Impeaching Gonzo: the good and the bad

by: Jay Stevens

Tue Jul 31, 2007 at 11:38:46 AM MST

The good:

[Washington] Rep. Jay Inslee will introduce a resolution today directing the House Judiciary Committee to investigate whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should be impeached.

Five co-sponsors have joined Inslee, D-Bainbridge Island, in backing the resolution....

Inslee and his co-sponsors are all former prosecutors. Inslee prosecuted cases for the city of Selah, Yakima County, while working as a private attorney in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

"Our resolution follows the careful procedure of conducting a thorough investigation before the House would decide on articles of impeachment - a fairness the attorney general did not afford to his fired U.S. attorneys," Inslee said Monday.

Great news. Let's get to work on restoring the public's confidence in government, starting with Alberto Gonzalez, perhaps the worst Attorney General the country's seen, who actively worked to give the White House unprecented powers to imprison and torture anyone it wants without any oversight, and who oversaw the politizitation of the rule of law in the country.

The bad:

Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the ranking Republican on the committee, denounced the resolution Monday night.

"The call by Democrats to impeach Attorney General Gonzales is a misuse of congressional power for purely political reasons and a waste of the American public's money and time," Smith said in a statement.

He said Democrats have chosen "to engage in a politically motivated campaign to slander the Justice Department and undermine the credibility of federal law enforcement."

I don't how these people sleep at night saying sh*t like this. There's no reasonable defense of Gonzalez' performance. Period. At best you could argue he was a moron who had no idea of what was going on in his department. And there's plenty of evidence to suggest that he's much, much worse than that. Smith is putting party over country.

I'm shocked.