Gonzales is only thinking of ‘our kids’

March 22, 2007

I can appreciate the fact that [tag]Attorney General[/tag] [tag]Alberto Gonzales[/tag] is struggling to keep his job, but he’ll have to do better than this.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced this morning: “I’m not going to resign. I’m going to stay focused on protecting our kids.” Speaking before a Project Safe Childhood event, Gonzales told reporters he plans “to go up to the Congress and provide further clarification” about the U.S. Attorney purge, and claimed that his department has been “tremendous in the area of public corruption.”

I strolled over to Wikipedia and found exactly what I was looking for: “The phrase ‘for the children,’ or similar phrases such as ‘think of the children,’ is an appeal to emotion and can be used to support an irrelevant conclusion (both logical fallacies) when used in an argument.”

There’s a reason this is such a cliche: it’s vapid and meaningless. Gonzales is going to stay on the job because he’s “focused on protecting our kids”? This may come as a surprise, but I’d hazard a guess that his replacement can focus on protecting our kids, too.

Honestly, could there be a weaker defense? Gonzales is at the center of a major scandal, he has few real allies, the public doesn’t trust him, and lawmakers from both parties want him to resign. According to some reports, the White House is already mulling over possible successors. But never mind all of that, Gonzales says, he’s “protecting our kids.” Please.

That said, the fact that the AG is even trying such an insipid ploy suggests he’s not going to go quietly. In fact, as ThinkProgress noted, Gonzales appears to be kicking off a “cross-country PR tour to save his job.”

“CBS News has learned Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will take to the road to fight for his job, spending the next week traveling the country to see as many US Attorneys as he can. One source says he’ll apologize not for firing eight of their colleagues but for the way he handled it. [Gonzales] will start his mea culpa tour tomorrow in St. Louis.” [CBS Evening News, 3/21/07]

“A day after Bush gave his attorney general a vote of confidence, Gonzales appeared to be launching a campaign to save his job by repairing relations with prosecutors in the field and reaching out to political supporters. His office released a dozen testimonials from Latinos and law enforcement groups, with many saying that Gonzales, the first Latino attorney general, was being unfairly held accountable for the fiasco.” [LA Times, 3/22/07]

“Embattled Attorney General met this afternoon with several Republican Senators, including Orrin Hatch, Jon Kyl, John Cornyn and Jeff Sessions, GOP sources said. The lunch meeting held at the Department of Justice, sources said, was initiated by Gonzales. A source familiar with the meeting says it was an attempt by Gonzales to reach out to Republicans who have been decidedly unhappy with how he has handled the US Attorney mess.” [ABC, 3/21/07]

To reiterate a point from the other day, from a purely political perspective, I’m not sure it matters either way. For the country’s benefit, I can only hope Gonzales resigns and Bush finds a capable, competent official to lead the Justice Department. But as far as the politics goes, Gonzales’ public-relations gambit may be irrelevant. Not only has he lost the nation’s confidence, but the longer Gonzales stays in office, the longer this scandal percolates. It leads to more conflict, more subpoenas, and just as importantly, more revelations about the Bush gang’s operation.

Either way, the purge scandal’s wheels keep turning.

I’m starting to hope that the Bush team refuses to deal with reality once the subpeonas are issued and tries to hide behind the fig leaf of executive privilege. On NPR yesterday, they mentioned in passing that Sam Ervin had threatened to issue orders to the Sergeant at Arms if Nixon officials resisted subpoenas. It never came to that, but after a brief net search, I ran across this gem at Wikipedia:

“The Sergeant at Arms of the Senate can arrest any person upon their violating Senate rules (including the President of the United States).”

Please. Please. Please.

  • If he was so damned concerned about the Children then why didn’t he pursue Mark Foley?

  • Gonzales will take to the road to fight for his job, spending the next week traveling the country

    Great, now we’re going to be treated to the Gonzalapalooza.

  • I guess in Bush World “protecting the kids” also includes protecting the tobacco companies? Who on earth kills more kids than them?

    I think Gonzales might want to stay out of small aircraft. If he had an “accident” that would pretty much shut the inquiry down for quite a while.

    On a somewhat related note, check out this major smackdown of Snowjob on national TV:

    http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=2595472n

  • Meanwhile, did Gonzalez ever respond to the letter from senators Schumer, etc., asking him to explain his role in quashing the investigation in which he was a target? Didn’t they ask him to reply by Tues., 3/20?

  • Re “protecting the kids,” he was, after all, speaking at a Project Safe Childhood event. I don’t support Gonzo or his boss at all, but this seems pretty obvious to me.

  • translation:

    i’m going to stick to my new story:

    “the u.s. a’s were fired because they wouldn’t prosecute porn vigorously.

    no more waltzing around with this and that excuse for a partner. porn is my one true passion.”

    your (republican, right-wing) government in action

  • “. . . Gonzales. . . was being unfairly held accountable for the fiasco.”

    Of course, to BushCo and their cronies all accountability for Rethuglicans is unfair accountability. They rule by divine right, doncha know. Pat Robertson said the lord himself expressed that to Pat in a dream.

  • Maybe Gonzales will have the “success” Bush had when he hit the road. His approval went down.

    It’s what he did, not how he handled his excuses. I want his scalp.

  • This is starting to look like a slow moving train wreck, and there could not be more worthy people driving the wrong way. Gonzales, Bush & Co care about the children? Not so you would notice. This is the same bunch that cut funding for Healthy Families and No Child Left Behind and school lunches. This bunch de-funded Clinton’s 100,000 new cops on the street. Am I missing something? Are my facts incorrect? Have I wandered into the wrong universe?

    This guy hasn’t done a thing for the children, all he has done is enable George W Bush to be the most authoritarian and incompetent president in my lifetime. If he cared about our children he would ensure that the Bill of Rights would be preserved for their future.

  • Agreed with Dale. When an ounce of truth would be better than a ton of bullsh*t, the White House would always rather pile on the B.S. Burying themselves in more lies just reinforces the Republican culture of deceit that pisses off so many Americans. Gonzales’ tour should be good for a few more votes in the D column come November ’08.

  • Considering that Abu’s beloved Patriot Act includes a rarely-mentioned clause that forces schools to give kids’ names and addresses to military recruiters, “protecting” our kids means keeping them alive just long enough to go die in Shrubby’s wars.

  • This is right out of the Bush playbook – he thinks everything is solved with a PR blitz. Too bad he doesn’t realize that we’re sick of being “sold” this garbage over and over again – do your damn job the way you’re supposed to and quit wasting the taxpayers’ money on junkets to get yourself on the nightly news.

  • Gonzales appears to be kicking off a “cross-country PR tour to save his job.”

    Just wondering:

    1. Is he doing this on the taxpayer’s dime?

    2. If he is, isn’t that even more abuse of the powers given to him as USAG?

    3. If 1. and 2., why is he making things even harder for himself? Can we get rid of him for this sort of thing?

  • Latinos issuing testimonials for Gonzales is unbelievable after Gonzlales smeared the sterling reputation of David Iglesias because Iglesias refused to pursue phony GOP voter fraud charges against Latino voters. Iglesias also refused to railroad a Latino politican at the behest of some very powerful non-Latino politicians.

    Latinos ought to consider how far Gonzlaes went to drag Iglesias through the mud. Charging Iglesias with excessive absenteeism for serving in the Naval Reserve was despicable and the height of hypocrisy for an administration that pretends to care about the military.

    If those Latino groups cared about ordinary Latinos, they would be defending David Iglesias, not Alberto Gonzales.

  • If he was so damned concerned about the Children then why didn’t he pursue Mark Foley?

    You know, I was just thinking the same thing? Not about Foley himself, though. There was some Republican Congressman who gave a press conference in the immediate aftermath of the Foley discovery, only he insisted on having about a dozen children under 10 in the room with him. The argument being apparently that their parents were devoted supporters of him, and he couldn’t possibly be so rude as to — gasp! — ask them to leave the room while he and the reporters worked. But in fact, just so that the reporters would not dare ask him anything about gay sex or sexual harassment or anything where kids could hear.

    “For the children” indeed. They are scraping the bottom of the barrel. It’s hard to imagine the situation staying this bad for Republicans until November 2008, but if stuff like Gonzales “campaign to keep his own job… for the tobacco conglomerates farmers children!!1!” keeps being needed, it will be a legendary sweep.

    Pass the popcorn. This will be fun.

  • in the field and reaching out to political supporters. His office released a dozen testimonials from Latinos and law enforcement groups

    I wonder how many of these dozen testimonals did come from latinos and of those how many came from people who were not related to Albie G? Where the hell are these letters anyway? If they’re on the DOJ site, I can’t find them.

    with many saying that Gonzales, the first Latino attorney general, was being unfairly held accountable for the fiasco

    It would be quite amusing if the letters also suggest that Rove be thrown under the bus.

  • What you whining liberals fail to realize is that there has been no crime. Gonzales and his deputy claimed that these people were fired for ‘performance’ reasons. That’s true. Some (not Chris Christie in NJ) failed to perform partisan hatchet jobs on Democrats prior to the election and some over-performed (Carol Lam) while prosecuting Republican corruption and malfeasance. Others were about to over-perform and were fired in time.

    All Rove & Miers need do is to take the oath, look Conyers in the eye and say: “These Republican appointees weren’t taking instructions from the politicians who nominated and appointed them so we had Bertie fire them.” End of story. Case closed. All legal and (finally) above board. Stick THAT where your Liberal sun don’t shine.

  • um. disgusted, i think that’s called obstruction of justice. the politicians who nominate them are not the ones to determine HOW the prosecutors do their jobs.

  • oh, and by the way, what in heaven’s name makes you think carol lam was OVER preforming? WTF?

  • Yeah, Gonzales is really concerned about children. He devised the legal base for sodomizing children in Abu Ghraib.

  • so alberto is going to go about the nation demonstrating his caring for our kids.

    sweet.

    well, turns out that’s an easy line of bullshit to dispose of.

    and it links with other doj corruption to boot.

    want the data?

    – go to “the left coaster”

    – look for steve soto’s article “alberto tanked government’s tobacco case” (march 21, 2007

    – go to the last paragraph . click on the “we said” in the first line of that paragraph (“As we said here….”)

    – this takes you to a steve soto article dated june 9, 2005 and titled “big tobacco’s man in alberto gonzales’ justice department”. it’s a post about robert mccallum.

    – go the the last paragraph of this article.

    – click on “children’s health advocates” in the first line of that last paragraph.

    – this will take you to a statement (a press release) dated june 7, 2005.

    the statement is by william v. corr, executive director of

    CAMPAIGN FOR TOBACCO-FREE KIDS.
    .

    the strands of corruption and deceit in the bush white house and doj are beginning to be woven into whole cloth – a shroud in which to bury the reputation of the pres and his administration.

    unless the white house can stall a congressional investigation, we should really see the rats start to leave this ship in a month or so.

  • Alberto Gonzales says he is working tirelessly to be sure he has every American’s back covered…

    I don’t know about anyone else but I’ve always been suspicious of the guy that seems to go out of his way to tell you he’s “got your back covered”.

    See a sarcastic visual that demonstrates how many Americans feel when the Attorney General reassures us that he’s got our backs covered…here:

    http://www.thoughttheater.com

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