Gon, Baby, Gone

Yesterday the president said his Attorney General’s name — Alberto Gonzales — had been “dragged through the mud for political reasons,” and now various bloggers are pointing out that, in fact, there were plenty of legitimate reasons to drag it around. I’d go a bit further: An Attorney General who denies the right of habeas corpus, who approves warrantless eavesdropping on US citizens, who advises his boss that the Geneva Convention may be obsolete, and who fires a number of state attorney generals so the White House can replace them with party-line apparatchiks like himself — a “public servant” who protects the president instead of the American people — is the mud in Washington. Saying his good name has been dragged through it rather misses the point. It’s like saying Karl Rove has been “the victim of a smear campaign.”

     posted 28 August 2007 by Michael Scott Moore