March 16, 2007

When Bush appointed his old crony Alberto Gonzales to be Attorney General, Nat Hentoff, the great civil libertarian, told me, “Watch out. He’s going to be even worse than Ashcroft.”

How Hentoff was right.

Let me count the ways.

There’s the torture policy.

There’s the illegal spying by the NSA.

There’s last week’s scandal about the firing of the prosecutors.

And last week’s revelations about the abuse of National Security Letters.

Now comes this week’s scandal: How Gonzales got Bush to deep-six the Justice Department’s own investigation of the NSA wiretapping, an investigation that was leading, you guessed it, right toward Gonzales.

The suspension of that investigation was the first time ever that the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility was prevented from carrying out its duties.

But Gonzales is not just a self-serving political hack. He’s also an ideological hack.

Like Cheney, he’s done everything within his power, and a lot of things outside it, to further the agenda of the imperial Presidency, whether that included Bush’s right to violate the “quaint” Geneva Conventions, or to engage in “extraordinary renditions,” or to illegally wiretap U.S. citizens.

On January 18, in testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales made that point pellucid. The topic was the NSA’s domestic spying and how that related to the FISA Act, which states that the “exclusive means” by which the NSA may eavesdrop on U.S. citizens at home is with a warrant from the FISA court. Testified Gonzales: “The truth of the matter is we looked at FISA and we all concluded there’s no way we can do what we have to do to protect this country under the strict reading of FISA.”

So did they come to Congress to get the power they felt they needed?

No, they just seized that power, and blatantly violated the FISA Act in the process. As Russ Feingold has noted, by so doing, they committed an impeachable offense.

This Administration has made it a practice to act as though the President were above the law.

But now even the imperial President himself may not choose to rescue his loyal vassal.

Watch for Bush to show Gonzales the door.

But don’t kid yourself. The next person in may be no better than the last.

Because they all work for the boss.

And it’s the boss who’s the problem.

Along with his profoundly undemocratic ideology.