Gonzales: We Know Best

Posted by Barbara O'Brien at 2:27 PM on January 17, 2007.

You'll like this one. Suzanne Goldenberg writes for the Guardian:

The Bush administration’s most senior legal official said today that US courts were not fit to make decisions on national security and should show deference to the White House.

I should have warned you at the top of the post to sit down and stay calm.

In remarks made after a talk at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative thinktank, the attorney-general, Alberto Gonzales, said: “I don’t think that a judge is equipped at all to make decisions about what is in the national security interest of our country.”

Mr Gonzales’s comments come a few days after a Pentagon official provoked a national backlash after suggesting large corporations boycott law firms that defend detainees at Guantánamo.

You, there! You banging your head against the wall! Stop that right now!

The Associated Press reports (emphasis added),

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says federal judges are unqualified to make rulings affecting national security policy, ramping up his criticism of how they handle terrorism cases.

In remarks prepared for delivery Wednesday, Gonzales says judges generally should defer to the will of the president and Congress when deciding national security cases. He also raps jurists who “apply an activist philosophy that stretches the law to suit policy preferences.”

'Scuse me while I go bang my head against the wall. At least I didn't throw up, like some people.

Big Tent Democrat explains,

I think the Attorney General could not be clearer. He advocates the vitiation of the Constitution by the judiciary when the President so desires. He is unfit for the office of Attorney General. He should be removed from office.

On the other hand, AG Gonzales has decided the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program will be subject to FISA approval, after all. (Glenn Greenwald is, as ever, the go-to guy for in-depth explanation of FISA.)

I understand Mr. Gonzales is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow.

Speaking of atrocities, my buddy the Talking Dog (who is not an atrocity; more of a shepherd-newfoundland mix, I think) interviews H. Candace Gorman, one of the attorneys Alberto Gonzales thinks should be boycotted because she represents detainees at Guantánamo. Good stuff.

Tagged as: nsa, fisa, gonzales, wiretapping, surveillance

Barbara O'Brien has guest blogged at the Take Back America Conference, Glenn Greenwald's, Unclaimed Territory, and Crooks and Liars. She is the "owner/proprietor" of The Mahablog.