Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey testified yesterday about Mr. Gonzales’s late night visit to the hospital to convince an ailing attorney general John Ashcroft to sign off on Mr. Bush’s domestic wiretapping plan which the Justice Department had already deemed illegal. It was riveting testimony. There is not much I can add to Mr. Comey’s testimony in this post. My best advice is that you watch the entirety of it - it is well worth the time.

I was reminded of the famous scene in "The Godfather" where Vito Corleone lies in the hospital unguarded and Michael Corleone rushes to save his father’s life.

To get a flavor of the kind of attorney general Alberto Gonzales is, as Alfredo points out in the comments, consider his remarks at the National Press Club soon after Paul McNulty resigned:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday that his deputy, who is resigning, was the most important player in the controversial decision about which U.S. attorneys should be fired last year.

…

"You have to remember, at the end of the day, the recommendations reflected the views of the deputy attorney general. He signed off on the names," Gonzales said. "And he would know better than anyone else, anyone in this room, anyone — again, the deputy attorney general would know best about the qualifications and the experiences of the United States attorneys community, and he signed off on the names."

Gonzales, who called McNulty’s pending departure "a loss" for the Department of Justice, said that his chief of staff had only coordinated the process of evaluating U.S. attorneys, while McNulty’s opinion "would be the most important.

"The one person I would care about would be the views of the deputy attorney general, because the deputy attorney general is the direct supervisor of the United States attorneys," Gonzales said.

Gonzales said he was reassured by McNulty as recently as March that the firings all were justified.

Gonzo. Pathetic. Worse than Watergate.

Paul McNulty resigned:

The No. 2 official at the Justice Department, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, submitted his resignation to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the Justice Department announced Monday.

McNulty cited personal reasons for his resignation.

"The financial realities of college-age children and two decades of public service lead me to a long overdue transition in my career," he wrote in his resignation letter.

Or in Kyle Sampson speak, he resigned for performance reasons:

the distinction between "political" and "performance-related" reasons for removing a United States Attorney is, in my view, largely artificial. A U.S. Attorney who is unsuccessful from a political perspective, either because he or she has alienated the leadership of the Department in Washington or cannot work constructively with law enforcement or other governmental constituencies in the district important to effective leadership of the office, is unsuccessful.

This is a sad day for injustice.