Comments (38)

Rusty wrote on March 20, 2007 3:39 PM:

Who wants to bet this will be a speech about why the president desperately need to keep secrets to do his job and how the Democrat Party is playing dirty politics trying to get the H-Dog and Piggy under oath? Anybody take that action? What a crock.

RR wrote on March 20, 2007 3:41 PM:

I don't suppose we'd be really lucky and he'll be announcing his own resignation...

I'll take Gonzo's in a pinch. Nothing's too good for torture boy.

Aida wrote on March 20, 2007 3:41 PM:

I'll take that bet! Pretty sure I'll make a bundle.

Robin Boerner wrote on March 20, 2007 3:44 PM:

Lying comes prett naturally to Bush...in between the stammering.

To bad this speech isn't going to be under oath.

Tom3 wrote on March 20, 2007 3:48 PM:

GONE-Zales!!

John wrote on March 20, 2007 3:48 PM:

Bush: The removal of the 8 USAs was an issue of national security. So, I claim executive privilege for former and current WH staff.

sholom wrote on March 20, 2007 3:49 PM:

Given that AG has already cancelled his Thrs am appearance on a budget hearing, and Tony Snow's backing of the AG with a tepid "let's see where it goes" . . . anyone want to guess AG's resignation? My only hesitation on that is one would think that if the AG were resigning, he'd be the one to announce it, no?

Too funny: the security code for this post is "keep"!

Over the Edge wrote on March 20, 2007 3:52 PM:

"Mistakes were made and you're doing a heckuva job, Gonzo."

macdust wrote on March 20, 2007 3:54 PM:

"We are not crooks."

R.A.C. wrote on March 20, 2007 3:54 PM:

Just gotta say -- You folks have done an amazing job on this story. The faster Al et al are gone, the faster we can fish our Constitution out of the shredder and start taping.

anon wrote on March 20, 2007 3:55 PM:

Over on a thread at Kos, someone said that MSNBC was reporting that Bush was going to give a statement reaffirming his support for Gonzo. I don't know if that is accurate or not. Seems like an odd action for the prez to take, as it does tend to highlight the precarious situation the AG is in if Bush has to go on TV to announce that he is still AG.

pj wrote on March 20, 2007 3:55 PM:

I love the smell of a bunker speech in the afternoon!

JTL wrote on March 20, 2007 3:57 PM:

The thing is, even IF it's to annouce Gonzales' resignation (and I'm not expecting it), SO WHAT? does that change the fact that the Whitehouse was involved in firing US Attorney's for political reasons? Nope.

mayan wrote on March 20, 2007 4:01 PM:

This will be a strictly partisan attack to try to get the public to see that Dems are playing politics while they are trying to move ahead with the "serious business" of -cough- gummint. Feh!

anon wrote on March 20, 2007 4:04 PM:

Judging by Tony Snow's remarks today, it might be Bush saying that the released docs show this was a low-level botch in the AG's office, that it didn't touch Gonzo or others, so let's all drop the matter now. "To continue digging is to beat a dead horse for partisan political blah blah blah."

"Now watch this drive!"

Robin Michael wrote on March 20, 2007 4:10 PM:

My only hesitation on that is one would think that if the AG were resigning, he'd be the one to announce it, no?

Posted by: sholom
_________________________________________________

Actually, the opposite of what I'd expect. I believe it's always the higher up that announces a resignation so they can get in a few kind words about the axed one's selfless contributions, blahbity-blah.

Bush is trying to get out ahead of this (good luck with that, fella). It'll either be a robust affirmation, or a sad announcement that he's accepted "The Judge's" resignation. Those are the only two options.

EH wrote on March 20, 2007 4:11 PM:

JTL: It's all about managing the message and getting in front of the story. If announcing the AG's resignation causes the story to follow poor Alberto and his crazy life history until it hits page A-double-digits, then the spotlight moves away from the puppetmaster(s) and the Iraq debacle can continue as planned.

The prize is Miers and Rove, and they know more than they're letting on. And where's Cheney, by the way?

Douglas Watts wrote on March 20, 2007 4:13 PM:

Hey flunkies !!! Back to the 3,000 pages !!!

Freakin' MSMers ...

Phoenix Woman wrote on March 20, 2007 4:15 PM:

Searchable PDFs of the doc dump can be found here:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/3/20/1129/05437

R.A.C. wrote on March 20, 2007 4:15 PM:

It's Bush's M.O. He will affirm support of Gonzalez, but wait as long as he can to get rid of him. Bush does not want to appear weak and caving to pressure. It's great for those of us who enjoy the smell of zeitgeist in the morning. This scandal, along with the National Security Letter abuses, will continue to keep Republican chestnuts where they belong, in the fire.

j swift wrote on March 20, 2007 4:17 PM:

Bush: "Well, the Democrats are serious about getting Turdblossom and Miers under oath.....so its your ass Gonzo. Good Luck with all your future endeavors. Adios."

EH wrote on March 20, 2007 4:21 PM:

RAC: This must be a second prong of the Fielding Gambit, create more news and controversy with Bush supporting Gonzales. It has the effect of delaying the inevitable while blurring the news landscape. If they can diffuse the stories through the end of the week, they may be able to weather this without an immediate change in the government and manage everything else into a morass of minor infractions.

nofltwlt wrote on March 20, 2007 4:24 PM:

Great! I'll be watching!

If there's is one thing the GOP should have learned is that they need Bush to shut up. Thank goodness he keeps talking.

anon wrote on March 20, 2007 4:33 PM:

...the Fielding Gambit...

Yup, there's no good way out of this mess for them. They can't have a real investigation or an honest AG so they need to go on the offensive as quickly as possible to keep ahead of the Dems. Unless the Dems really come out swinging, I think they can get away with it. No, I don't think Gonzales will survive but I think they will try to use his resignation to close/slow the investigations. I just don't understand why the Dems didn't switch to hardball well before Fielding showed up. It's really dumb to let the administration get back on its feet.

mayan wrote on March 20, 2007 4:34 PM:

They are definately trying to get ahead of the story...demonize the Dems...and throw as much sand, fog and dust into the public's eye as possible.

Weird time, 5:45. I guess it'll be the last story in tonight's news cycle.

DJ wrote on March 20, 2007 4:34 PM:

I am so profoundly excited about this Congress and how this story is going. I really can't even type my real feelings because I think everyone has uncovered it all i.e., obstruction of justice, installing Griffin to sniff out Hillary, throwing curveballs in San Diego and California and stubbing their noses at Congress and even their own Repugs.

But the President speaking to get on nightly 6:30 news is fascinating, it is to get their message and trying to control the news cycle out there but it just creates more controversy. Imagine this nutjob had to get up at 7:00 to call Gonzales to have us reading it that the call was made by 10:00am but waiting to tell us that they want to exert executive privelege, Excuse did I miss the memo that you want to tell us about your private phone calls with him but we don't want to tell you anything else.

This story is snowballing into a s-storm. My only regret is that this story took the focus off of the wounded Veterans. But I can't wait to see what tomorrow bring because this is not going away.

Stabular wrote on March 20, 2007 4:37 PM:

Don't expect anything new or meaningful from W. He's not above throwing subordinates on their sword to provide himself cover, but Rove is as far up as this gets. Competence and accountability are not qualifications to hold
important positions, in W's eyes. Cronyism over competence; party over country; and self over party.

He'll publicly stand behind Gonzo till the bitter end, though he might accept his "resignation," if Cheney and Rove so deem.

kis wrote on March 20, 2007 4:39 PM:

Bush is going to attempt to pre-frame any further actions by congress as a Democratic witch-hunt.

He will do this by re-affirming his support for Abu-G, by claiming they've already shared over 3000 documents, by pretending that he's offered to let his aides meet with congress, and by re-emphasizing the tired 'pleasure of the president' talking points for good measure.

I think its going to backfire, however, like everything else he's done.

comadrejo wrote on March 20, 2007 4:48 PM:

I can't see Bush keeping Gonzales in his lifeboat for much longer, the Senate Vote today of 94-2 should be the writing of the wall that the Senate Republicans want Gonzales gone, not one Congressional Republican has gone out to support Gonzales, they had either defend the White House or attack Democrats, but not offer one line of support to Gonzales as a good Attorney General.

Gonzales is going to resign, given he is not appearing before Congress this Thursday as expected. As long as Bush keeps Gonzales, the Attorney General wished that he rather do the stations of the Cross than which would be less torturious than going through every senate and house hearing on the US Attorney firings, the NSA eavesdropping program, killing an internal investigation etc. etc. If Gonzales doesn't resign today, then he will resign one of these day, he is too much deadweight to keep, he has to be thrown overboard as Michael Brown was thrown overboard.

oldtree wrote on March 20, 2007 4:58 PM:

the only time CNN has mentioned this criminal conspiracy is to tell everyone willing to listen is that the pres is going to say: "atta boy gonzo" this is reporting folks. CNN is beyond fox now. they don't argue and do all the pretend drama, they ignore the news that is fit to print.

oldtree wrote on March 20, 2007 5:09 PM:

for any of you that were here during this stage of the watergate hearings, what do you figure? I say about 6 months before bush will have to resign in disgrace and dance to criminal trials. clearly, the demos want this to happen around election day. however, I doubt that their reason is so to prevent a republican vp replacement from pardoning the lot of them. they seem to only want it to win another election.
because I donated to congressional folks via the blogs, I am now getting letters from the congress people for money. this is really quite nauseating to receive a request for further money before they have done the job they promised. anyone else getting the begging letters?

stephen miller wrote on March 20, 2007 5:26 PM:

I will be surprised if Gonzo isn't gone by next monday. Maybe later today?

thnerkie wrote on March 20, 2007 5:30 PM:

the white house's occupants have been lying with congressional approval for years so "not under oath" surprises anyone?

dzman49 wrote on March 20, 2007 5:42 PM:

...the begging letters...

Ah, yes. From the right and the left both (I'm an eclectic reader).

TPM will be the only recipient of my wee largesse for a while. Here, I see results

Robin wrote on March 20, 2007 5:48 PM:

Delightful. Trying to watch the webcast on whitehouse.gov and there's no sound. Probably deliberate.

Arkansan wrote on March 20, 2007 5:49 PM:

The elephant in the room.

Why doesn’t the press ever mention it when Bush goes on the air drunk? He can barely speak this after noon, but they’ll all pretend he was lucid.

R.A.C. wrote on March 20, 2007 6:05 PM:

I don't think Gonzales is out in the next few weeks. The base really wants Bush to fight this, and it's his nature to push back. After all, he kept Rumsfeld for years. Then he got a new shot clock on the Iraq war when Gates came in.

Democrats have been on a run. And Bush needs to slow the game down if he wants to change momentum. These scandals won't go away even if Gonzales goes. So why not let him be the lightening rod for a while? The closer we come to the 2008 election, the easier it will be for Republicans to convince people that these legitimate investigations are purely political.

I think they'd be smarter to take their lumps and get this behind them. But who ever accused Republicans of being smart?

Robin Boerner wrote on April 18, 2007 1:28 PM:

My Fiancee, John R. Mitchell and I have posted some completely outrageous comment in the past few years and want to apologize to this forum.

by:
Robin L. Boerner
P.O.Box 771765
Eagle River, Alaska 99577
Cell: 907-360-0224

To: All Senate Committee on the Judiciary

Dear Senators,
I’ve been under the umbrella of an illness most people do not talk about. The doctors currently have me under closer supervision and back on a regular schedule of routine medication.

John Mitchell and I have been on a roller coaster ride of medication, professional help and conspiracy theories for years. So needless to say we both have illnesses we will, for obvious reason, not post here today.

Again If you would like more information please write or email me at:

John Mitchell
C/O
Robin Boerner
Po Box 771765
Eagle River, Alaska 99577

Email: Johnmitchell@makethearmyhonest.com
Cell: 907-360-0224