Year End Cleanup . . . .

Some end of the year cleanup is in order, and how fitting it is to feature the bush administration.

From Bob Herbert of the New York Times we get:

Add Up the Damage
By BOB HERBERT - December 30, 2008

Does anyone know where George W. Bush is?

You don’t hear much from him anymore. The last image most of us remember is of the president ducking a pair of size 10s that were hurled at him in Baghdad.

We’re still at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel is thrashing the Palestinians in Gaza. And the U.S. economy is about as vibrant as the 0-16 Detroit Lions.

But hardly a peep have we heard from George, the 43rd.

When Mr. Bush officially takes his leave in three weeks (in reality, he checked out long ago), most Americans will be content to sigh good riddance. I disagree. I don’t think he should be allowed to slip quietly out of town. There should be a great hue and cry — a loud, collective angry howl, demonstrations with signs and bullhorns and fiery speeches — over the damage he’s done to this country.

This is the man who gave us the war in Iraq and Guantánamo and torture and rendition; who turned the Clinton economy and the budget surplus into fool’s gold; who dithered while New Orleans drowned; who trampled our civil liberties at home and ruined our reputation abroad; who let Dick Cheney run hog wild and thought Brownie was doing a heckuva job.

_______________


The catalog of his transgressions against the nation’s interests — sins of commission and omission — would keep Mr. Bush in a confessional for the rest of his life. Don’t hold your breath. He’s hardly the contrite sort.

He told ABC’s Charlie Gibson: “I don’t spend a lot of time really worrying about short-term history. I guess I don’t worry about long-term history, either, since I’m not going to be around to read it.”

The president chuckled, thinking — as he did when he made his jokes about the missing weapons of mass destruction — that there was something funny going on.

Paul Krugman, winner of the Nobel prize in economics, also of the New York Times now weighs in:

Looking for a word
December 31, 2008

Unusually, I’m having a vocabulary problem. There has to be some word for the kind of person who considers his mild discomfort the equivalent of torture, crippling injury, or death for other people. But I can’t think of it.

What brings this to mind is this from Alberto Gonzales:

"I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror."

This reminded me of Laura Bush’s remark on carnage in Iraq:

"And believe me, no one suffers more than their president and I do when we watch this."

Remember this. And remember, too, that for long years these people were considered heroic patriots, defenders of the nation.

And now it is time for them to go away . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

That law degree is... quaint.

Via Liliana Segura and LuLu, it seems Alberto Gonzales, the former US Attorney General who never met a law he couldn't just ignore, is still unemployed after having slithered out of the Bush bunker a half a year ago.

Maybe this is a sign of things to come. Even John Ashcroft, that great defender of liberty...

Following his tenure as attorney general in post-9/11 America -- a time that brought us the Patriot Act and saw career lawyers at the DoJ replaced by cronies and conservative Christians -- he founded his own consulting firm, and was swiftly hired as "distinguished professor of law and government" by Regent University, the pretend- (but politically influential) law school founded by Pat Robertson.

What do you think of Bush's legacy now, Gonzo?

Give us another smirk and (one more time!), I can't recall.

Since, apparently, that Harvard law degree is just a piece of paper, you might have to consider a new career path. Start practicing: Would you like fries with that?

Is there a cash award with that?

Sit down. Please. Just sit down.

Now read this.

Alberto Gonzales spent much of 2007 fighting in vain his ouster as US attorney general, but that has earned him a consolation prize: a top law magazine named him on Wednesday its "Lawyer of the Year."

US President George W. Bush's longtime personal legal council and, from February 2005 to September 2007, the nation's top justice official, Gonzales was the year's legal headliner, according to ABA Journal, the magazine of the American Bar Association.

But that was, according to ABA Journal editor Edward Adams, mainly due to his central role in scandals over the Bush administration's secret warrantless wiretap program, its legal justifications for rough interrogation of "war on terror" detainees that critics said permitted torture, and an alleged effort to fire at least eight US attorneys for political reasons.

"George W. Bush appeared to be grooming the man he affectionately calls 'Fredo' for the US Supreme Court," the magazine wrote.

"But after Gonzales appeared veracity-challenged when testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he resigned in August," it said, referring to hearings into the US attorneys firing scandal.

The magazine also cited Gonzales's role as White House counsel and then attorney general in "what now appears to have been a stealth campaign to reinstate pre-Watergate presidential authority."

"His determination to do so is epitomized in a now-infamous hospital-room meeting with an incapacitated John Ashcroft (Gonzales's predecessor as attorney general) in an unsuccessful effort to gain approval for a secret wiretapping program.

"The highlight: Ashcroft's wife sticking her tongue out at Gonzales and his entourage as they retreated from Ashcroft's bedside."

"We selected the Lawyer of the Year based on who was the most newsworthy lawyer," Adams told AFP, refusing to assess what Gonzales' impact was. "Clearly he was influential, there can be no doubt about that."

We're not done yet.

But among those named as runners-up is David Addington, a top aide of Vice President Dick Cheney who is also credited in the drive to increase the president's executive powers.

"Addington shares his boss's belief that the president should have unlimited powers in time of war -- and should have carte blanche in dealing with the thorny issues of torture, secret detention and warrantless eavesdropping," it said.

A Gonzales assistant deeply involved in the sacked prosecutors scandal, Monica Goodling, also earned a runner-up nod for her "overly zealous and questionably legal actions" that led to her resignation and then Gonzales's.

Other runners-up included both Cheney aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Patrick Fitzgerald, who prosecuted Libby for perjury in the case over the outing of a CIA agent.

And without even the benefit of a New Year's Eve party the ABA has picked next year's lawyer of the year.

The magazine also took the uncommon step of naming its Lawyer of the Year for 2008, 12 months ahead of time: Michael Mukasey, Gonzales's replacement.

Adams said there was little doubt Mukasey would spend much of the year wrestling with the large legal issues Gonzales left behind -- like those on torture and domestic spying.

What is it with these guys? Did they suddenly decide there was a shortage of lawyer jokes out there?

The incompetence of Gonzales

Laura has unearthed an enlightening four-year old article in The Atlantic which highlights the ethics and behaviour of "our man al" Gonzales.

At issue was his performance as George W.Bush's legal counsel in the days of the Bush Texas governorship. Specifically, Gonzales provided written briefs to Bush providing information from which he was to determine whether to grant clemency to criminals sentenced to be executed. The briefs were normally provided on the morning of the day the execution was to take place and would have presumably provided every detail possible to allow the governor to make an informed decision.

What we see, however, is something completely different.

During Bush's six years as governor 150 men and two women were executed in Texas—a record unmatched by any other governor in modern American history. Each time a person was sentenced to death, Bush received from his legal counsel a document summarizing the facts of the case, usually on the morning of the day scheduled for the execution, and was then briefed on those facts by his counsel; based on this information Bush allowed the execution to proceed in all cases but one. The first fifty-seven of these summaries were prepared by Gonzales, a Harvard-educated lawyer who went on to become the Texas secretary of state and a justice on the Texas supreme court. He is now the White House counsel. ed - and went on to become US Attorney General.

In truth, neither the documents produced by Gonzales, nor the time allocated by Bush for verbal briefings would have been sufficient to provide Bush enough information to make a properly informed decision.

There is no doubt that Bush is both intellectually lazy and indifferent to the plight of others, and it is likely that he found the abbreviated information on clemency appeals suitable to his own diligence in such matters. However, it also highlights the incompetence of Gonzales in that, regardless of what his boss may have wanted, it was his duty to the law and justice to exhaustively investigate every aspect of the appellant's case and then present, in detail, every salient fact.

What is also revealing is that back in the Texas State House, Gonzales deigned to exercise a level of personal immunity from public scrutiny which did not rightfully exist. It was something he would bring with him to the Bush White House and which would become the cornerstone of an administration that refuses to be held accountable - for anything.

Gonzales never intended his summaries to be made public. Almost all are marked CONFIDENTIAL and state, "The privileges claimed include, but are not limited to, claims of Attorney-Client Privilege, Attorney Work-Product Privilege, and the Internal Memorandum exception to the Texas Public Information Act." I obtained the summaries and related documents, which have never been published, after the Texas attorney general ruled that they were not exempt from the disclosure requirements of the Public Information Act.

Laura's take is as important as the actual article. Read it here.

Dream On, al . . . .

From AlterNet today:

How Gonzales Destroyed the American Dream
by Roberto Lovato, New America Media - Posted on September 4, 2007

Alberto Gonzales went down dreaming.

While announcing his resignation earlier this week, Alberto Gonzales deployed one of his most powerful and romantic rhetorical weapons. "I often remind our fellow citizens that we live in the greatest country in the world and that I have lived the American dream," he stated. "Even my worst days as attorney general have been better than my father's best days."

More than any public official in recent memory, the often smiley and sometimes smirking Gonzales -- and his supporters -- consistently framed his story as a brown embodiment of the American dream.

_________________


Viewed from the optic of elite political and corporate interests, who know better than anyone of the death of the American dream (they are, after all, the ones who created and killed it), Alberto Gonzales did his job.

He may have left too much evidence of state-sanctioned torture and lying and malfeasance and corruption (he may also still be put on trial for perjury in the attorney firing scandal).

But he did what he was supposed to. More than anyone, he was responsible for securing the legal systems necessary to better control a citizenry that was increasingly angry and frustrated at big government and big business for destroying the American dream. his saga provides an object lesson in how to hide elite interests behind a dreamy haze of real-life ethnic success stories.

While many of us were debating whether or not the son of migrant workers was or wasn't the embodiment of the dream, he worked loyally -- as fiercely as his farm worker parents -- to lay the legal foundation to make it easier to snoop on, arrest, prosecute and jail a population growing less and less patient with the status quo.

In the time it took most of the country to admit that it no longer believed in the dream -- a July poll by veteran pollster Celinda Lake found that only 18 percent of people in the country believe they are living the American dream -- Gonzales prepared for the fallout by helping fashion the Patriot Act. This made it easier for government to define as "domestic terrorists" those who choose to speak out against the Iraq war and other dream (and budget)-killing policies.

While Hollywood and Washington tried to keep the global dream machine working, Gonzales crafted the legal rationale for the global nightmare exemplified by Abu Ghraib. As more and more people joined the ranks of the uninsured -- 9 million since Bush was elected in 2000 -- Gonzales facilitated the government's ability to access intimate medical, financial and other personal records.

_______________


What the ultimate moral of the Gonzales story becomes depends on whether we are ready to not just to accept the death of the American dream, but to take part in dispelling whatever illusions of it are left.

_______________


Despite the tragedy and comedy of it all, Gonzales' scandalous story offers us an opportunity to dispel obsolete notions, like the dreamy idea that government is looking out for the little guy -- or that ethnic politics can only be played one way -- and other dangerous ideas rooted in the American dream he embodied.

Roberto Lovato former director of CARECEN, representing Central American immigrants and refugees, is a New York based writer and an associate editor at New America Media.

'Ya gotta wonder who the idiot-in-chief will nominate to protect his sorry ass now that "Smiley" is gone . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moving to Vancouver)

al's Timeline of Disgrace . . . .

From the Washington Post today:




A Timeline of Significant Events in Gonzales' Career
The Associated Press - Monday, August 27, 2007; 1:37 PM

Some significant dates in the career of Alberto R. Gonzales, the nation's 80th U.S. attorney general who announced his resignation Monday.

1979: Receives bachelor's degree from Rice University, after enlisting in the Air Force in 1973 and serving at Fort Yukon, Alaska.

1982: Earns law degree from Harvard University; joins the Houston-based law firm Vinson and Elkins, whose client list included Enron and Halliburton.

1995-1997: Served as general counsel to then-Gov. George W. Bush of Texas. (While in this position, he was involved in successfully hiding george's drunk-driving charge from 1976 in Kennebunkport, Maine. Way to start your ignominious career with bushco, al.)

There are more "significant" dates in his history of public life which you can see in it's entirety here.

I've saved the best one for last:


Aug. 27, 2007: Gonzales announces his resignation and Bush publicly accepts.


Now, if him and the rest of the crowd involved in the worst administration in US history will be brought up on War Crimes charges, there really is justice for all . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moving to Vancouver)

al gone . . . .

ABC News just broke into regular programming to announce that al gonzales has tendered his resignation as Attorney General.




Ding Dong the Witch is Nearly ____ . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moving to Vancouver)

Democrat's Descent ? ? ? ?

Excellent piece by Alexander Cockburn at The Nation in today's AlterNet:

How the Democrats Blew It in Only Eight Months

By Alexander Cockburn, The Nation
Posted on August 10, 2007

Led by Democrats since the start of this year, Congress now has a "confidence" rating of 14 percent, the lowest since Gallup started asking the question in 1973 and five points lower than Republicans scored last year.

The voters put the Democrats in to end the war, and it's escalating. The Democrats voted the money for the surge and the money for the next $459.6 billion military budget. Their latest achievement was to provide enough votes in support of Bush to legalize warrantless wiretapping for "foreign suspects whose communications pass through the United States." Enough Democrats joined Republicans to make this a 227-183 victory for Bush. The Democrats control the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi could have stopped the bill in its tracks if she'd wanted to. But she didn't. The Democrats' game is to go along with the White House agenda while stirring up dust storms to blind the base to their failure to bring the troops home or restore constitutional government.

One of my favourite sections is the reference made to my man Russ Feingold:

The one Democrat acting on principle in the Gonzales affair has been Senator Russ Feingold. He at least tried to dig into the visit of chief White House counsel Gonzales, as he then was, to the bedside of Attorney General John Ashcroft, to get him to sign off on the illegal wiretaps. And how did the Democrat-controlled Congress deal with Feingold's efforts to nail Gonzales for his efforts to undermine the Constitution and for his prevarications under oath? It promptly legalized the eavesdropping.


Those heady, euphoric days immediately after last November's election are becoming a memory, eh, Democrats? Perhaps it's time the Democratic leaders stopped monkeying around and get on with the policies the people elected them to do . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moving to Vancouver)

Get out that Medal of Freedom, George!

When you've lost Newt Gingrich, you've lost the fight. When an established Republican can't find a defender for his actions on Conservative TV FOX News, it's time to get those resumes out to the golden arches.

Alberto Gonzales is starting to look a little burnt on one side. Perhaps it's time to flip him.

Impolitical has also drawn a bit out of the New York Times, which has taken it's own good time on this, considering they spiked a column which would have blown this whole issue into the stratosphere, before the 2004 elections, based on a bill of goods they were sold by the Bush administration.

What does the New York Times actually reveal? It was Dick Cheney who sent Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card to the hospital bed of then Attorney General John Ashcroft to attempt to coerce approval for continued covert and clearly illegal information gathering activities.

Impolitical makes this point:

Hardly surprising, it was apparently Cheney who ordered the attempted strong-arming of a sick man by Gonzales and Card. I had not read this to date. Even this past week, Schumer was asking Gonzales who sent him to the hospital to pursue this sickly course of action. Gonzales refused to answer. No kidding.

I love it when Cheney is involved. You just know someone is going to get tossed under the bus and Bill Kristol is going to start howling like a moonstruck malamute with one nut.

Let the games begin.

UPDATE: Lindsay points us to the Anonymous Liberal, who, as she says, is a lawyer and guest-blogger for Glenn Greenwald. A.L. provides a very readable summary of the perjury case against Gonzales, including the technical defense Gonzales would use to fight such a charge and which the National Review has already published in an editorial.

A Gift From Above . . . .

CQ TODAY MIDDAY UPDATE July 26, 2007 – 1:45 p.m.

Senate Democrats Request Special Prosecutor to Investigate Gonzales

Four Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats on Thursday asked the Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales lied under oath to Congress.

Meanwhile, Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., subpoenaed White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove and J. Scott Jennings, a White House political aide, for testimony and documents, setting an Aug. 2 deadline that the White House is likely to ignore.

“If there are any cooler heads at the White House, I urge them to reconsider the course that they have taken because there is a cloud over the White House and a gathering storm,” Leahy said on the Senate floor.

The quartet of senators — Charles E. Schumer of New York, Dianne Feinstein of California, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island — convinced that Gonzales has repeatedly committed perjury in congressional testimony, most recently during a July 24 appearance before the Judiciary panel — asked Solicitor General Paul D. Clement to name a special counsel from outside the department to investigate.

“His instinct is not to tell the truth, but to dissemble and deceive,” Schumer said.

Source: CQ Today Midday Update

Heh, heh, heh . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moving to Vancouver)

Gonzales' memory

Either he's lying or he has the worst memory of attorneys-general in US history.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales denied Tuesday that he and former White House chief of staff Andy Card pressured then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to recertify President Bush's domestic surveillance program during a now-famous 2004 hospital visit.

Gonzales said that he and Card had been urged by congressional leaders of both parties to ensure that the terrorist surveillance program survive a looming deadline for its expiration. To do that, Gonzales said, he needed the permission of Ashcroft, then the attorney general. Ashcroft at the time was in an intensive care unit recovering from gall bladder surgery.

''We went there because we thought it was important for him to know where the congressional leadership was on this,'' Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee in his first public explanation of the meeting.

''Clearly if he had been competent and understood the facts and had been inclined to do so, yes we would have asked him,'' Gonzales added.

Which kind of flies in the face of the testimony of James B. Comey, then Ashcroft's deputy attorney general and, because of Ashcroft's medical condition, the person with the authority to extend the eavesdropping program.

In vivid testimony to th Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, Comey said he alerted FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and raced, sirens blaring, to join Ashcroft in his hospital room, arriving minutes before Gonzales and Card. Ashcroft, summoning the strength to lift his head and speak, refused to sign the papers they had brought. Gonzales and Card, who had never acknowledged Comey's presence in the room, turned and left.

The sickbed visit was the start of a dramatic showdown between the White House and the Justice Department in early 2004 that, according to Comey, was resolved only when Bush overruled Gonzales and Card. But that was not before Ashcroft, Comey, Mueller and their aides prepared a mass resignation, Comey said. The domestic spying by the National Security Agency continued for several weeks without Justice approval, he said.

"I was angry," Comey testified. "I thought I just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man, who did not have the powers of the attorney general because they had been transferred to me."

Perhaps it's time Gonzales exercised his mind a little. Some basic techniques might help him remember a little more. Not that he needs to, I suppose. Given the fact that the rule of law appears to have gone completely off the rails in the Bush administration, remembering facts is just plain inconvenient.

Personally, I'm waiting for the day when Gonzales leaves politics and writes a "tell-all" book. It should be the perfect Republican tome.

One blank page, handsomely bound with a gilded title: I Can't Recall

It's about the cover up, stupid

UPDATED
Who is Monica Goodling? McClatchy News Service provides a good description.

Goodling, 33, is a 1995 graduate Messiah College in Grantham, Pa., an institution that describes itself as "committed to embracing an evangelical spirit."

She received her law degree at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va. Regent, founded by Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson, says its mission is "to produce Christian leaders who will make a difference, who will change the world."

E-mails show that Goodling was involved in planning the dismissals and in later efforts to limit the negative reaction. As the Justice Department's liaison to the White House, she could shed light on the extent of White House involvement in the dismissals.

She was involved? Apparently, she has a lot of the picture. In fact, she may have the big picture. Yesterday she announced that she would invoke her Fifth Amendment rights under the US Constitution and refuse to answer questions to a Senate hearing.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' liaison with the White House will refuse to answer questions at upcoming Senate hearings about the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, citing her Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination, her lawyer said Monday.

"I have decided to follow my lawyer's advice and respectfully invoke my constitutional right," Monica Goodling, Gonzales' counsel and White House liaison, said in a statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

It's funny how that Constitution, which was so much in the way of the Bush administration program of protecting the American people against Terra™, suddenly appears with Republican operators clutching it to their bosoms. Mind you, they were so determined to tell everyone what isn't in the Constitution that they should be intimately familiar with what is in it.

Alberto Gonzales, on the other hand, is clinging to his chair, not because of the power or the perks or the fact that he's an insider. Nope. He has more holistic reasons.

In an interview with NBC News, Gonzales said Monday he was "really pained" by Republicans and Democrats alike who widely say the attorney general has lost his credibility.

Asked why he would want to remain as attorney general amid so many calls for his ouster, Gonzales said he's been asking himself lately whether it's appropriate for him to stay in his job.

But, he said, "at the end of the day, it's not about Alberto Gonzales. It's about this great Department of Justice that does so many wonderful things for the American people."

*Choke*

Anyway, back to Goodling.

John Dowd, Goodling's lawyer, suggested in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., that the Democrat-led panel has laid what amounts to a perjury trap for his client.

[...]

"One need look no further than the recent circumstances and proceedings involving Lewis Libby," Dowd said, a reference to the recent conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff in the CIA leak case.

Ummm. That was because he lied. Is Dowd saying the only way Goodling can answer any questions is if she lies?

Leahy swiftly cast doubt about Goodling's motives.

"The American people are left to wonder what conduct is at the base of Ms. Goodling's concern that she may incriminate herself in connection with criminal charges if she appears before the committee under oath," said Leahy.

Uh huh. Although, she has the right, even if she herself becomes the subject of an investigation.

Dowd shot back in a second letter that Leahy's comments were a good illustration of why testifying was "perilous" for his client.

"It is the politically charged environment created by the members of the committee ... that has created the ambiguous and perilous environment in which even innocent witnesses would be well advised not to testify," Dowd wrote.

Right. Because the question, "What did Gonzales know and when did he know it?" could bring down a whole house of cards.

Update: From TPM

Monica Goodling does have a good faith basis for pleading the Fifth Amendment - just not the ones in her lawyer's letter that are getting all the attention.

Under the federal False Statements statute, 18 USC 1001, it is a felony to cause another person to make a false statement to Congress. Since McNulty has allegedly told Senator Schumer that he made a false statement to Congress based on information provided to him by Monica Goodling, Goodling could very well be prosecuted for a Section 1001 violation.

All the rest of the crap in her lawyer's letter is intended to sooth as much as possible WH anger at her for invoking the Fifth.

(Hat tip Echidne of the Snakes)

Powertools makes a long stretch.

The kids with the ice-cream cones stuck to their foreheads are at it again:

Gonzales gave incorrect testimony to Congress about matters relating the replacement of the eight U.S. Attorneys. If he knew the information was incorrect, then he lied. If he lied to Congress, he should be removed and prosecuted. But at this juncture, there appears to be no evidence that he lied. Instead, the evidence goes no further than establishing that he failed to inform himself well enough to answer some of the questions he was asked during his appearance on the Hill and made the mistake of answering the questions anyway.

There's a new twist!

Alberto Gonzales is one of the Bush administration's artful dodgers. It doesn't matter which committee he appears before, he's more than willing to dodge a question with the reply, "I don't know," or words to that effect.

On February 6th, 2006 before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wartime Executive Power and the NSA's Surveillance Authority, in response to direct questions from Senator Patrick Leahy:

LEAHY: The president has said publicly that he gave about 30 of these authorizations, having held off for a period of time, I think when the administration heard the New York Times was looking into it.

But you were White House counsel: Did the president give his first authorization before or after Attorney General Ashcroft met with us and gave us the proposals from the administration which ultimately went into the USA Patriot Act?

GONZALES: Sir, I don't know. I don't know when he gave you those proposals.

LEAHY: Well, we enacted the USA Patriot Act in October 2001. And you were there at the signing ceremony. We tried to encompass those things that the administration said they needed.

Was the first one of the president's authorizations done before he signed the USA Patriot Act?

GONZALES: I'd have to go back and check. I don't know.

On January 17, 2007 when testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Maher Arar case, again in an exchange with Senator Patrick Leahy:

LEAHY:Why is he on a government watch list if he's been found completely innocent by this Canadian commission, which actually had the information from us?

GONZALES: Senator, I've got some very definite views about this particular case, as you know...

LEAHY: Well, go ahead.

GONZALES: ... beyond litigation. What I want to do is, hopefully, in the next few days – I'm happy to sit down with you and Senator (Arlen) Specter and give you more information.

In fact, we may be able to publicly say more about this shortly. I'm just not at liberty, at this time, to...

LEAHY: Let me ask you this: Why aren't you at liberty?

I don't understand that. It's not a matter of executive privilege.

GONZALES: No, sir, again, and I'm not ...

LEAHY: It's only the president that can ...

GONZALES: No, I'm not suggesting that I will not be able to answer your questions. I'm just suggesting I can't do it today.

LEAHY: Why?

GONZALES: I just – sir, I'm not – there is not a position – I can't represent the position of the executive branch on this particular issue.

But I think, in a relatively short period of time, there's more information that I should be able to share with you, and hopefully, that we can share publicly.

LEAHY: But why was he sent to Syria instead of Canada?

GONZALES: Well, again, Senator, I'd be happy to answer these questions I think we can say a lot more about it, if you just simply give me some additional time.

This is a guy who doesn't answer questions to which he does have the information. Now, Mirengoff is going so far as to suggest that Gonzales, lacking information to provide a truthful, complete answer, instead of his trademark, "I don't know" or "I'll have to get back to you", made something up!

That would make him incompetent. Short of that, he's lying. Both good reasons to send him back to Texas with a pink slip in his hands.