tony Snow offered a tepid defense when asked if Gonzales would stay on the job until the end of President Bush's term.

"We hope so," Snow said. "None of us knows what's going to happen to us over the next 21 months."

Shocker! From the AP

WASHINGTON (AP) - White House political adviser Karl Rove raised questions in early 2005 about replacing some federal prosecutors but allowing others to stay, an e-mail released Thursday shows.

The one-page document, which spans e-mails between the White House and the Justice Department in January 2005, also indicates Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was considering a range of options in dismissing U.S. attorneys early in President Bush's second term.

But it concludes with Gonzales' top aide warning that an across-the-board housecleaning "would certainly send ripples through the U.S. attorney community if we told folks they got one term only."

The e-mails released Thursday by the Justice Department indicated that Gonzales and his then-chief aide, Kyle Sampson, suggested replacing 15 percent to 20 percent of federal prosecutors they identified as underperformers.

Sampson resigned under fire this week over the Justice Department's mishandling of the firings of eight U.S. attorneys - and misleading Congress about the process.