Ten Questions for Alberto Gonzales (by John Nichols for The Nation)

[marmar]

BLOG | Posted 04/19/2007 @ 03:59am
Ten Questions for Alberto Gonzales

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales goes in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee today as the most embattled high-ranking member of a presidential administration to appear before an oversight panel in decades. That Gonzales has clung to his position in the face of an overwhelming tide of revelations about his own misdeeds and the "take-the-fifth" actions of his lieutenants is a testament not to tenacity but to the closeness of his relationship with his enabling protector, President Bush, and the refusal of the current administration to entertain even baseline standards of accountability.

By any reasonable measure of propriety and practical politics, Gonzales looks to be on the way out. A ranking Republican member of the Judiciary Committee, Utah's Orrin Hatch, is already angling for the attorney general's job and it is difficult to imagine that Hatch will not have it in due course.

That said, the Gonzales testimony is important. Even in full spin mode -- and, make no mistake, the attorney general will appear with more lines memorized that a Shakespearean actor -- what transpires on Capitol Hill today could go a long way toward defining the future not just of the inquiry into the firings of U.S. Attorneys but of the Bush administration.

To that end, here are ten sets of questions that ought to be asked and answered by Gonzales:

1. Is it true that you have spent most of the past month preparing to give this testimony? Is it true that you have participated in hundreds of hours of practice sessions and reviews of information related to concerns about the politicization of the hiring and firing of U.S. Attorneys and allegations that sitting and former prosecutors were pressured to use their positions to advance the electoral and policy goals of the Bush White House and the Republican Party? If so, can we assume that you are prepared to provide thorough, detailed and straight-forward testimony without resorting to claims that you do not recall, recognize or understand matters that might reasonably have been expected to arise today? ....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=187607

[Cirque du So-What]

1. In particular, I'd like to see No. 6 asked:

From the link above:

6. Were you ever involved in conversations, verbal or digital, in which White House political czar Karl Rove outlined a desire to politicize prosecutions by U.S. Attorneys around the country? Were you ever involved in conversations with state or national Republican party leaders in this regard? Did you ever read memos from state party officials outlining prosecutions they would like to see brought? What actions, if any, did you take to prevent politicized prosecutions? Did concerns about how U.S. Attorneys handled so-called "voter fraud" cases and other political matters weigh in deliberations by you and your aides about whether to retain federal prosecutors?

I want to hear Turd Rove's name invoked multiple times during these hearings!