and that's being generous by any standards of intellectual acumen.
Don't let the door hit you on the way out, Ali-G.
From the front page of today's WSJ:
Attacks on Gonzales Bare Weak Power Base - WSJ.com
The political storm brewing around Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has exposed a potentially serious vulnerability -- he lacks a significant base of support outside the White House.
Many conservatives have long questioned his moderate stances on abortion and affirmative action, positions thought to have cost him a shot at an appointment to the Supreme Court. Liberals have faulted him for his actions as White House counsel, when he composed and defended controversial Bush administration tactics for detaining and interrogating terrorism suspects.
His supreme loyalty to President Bush, whom he served as counsel in Texas, helped him become attorney general. But having a power base of one -- a now-unpopular president -- could make it more difficult for Mr. Gonzales to fend off Democratic calls for him to resign over the Justice Department's handling of the firing of eight federal prosecutors....
In recent days, his strongest asset -- his close ties to Mr. Bush -- has become a liability. Those ties have served him well since 1994, when the then-governor of Texas plucked him from a law firm to be his counsel. Democrats recently have obtained emails sent by the White House to the Justice Department. They indicate significant White House involvement in instigating and pushing a plan to rein in prosecutors who weren't pursuing the White House's prosecution priorities, including bringing cases related to immigration and voting fraud. Democrats have framed the controversy as a sign of Mr. Gonzales's lack of independence from the White House, charging that his loyalty to the president had politicized an important part of the justice system....
critics say the latest firings are different. Select prosecutors appointed by Mr. Bush himself were targeted for political reasons, they say. The shifting public explanations of the matter compounded Mr. Gonzales's problems.Many of President Bush's supporters have kept their distance from Mr. Gonzales. Some still repeat the old joke that Gonzales is Spanish for Souter -- a reference to the appointment of David Souter to the Supreme Court by the first President Bush. Mr. Souter is viewed as a disappointment to conservatives because he sometimes aligns himself with the court's more liberal wing. When Mr. Gonzales was talked about as a possibility for the Court, conservatives rebelled, in part because they suspected he wouldn't share their views on issues ranging from abortion to affirmative action.
On affirmative action, Mr. Gonzales played a role in softening an administration brief filed in a Supreme Court case challenging the University of Michigan's admission programs in 2003. Roger Clegg, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, says his organization, which is against affirmative action, opposed nominating Mr. Gonzales to the Supreme Court in part because of his involvement in the Michigan case.
“That was a great disappointment to those of us who were hoping that the Supreme Court would close the door to racial and ethnic preferences,” he says. On “color blind” policies, Mr. Clegg says, he gives Mr. Gonzales and the administration “a B or C” grade.
Mr. Gonzales further alienated some conservatives by supporting a federal prosecutor who brought a controversial case. Johnny Sutton, a U.S. attorney in western Texas and a friend of Messrs. Gonzales and Bush, successfully prosecuted two border patrol agents for shooting a suspected drug smuggler. Some conservatives, including members of Congress, criticized the prosecutions.
Some liberals, however, don't agree with conservatives' description of Mr. Gonzales as a “stealth liberal,” citing his role in crafting antiterrorism policies. At a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat who chairs the committee, accused Mr. Gonzales of being “complicit in advancing these government policies which threaten our basic liberties and overstep the bounds of our Constitution.”
In the Feb. 28 interview, Mr. Gonzales said of the criticism about his legal advice to the president on civil liberties: “Every time the courts issue a decision, we learn more. We are still feeling our way here. We need people to realize that we're not yet safe. Every day is Sept. 12.”
“I acknowledge that we have an issue and perception problem with our allies as a result of some of the events that have occurred,” he continued. “They need to understand Abu Ghraib is a fact, but it didn't happen because of administration policy.”
Tags: attorneys, /Bush_donor
