Attorney General Gonzales’s Vow is Cold Comfort

America’s first Hispanic Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, says that combatting terrorism will be his top priority. "But,” he added, “we will do so in a way that's consistent with our values, consistent with our legal obligations." Oh swell. And those values would be ...? Those legal obligations are according to whose definition? If Gonzales’s values are those outlined by the BushMen--which were beautifully summarized in the American Civil Liberties Union of PA Free For All pamphlet--then this is his credo: Send gays back to the closet and make them second-class citizens by law Force religion on public school children Give huge sums of tax dollars to faith-based organizations so they can proselytize Deny women the choice to control their bodies Gonzales was one of the lawyers who parsed the Geneva Convention rules for the GOP so that torture was not only allowed in interrogation techniques but was the preferred method to be used on detainees from Afghanistan and Iraq. Newsweek’s International edition last May 24th ran a story about the White House deciding the Geneva Convention rules on torture didn’t apply to the Bush administration. The article stated that, “The story begins in the months after September 11, when a small band of conservative lawyers within the Bush administration staked out a forward-leaning legal position. The attacks by Al Qaeda on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, these lawyers said, had plunged the country into a new kind of war. It was a conflict against a vast, outlaw, international enemy in which the rules of war, international treaties and even the Geneva Conventions did not apply. These positions were laid out in secret legal opinions drafted by lawyers from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, and then endorsed by the Department of Defense and ultimately by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, according to copies of the opinions and other internal legal memos obtained by Newsweek.” All of which means Gonzales is under no “legal obligations” except to torque criminal behavior into acceptable behavior according to White House rules. White House Rules: 1. Fuck you for a start 2. Fuck your mother 3. Fuck your mother's ancestors 4. Fuck the boat that brought your mother's ancestors to Philadelphia 5. Fuck the signers of the Constitution 6. Fuck the particular signer who fucked your grandmother’s great-great grandmother 7. Fuck George Washington who fucked the Indian who fucked the particular signer of the Constitution who fucked your grandmother’s great-great-grandmother. 7. Finally, if you think we’re going to give you the sweat off our balls, the time of day, a hello or smile, much less kiss your ass...let's go back to the beginning. FUCK YOU!