The Mob Considers Canning Its Consigliere

The Mob has lined up its goombata to go on the record and support the Family’s Consigliere. But everyone knows the Family has decided to kick the suit to the curb. Even so, that’s not an easy thing to do. Short of whacking the slimy and incompetent gavonne, how do you fire the guy who knows where all the bodies are buried? If watching Capo Orrin Hatch yesterday on George Steph’s Sunday morning show is any indication, the Mob in the White House has instructed its soldiers to praise Alberto Gonzales to the skies, then they are gong to sell him out to the Democrats and they will let the Dems do the dirty work. Senator Hatch (R-UT) sounded like a veritable Bruce Cutler on Steph’s “This Week” yesterday. I love John Gotti’s mouthpiece Bruce Cutler, but he’s charming and smart when being evasive and slick, not irritating and shifty like Hatch. Hatch kept asking where the “evidence” was against Alberto Gonzales. Of course, when Hatch kept yammering about there being no evidence, he didn’t venture from the topic of Gonzales having fired nine U.S. attorneys in 2006. This morning, the Washington Post helpfully chronicled the damning evidence against Gonzales in a news story titled “Gonzales's Truthfulness Long Disputed” (and subtitled “Claims of Misstatements to Shield Bush Stretch Back a Decade”). Gonzales owes his entire career to George W. Bush. Shielding GWB dates back to Gonzales’s tenure in Texas as general counsel, secretary of state, judge on the Supreme Court and good buddy to GWB. The WaPo article quoted Bill Minutaglio, a University of Texas journalism professor and author of biographies of Gonzales and Bush. Minutaglio said Gonzales had kept a low profile in Texas and ‘had little practice before he came to Washington at responding publicly to stiff scrutiny’ and that ‘it’s beyond anything he had ever experienced in his life. He was ill prepared for it.’” The WaPo article goes on to say: “Democrats and some experts on the use of language say that Gonzales's gaffes are too numerous and consistent to be chalked up to misunderstandings...his answers, or his refusals to answer, have served to obscure events that would be damaging to the administration, Gonzales or Bush. One example involves the Terrorist Surveillance Program...Gonzales has testified repeatedly that there was never 'serious disagreement' among administration officials about the program and that an unusual visit by Gonzales to the hospital bed of then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft was focused on 'other intelligence activities'...Others privy to details of the surveillance activities -- including several lawmakers and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller -- have suggested that they were all part of a single NSA program. Gonzales's critics say his distinction was a lawyerly one that stretched the bounds of the truth.” More quotes from WaPo: "He's a slippery fellow, and I think so intentionally," said Richard L. Schott, a professor at the University of Texas's Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. "He's trying to keep the president's secrets and to be a team player, even if it means prevaricating or forgetting convenient things.” “Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) told Gonzales at the (Senate) hearing (in April) that much of his testimony was ‘a stretch’. and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said he was ‘taken aback’ by Gonzales's memory lapses. Last week, Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), the Judiciary Committee's senior Republican, warned Gonzales to review his remarks, saying: ‘I do not find your testimony credible, candidly.’ “Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at the New York University School of Law, said that Gonzales's strengths "may lie elsewhere, but they are not in management." Oh yeah...the administration is going to get rid of Gonzales. But how? A fatal accident would look really bad and that option has probably been taken off the table...for now. I see Gonzales resigning, being given a Medal of Freedom and being pardoned for all past and future peccadilloes, misdemeanors and felonies instead of going to trial and being convicted. Then he has a fatal accident.