The Attorney Scandal Continues

Well I left it alone for a week and what’s happened? It gets worse! This story from The Seattle Times is an indication of the depth of the mess that the Bush regime has now fallen into:Charges may result from firings, say two former U.S. attorneys | Seattle Times Newspaper

So here are two solidly Republican attorneys, both of whom were fired by the Department of Justice for “performance reasons” discussing their experience. Remember: they are Republicans.

And they are saying that, in their opinion, the current scandal will “get worse” and that it will result in criminal indictments.

At the very least it seems straightfoward that Alberto Gonzales and his deputy Paul McNulty have both lied to Congress. This is a crime. The reason that Monica Goodling has run for the cover of the Fifth Amendment is that she is intimately aware of those lies: she most likely helped conjure them up. She was the go-between linking the White House and the DoJ, so she acted as the conduit through which Karl Rove effectively ran the Justice Department as an adjunct of the Republican Party.

The astonishing fact is that Gonzales admitted that the White House ran things. As these two attorneys tell it he announced to a meeting of all the US Attorneys that “I work for the White House, so you work for the White House”. So much for the independence of our justice system! No wonder a few of the more upstanding US Attorneys were shocked. they don’t work for the White House: they work for us. Or at least they used to until Rove took over.

That’s what makes this scandal so huge. The protection of the integrity of our legal system is at stake. It is increasingly clear that the Bush regime has infected the administration of justice with a partisan bias. Such a bias is poisonous to democracy. For all you doubting folks, all you Republican supporters who still think this is “just a political fishing trip”: imagine what you would say if the shoe was on the other foot and the DoJ was being used to hunt down and prosecute Republican favorites and supporters. It is that simple. Bush and Rove have gone beyond the pale. They are deliberately undermining democracy in order to gain partisan advantage.

And no. No both sides don’t play this game. No one has ever done this before. This is without precedent.

So. You remaining doubters: get on the bandwagon to protect democracy; stop covering for Bush’s flagrant disregard for our freedoms.

Trying to protect Bush is no longer a partisan duty. It has become unpatriotic.

Your choice.