Gonzales

"Don't Tase Me, Bro" tops '07 memorable quote list

Dec 20, 2007

By Arthur Spiegelman
Reuters

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - "Don't Tase Me, Bro," a phrase that swept the nation after a college student used it seeking to stop campus police from throwing him out of a speech by Sen. John Kerry, was named on Wednesday as the most memorable quote of 2007.

Fred R. Shapiro, the editor of the Yale Book of Quotations, said the plea made by University of Florida student Andrew Meyer on September 17, accompanied by Meyer's screams as he was tased, beat out the racial slur that cost shock jock Don Imus his job and the Iranian president's declaration that his country does not have homosexuals.

American Nightmare: Gonzales "wrong and illegal and unethical"

by Greg Palast
Tuesday, August 28.

"What I've experienced in the last six months is the ugly side of the American dream."

Last month, David Iglesias and I were looking out at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island where his dad had entered the US from Panama decades ago. It was a hard moment for the military lawyer who, immediately after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales fired Iglesias as US Attorney for New Mexico, returned to active military duty as a Naval Reserve JAG.

Captain Iglesias, cool and circumspect, added something I didn't expect:

' career

LA Times
August 28, 2007

At last the attorney general has done the right thing and stepped down.
Some significant dates in the Washington career of Alberto R. Gonzales, the nation's 80th U.S. attorney general, who announced his resignation Monday.

January 2001: Named President Bush's White House legal counsel.

Jan. 25, 2002: In a memo, Gonzales contends that the president can waive anti-torture
laws and international treaties that provide protections to prisoners of war.

Feb. 3, 2005: Confirmed and sworn in as attorney general.

Bush Isn't Spying on al Qaeda ... He's Spying on You

By Robert Parry
Consortium News

August 4, 2007
alternet.org

The dispute over whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales committed perjury when he parsed words about George W. Bush's warrantless surveillance program misses a larger point: the extraordinary secrecy surrounding these spying operations is not aimed at al-Qaeda, but at the American people.

There has never been a reasonable explanation for why a fuller discussion of these operations would help al-Qaeda, although that claim often is used by the Bush administration to challenge the patriotism of its critics or to avoid tough questions.

The Bush administration's code of silence

Sidney Blumenthal
Guardian

August 2, 2007
.

Omertà (or code of silence) has become the final bond holding the Bush administration together. Honesty is dishonourable; silence is manly; penitence is weakness. Loyalty trumps law. Protecting higher-ups is patriotism. Stonewalling is idealism. Telling the truth is informing. Cooperation with investigators is cowardice; breaking the code is betrayal. Once the code is shattered, however, no one can be trusted and the entire edifice crumbles.

TELL CONGRESS TO VOTE NO CONFIDENCE ON ALBERTO GONZALES
No Confidence

On Monday, June 11, there is scheduled to be a no confidence vote on Alberto Gonzales in the Senate.

ACTION PAGE: http://www.millionphonemarch.com/no_confidence.php

All our senators need to hear from us on this, but especially we have a message your Republican senators need to hear. How dare they call this vote playing politics? Talk about turning justice on its head. The whole reason Congress must now step in is to STOP the justice department from playing politics.

What WAS politically motivated was when Gonzales turned our justice department into a hit squad for the RNC.