Scarletwine
New Yorker
Gonzales Expected to Be Bush's Attorney General Pick
http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/elections/article.adp?id=20041109180709990012
WASHINGTON (Nov. 10) -- President Bush has chosen White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, a Texas confidant and the most prominent Hispanic in the administration, to succeed Attorney General John Ashcroft, sources close to the White House said Wednesday.
The White House hinted that formal word from the president could come later Wednesday. ''I would not rule out an announcement today,'' White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.
...
Gonzales has been at the center of developing Bush's positions on balancing civil liberties with waging the war on terrorism - opening the White House counsel to the same line of criticism that has dogged Ashcroft.
For instance, Gonzales publicly defended the administration's policy - essentially repudiated by the Supreme Court and now being fought out in the lower courts - of detaining certain terrorism suspects for extended periods without access to lawyers or courts.
He also wrote a controversial February 2002 memo in which Bush claimed the right to waive anti-torture law and international treaties providing protections to prisoners of war. That position drew fire from human rights groups, which said it helped led to the type of abuses uncovered in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
Some conservatives also have quietly questioned Gonzales' credentials on core social issues. And he once was a partner in a Houston law firm which represented the scandal-ridden energy giant Enron.
...
One can only hope the Dems stay strong on this one and Bush has to use his supposed political capital in this fight. Ashcroft should have never been approved in the first place. Can you say filibuster!
http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/elections/article.adp?id=20041109180709990012
WASHINGTON (Nov. 10) -- President Bush has chosen White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, a Texas confidant and the most prominent Hispanic in the administration, to succeed Attorney General John Ashcroft, sources close to the White House said Wednesday.
The White House hinted that formal word from the president could come later Wednesday. ''I would not rule out an announcement today,'' White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.
...
Gonzales has been at the center of developing Bush's positions on balancing civil liberties with waging the war on terrorism - opening the White House counsel to the same line of criticism that has dogged Ashcroft.
For instance, Gonzales publicly defended the administration's policy - essentially repudiated by the Supreme Court and now being fought out in the lower courts - of detaining certain terrorism suspects for extended periods without access to lawyers or courts.
He also wrote a controversial February 2002 memo in which Bush claimed the right to waive anti-torture law and international treaties providing protections to prisoners of war. That position drew fire from human rights groups, which said it helped led to the type of abuses uncovered in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
Some conservatives also have quietly questioned Gonzales' credentials on core social issues. And he once was a partner in a Houston law firm which represented the scandal-ridden energy giant Enron.
...
One can only hope the Dems stay strong on this one and Bush has to use his supposed political capital in this fight. Ashcroft should have never been approved in the first place. Can you say filibuster!