Stop the steamroller. Reject Gonzales

As US Attorney General, John Ashcroft had a multitude of
frightening beliefs and policies. Alberto Gonzales, nominated to succeed Ashcroft,
has his own.

            During last
week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont
seemed concerned about Gonzales’s past. But, said Leahy, looking back at the
Ashcroft record, Gonzales’s nomination “seems to offer the possibility of a new
era.”

            Senators,
said Leahy, need to know more about Gonzales’s judgment.

            More? How
much more can we stomach?

            There are,
no doubt, many Americans who applauded Gonzales’s equivocations during his
testimony. There are Americans who believe that torture is all right in some
situations, who think that the treatment of some prisoners should not be
covered by the Geneva Conventions, who believe that the president isn’t always
bound by international law and treaties.

            But United
States Senators can not plead such
ignorance.

            During the
hearing, Gonzales tried to distance himself from the most widely publicized
example of torture, the Abu Ghraib scandal. Some senators and some commentators
have even pretended that Abu Ghraib was an aberration. It was not. Similar
mistreatment of prisoners has occurred in Afghanistan
and at Guantanamo.

            And as
author Mark Danner wrote in a New York
Times op-ed piece, the torture did not stop when Abu Ghraib made the news.
Danner cites the account of an FBI official who, three months after the
exposure of Abu Ghraib, personally saw prisoners who had been abused. One of
them was so traumatized that he had “apparently been literally pulling his own
hair out throughout the night.”

            Danner
gives clear reasons why Gonzales should not be confirmed. He helped the
president find ways to circumvent the law. He is now “the symbol of the United
States’ fateful departure from a body of
settled international law and human rights practice for which the country
claims to stand.” And warns Danner, the next attorney general will face “a raft
of torture cases that challenge the very policies that [Gonzales] personally
helped devise.”

            “Mr.
Gonzales,” writes the Times’ Bob
Herbert, “shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near that office.”

            But as
NPR’s Nina Totenberg reported last week, all Senate Republicans are expected to
approve the Gonzales nomination, “as are many Democrats.” And, it is said,
that’ll put Gonzales on the fast track to the Supreme Court.

            “The
political climate is hardly right for a challenge to a newly re-elected
president,” said Totenberg.

            Hardly right? If not now, when?

            You know
the drill:

            Senator Charles Schumer (a member of
the Judiciary Committee), 3040 FederalBuilding, 100
State Street, Rochester14614;
www.schumer.senate.gov.

            Senator Hillary Clinton, 3280 FederalBuilding, 100
State Street, Rochester14614;
www.clinton.senate.gov.

What, me worry?

My goodness: Is next year’s governor’s race already Eliot
Spitzer’s to lose?

            A lot can
happen before November 2006, of course. But in last week’s State of the State
address, Pataki might as well have handed the election to Spitzer on a silver
tray.

            There had
been speculation that Pataki might use State of the State to signal his intentions
about running for re-election. If he did, the signal was lost under all the
fluff and puff. (Maybe he’s waiting to see whether there’s a place for him in
Bush Administration II. Maybe he’s
waiting for Rehnquist to resign, to open up a spot for Alberto Gonzales with
the Supremes, which will open up the AG’s post again. Well? It’s as good a
guess as any, yes?)

            Pataki’s
“State” was a dismaying speech, full of reports of bold action and progress.
We’re the safest large state in America.
We have the best Homeland Security Office in the nation.

            There were
astonishing howlers: “We came together and boldly transformed New
York’s failing economic climate by enacting a series
of sweeping changes to state government.”

            “We know
tax cuts work.” (Well, yes, if the goal is to ramp up the state’s debt.
Off-books accounting works, too.)

            There were
hollow promises — promises to fix the same things Pataki has promised to fix
in his previous State of the States.

            There were
promises to expand programs and add new ones, and to cut taxes further. And
there was, of course, no mention — not a word — about the state’s $6
billion deficit. And that $6 billion doesn’t count the $6 additional billion
— a year — that the state has been ordered to put into schools… in New
York City alone.

            It will not
be easy to turn this state around. How will we reconcile the need to care for
the large number of New York’s
needy — the frail elderly, the ill, the poor, the drug addicted, the
homeless, the unemployed — with the pressure to lower taxes? The next
governor will have to have intelligence, skill, and determination. The next
governor will have to have a cooperative legislature, and there are sure no
guarantees there.

            But no
matter. “Today,” glowed Pataki as he wrapped up his 69-minute review, “the
storm clouds are dispersing, and the sun is breaking through. And as it does,
it will shine ever brighter upon our EmpireState.”

            We should
all be writhing in embarrassment. As sad as the Pataki speech was, though,
sadder still is New York itself:
debt ridden, uncompetitive, lackluster, rudderless and leaderless, with little
vision, grand or otherwise.

            The state
Pataki praises, with the wealth of talent and diversity he points to, just
can’t get it together.

            It is
sinful, folks. Just sinful.

This article appears in Jan 12-18, 2005.