Beginning the Gonzales Watch: "Or they're out to lunch..."

(Sam Donaldson on this morning's ABC This Week.)

Sometimes the talking heads surprise you by making principled statements contrary to the political interests they typically serve.
Consider George Will's performance on this morning's This Week, particularly in the segment on Alberto Gonzales (yes, I'm going to kick Gonzales again, and will probably continue to do so until he leaves the scene of his many crimes. I would prefer in handcuffs with full perp walk regalia, but that is negotiable--maybe with mug shot and fingerprints, but out the back door of the Justice Dept. Kind of like testimony without oaths or transcripts. All the Rove...er, rage, these days.)

Among Will's comments, on the varying current scandals (my transcriptions, off air):

>[on the US Attorney firings:]"...or he's not lying, which is worse, in a way..."

>[on the national security letters:]..."no one did this deliberately, and that's really scary..."

and my favorite, summing things up:

"He serves a President who has made very broad...I would say extravagant, claims of executive power...He [the President] needs a very nimble and intellectually powerful, not to say inventive (chuckle) Attorney General who can defend these claims, and that is not Mr. Gonzales."

Right. Or, better, an A.G. who pays attention to the Constitution, and to his, or her, duties to that document. And who does not go all weak-kneed in the Oval Office.

If I remember correctly, Mr. Will was a big fan of Edward Levi, brought in by President Ford to serve as A.G. in the aftermath of the Watergate scandals and the Nixon resignation, to restore honor, competence and a measure of independence to the Department of Justice. There is a novel thought.

To repeat the oft-made principle, as it applies to the particular circumstance: The President (and the Attorney General) may have the legal "right" to replace U.S. Attorneys; that does not necessarily make particular firings (say, for investigating and prosecuting members of the President's political party, or failing to bring dubious charges against political opponents during the height of election season), "right" in a moral or governmental sense. Our only defense of "right" in those deeper senses is political accountability. Mr. Will is making a worthy contribution toward that end.

While I don't agree with Mr. Will on most matters (including his cavalier, if purportedly Constitutonally-based) dismissal of meaningful voting rights and representation for citizens of the District of Columbia (where I once lived and where our children were born), it's nice to see that not all members of the punditocracy (to contrast a particularly notorious example, consider Robert Novak, although there are certainly parallels on the Democratic Party side as well) are not pure water-carriers for their political patrons.

(Gee, I must say, as someone new to blogging, that this is fun. Much better than writing unpublished letters to the Times, and I don't even have to find an article to serve as the "hook"!...Maybe that was one of my problems getting published more often.)