The Bush-Gonzales-Renzi dotted line
May 7th, 2007, 9:59 am · Post a Comment · posted by Paul Giblin
The New York Times, in a Sunday editorial headlined, "A Scandal That Keeps Growing," called for President Bush to fire attorney general Alberto Gonzales. It’s hard to imagine Bush jotting down that bit of business on his day calendar anytime soon.The Times argues that Gonzales pink-slipped eight U.S. attorneys, including Paul Charlton of Arizona, then tried to cover up the mess.The thinking goes that Gonzales booted Charlton because Charlton opened a public-corruption investigation into U.S. Rep. Rick Renzi, who is one of Bush’s political croonies.While it’s true that Gonzales canned Charlton, and it’s true that Charlton was snooping into Renzi’s business, no one has produced a letter, an e-mail or a taped phone call to connect the two actions — yet.Still, Gonzales has done little to explain why else he fired Charlton.Here’s the beginning of the Times’ editorial:Attorney General Alberto Gonzales declared recently, while batting down bipartisan calls for him to resign, that he had many things to do and "can’t just be focused on the U.S. attorneys situation."It’s not surprising that Mr. Gonzales wants to change the subject. At best, the firing of eight United States attorneys, most of them highly respected, is an example of such profound incompetence that it should cost Mr. Gonzales his job.At worst, it was a political purge followed by a cover-up. In either case, the scandal is only getting bigger and more disturbing.New reports of possible malfeasance keep coming fast and furious. They all seem to make it more likely than ever that the firings were part of an attempt to turn the Justice Department into a partisan political operation.There is, to start, the very strong appearance that United States attorneys were fired because they were investigating powerful Republicans or refused to bring baseless charges against Democrats.There is reason to believe that Carol Lam of San Diego, who put Randy Cunningham, the former Republican congressman, in jail, and Paul Charlton of Arizona, who was investigating Representative Rick Renzi, among others, were fired simply for their nonpartisan pursuit of justice.The editorial can be viewed in full here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/opinion/06sun1.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
