Let me cut right to the chase with the fiasco of Attorney General’s office spokesperson Monica Goodling’s purported invocation of the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination: if she is not fired by the end of the week, then Alberto Gonzales should be fired (or if necessary impeached) for not firing her.
Reading her tactic (which I presume was orchestrated by Karl Rove, because everything else seems to be) in its best light, she has supposedly tried to avoid “a partisan perjury trap”, to wit, the same horseshit Bill Clinton was arguably exposed to– questions with no underlying purpose other than to try to get someone to lie under oath. This supposed trap has not, however, been recognized as a justification not to testify. Further, the usual invocation of the privilege is not at a refusal to appear pursuant to a subpoena (which is rightly contempt of Congress for which Miss Goodling should rightly be penalized, i.e. 1 to 12 months in jail and a fine of $100 to $1,000), but at the time of questioning, at which time, immunity can be offered, if necessary. Note that we’re not talking about a special prosecutor like the Clinton people had to deal with, but simply a Congressional committee… just one, you know, elected by the People, as opposed to Pat Robertson’s friends.
But what Miss Goodling has actually done is far more serious: she has either demonstrated, with her cutesy tactic, that (1) she has committed criminal acts in her role as a high level official in the United States Department of Justice, our nation’s principal law enforcement agency, and/or (2) she has no concept of one of the most basic of Constitutional privileges. In short, she has just confessed that she is either too dirty, or too stupid, to continue to serve in her job (or possibly both). (I won’t even go into the significance of her having attended Pat Robertson’s Regent University Law School or a similarly situated Christianist “Messiah College”… institutions that, academically, compare poorly to the average community college, but which seem to graduate a wildly disproportionate number of people who make it into the ranks of Congressional and White House aides… though, if possibility (2) is in play and she is not a crook, then her “education” has ill-served her.)
And there you have it. An easy, ready made scandal that even Chuck Schumer ought to be able to understand: regardless of what happens to Alberto “Abu” Gonzales, Miss Goodling can simply not be trusted to serve the public. Not another day. Not another minute (though it’s after hours). She has demonstrated either sufficient nefariousness… or sufficient numb-fuckness… to be sacked immediately.
Regardless of what happens to the Attorney General himself, his selection of this criminal, or this idiot, or both… speaks volumes about his own management skills. And she just has to go.
tdog
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