"We went to the hospital to make sure that the Attorney General had information...."

Marcy Wheeler has some reflections on Abou Gonzeles' long interview on NPR. The man is such a sleazy weasel. I do hope he's held accountable somehow somewhere. Remember, lying to Congress is a felony.

--the BB

Waaaaaaaaaaaah! - updated

During a lunch meeting two blocks from the White House, where he served under his longtime friend, President George W. Bush, Mr. Gonzales said that "for some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror."
--WSJ

Sorry, Abou G, you were one of the enablers of the SCWOT. Its casualties are the Iraqi dead, the lost and wounded MNF troops, the US Constitution, and the Geneva Conventions. You also trashed the US Justice Department, leaving our legal system in shambles. You get no sympathy for having stood by W all those many years. If you'd let him go for jury duty and reveal his drunk driving charge decades ago, we all might have been spared the horror of Bush. Suck eggs.

UPDATE:
Helpful reminders for Gonzales' highly flawed memory can be found at Crooks and Liars where Jon Perr describes AGAG's numerous lies to Congress (which - does anyone pay attention any more? - is a crime).
--the BB

Well, it's a beginning

A South Texas grand jury has indicted Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on charges related to the alleged abuse of prisoners in Willacy County's federal detention centers.

The indictment criticizes Cheney's investment in the Vanguard Group, which holds interests in the private prison companies running the federal detention centers. It accuses Cheney of a conflict of interest and "at least misdemeanor assaults" on detainees by working through the prison companies.

--Fox News, no less

I'm still holding out for war crimes tried before the Hague.
--the BB
Thanks to Google News headlines for the tip
--the BB

All roads lead to the White House

Though Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, and others have stonewalled the investigations, the nearly 400-page inspector general's report released this week provides a far clearer sense of the White House's role in the U.S. Attorney purge of 2006.

Read more at TPM.
--the BB

It's not ancient history, folks

You may have read a bit about the name Renzi today.

Arizona's Rep. Renzi Is Indicted In Land Deal
Washington Post - 1 hour ago
By Ben Pershing Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) used his position in Congress to influence a federal land-exchange deal, collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in payoffs, according to an indictment released yesterday.
Grand Jury Indicts Arizona Congressman New York Times

So, another scamp is indicted. Big deal. Right?

Well, actually it is a big deal, because when you pull one thread you never know what might unravel. Consider these comments by Max Blumenthal at The Nation (via Kagro X at Daily Kos):

In September 2006, just weeks before pivotal Congressional midterm elections, Paul Charlton, US Attorney for Arizona, opened a preliminary investigation into Republican Representative Rick Renzi of the state's First Congressional District for an alleged pattern of corruption involving influence-peddling and land deals. Almost immediately, Charlton's name was added to a blacklist of federal prosecutors the White House wanted to force from their jobs. Charlton is someone "we should now consider pushing out," D. Kyle Sampson, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez's chief of staff, wrote to then White House Counsel Harriet Miers on September 13. In his previously safe Republican district, Renzi had barely held on in the election. On December 7, the White House demanded Charlton's resignation without offering him any explanation.

Stacks of internal Justice Department e-mails subpoenaed by Congress in early March from the White House provided evidence that the dismissals of Charlton and seven other US Attorneys was a political purge orchestrated to install "loyal Bushies," as Sampson called them, into their posts and to protect Republican lawmakers like Renzi from indictments for corruption. The Administration's explanation that the ousters were "performance-related" has been discredited in light of the exposure of the e-mails--and especially proved false in Charlton's case. A model of professionalism, Charlton's office was honored with the Federal Service Award and hailed by the Justice Department as a "Model Program" for its protection of crime victims.

[Emphasis mine]

You remember Gonzogate: the whole scandal over the US Attorneys being fired for phony reasons but in a rather clear partisan pattern of quashing pursuit of Republican misdeed and urging pursuit of Democrat misdeeds.

Kagro X is right on, commenting:

Alberto Gonzales should have been impeached. Instead, American punditry insisted this was nothing, and Congress satisfied itself with allowing Gonzales to move on to the lecture circuit, unsullied by the criminality that average Americans who have given up on the sycophantic media knew was plain to see.

Emptywheel has a couple of posts on this (here and here). The latter one gets technical but the former one is helpful for a general grasp of things.
--the BB

Dilly, dally, and delay

The Los Angeles Times [free registration required] has an article today about the progress we are NOT making in the investigation into the firing of United States Attorneys under former AG Abu Gonzales.

WASHINGTON -- The government agency that enforces one of the principal laws aimed at keeping politics out of the civil service has accused the Justice Department of blocking its investigation into alleged politicizing of the department under former Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales.

Scott J. Bloch, head of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, wrote Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey last week that the department had repeatedly "impeded" his investigation by refusing to share documents and provide answers to written questions, according to a copy of Bloch's letter obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

The Justice Department wants Bloch to wait until its own internal investigation is completed. A department official signaled recently that the investigation is examining the possibility of criminal charges.

But that, the regulator wrote, could take until the last months of the Bush administration, "when there is little hope of any corrective measures or discipline possible" being taken by his office.

I do hope that when AG Mukasey has his chat with the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow this issue will be discussed.

--the BB