Thursday, April 19, 2007

Gonzales Can't Recall Meetings That Led to Attorney Firings

By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t Report
Thursday 19 April 2007

Embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified Thursday before a Senate committee that he could not recall the details of any of the meetings he participated in over the course of two years, in which he and his staff discussed a plan to fire eight US attorneys.

"I have searched my memory," Gonzales said, in response to a question by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) about one meeting Gonzales attended in November 2006 when he discussed the firings. "I have no recollection of the meeting.... I don't remember the contents of this meeting."

Gonzales was visibly defensive as a frustrated group of bipartisan senators pounded the attorney general with some tough questions about his role in firings. Throughout the daylong hearing, Gonzales testified more than 70 times that he could not recall any part of the conversations or details of the backdoor meetings he had with White House officials or members of his staff surrounding the questionable dismissals of the US attorneys. He added that he could not recall whether he had certain conversations over the telephone or in person.

Immediately following Gonzales's testimony, Sen. Chuck Schumer D-New York) said that if Gonzales wanted to restore integrity and credibility to the Department of Justice, he would "look into his heart, he would march over to Pennsylvania Avenue and submit his resignation."

The hearing began Thursday morning with an impassioned opening statement by Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, who said the Department of Justice has been "experiencing a crisis of leadership perhaps unrivaled during its 137-year history.

"There is the growing scandal swirling around the dismissal and replacement of several prosecutors, and persistent efforts to undermine and marginalize career lawyers in the Civil Rights Division and elsewhere in the department," Leahy said. "Since Attorney General Gonzales last appeared before this committee on January 18, we have heard sworn testimony from the former US attorneys forced from office and from his former chief of staff. Their testimony sharply contradicts the accounts of the plan to replace US attorneys that the attorney general provided to this committee under oath in January and to the American people during his March 13 press conference."

In his opening statement, Gonzales said he has "nothing to hide," but senators from both parties said Gonzales's failure to provide answers to their questions about why the attorneys were fired and how the plan to oust them was conceived left them with no choice but to conclude Gonzales was being less than truthful in his testimony, and to demand that he immediately resign.

Anti-Gay Group To Picket Va. Tech Funerals

Apr 19, 2007

An anti-gay group from Topeka, Kan., announced plans to picket the funerals of victims of the Virginia Tech massacre.

The Westboro Baptist Church, which is not affiliated with any national Baptist organization, claims shooter Cho Seung-hui was carrying out God's wishes by punishing the victims who weren't Christian, CBS News reported.

"The evidence is they were not Christian. God does not do that to his servants," WBC member Shirley Phelps-Roper told CBS.

The group is known for setting up anti-gay protests at the funerals of U.S. soldiers, although Virginia already has added funerals and memorial services to the state's disorderly conduct statute that could be used by police to keep WBC members at a distance, the report said.

Cho killed 32 people and himself on Monday at the university.

The Post Chronicle™

CNN: White House Won't Deny Lost Emails



Visit>> CREW- Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington

Monday, April 16, 2007

Is Cheney Right? Will Democrats Cave on Iraq Funding?

By Ray McGovern
t r u t h o u t Guest Contributor
Monday 16 April 2007

The rhetoric over recent days and this morning makes it clear that Vice President Dick Cheney is still in charge of Iraq policy. He seems supremely confident that the Democrats can be intimidated into giving the White House the only thing it really wants - enough money to stave off defeat until President George W. Bush and Cheney are safely out of office.
That, of course, is also what lies behind the "temporary surge" in troop strength.

Was Defense Secretary Robert Gates being naive or disingenuous on January 11, when he appeared before the Senate Armed Forces Committee and addressed the "surge?"

I don't think anybody has a definite idea about how long the surge would last. I think for most of us, in our minds, we're thinking of it as a matter of months, not 18 months or two years.

I know Gates; he is not naive. And, whatever the relative merits of positions on a policy issue, neither he nor anyone else in the small coterie of presidential advisers is likely to stand up to Cheney. The $64 question is whether the Democrats will. To me, that appears a long shot.

While some Democrats in Congress have shown backbone since becoming the majority, key members like Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Levin of Michigan seem willing to acquiesce in giving Cheney and Bush funding to continue the war, no matter what. On April 8, right after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced he would cosponsor legislation cutting off all funding for combat troops next March, Levin undercut Reid by telling ABC's "This Week, "We're not going to vote to cut the funding, period.... We're not going to cut off funding for the troops. We shouldn't cut off funding for the troops.... We're going to vote for a bill that funds the troops, period. We're going to fund the troops. We always have."

Do you want me to repeat that?

Levin is a smart fellow, but his progressive credentials have been tarnished by his caving in on funding for an unworkable National Missile Defense project; by his working out an unsavory compromise with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) on depriving detainees of rights formerly guaranteed them by the US Constitution. And now this.

What would prompt Levin to pre-empt his own majority leader? One possible explanation might be found in the chutzpah-laden admonitions coming from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, and the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) cheerleaders for Cheney, who do not disguise their fervor for the US continuing the war in Iraq. Their gratuitous warnings at last month's AIPAC meeting in Washington that US politicians not show "weakness" on Iraq spring from their conviction that withdrawal of US troops would make the neighborhood more dangerous for Israel. (Israeli politicians should have thought of that before goading Bush and Cheney into attacking Iraq in the first place.)

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