Bush Defends Gonzales’s Decision<\/strong>
Bush Says ‘Mistakes Were Made’ in Explanation to Congress<\/a> <\/div>\nPresident Bush expressed confidence in Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales on Wednesday, but agreed that "mistakes were made" in the dismissal of eight federal prosecutors, and said it "troubles me" that lawmakers feel his administration was not straightforward.<\/p>\n
As he wrapped up a six-day, five-nation tour of Latin America, Bush found himself again forced to confront a political furor back home. He took time out from his Mexican schedule to call Gonzales Wednesday morning and instruct him to go to Capitol Hill to repair his credibility problems with Congress. But Bush denied that politics drove the decision to fire the U.S. attorneys.<\/strong><\/p>\n"I’ve heard those allegations about political decision making — it’s just not true," Bush said during an appearance with Mexican President Felipe Calder\u00c3\u00b3n here before flying back to Washington in the afternoon. He added:
"What Al did, and what the Justice Department did, was appropriate. U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president. They can be removed by the president. What was mishandled was the explanation of the cases to Congress."<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nI recall wincing when Bush says, "you got to understand …" He talks as if the criticism is because we just don’t get the point. "You got to understand, Saddam Hussein is a bad man…" So now we’re going to hear that what "mistakes were made" means is that "the explanation of the cases to Congress" was somehow faulty [meaning, they didn’t like it, so we didn’t pitch it right].<\/div>\n
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We’re sitting out here reading nine months of emails between Harriet Myers and Kyle Samson in which they plot and scheme to get rid of Prosecutors who won’t get on board using the Justice Department to prosecute voters cases that might purge Democratic voters.<\/strong><\/font> What wasn’t<\/u> political about that? How would that be presented to Congress to make it okay? And the part about "at the pleasure of the President." We know that. But what we’re saying is that he’s not Louis XIV<\/strong><\/font>. We’re not questioning that he’s got the authority to do what he’s doing. We’re saying that there’s a level of accountability for what he does that’s a step above the fact that he has the power. We’re complaining about the basic morality of firing Federal Prosecutors because they won’t follow what we consider to be a blatantly partisan political agenda.<\/p>\nAnd then he says: "I’ve heard those allegations about political decision making — it’s just not true." We’ve read the emails. We’ve read their performance ratings. What is true? It sure looks, sounds, and quacks like a duck to me. We do understand. And, I hasten to add that the President serves at the "pleasure of" the people and the Congress.<\/p>\n
So now a head has rolled. Alberto’s Chief of Staff bit the dust yeasterday. Being a Chief of Staff in this Administration is like being a King’s food taster in days of gone by – a dangerous job. And one wonders if this is why Harriet Miers resigned. She resigned on January 4th, a month after these firings, for no discernable reason. One wonders if the s__t was already hitting the proverbial fan about these firings and hers was a pre-emptive resignation to dodge the soon-coming bullets. The firings hit the Press a week or so after her resignation best I can reconstruct…<\/p>\n
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Bush Defends Gonzales’s Decision Bush Says ‘Mistakes Were Made’ in Explanation to Congress President Bush expressed confidence in Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales on Wednesday, but agreed that "mistakes were made" in the dismissal of eight federal prosecutors, and said it "troubles me" that lawmakers feel his administration was not straightforward. As he wrapped up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}