Pile-up in the Passing Lane
A.G.A.G. is dead now, even though he's still on his feet. He's lurching around in those last gasps, like King Kong at the top of the Empire State Building, just after the last round of machine gun fire, but before letting go of the radio antenna.
And that's as it should be, on both counts. King Kong was too huge and mean, even for New York City, and A.G.A.G. was too dumb to survive. Pure Darwinism at work. Politics is as forgiving as gladitorial combat, and today's attorney-general is tomorrow's forgotten prisoner doing a dime in a federal pen in Leavenworth or Fort Dix. A.G.A.G. can't expect Bush to jump in front of him and take the bullet when the hammer finally falls; he is the president, after all — people take bullets for him, not the other way around. And the bullet that reads "Alberto Gonzalez" will be leaving the chamber soon.
The whole scene reads like something from the Nixon years, or even worse. White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez, along with chief of staff Andrew Card, showing up at the bedside of the attorney-general while he's in some near-vegetative state, demanding that he "sign papers" for "the good of the country."
But even under these conditions, and even though he's an old self-righteous Jesus freak, Ashcroft saw the writing on the wall — thank acting attorney-general Comey for that. But now, with A.G. as A.G. and Andrew Card gone to ground after being publicly humiliated and nearly lynched a couple months ago, the fat is in the fire, as they say. A.G.A.G. maintained to Congress that he was at the bedside of Ashcroft to testify about a different top-secret intelligence program, not the secret wiretapping that he had earlier denied. But FBI director Robert Mueller said that A.G.A.G. had indeed been at Ashcroft's bedside to whisper the wiretapping poison in his ear. Next, A.G.A.G. maintained that congressional Democrats had been briefed on the wiretapping program, but ex-senate majority leader Tom Daschle emerged from retirement to beat that lie back as well, saying that the program had been sold to them as just "routine." The whole sordid mess, which inevitably leads to A.G.A.G. as both a perjuror and an obstructor of justice, is detailed in Michael Isikoff's latest Newsweek article.
And all that arrived after A.G.A.G. had already lied about the very meeting the Dems were at, a lie exposed in this story. By my count, A.G.A.G. has committed perjury before Congress some half a dozen times. Bush has already promised that no special prosecutor will ever be appointed to investigate A.G.A.G., but if Bush doesn't remove the guy, he will be made to do so.
Bush and A.G.A.G. go way back. The squirrelly, oily man was Bush's lawyer, even in the years before being White House counsel, and it certainly shows. His entire bullshit testimony was meant only to cover for the Boss. This sort of cozy relationship between the attorney-general and the president is never a good thing. Ed Meese and Reagan went back to Dutch's days as governor of California in the 1960s, and Meese was a bloated sac that represented everything cruel and authoritarian in American governance. Hell, by that token, A.G.A.G. is his spiritual descendant. This sadistic little weasel deserves whatever he gets.
But he's not the only one in trouble. The FBI raided Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) house this morning, as part of a construction-for-contracts scandal that bears an eerie resemblance to the 2004 scandal that brought down Connecticut governor John Rowland. It's a bit of a pity for Ted Stevens, who at the age of 142 managed to survive for so many years without the feds knocking on his door. But he's screwed now, if the 10 months Rowland did in the pen are any indication. Stevens is the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, and second-longest serving active senator after Robert Byrd of West Virginia who, if rumor is to be believed, signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 under the nom de guerre "Button Gwinnett."
And why not? D.C. is a fast-paced place, and when you drive that fast, the accidents are always spectacular. But while their patrons are being torn to shreds in Washington and even in their own homes, the moneyed few continue to do pretty much whatever they want, whenever they want, however they want, with whom they want, and at any time, day or night. Although Indiana law states that companies can only put 1.3 ounces of mercury into Lake Michigan each year, BP has dumped 3 pounds of the stuff into the lake every year. But rather than prosecute the criminal corporation, the Indiana Dept. of Environmental Management gave BP a permit exempting it from following the law.
It's getting to the point that even Republican mouthpieces like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal can't bear to defend their people anymore. The looks on anchors' faces as they defend Gonzalez against his Democratic foes are positively withering — the looks of whores who have finally realized exactly who and what they are, after years of fucking for cash.
In other news, John and Elizabeth Edwards celebrated their 30th anniversary at Wendy's, as they have every other year since their first. She still wears the $11 ring he gave her in law school. The story's either great sentimental, humanizing stuff, or else designed by the Edwards team to look like great sentimental,humanizing stuff, to reinforce the "son of a mill worker" thing and downplay John's current richer-than-Croesus status. But even if it's the cynical, latter story, I'll take Edwards over any of the jabbering mutants that pass for Republicans today.
