Gonzales' Most Serious Crime: Propping up the Unconstitutional Powers of King George

Posted by Digby, Hullabaloo at 11:22 AM on January 1, 2009.

Alberto Gonzales doesn't have any idea what he did that was so fundamentally wrong. Yes, it's pathetic, but I think he's mostly making an appeal to the village (and perhaps George W. Bush ... ) that he's been punished enough -- he says he can't get a job because people think he's going to be indicted. Poor Alberto.

There is a long list of things Gonzales did wrong, of course, not the least of which was his involvement in the torture and spying regime. But I suspect the most serious crime for an Attorney General is the abuse of the constitution and fundamental principles of American law. Reader Brian sent me this note yesterday in response to my post about the villagers' consensus that investigations and prosecutions of the Bush war crimes would be the wrong thing to do, that I think speaks very well to that point:

Judging by the apologias of Taylor and Marcus, for torture and sundry other criminal enterprises, one is overwhelmingly compelled to conclude they would say literally the exact same thing in response to those items of grievance against King George specified by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence.

 

 

 

 

"He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good..."

 

"He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers..."

"He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior

to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws ; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:...

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences..."

Taylor and Marcus would obviously have been happy licking the bootheels of that other King George, and they would have condemned Jefferson as a lefty extremist.

The Bush administration's crimes are many, and none more repugnant than the torture, spying and indefinite detention scheme. But the fundamental, underlying crime was the one against the principle that the United States is a country of laws not men. Investing supreme and unaccountable power in the president, even if that power resides in a particular person for only four or eight years at a time, is a crime against the foundation of American ideals (however tarnished they are in practice.) And Gonzales, a justice of the supreme court of Texas, white house counsel, Attorney General, not only never questioned that, he worked hard to help the administration perpetrate it. He and his fellows clearly believed in the royalist model of King George, which is about as unamerican as it gets.

Tagged as: bush, constitution, war crimes, gonzales

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