Gonzales: Dead Man Walking

Chuckie Schumer, an enemy of civil rights (e.g., the RKBA) calls for Attorney General Gonzales' resignation. Ordinarily, a Conservative treats statements from Schumer as either Red Flag Warnings or background noise. Fortunately, "background noise" has predominated over the last few years.

In this case it may be different--because a lot of Conservatives happen to agree that Gonzales is a nincompoop.


The top Republican on the House's main investigative committee, Rep. Thomas Davis of Virginia, is charging the Justice Department with stonewalling his inquiries about the FBI's assertion that it closed several leak investigations because of a lack of cooperation on the part of other government officials.

In January, Mr. Davis asked the Justice Department about a report in The New York Sun that at least three leak inquiries were shut down after officials at the "victim agency" ignored phone calls and canceled meetings with FBI agents assigned to the probes. The agents said some requests for information were rebuffed for more than a year.

On Friday, the lawmaker, the ranking Republican member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sent a sharply worded letter to Attorney General Gonzales, expressing "aggravation" at the Justice Department's handling of questions about the aborted investigations.

Another element is the recent canning of 8 US Attorneys. It's being played up as a "political" housecleaning, which may have traction.

But there's more:

On Friday, Mr. Gonzales came under fire on a second front, regarding alleged misuse of administrative subpoenas which do not require judicial approval and are known as national security letters. A report by the Justice Department's inspector general found that the FBI sometimes issued the letters without proper authority, obtained data beyond what the law permits, and failed to include more than 8,000 of the information demands in statistics provided to Congress.

And, of course, there is Justice's persecution of the two Border Patrol officers who have been sent to Club Fed for.....doing their job...after which a number of issues were raised which go to the question of "prosecutorial misconduct."

Rohrabacher is calling for a new trial, charging the new documents show Sutton "knowingly presented a false picture of the drug smuggler in order to justify his ruthless prosecution of Border Patrol agents Ramos and Compean."

It gets worse.

Sandy "Burglar" Berger's case--which involved removing documents from the National Archives which could have had extremely grave national-security implications--was settled with a small fine ($50K) and some public-service crap.

On the other hand, the Libby case (which was an expensive farce) winds up differently.

One might ask "what the Hell's going on over there?" without any partisanship.

Gonzales' DoJ seems to be schizophrenic, or perhaps paranoid. Either way, it's not good for the Country.

HT: Powerline