These guys lie with the aplomb of third grade boys.
*
Alberto Gonzalez discusses his proposal that all adult males in the
United States must wear flag lapel pins. Size of the pin will be a
measure of one’s patriotism. President Bush’s brother-in-law,
Skeeter, owns a costume jewelry company in El Paso
and has successfully bid on the government contract
to produce 150,000,000 pins.
*
This is a portion of yesterday’s White House Watch column by Dan Froomkin.
Here’s the transcript of Gonzales’s news conference yesterday.
Dana Milbank of The Washington Post examines some of the contradictions:
“‘Mistakes were made,’ he said in fluent scandalese, but ‘I think it was the right decision.’
“‘I am responsible for what happens at the Department of Justice,’ he posited, but ‘I . . . was not involved in any discussions about what was going on.’
“‘Kyle Sampson’ — Gonzales’s chief of staff — ‘has resigned,’ he said, but ‘he is still at the department.’
“And, finally, ‘I believe in the independence of our U.S. attorneys,’ Gonzales maintained, but ‘all political appointees can be removed . . . for any reason.’
“He had the look of a hunted man in his appearance at the Justice Department. He wiggled his toes inside his shoes and shifted his feet. He spoke too loudly into the microphone. He arrived 18 minutes late, gave well-rehearsed answers and appeared intent on getting out as fast as he could, ignoring reporters’ shouts of ‘Sir! Sir!’ The child of Mexican immigrants even mentioned his rise from poverty in dismissing calls for his ouster: ‘I’ve overcome a lot of obstacles in my life to become attorney general. I am here not because I give up.’”
Ruth Marcus writes in her Washington Post opinion column that Gonzales’s news conference “was a self-serving masterpiece of passive voice and unpersuasive platitudes. . . .
“Translation: ‘I’m going to tell you I’m responsible, because that’s what they tell me I have to say. But of course I’m not. It’s all Kyle Sampson’s fault. I’m hoping that if I say I’m accountable often enough, no one will actually hold me accountable.’…
“The precise non-mistake mistake that Gonzales copped to yesterday was sharing ‘incomplete’ — this is Gonzales-speak for wrong — information with Congress. Think about this: Gonzales first testified about the U.S. attorney firings on Jan. 19. His No. 2, Paul McNulty, testified on Feb. 6. Assistant Attorney General William Moschella testified March 6.
“And it wasn’t until this week that Justice finally figured out it hadn’t figured out the whole story? If that’s true — and I’m not sure which would be worse — why should anyone believe this crowd is capable of getting its congressional story straight in the future?”
Gonzales in the Morning
On CNN this morning, anchor Miles O’Brien got Gonzales to admit he himself made mistakes — but not to say what they were.
Here’s the video and the transcript:
“O’BRIEN: Why don’t you give us a self-evaluation? How do you think you did your job through all this?
“GONZALES: Obviously, I think there were mistakes made here. I think that part of the problem is we don’t have –
“O’BRIEN: I was asking — that ‘mistakes made,’ that’s passive. The question is, how did you do your job? Do you feel you did a good job?
“GONZALES: I think that I did make some mistakes and we’ll going to take steps to ensure that doesn’t happen again. But, ultimately, I work for the American people and I serve at the pleasure of the United States and he’ll decide if I continue to serve as attorney general. . . .
“O’BRIEN: Mr. Attorney General, do you feel it’s time for you to step down?
“GONZALES: That will be a decision for the president of the United States to make. I think if you look at the record of the department –
“O’BRIEN: But should you offer your resignation? Is it time for you to offer your resignation?
“GONZALES: It’s the decision of the president of the United States to make. I’ll be focused on identifying what went wrong here and correcting those mistakes, and focused on the good for the American people.
“O’BRIEN: The decision to offer your resignation is yours, is it not?
“GONZALES: I’m focused on doing my job.”
NBC’s Matt Lauer and CBS’s Harry Smith weren’t able to move Gonzales off his talking points even that much.
Image: (original) I believe AFP.
Please find the entire column at The Washington Post.