The Delusional Debate Ashcroft vs. Gonzales

Now that the election is over we find that cabinet members begin to fly off the Bush wagon faster than Bush himself did.

Andrew Card will remain as chief of staff but soon he will have a fresh batch of staffers to look after. I can’t wait.

Luckily enough the White House gave the papers some fodder to get over their post election news slump. John Ashcroft resigned. Before you can start singing let the eagle soar (as he did in this video clip).

Bush appoints Uncle Al Gonzalez to calm our worries about another 4 years of siphoning your civil liberties.

However, further investigation informs us that Uncle Al really is not just a Hispanic who grew from the poorest of the poor to eventually serve his country, go to Rice, trust in god to get him into Harvard law and sure enough became a lawyer. Uncle Al has been hanging on to Bush’s coattails ever since. Uncle Al’s first job was working for the boys at Enron (which I don’t think got enough coverage this election cycle, take that democrats). Once he was done finagling Ken Lay and the rest of the Enron worms he got promoted to the Texas State Supreme Court. Presiding over cases without ever having judicial experience. He was known to draft memos on the morning of the 150 executions presided over by Bush himself. These memos were “briefs” about the cases of the men who were going to be jolted that morning. These memos were the final chance for keeping these men from the chair.

One of his legacy decisions being debated today is the fact that he went against Texas’ parental notification law granting a 17 year old girl an abortion without having to inform her parents who would have beaten the crap out of her.

That was then this is now. Uncle Al for the last 4 years drafted The PATRIOT Act and all the laws and led to the rodeo at Guantanamo. Al (as he allows even CSPAN interviewers to call him) is on record dismissing the Geneva conventions stating “this new paradigm [war on terror] renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions requiring that captured enemy be afforded such things as commissary privileges” (fact check).

So where is the debate about this guy being just another one of Bush’s henchmen against our civil liberties? Conservatives focus on his lone liberal decision I mentioned above.

As we all now know the nation is in a time of healing. It would look bad to have a conservative Attorney General, one who happens to be Bush’s protégé. Thus the conservatives start their facetious argument against him, calling him a liberal for his stance on the parental notification in the abortion case.

Turning the rhetoric around is this administration’s strongest attribute. They have done it for the past four years with Iraq, Terrorism, and just yesterday by making us feel safe by lowering the national threat level back to peaceful yellow.

Why shouldn’t they! The president has a fresh batch of controversial political capital, and he’s got Uncle Al on his team now.

And anyway, Ashcroft did a fine job, as he said in his last words as Attorney General:
“The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved.”

The Global War on Terror is over! Bring the boys back home!