Showing posts with label NY Times. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NY Times. Show all posts
Saturday, May 19, 2007
In March 2004, the acting attorney general distrusted Alberto Gonzales so much that he wouldn’t meet with him at the White House without a witness. Eight months later, President Bush promoted Mr. Gonzales from White House counsel to attorney general, the top law enforcement job in the land. The president is still standing by his man, ignoring Mr. Gonzales’s efforts to mislead Congress, his disregard for the Constitution and his gross neglect of even basic bureaucratic duties.
It’s a familiar pattern: Mr. Bush sticks by his most trusted aides no matter how evident it is — even to the Republican Congressional chorus — that they are guilty of incompetence, bad judgment, malfeasance or all three. (George Tenet, the director of central intelligence; Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; and the Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers spring to mind.)
Each time, we’re told Mr. Bush repays loyalty with loyalty. We’re told it’s a sign of character. We don’t buy the explanation. The more persuasive answer is that Mr. Bush protects his embattled advisers because they are doing precisely what he told them to do.
Although bloggers have been saying this for years, it's nice to see the Times join the party.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
During the hearing on his nomination as attorney general, Alberto Gonzales said he understood the difference between the job he held — President Bush’s in-house lawyer — and the job he wanted, which was to represent all Americans as their chief law enforcement officer and a key defender of the Constitution. Two years later, it is obvious Mr. Gonzales does not have a clue about the difference.
He has never stopped being consigliere to Mr. Bush’s imperial presidency. If anyone, outside Mr. Bush’s rapidly shrinking circle of enablers, still had doubts about that, the events of last week should have erased them.
(snip)
On Thursday, Senator Arlen Specter, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, hinted very obliquely that perhaps Mr. Gonzales’s time was up. We’re not going to be oblique. Mr. Bush should dismiss Mr. Gonzales and finally appoint an attorney general who will use the job to enforce the law and defend the Constitution.
I see Alberto Gonzales is going to get a Presidential Medal of Freedom now. Obviously this level of incompetence is going to actually give him more stature with President Bush. Gonzales has been a stain on the country, the constitution, and our image through out the world. Bush loves the guy in other words.
Pressure will soon be mounting though. We can tolerate mild levels of corruption, anti constitutional behavior from certain federal officials as being human nature. We do not need somebody who disdains our constitutional freedoms in the position of chief law enforcement official. Arlen Specter needs to finally decide if he is all talk, or come out more vocally here and explicitly demand Gonzales go.
The last few years will beome Specter's legacy unless he decides that he is an American first and a loyalist to George W. Bush second.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Interesting story today in the NY Times about men probably having a biological clock too. Except this one makes sperm more unhealthy, and the probability of birth defects rise. One highlight is a study on autism.
A recent study on autism attracted attention because of its striking findings about a perplexing disorder. Researchers analyzed a large Israeli military database to determine whether there was a correlation between paternal age and the incidence of autism and related disorders. It found that children of men who became a father at 40 or older were 5.75 times as likely to have an autism disorder as those whose fathers were younger than 30.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Over at National Review's The Corner, Andy McCarthy backhandedly commends the NY Times for not discussing Dick Cheney's role as the successor to Darth Cheney in light of the assasination attempt upon him by the Taliban in Afghanistan yesterday.
Whaddya know, no mention today of Cheney's "well-known penchant for secrecy." Apparently even the Times now grasps that the Veep had pretty good reasons to be discrete. Maybe Cheney's not nuts! Maybe the Taliban and al Qaeda really do want us dead after all. Who knows — maybe tomorrow the Gray Lady will even acknowledge that the Patriot Act and the NSA program are not sinister power grabs but modest, sensible precautions against people who are hellbent on killing us. Naaaaaaahhhhh.Yes, the fact that the Taliban attempted to kill Cheney does convince me that we need to waterboard, stick wires to people's genitals, put foreign object into their anuses, listen into everybody's phone calls. Thank goodness this event happened. Otherwise, I might have continued assuming that Cheney was a dirtbag who enjoys urinating on the constitution during his morning constitutional, and that his actions have made the world a more dangerous place.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Read this piece at firedoglake. Apparently, David Geffen wasn't really comfortable about talking about the Clinton's but that was Dowd's agenda, so she kept fishing until she got enough negative quotes to run with for her column, and her reason for writing it.
She hates the Clintons. Ever since Monica Lewinsky especially, she has been on a crusade against the both of them. Fine enough. But she should be honest about what she is attempting here.
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