Next week Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will testify unless, with an aplomb and circumspection he has not demonstrated yet, he resigns first. The Senate should press him to the wall; they should make it plain to him from their readings of the emails that they do not appreciate being lied to in public (or private) and that they do not like the chief domestic investigative force to be running around taking notes on innocent Americans just as if J. Edgar were still around.
A nation founded on the principle of a Rule of Law cannot stand for very long at all with its institutions of Justice profaned, politicized, corrupted, and let off the hook for gross violations of citizens privacy and civil rights. It is totally unacceptable to have vermin like Karl Rove directing the hiring, firing, and directions of prosecutions. Rove may think that any part of government is up for grabs for political purposes and that the function of government is to serve as a vehicle for political ideologies, BUT IT IS NOT. Government is to serve the people, their security, their industry, their civil rights and civil liberties as wellas their creativity, curiosity, and better natures through the sciences and arts.
Some of us saw this coming. Our prescience was not that arcane or mysterious. All you had to do was understand that the organizing principle of Bushite politics was Rove, mendacity, Rove, corruption, Rove, character assassination, Rove, power for its own sake. This was apparent in Texas; just ask Jim Hightower and others.
The quiet before the 9/11 storm was the time when they installed their DNA into the bloodstream of government, and no body noticed. It just looked like another change of parties' change of administration. But this was different, with Ashcroft and now the feckless Gonzo, the incompetent and recklessly corrupt are emerging like maggots on a gangrenous foot. The stench of evil in Washington is as sharp and pungent as ever it has been in the history of our republic.
It is time to begin a purge of Justice, beginning with Gonzales and ending wherever it takes us. There are no troops in harm's way to worry about. It is something the Democrats can do with the slender majority in the Senate and in the House. If we have to we shall fund the War of Bush's Lie and send the GOP into the dustbin of history with it November 2008, but NOW is the time to begin the clean up in Justice!
JB
