After Comey, after Goldsmith rescinded the Bybee Memo on Torture, after Congress passed laws barring torture, and many more denials by Bush, yet another secret opinion was written saying torture was ok, even when done to the extreme.

The collective power of the peace movement helped the Democrats take control of Congress and turn Nancy Pelosi from Minority leader into Madam Speaker. But in May the new Congress turned its back on the peace movement, granting Bush another $95 billion for war with no timetable for withdrawal. While the Speaker of the House herself voted against the war funding, she failed to put pressure on the conservative Democrats to form a united front against another blank check for war. She also failed to effectively use her power to decide what bills would come up for a vote. In the case of both the unrestricted war funding and the expanded FISA wiretapping, Pelosi had the ability to keep the bills off the floor but refused to do so.

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing


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Attorney General Alberto Gonzales finally announced his resignation  today after meeting with the president at his ranch in Crawford Texas. This time there was no "spend time with family" excuse given. The reasons for his departure were obvious to everyone except the president. This was his reaction:

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing


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    Uncle Bud and I were having our last beer for night in the Select Taproom Room, an undistinguished establishment (OK, run down dive) in Southeast DC that he’d bought in his retirement. It was a quiet, out-of-the-way place for the GOP crowd to meet below the radar of the media and any other nosy types. It was early in the morning, around 4 a.m., and the debris from Karl Rove’s going away party still littered the old, battered place. The partygoers had wandered off. It had been a fine send off for the Brain, but Uncle Bud was unhappy. He’d never liked Rove much, and had little use for the whole Grover Norquist wing of the GOP. I know he was glad to see Abramoff out of circulation, and wanted Ralph Reed to go down with him. As for Bush, I’ve always suspected that one of Uncle Bud’s assignments when he was working as a Republican operative was to kept tabs on the young W. I’ve heard Bud say, more than once, that “the boy needs several keepers on duty ‘round the clock.”

It seems that once again the spotlight will be on Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, as Representative John Conyers and Senator Patrick Leahy will ask the Justice Department to investigate whether or not the Attorney General misled, lied, or otherwise acted improperly when testifying before Congress on the issue of the illegal wiretaps. This request came on the release of notes maintained by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, pertaining to his meeting on March 12, 2004 with then Attorney General John Ashcroft.

    Uncle Bud and his nephew stepped quickly through the door in the back of the janitorial closet at the Capitol Grille. Bud swung the door closed, and Carter took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the low light. He could hear some muffled noise from the restaurant and some rumbling in the distance that was most likely a Metro train.

    “How are we going to back to the bar?” asked Carter. “It’s got to be three miles at least.”

    “Over here,” said Bud, nodding to his left.

    “Segways? I’ve never ridden a Segway. I don’t know how.”

    “Relax, kid, I’ve had a friend of mine modify these.”
    “You pimped a Segway?”

    “Four Segways, as a matter of fact.”

Gonzales Now Says Top Aides Got Political Briefings

By Dan Eggen and Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writer and washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Saturday, August 4, 2007; Page A05

Justice Department officials attended at least a dozen political briefings at the White House since 2001, including some meetings led by Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, and others that were focused on election trends prior to the 2006 midterm contest, according to documents released yesterday.

(So what. Big deal. Karl Rove was telling the nation’s chief law enforcement officials that they should prosecute Democrats and not Republicans. So what, who cares. There’s no scandal here, come on...) (continued)

Slowly but surely, America is waking-up to the fact that President Bush and Dick Cheney are supporting Alberto Gonzales for only one reason – if Gonzo is impeached, resigns, or is otherwise removed from office, the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney is almost a certainty. Time Magazine, in a recent article, stunned me with their honesty and assessment of the current situation – and all of us should take heed and concentrate on getting Gonzales out of office by any and all legal means at our disposal! Get rid of Gonzales, and we have a chance at saving our Democratic Republic; allow him to stay and say good-bye to Democracy and freedom.

Time Magazine listed three reasons why Bush and Cheney are protecting Gonzales – and none of them have to do with his legal expertise, or ability to run the Justice Department in a non-partisan manner. In short, it would appear that Gonzales is aiding and abetting high treason and the undoing of our system of checks and balances:

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing


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It is less than 72 hours until Alberto Gonzales’ deadline to provide an explanation as to how he and FBI Director Robert Mueller can disagree so completely, in sworn testimony, about that infamous hospital meeting with John Ashcroft.

I am here today to provide, via an exclusive and unnamed source, the first explanation that can completely exonerate Gonzales.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers is a bulldog.  He's worried more bones that the Bush Administration has tried to bury in the DoJ than any backyard canine.  Now he's worrying another.

In an Op-Ed published today the New York Times is calling for the impeachment of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in the likely event that the Justice Dept. refuses a Congressional request to assign a special prosecutor to the case. From the Times story: