Salon.com disgusted with Democrats over Gonzales questioning

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

(Salon.com was one of the pillars of the ABB movement last year. The fact
that it feels compelled to dissociate itself from the Democrats on the
Gonzales nomination is therefore of some interest. There seems to be some
grumbling in these ranks. Lately, Air America--another ABB outlet--has been
lashing out at DP spinelessness. I must admit that I base this on
late-night listening and not to the Al Franken show, who is a hardened DP
ideologue.)

Salon.com
Not with a bang but a whimper
As the protest against Bush's certification fell flat and they rolled over
for Gonzales, it was a day of humiliation and futility for Democrats.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Tim Grieve

Jan. 7, 2005  |  WASHINGTON -- For an hour or so Thursday morning, Alberto
Gonzales had played a lawyerly game of Slip 'n' Slide with members of the
Senate Judiciary Committee. That 2002 memo in which he called portions of
the Geneva Convention "quaint" and "obsolete"? Gonzales disavowed it. His
view of the president's powers during wartime? A "hypothetical" question
that Gonzales wouldn't answer. The legal opinion that seemed to authorize
torture by U.S. troops? Gonzales said he couldn't remember who asked for
it, then blamed the Department of Justice for the conclusions it reached.

Democratic Sen. Joe Biden sat quietly, listening to it all. On another day,
in another political reality, he might have been watching a presidential
nominee self-destruct. The man who would be attorney general was coming off
as evasive, as ill-prepared, as unwilling to accept responsibility for
anything that happened on his watch as George W. Bush's White House
counsel. But when Biden finally had his chance to put a question to
Gonzales, he delivered this clear message instead: "You're going to be
confirmed."

Thursday was the first serious work day for the 109th Congress, and it was
a day of humiliation and futility for the Democrats who still have jobs on
Capitol Hill. Republicans picked up four Senate seats and three House seats
in November, and signs of the Democrats' increasing powerlessness were
everywhere Thursday. In a hearing room in the Hart Senate Office Building,
Biden and his Democratic colleagues went through the motions of questioning
an attorney general nominee whose confirmation is a foregone conclusion. On
the floor of the House of Representatives, a handful of Democrats launched
a meaningless protest against the certification of Bush's reelection.

For Democrats, the election protest was at least a momentary triumph. Four
years ago, with Al Gore presiding, Congress met in joint session to certify
the results of the 2000 election. One after another, African-American
members of the House rose to protest the vote from Florida, where thousands
of black voters had been disenfranchised and the U.S. Supreme Court had
called off the recount. Again and again, the members were gaveled down
because they couldn't get a single senator to join them in protesting the
election results.

It was different this time. When Ohio Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones rose in
the House chambers, she announced that she had a protest to lodge against
the Ohio vote, in writing as required. "And," she said, "I do have a
senator." The senator was California's Barbara Boxer, who said she joined
in the protest because it was the only way to shed light on the voting
irregularities in Ohio and the need for election reform nationwide.

Sen. Ted Kennedy praised Boxer for forcing the issue, saying that to treat
the vote certification as a "meaningless ritual would be an insult to our
democracy." But as noble as the Democrats' intentions might have been, it
was hard to see how the protest itself was anything other than a
"meaningless ritual."

The protest put a hold on the vote certification so that each house could
retire to its respective chamber for debate and a vote on the issue. But
Boxer -- or anyone else who thought the protest would lead to serious
discussion of election reform -- must have been disappointed by the sorry
spectacle that followed. There was no sense of history being made, no sense
that anything was really happening at all. Although a few hundred people
protested in the drizzle across the street from the Capitol, the visitor
galleries in the Senate were mostly empty. Fewer than a dozen senators
showed up for the debate, and only the ones who spoke -- among them,
Hillary Rodham Clinton and, in his first floor speech, Barack Obama --
seemed to take it seriously. As Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin made an
impassioned plea for a bipartisan effort to improve the electoral system,
Dick Cheney and Sen. Rick Santorum sat slumped in a couple of chairs on the
edge of the Senate floor, talking and laughing. They weren't listening.
With solid majorities in both houses, they didn't have to.

And the Republicans weren't the only ones who seemed to give the protest
short shrift. Minnesota Sen. Mark Dayton, a Democrat, took to the floor to
criticize Boxer for facilitating the protest, saying she would undermine
the country's confidence in its democracy if the protest were to succeed
and the election were thrown to the House of Representatives. And while
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid ultimately spoke of the need for election
reform, he spent much of the protest debate on the other side of the aisle,
kibitzing with Santorum and a few other Republican senators.

When it came time for the roll call, Boxer was the only senator to vote for
the protest; John Kerry, who had announced Wednesday that he wouldn't take
part in any protest, conveniently found himself on a mission to Baghdad. In
the House, 31 Democrats voted to support the objection. Eighty-eight House
Democrats voted against it, and 80 of them didn't bother to vote at all.
For their efforts, Rep. John Conyers and the others who pursued an
investigation in Ohio got neither a serious debate over the voting
irregularities nor a commitment from Republicans even to think about
electoral reform.

The Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee were every bit as
ineffective in securing commitments from Alberto Gonzales. New York Sen.
Chuck Schumer asked Gonzales whether he would agree to urge Bush to consult
with Democrats about potential Supreme Court nominees. Gonzales' response?
He said he'd relay the request.

Gonzales' exchange with Schumer was one of several in which the nominee was
either unable to or uninterested in engaging with the questions before him.
Schumer praised Gonzales for working with him on judicial appointments,
saying that because of their cooperation, Bush had appointed federal judges
for New York who were conservative but not outside the mainstream. When
Schumer asked why the administration hadn't been able to work cooperatively
on nominations with Democrats elsewhere in the country, Gonzales said he'd
wondered about that, too, then left it at that.

And time and again, when senators suggested that there might be some
linkage between Gonzales' legal work and the abuses at Abu Ghraib, Gonzales
seemed unable to understand why anyone might think there could be a
connection. When asked whether he agreed with the narrow definition of
"torture" set forth in a legal opinion he requested from the Department of
Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, Gonzales said that by asking for the
opinion to be written, "I did my job as counsel to the president." Pressed
further by Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, Gonzales said that he didn't recall
whether he agreed with the narrow definition at the time the opinion was
presented to him, and that "ultimately, it was the responsibility of the
Department of Justice" to interpret the law.

Other times, Gonzales seemed to be unprepared for questions he should have
known were coming. When asked about memos he wrote to help Bush, then
governor of Texas, weigh clemency requests from death row inmates, Gonzales
was vague about why he had left out information that could have given Bush
reason to think that death sentences should be commuted or at least
delayed. Asked about a now legendary case in which the condemned man's
lawyer slept through much of his trial -- a fact Gonzales didn't see fit to
mention in his clemency memo -- the nominee said he couldn't remember any
of the details of the case. And when Sen. Lindsey Graham asked Gonzales
whether he agreed with a military lawyer's suggestion that White House
policy on torture and the Geneva Convention put U.S. troops at risk, the
nominee was caught completely flat-footed. He asked if the clock hadn't run
out on Graham's questioning. He asked Graham to repeat the question. And
then, when he still had nothing to say, he accepted Graham's offer to take
some time to think about it and provide a response later.

Gonzales offered a few assurances here and there. He said he understands
that he'll have an obligation to justice, and not just to the president,
when he's serving as attorney general. He said he disapproves of torture,
and that he is committed to following the rule of law. But without details
-- and Gonzales wasn't providing any -- Democrats know that those promises
don't mean much. If you don't say how you'd define torture -- and Gonzales
didn't -- then it's easy to say that you oppose it, just as it's easy to
say you'll follow the rule of law so long as you don't say what you think
the law is.

None of this sat well with the Democrats on the committee, but they know
there's nothing they can do about it. It takes a simple majority to confirm
a cabinet appointee. The Republicans can provide that on their own, and
some Democrats -- including Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar, who introduced
Gonzales at the meeting -- are likely to cross over and join them.

So even if there's a direct line between Gonzales' legal work and the
abuses of Abu Ghraib -- abuses so awful that Sen. Orrin Hatch suggested
that photographs of them not be shown while Gonzales' children were in the
hearing room -- the Democrats are just going to have to take it. The
process wasn't pretty. Some Democrats pushed Gonzales hard for answers.
Leahy pursued him aggressively on a number of issues, including his
vetting, such as it was, of Bernard Kerik. Kennedy came at him again and
again on torture and the Geneva Convention. And Graham, a Republican,
questioned Gonzales sharply even though he said he intended to vote to
confirm him.

But even the most aggressive questioners were left looking a little
pathetic. At one point Thursday afternoon, Ted Kennedy was reduced to
begging Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter for all of 15 minutes to
question Gonzales about issues like immigration and civil rights.

And after assuring Gonzales that his confirmation was in the bag, Joe Biden
found himself groveling before the nominee, calling him the "real deal" --
remember when they said that about John Kerry? -- even as he pleaded with
him to tell the truth about something. "We're looking for candor, old
buddy," Biden told Gonzales Thursday morning. "We're looking for you, when
we ask you a question, to give us an answer, which you haven't done yet. I
love you, but you're not being very candid so far."

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