These are the results of W’s proclaiming unitary executive privileges, which is the underpinning of all of his crimes, and includes those committed by his subordinates at our Justice, Legislative, and Executives branches and those in the US 4th estate!
This week we are being slapped in the face by the FBI secretly obtaining information on US citizens via national security letters, the White House being involved in firing US Attorneys, the US military destroying evidence of their misdoings in Afghanistan, and Maliki, W’s hand-picked stooge, changing his government, and missing deadlines Bush vowed that Maliki would keep. What do these seemingly disparate events have in common? They could occur only in a dictatorship, not a democracy, and that is what W is trying, without announcing it to our great, but dozing, common people!
The article “FBI audit finds improper use of national security letters” at http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2007/03/11/fbi-audit-finds-improper-use-of-national-security-letters/shows how Gonzales failed the US people, but pleased the only one he’s concerned about, W! It states “The Federal Bureau of Investigation repeatedly broke the law in order to obtain personal information about tens of thousands of Americans, much of which was never related to any sort of investigation, according to an inspector general’s report released Friday….
“This is not simply about errors in oversight,” said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “This is about disregard for the law. For example, FBI terrorism investigators ignored their own lawyers’ advice to stop using so-called exigent letters for about two years.” “This goes above and beyond almost everything they’ve done already,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), who was among a host of Democrats promising investigative hearings. “It shows just how this administration has no respect for checks and balances.”
Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), the Judiciary Committee’s ranking Republican, told reporters that Congress may “impose statutory requirements and perhaps take away some of the authority which we’ve already given to the FBI, since they appear not to be able to know how to use it.”
Sen. Schumer, on national television Sunday called for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign as “But he either doesn’t accept or doesn’t understand that he is no longer just the president’s lawyer but has a higher obligation to the rule of law and the Constitution, even when the president should not want it to be so.”
People under Gonzales’ authority are getting information on you that they aren’t legally allowed to obtain. We found out about this, but there are probably other similar programs, some with other people he’s in charge of.
The article “The Blame Game.” at http://www.slate.com/id/2161788/fr/rss/ states “The White House also insisted Bush didn’t really play a role in the firings and placed much of the blame on Miers. Another person who received lots of blame was D. Kyle Sampson, who resigned Monday as Gonzales’ chief of staff. “I was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on,” Gonzales said. Regardless, the attorney general made clear that he stands by the decision to fire the eight prosecutors. “Kyle Sampson will not become the next Scooter Libby, the fall guy,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, who was the first Democrat to call for the attorney general’s resignation, said.
The e-mails released Tuesday conflict with the testimony that the attorney general and other Justice Department officials gave to Congress about the firings.”
Gonzales lies that he was out of the loop, a modern-day “Colonel Klink” and they want to put it all on either Miers or Sampson, or anyone who will fit the role of the first patsy for a GOP goon—Ollie North, as well as Libby has.
Gonzales makes his boss, W, proud as he lies so frequently, even though the rapid pack of lies dooms them to failure. W is trying to emulate Reagan, who we all can remember knew nothing about the Iran-Contra scandal—even though a slew of his closest advisors were pardoned by Bush 41.
The article “Hyper Hacks—What’s really wrong with the Bush Justice Department” at http://www.slate.com/id/2161804/nav/tap1/ explains that W’s firing of these Attorneys was unprecedented and an indication of this inept crew’s corruption as “Political directives like this flout the tradition of nonpolitical law enforcement that’s essential because of the awesome power of prosecutors. The uproar over the firings seems to have taken the administration by surprise, and it’s possible they resulted from incompetence as much as cunning. But an administration’s use of law enforcement for political ends has rarely seemed more brazen… Three of the fired U.S. attorneys—David Iglesias of New Mexico, Carol Lam of the southern district of California, and John McKay of the western district of Washington—were lauded by the Justice Department before they were fired.” Talking specifically about Lam “he successfully prosecuted and convicted on corruption charges former Republican and San Diego Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham. Yesterday on the Senate floor, Arlen Specter, the Republican from Pennsylvania, asked whether she was dismissed because she was “about to investigate other people who were politically powerful.”
Lam had the audacity of squealing on Cunningham a GOP lining his pockets out of defense contractors’ kickbacks. That seems too similar to what Cheney is doing and to let her continue in this manner might give people the idea that Cheney’s dealings with Halliburton could be investigated—even if they moved their offices Dubai to protect themselves. Some of Gonzales’ earlier testimony was that the firings were solely due to ineffective performance, but subsequent e-mails proved that to be false. The firings happened because they didn’t play ball with their leaders.
The article “Rove Is Linked to Early Query Over Dismissals” at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/16/washington/16attorneys.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&or explains that W’s aptly named chum, Karl, “Turd Blossom”, Rove was involved in this much earlier than he originally admitted—which means he’s lying, and as this drags on we’ll see more of this as “Karl Rove, the senior presidential adviser, inquired about firing United States attorneys in January 2005, e-mail messages released Thursday show. The request prompted a Justice Department aide to respond that Alberto R. Gonzales, soon to be confirmed as attorney general, favored replacing a group of “underperforming” prosecutors.”
The fired U.S. attorneys, and the national security letters aren’t the only web of lies that Gonzales is ensnared in. He also has been a prime player in the illegal eavesdropping on innocent US citizens as “Separately, the House Judiciary Committee, opened a new front in its investigation of Mr. Gonzales, asking him to respond to an article published in The National Journal asserting that he had advised President Bush to effectively terminate a Justice Department inquiry into the program of domestic surveillance without warrants only after Mr. Gonzales learned he might be a subject of the investigation.”
The White House had said earlier this week that Harriet E. Miers, who succeeded Mr. Gonzales as White House counsel, initiated the idea in early 2005 of replacing all the prosecutors. W plans on giving both Miers and Sampson Medals of Honor, as W has done with other failures in the past, and will try to silence them, but that is where the fact that they aren’t used to dealing with a Congress that will monitor them comes into play! The Democratic leaders in Congress are already discussing subpoenas of White House miscreants.
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