Claire McCaskill Speaks Out Against Gonzales

The national media loves our Claire McCaskill!! The New York Times published the opinion letter below about 1) how bad Gonzales/Bush/Rove have ruined the Justice Department 2) how eloquent Senator Claire McCaskill is 3) how even Sen. Kit Bond says there is no leadership in the DOJ and 4) how the former US Attorney for the Western District of Missouri (which is in downtown KC), Brad Schlozman, had to write and say he gave untrue testimony. Claire is a wonderful advocate for real Missouri values. Harry Truman has to be proud. What is sad is how the Graves/Roe/Blunts machine have made Missouri this hot bed of Republican game playing. Graves/Roe/Blunts don't care about impartial judicial systems or fairness in the justice system. Time to elect some more Claire McCaskills and get rid of Graves/Roe and both Blunts.


Silence in the Senate
Published: June 13, 2007

The most remarkable thing about the debate on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales this week was what didn’t happen. Barely a word was said in praise him or his management of the Justice Department. The message was clear even though the Republicans prevented a no-confidence vote through the threat of a filibuster — a tactic that until recently they claimed to abhor. The sound of Mr. Gonzales not being defended was deafening.

The senators who rose to speak in favor of the no-confidence vote made a compelling, and by now well-known, case. Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, and Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, both former prosecutors, were especially eloquent about the way in which Mr. Gonzales has betrayed the ideals of American law.

The senators who defended Mr. Gonzales clearly did not have their heart in it. Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, went off on such a long and belabored attack on Senator Charles Schumer of New York, who has done a commendable job on this matter, that he seemed to think Mr. Schumer, not Mr. Gonzales, was the subject of the resolution. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, complained that the Senate was wasting a “whole day” on the vote. Actually, it took just a couple of hours, and anyone who watches C-Span knows how little the Senate can accomplish in two hours. For Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi, the issue seemed to be that the vote would not matter. In other words, since the president does not care what Congress thinks about the integrity of the Justice Department, it is a waste of time to tell him.
President Bush said the investigation of Mr. Gonzales and the Justice Department over the firing of nine United States attorneys was being “drug out” by the Democrats, and that it was purely partisan political theater.

If the investigation is dragging on, it’s the fault of the administration, not the Democrats in Congress. The Justice Department has withheld critical documents and released the uncritical ones in dribs and drabs. The White House is refusing to let Karl Rove; Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel; and others testify under oath.

What has slowed things down the most are the repeated misstatements by Mr. Gonzales and other officials. Just this week, Bradley Schlozman, a former United States attorney in Missouri who appears to have used his office to help Republicans win elections, wrote to the Senate to say that he had made untrue statements in his testimony last week.

As for the charge of politics, seven Republicans voted with Democrats to end debate, and many more have been critical of Mr. Gonzales. Christopher Bond, Republican of Missouri, stuck with his party on the vote, but told The Associated Press, “The president might decide that the current leadership remaining at D.O.J. is doing more harm than good.”

That so many Senate Republicans supported an attorney general that they cannot bring themselves to defend shows that politics is not behind the drive to force him out. It’s behind the insistence that he stay.