Impeach Gonzales

"The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."

- Constitution of the United States, Article II, Section 4

Enough is enough.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has shown over and over again that he will warp justice, perjure himself before Congress and drag the Justice Department into the mud to protect the political interests of President Bush and the Republican Party. His latest antics before the Senate Judiciary Committee did nothing to change that perception.

Back in 2004, half the Justice Department's top leadership threatened to resign over the Bush Administration's blatantly illegal secret-spying program, and stayed only because the White House agreed to rein in its more outrageous aspects. Testifying before the Senate last week, Gonzales claimed that the dispute was not over the innocuously-named "Terrorist Surveillance Program," but over another spying program.

The only problem was that former Assistant Attorney General James Comey, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, and internal DOJ documents all showed that Gonzales was lying through his teeth. It could have been lifted right out of the Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup - "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?"

The farce achieved further Marxian proportions when Press Secretary Tony Snow insisted that "nobody has really laid a glove on" Gonzales, despite even loyal Republicans publicly saying that the Attorney General is more trouble than he's worth.

This is about more than just a matter of this spy program vs. that spy program. It is about the Bush Administration putting itself above the law, and an Attorney General who still sees himself as the President's personal attorney and not as chief law enforcement officer of the country.

What we already know is dismaying enough:

• Nine U.S. Attorneys were fired because they wouldn't go along with the White House's plan to indict prominent Democrats on trumped-up charges and leave provably crooked Republicans alone.
• Gonzales, very likely on direct orders from the President, attempted to pressure a very sick John Ashcroft to sign off on the TSP, an action that sparked the DOJ mutiny.
• Gonzales perjured himself before Congress when he claimed that there had been no documented abuse of "national security letters," when numerous reports of rampant FBI abuse of the practice had reached his desk only days earlier.
• The White House has ordered the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia to ignore any and all contempt citations issued to Administration staffers who defy Congressional subpoenas to testify.

Just imagine what we haven't yet learned.

Bush has already said that he has no intention of firing Gonzales or letting him resign which, while disastrous, actually makes a bizarre sort of sense from a political standpoint. A vacancy at the top of DOJ means Bush would have to nominate a replacement, which means confirmation hearings. And that means that the White House would be forced to reveal, slowly and painfully, all the corruption and machinations that have so tainted the Justice Department under Gonzales.

But there is another way of getting rid of him - impeachment. The Constitution clearly provides for impeachment and removal of government officials other than the President.

Congress must step up and demand the return of honesty and accountability to the Justice Department and, by extension, the entire Administration. Gonzales has to go.