Let’s Not Mince Words

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Timothy Burke

The US Senate is being “tough” on Gonzalez, but it comes down to this: either Gonzalez or Comey is lying. They need to ask him straight up: are you calling Comey a liar? No more of this postmodern “you have to see it in context” shit. Either the Attorney General of the United States of America is going to say, “The other guy is a liar” or not. If not, that’ll make it clear that we have a President who thinks it’s a jolly good idea to have the top law enforcement officer of the country be a liar. If he says Comey is a liar, then stack the public records of the two men up against each other. Hint: Gonzalez doesn’t look real good. Especially given that this is an Administration that has been more than willing to take a dump on any man or woman of honor who had the guts to break with them in public and criticize them. The supreme political principle in this time? Loyalty to the President. Not loyalty to your responsibilities, your office, your society.

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5 Responses to Let’s Not Mince Words

  1. daddy democrat says:
    July 25, 2007 at 4:01 pm

    But isn’t the principle disagreement between Gonzales and Comey about intent? Sure, Comey has vastly more credibility on this issue, but it’s pretty hard to prove absolutely that Gonzales is lying about what was in his heart. It’s not like’s reported to have yelled at Ashcroft or trying to twist his arm.

  2. hestal says:
    July 25, 2007 at 4:21 pm

    George Washington did not mince words when he warned us that political parties could fall prey to “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men.” And both parties seem to be infected at present. They are both seeking the favor of the God of Reelection, and to hell with the Constitution. The Framers made a lot of assumptions that were incorrect and those errors need to be corrected. One error is that they did not outlaw parties.

  3. Timothy Burke says:
    July 25, 2007 at 7:44 pm

    Where Gonzalez is lying (or Comey is) regards Gonzalez’ claim that he had no idea that Comey or Ashcroft objected to reauthorization of the NSA’s surveillance, or that there was any disagreement within the Administration about it. This means that his visit to Ashcroft is pretty incomprehensible–if you’re not trying to do an end run around someone and if you’re not trying to see if you can pressure a sick man into signing off on something, then why are you rushing to the hospital to see Ashcroft? It really doesn’t matter what was in his heart in seeing Ashcroft: there’s a basic factual question about the purpose of the visit to be answered, and Gonzalez is denying that it had anything to do with trying to do an end run around Comey or about any kind of objections within the DOJ at all. In the course of the testimony, Gonzalez eventually said that there were “other” intelligence programs that they disagreed over, but not the NSA one which was the reason why he went to see Ashcroft.

  4. withywindle says:
    July 25, 2007 at 8:54 pm

    Which could always be possible–interesting to see. But I confess I have no particular urge to search for possible excuses for AG Gonzalez right now–I think he has exhausted the benefit of the doubt.

  5. The Constructivist says:
    July 26, 2007 at 5:31 pm

    Given my track record on Gonzalez predictions and assessments, I’ll stick to meaningless mayoral campaigns, thank you very much.

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