Gonzales's didn't pursue the many unanswered questions surrounding the Clinton administration. For this reason alone he didn't live up to America's expectations.

Isn't there still an ongoing investigation by a special prosecutor who was appointed last year to look into the removal of the attorneys?

I wish I could comment on that, but because it's an ongoing investigation, I cannot.

I can't believe you didn't comment on this, Steve. One of the funnier things I've read recently. Hopefully immediately after saying this, his head imploded

Thanks, Al - I was hoping someone would bring that up. There is no way Clinton was not involved in Pearl Harbor, he totally sold out America to the Japanese, I don't care if he was only five. Liberals start ruining things early.

If we could veer the discussion back onto its actual subject, Alberto Gonzales - 'Berto was beloved of George Bush because he was loyal, like a dog. He stamped what Bush's administration told him to stamp, and he said the law meant whatever the president thought it meant. For that reason alone he will be recorded in history as the biggest judicial embarrassment since Torquemada.

If he had any sense at all of the enormity of his failure, he wouldn't be trying to use his "experience" with the law to get a job - he'd take up welding, or hump boxes for FedEx. That he still thinks he's an influential figure in the legal profession is evidence enough that he learned nothing. No punishment is sufficiently enormous.

> Gonzales's didn't pursue the many unanswered
> questions surrounding the Clinton administration.

I guess you forgot Kenneth Starr. He did everything in his power and came out empty. To the partisan hacks, Ken Starr was appointed by a dem AG. Imagine that.

You stated, "unlike the nation he served." I would just change that to "unlike the nation for which he performed this disservice."

I'm with you, Al. I was very disappointed that Gonzales failed to prove once and for all that the Clintons murdered Vince Foster.

To the best of my knowledge, he spent no time at all on the Foster matter. What a loser.

Gonzales would make a good protagonist in a B. Traven novel - he's been lost in the Sierra Madres for a while now. Instead of gold fever, Mr. Gonzales, George Bush and Dick Cheney got drunk on corrupted power! -Kevo

Another whiny Bush handmaiden. Yawn. "Everyone is being so unfair to me!" "It wasn't my fault!" Party of personal responsibility, my arse.

No, it must be hard to be Alberto Gonzales or John Yoo, having to endure the slights, the sidelong stares in the faculty lounge. Why, if I had been repeatedly waterboarded on the say-so of these guys, even though I was guilty of nothing and had no useful information, my heart would truly bleed for them.

What's surprising is Gonzales seems to try to imply that he remembers or recalls his time as Attorney General, but his testimony to Congress is proof that this is not possible.

His sullied reputation is "undeserved"? This makes him "angry"?

Gonzales is angry because, unlike most of the other partisan hacks from the Bush administration, the Republican establishment hasn't taken care of him and placed him an a cushy, six-figure job.

The stain Gonzales left will linger for years in the form of hard right ideologues he stocked the Justice Department with.

Well, the reason Gonzo didn't get a six figure, cushy wingnut welfare job is that he's brown, and the wingnut welfare circuit has more than enough tokens. Plus, he's a crappy attorney. Maybe he, John Yoo and Ben Stein can form their own scruffy think tank and begin discussing all those lefty intellectuals who need to be waterboarded.

What a humiliation that Gonzo and Yoo are still walking around in the facade of respectability. All these slimeballs (Gonzo, Addington, Yoo, etc.) who fouled the Department of Justice and our judicial system should be permanently housed in Gitmo, or its replacement. No punishment is too demeaning for these swine. But, not capital; we need them to suffer forever.

The bad news is we are becoming a Third World country.

The good news is that in Third World countries the Gonzos and the Yoos (and the ad infinitums) are stood up against a wall. . .

Gonzo deserves to have his name cleared!

AG Holder should launch a full scale investigation of the DOJ shenanigans, the WH/DOJ counsel shenanigans (including Rove) by independent counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. I'm sure this would be extremely welcome by all involved to clear up their besmirched reputations!

Interesting that Gonzo has not talked to Bush since leaving office, and is facing his mounting legal bills without his help. That confirms the view of BushCo as people who just use up and discard other people, even lifelong friends.

As long as we're giving Alberto Gonzales help with refreshing his memory, here's Slate's graphical contribution, citing the "golden rule of wrongdoing in the White House: All roads lead to Gonzales."

I really think that we are giving Gonzales too much credit for knowing what was going on around him and what he was doing at the time everything was going to hell. I strongly suspect that he was, is and will always be completely unaware about everything and the consequences of what was going on at the DOJ. You have to look really hard for someone so far out of touch with normal human thought processes, but I knew one person like that in high school. The man gives a whole new dimension to the concept of clueless.

I agree Texas Aggie, Gonzales was even more clueless than Bush, which is a pretty low bar to clear.

My favorite comment on Gonzales, from Rahm Emmanuel after Gonzales' Congressional testimony: "He appears to think that, 'the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth' are three different things".

I'm not one to advocate violence, and I'm not advocating it here, but I'm really, sincerely shocked that all that's been done to stop this war criminal from showing his face at Texas Tech or in public anywhere ever again is a frowny-face letter from 70 of his soon-to-be colleagues.

If I was a TT student, I'd be making creme pies, buying super-soakers, hoarding stink bombs and everything else I could think of to non-violently let this asshole know that action have consequences.

Instead, all the disruptive types decide to go to town hall meetings, when they should effectively SHUT DOWN Texas Tech until this evil, evil man agrees not only to leave, but to report to the Hague to answer for his crimes against humanity.

I kind of worry that Gonzales may have some kind of brain disorder. He could never recall meetings that he reasonably should have attended, etc. Without a job, he'd have no health insurance to cover him, since this is a pre-existing condition.

I have noticed over the years that "criminal wrongdoing" seems to be the standard that Republicans hold themselves. If they can get away with it without doing any jail time, or even if the fines and jail time cost them less than whatever it is they are trying to gain, anything goes. And then, when they are questioned about their behaviour, they play the victim.

Bob hit it on the head, since only Gonzo of the major miscreantshad to beg for work, and no one is willing to help in the RNC. I would think such a useful tool would have been at least slotted into some legal functionary type, generating justifications for talking points du jour (sorry about the French).

However, it is the "why" that really interests me here. If it's because he's not white enough, it reinforces the message sent by Mel Martinez giving up the RNC chair because he wasn't getting any respect. And, IF the RNC thinks they are going to rise from the cesspool that they've sunk into after digging it, they will not do it without the Latino vote in a larger proportion than just the oligarch class.

Sure, Gonzo's a crappy and deceitful lawyer. So were Yoo and Addington and Bybee and Condi [who matches Gonzo in declared cluelessness as well, as no one could have predicted...]. However, out of those five, four got respectable gigs, and the one who stuck his neck out farther than the others (look at the testimony and the liabilities therefrom not yet called in) to cover W's arse is the one left in the cold with no love from anyone, even W.

It makes one wonder whether it's worth it working for these guys. Libby's out of jail but muzzled. So maybe it isn't as racial as it moght seem, but if you aren't useful, you are done. It also makes me wonder how much greasing of the skids Yoo and Condi did to get their positions back.