Ashcroft & Evans resign

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by dissention

That reminds me, I just bought an "Ann Coulter Youth" t-shirt.

Does it come in anything but a size zero with indentations for breasts (her's not yours)

[dissention]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

Does it come in anything but a size zero with indentations for breasts (her's not yours)

What breasts? Ann the Man stuffs!

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by dissention

What breasts? Ann the Man stuffs!

LOL - with that Adam's Apple - she could be a drag queen - and she certainly is a rabid as some I know

[dissention]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

LOL - with that Adam's Apple - she could be a drag queen - and she certainly is a rabid as some I know

Don't get my started on that bulge in her throat (or any other bulge) again, dammit!

[Moony]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

he picked A. Gonzales for Atty. General - please note the bold - again waving one hand to get your attention and robbing you blind with the other.


November 10, 2004
Bush Picks Alberto Gonzales to Replace Ashcroft at Justice Dept.
By DAVID STOUT

ASHINGTON, Nov. 10 - President Bush said today that he has chosen Alberto R.Gonzales, who he said had been "a calm and steady voice in times of crisis" as his White House counsel, to be the next attorney general of the United States, succeeding John Ashcroft.

Mr. Bush said he was confident that Mr. Gonzales would be "a steward of civil rights" as head of the Justice Department. He praised Mr. Ashcroft as "a superb public servant" and said Mr. Gonzales, whom he called a personal friend, would be a worthy successor.

Mr. Gonzales, who appeared at the White House with Mr. Bush, vowed to do his best to "make America better, safer and stronger." The nominee said he was committed to "justice for every American - on this principle, there can be no compromise."

Mr. Gonzales is a longtime friend and political ally from Mr. Bush's days as Texas governor, and he had been rumored to be a leading candidate to head the Justice Department after Mr. Ashcroft's departure. While there was no mention of possible controversy in the brief White House announcement, the nominee is likely to face sharp questioning on Capitol Hill.

During Mr. Bush's two terms in Austin, Mr. Gonzales was a close adviser, first as general counsel to the governor for three years and later as Texas secretary of state. In the latter post, he was Mr. Bush's chief adviser on issues involving Mexico and the Texas-Mexico border. Before joining the governor's staff he was a partner in a Houston law firm.

Mr. Gonzales served as a justice of the Supreme Court of Texas from 1999 until he came to Washington to work in the Bush administration. His name has also been mentioned from time to time as a possible nominee for the United States Supreme Court.

Mr. Ashcroft, whose resignation was announced on Tuesday, promised to remain in the post until a successor is confirmed. President Bush is expected to wait until January to formally send Mr. Gonzales's nomination to Capitol Hill, since the Senate that will be seated then will have a stronger Republican majority as a result of the elections.

Mr. Gonzales, 49, would be the first Hispanic attorney general. He is virtually certain to be questioned about a memo he wrote early in 2002 about the treatment of people detained by the United States after the American-led campaign to topple the Taliban regime in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

On Jan. 25, 2002, Mr. Gonzales wrote a memorandum to President Bush in which he supported the Justice Department's position that suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban members did not need to be treated according to rules of the Geneva Conventions, which govern treatment of prisoners of war.

Mr. Gonzales argued that accepting the recommendations of the Justice Department would preserve flexibility in the global war against terrorism.

"The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians," his memo said.

Mr. Gonzales went on to say that the war against terrorism, "in my judgment renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners."

Given the allegations of mistreatment of some detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba and the scandal over the abuse of prisoners in Iraq, some senators can be expected to ask the nominee whether he still embraces those views.

The American Civil Liberties Union issued a statement saying that it was sticking to its 80-year record of "uncompromising nonpartisanship" and thus taking no position on the nomination. "The board, staff and more than 400,000 members of the A.C.L.U. do call, however, for a full and thorough Senate confirmation process that scrutinizes Mr. Gonzales' positions on key civil liberties and human rights issues," the organization said.

People for the American Way issued a similar statement. "Alberto Gonzalez's role in the development of policies that ultimately led to the Abu Ghraib prison scandals in Iraq is deeply troubling," said the organization's president, Ralph G. Neas. "Few images have done more to scar our nation's image at home and abroad than the terrible pictures of prisoners being abused in Iraq. Further, there are many questions that must still be answered regarding the rights and treatments of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. We expect senators to question him closely on these matters."

from http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/10/po...rint&position=

This guy sounds like a pinche maleton if you ask me.
What's with all these conservative, republican Hispanics anyway? This one doesn't understand it.

Originally Posted by dissention

What breasts? Ann the Man stuffs!

Bwah!

[heyjupiter678]

Love your sig, Moony!!

[heyjupiter678]

Originally Posted by dissention

I can't believe you quoted Ayn Rand.

The pResident's clear mandate has made me see the error of my evil socialist ways. (Where's a barfing emoticon when you need it?)

Nah, I just like the quote.

[strandinthewind]

from the NYTimes - I thought it interesting!!!! Note, they think this was the hispanic USSC candidate. Thus, I still think W will try to get Ashcroft on the Court

November 11, 2004
Nominee for Attorney General Rides an Ideological Divide
By DAVID JOHNSTON
and RICHARD W. STEVENSON

ASHINGTON, Nov. 10 - When Alberto R. Gonzales was 12, he hawked cold sodas at Rice University football games in Houston, his hometown. The son of a migrant worker, he occasionally stole glances at the campus and the students, dreaming, as he recounted in the commencement address there in May, that he might one day be among them.

On Wednesday, President Bush said he would nominate Mr. Gonzales as attorney general, replacing John Ashcroft, whose resignation the White House announced on Tuesday.

For Mr. Gonzales, it was a remarkable moment in a journey that has taken him from a house with no hot water or phone to Rice and Harvard Law School, the White House and now one of the most visible and influential jobs in Washington.

"When I talk to people around the country, I sometimes tell them that within the Hispanic community there is a shared hope for an opportunity to succeed," Mr. Gonzales, who has been White House counsel for nearly four years, said after the president's announcement. " 'Just give me a chance to prove myself' - that is a common prayer for those in my community."

Assuming he is confirmed by the Senate - and the initial response from Democrats suggested that he would be - Mr. Gonzales will get his chance. As attorney general, he will be forced to prove and defend himself on many of the most important and ideologically charged issues facing the nation.

He is viewed with some suspicion by Democrats, who promised on Wednesday to question him aggressively about his role in setting administration policy on detaining and questioning people captured in the effort to combat terrorism. And he is seen as unreliable by many conservatives, who said he has not been sufficiently hard line on the issues of most concern to them, including abortion and affirmative action.

Mr. Gonzales has a powerful patron in Mr. Bush. He served Mr. Bush as general counsel and then secretary of state when Mr. Bush was governor of Texas. In 1999, Mr. Bush named Mr. Gonzales to a seat on the Texas Supreme Court - an appointment that came as a mild surprise in the state's legal circles because Mr. Gonzales had no judicial experience.

He also has a political wind at his back. The fast-growing Hispanic population has become crucial to both parties, and Mr. Bush's success in winning a record 44 percent of a voting group that Democrats had hoped to keep a lock on has made the appointment of a high-level Hispanic cabinet officer that much more appealing to Republicans.

But the glow over the appointment of the first Hispanic to be the country's chief legal officer is not likely to linger once Mr. Gonzales's nomination goes to the Senate.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement that the panel would review issues like the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects - issues in which Mr. Gonzales played a pivotal role.

"These confirmation hearings will be a rare opportunity for the Senate and the public to finally get some answers on several issues for which the administration has resisted accountability, including its use of the Patriot Act, the lack of cooperation with Congress on oversight, and the policies that have been rejected by the courts on the treatment of detainees," Mr. Leahy said.

Mr. Gonzales was the author of one of the most contentious memorandums to surface in the furor that followed the disclosure of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. In a draft memorandum to Mr. Bush in early 2002, he wrote that the fight against terrorism had rendered the Geneva Conventions "obsolete" in so far as those international accords safeguarded the way people suspected of terrorism should be interrogated. He also wrote that the conventions were "quaint" in that they afforded prisoners privileges like athletic uniforms and commissary rights.

While it remains unclear whether the memorandum ever reached a final form, the tone and breadth of it reflected the sweep of Mr. Gonzales's legal thinking and what appears to be his willingness to adopt highly aggressive interpretations of the law in the fight against terrorism.

The memorandum was also indicative of his central role as one of Mr. Bush's most trusted legal strategists on critical issues like the rules governing the capture, interrogation, detention and trials of terrorists.

He has been at the center of controversy on other issues. Mr. Gonzales helped write the Patriot Act, managed the selection of judicial nominees and was a vigorous advocate of expanding the powers of the executive branch of the government.

But Mr. Gonzales has also run afoul of many conservatives because of what they judge to be his failure to take a harder line against abortion and affirmative action.

Mr. Gonzales has always declined to discuss in public his personal views about abortion or the Supreme Court ruling that legalized it, Roe v. Wade. But in a case that went before the Texas Supreme Court when he was there, Mr. Gonzales was part of a majority that voted to allow a 17-year-old girl a waiver, allowed for under state law, from the usual requirement that a minor seeking an abortion had to inform her parents.

His record on affirmative action is defined, in the eyes of conservatives, by his role in developing the administration's position in the case last year in which the United States Supreme Court generally preserved affirmative action in university admissions. Mr. Gonzales, conservatives said, did not push hard enough for the administration to call for a complete end to racial preferences in college admissions.

For several years, Mr. Gonzales was rumored to be a likely nominee to the Supreme Court. Word on Wednesday that he would instead go to the Justice Department was met with sighs of relief from conservative activists, who feared that on the Supreme Court he might have impeded their efforts to reverse Roe v. Wade and more generally move the court further rightward on social issues.

"It's been clear for a long time that the president has the utmost confidence in him, and given the many options that were possible, I think attorney general is a pretty good fit for him," said Gary L. Bauer, the president of American Values, a conservative group.

"It would have been problematic if he had been nominated for the court, because it is pretty well clear that he is not as conservative as the chief justice, and that appears to be the first seat that will come open," Mr. Bauer said, referring to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who has thyroid cancer.

Alberto R. Gonzales - the White House declined to release his middle name, saying that Mr. Gonzales prefers the initial - was born on Aug. 4, 1955. He grew up in North Houston in a house built by his father and two uncles, sharing two bedrooms with 10 family members. He and his wife, Rebecca, now have a family of three sons, Graham, Gabriel and Jared.

After high school, he joined the Air Force and was posted to Fort Yukon, Alaska, north of the Arctic Circle. He won an appointment to the Air Force Academy, but after two years he grew restless studying science and engineering and began thinking about law instead.

"I put it in God's hands," he said in his commencement address at Rice in May. "I'd apply to transfer to Rice, and if accepted would pursue a legal career. If denied, I'd continue my military career."

He was accepted, graduated from Rice in 1979, received his law degree from Harvard in 1982 and returned to Houston for a job at Vinson & Elkins, one of the premier law firms in Texas, where he became a partner before going to work for Mr. Bush.


Ralph Blumenthal contributed reporting from Texas for this article.

[amber]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

I did not see that. I LOVE HER - despite that so so movie about her life a few years ago. "Atlas Shrugged" - which I read on a boat in the Mediterranean (sighs) - and "The Fountainhead" are two of my fav.'s ever - plus how can you miss with Cooper and Neal - swoon.

I wholeheartedly concur. Neal! I've reread Atlas Shrugged a few times. Am always enthralled...

[Moony]

Originally Posted by heyjupiter678

Love your sig, Moony!!

Thanks! I sorta cut and pasted it from this website: We're sorry everybody
It's pretty cool.