AFTER WOLFOWITZ COMES GONZALES... AND THEN ROVE-- AND THEY'LL ALL WANT LETTERS ABSOLVING THEM OF ANY FAULTS FOR HAVING DONE ANYTHING UNTOWARD

When LBJ lost Walter Cronkite, he lost the Vietnam War. Today Albert Gonzales lost conservative Democrat Dianne Feinstein. She says she's lost confidence in him and she joined Chuck Schumer in calling for a Vote of No Confidence in the Senate. And Feinstein and Schumer weren't the only harbingers of the end of the road for Abu Gonzo this week.

Their announcement is the latest in a series of blows suffered by Gonzales this week, including new criticism from Republicans and the prediction of one GOP veteran that the investigation into the firings of federal prosecutors would end with the attorney general's resignation.

Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Thursday that the Justice Department can't properly protect the nation from terrorism or oversee Bush's no- warrant eavesdropping program with Gonzales at the helm.

"I have a sense that when we finish our investigation, we may have the conclusion of the tenure of the attorney general," Specter said during a committee hearing. "I think when our investigation is concluded, it'll be clear even to the attorney general and the president that we're looking at a dysfunctional department which is vital to the national welfare."

His comment echoed new criticism of Gonzales this week. Former deputy attorney general James Comey testified that Gonzales tried to get his predecessor as attorney general, John Ashcroft, to approve Bush's eavesdropping program as Ashcroft lay in intensive care.

Asked twice during a news conference Thursday if he personally ordered Gonzales and then-White House chief of staff Andrew Card to Ashcroft's hospital room, Bush refused to answer.

Conservative Republican senators like Chuck Hagel and quintessential Bush Regime rubber stamps Pat Roberts (R-KS), Tom Coburn (R-OK) and John Sununu (R-NH) have also been howling for Gonzales to resign-- and resign fast, before he does even more damage to what's left of the Republican brand. Even John McCain pulled his head out of Cheney's ass long enough to demand Gonzales resign or be fired.

This morning's NY Times analyzed the James Comey testimony in an editorial that went beyond Gonzales' impending departure from the Justice Department. "The Republican-controlled Congress did a disservice to the nation by refusing to hold Mr. Bush to account for the illegal wiretapping. The current Congress should resume a vigorous investigation of this egregious abuse of power."

There is only one place where this ends-- and that is with Karl Rove in a prison cell. There has been a well-orchestrated coverup of misconduct in multiple DOJ operations and, clearly, Gonzales-- a willing participant-- is not speedy enough to have done the orchestrating.

WHY IS IT only now that the disturbing story of the Bush administration's willingness to override the legal advice of its own Justice Department is emerging? The chief reason is that the administration, in the person of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, stonewalled congressional inquiries and did its best to ensure that the shameful episode never came to light.

In February 2006, the Senate Judiciary Committee was inquiring into the warrantless wiretapping program whose existence had been revealed just two months before. Sketchy details had also begun to emerge of the March 2004 hospital room ambush, in which Mr. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, and then-White House chief of staff Andrew H. Card Jr. tried to browbeat the gravely ill Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, who had temporarily yielded his office to his deputy, into approving the warrantless surveillance program.

Respectable publications like the Times and Post may be shy about the obvious connection between Rove and all this scandal. But the Republican Prince of Darkness isn't. In his column today, the reactionary and always-partisan Robert Novak writes that Rove is neck-high in all the most outrageous aspects of what is turning out to be the Bush Regime's disintegration before our eyes. He ends his column by pointing out that plenty of Republican congressmen-- many of whose jobs are in jeopardy because of Rove's shenanigans-- "believe that Rove should have quit when he was ahead as manager of the two Bush elections and left in January 2005. However, they do not want to see him limp out of Washington with his scalp hanging on Henry Waxman's belt. 'We're not hostile to the administration,' one prominent conservative House member who did not want his name used told me. 'We just want it to be over.'" Most Americans just want it over.


UPDATE: WHY IS CHRIS DODD IGNORING KARL ROVE?

Or, maybe his resolution calling for the resignations of Gonzales and Wolfowitz is just a first step. Let's step it up, though.


UPDATE: PFAW: “ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROVE”

More evidence emerges every day that the myth of widespread ‘voter fraud’ was cooked up by Republican strategists (Do you smell a Rove?) as an excuse to pass restrictive measures like voter ID laws that disenfranchise eligible voters in vulnerable communities-- voters who, quite frankly, are not likely to vote overwhelmingly Republican (minorities, the poor, the disabled, students and the elderly).
Let's review:
• Policies that erect barriers to voting…

• The politicization of the Justice Department’s voting rights section…

• The pressuring of U.S. attorneys to investigate civic organizations and campaigns that register voters in poor and minority communities…

• The subsequent firing of several U.S. attorneys who refused to engage in the voter fraud witch hunt…



All of these are part of a plan to keep certain voters from the polls and make sure the playing field is unevenly skewed to the Republicans’ advantage in 2008.
Voter suppression: political operatives associated with the Bush administration, led by Karl Rove, are the best in the biz. And they have used government agencies to turn it into a national, coordinated effort since they came into power. Attorney General Gonzales has been a primary enabler (cleaning up the DOJ is critical to ensuring fair elections). But even fired U.S. Attorney David Iglesias of New Mexico said of the firing scandal, “I think all roads lead to Rove.”
Short of the president and vice president themselves, Karl Rove is about as high up in the Bush administration as you can go. Who else in the White House was involved, not only with the U.S. attorney firings, but with the ongoing concerted effort to fix elections via disenfranchisement and the misuse of the Justice Department? This is a question we must keep asking – for the health of our democracy, those involved must be held accountable.
In the meantime, PFAW will be working to clean up the Department of Justice and expose the threat to voting rights posed by officials at the highest levels of the Bush administration.

UPDATE: SENATE WILL MOVE TO CENSURE ABU GONZO

A no-confidence vote is kind of European and there's not really any such thing in the U.S. Censure, on the other hand, will work-- at least to pressure the Bush Regime to dump Gonzales overboard. He has certainly earned it. The McClatchy newspapers claim that the censure vote is "impending" and tomorrow's NY Times paints a very grim picture for Gonzales' political survival. The two top senators of the Judiciary Committee, Chairman Pat Leahy and Republican ranking member Arlen Specter both seem to feel Gonzales is a goner. Leahy said he has "absolutely no confidence in the attorney general or his leadership" and Specter, in his catty way, said he has "a sense that when we finish our investigation, we may have the conclusion of the tenure of the attorney general." Another Republican rubber stamp hack in fear for his job, Norman Coleman (MN), declared that Gonzales should resign at once.


UPDATE: OUT WITH THE OLD TRASH, IN WITH THE NEW

Although the Bush Regime is busy trying to sneak a vicious racist KKK slug, Leslie Southwick, onto the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, there is always time to root around in the sewers looking for an apt replacement for their disgraced shill, Wolfowitz. A Bush flack painted a purty picture: "Traditionally, the American nominee has become the World Bank president. We want to move swiftly in this process. We want to make sure that we are selecting the best individual for the job. We want someone who has a real passion for lifting people out of poverty." Recall that yesterday Bush twisted reality on its head-- as is his regular modus operandi-- to imply that Wolfowitz was fired because he was too strong an advocate for the poor. Among the partisan monstrosities the Bush Regime is threatening to inflict on the World Bank are otherwise unemployable right wing hacks like Robert Zoellick, Jim Leach, Stanley Fischer and Paul Volcker. They also are tossing around Henry Paulson's name, the current Bush Regime Treasury Secretary and, catering to his unbounded vanity, Indiana Senator Richard Lugar.