Case against AG craters

Ruben Navarette:

When I wrote recently that Alberto Gonzales was being unfairly castigated by -- among others -- white liberals who have long opposed him because they couldn't claim credit for his achievements, some people took offense. How dare I suggest that race had anything to do with this mess, they said -- right before they proceeded to charge, sweet as you please, that the only reason I was defending the embattled attorney general is because we're both Hispanic.

Just curious: If a white male defends another, have you ever heard someone say it's because they're both white males?

The real reason I feel queasy about the ongoing persecution of the attorney general is because the case for his ouster -- Pundits and Politicos v. Gonzales -- is slowly falling apart.

You wouldn't know it, given how inept Gonzales and others at the Justice Department have been in defending themselves. Nor from the shoddy media coverage, which often has been marked by inaccuracies.

For example, The New York Times penned an editorial on March 27 claiming that Gonzales had denied signing off on the firings of eight U.S. attorneys. But the White House released video footage of Gonzales -- from a week or so earlier -- in which the attorney general acknowledged that he had approved the firings while insisting that he was not involved in the nitty-gritty of deciding who ought to go.

In fact, the case against Gonzales is unraveling so fast that the accusations are constantly shifting.

When this non-scandal broke at the beginning of March, the accusation by some was that Gonzales was guilty of the political equivalent of a felony -- canning federal prosecutors to thwart prosecutions that could have political consequences, and then trying to hide it by lying.

Never happened, Gonzales' ex-chief of staff told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. When Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., asked D. Kyle Sampson if he was "prepared to swear under oath that no U.S. attorney was asked to resign because the U.S. attorney was pursuing an investigation ... or failing to undertake a prosecution,'' Sampson answered yes. Later, in response to questioning from Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., Sampson was even more explicit that "no U.S. attorney was asked to resign for the purpose of influencing a particular case for a political reason.''

Hence the predicament facing Senate Democrats: They don't want to take Sampson's word that the firings of the U.S. attorneys were justified, and yet they insist that Sampson is credible when he says he doesn't "think the attorney general's statement that he was not involved in any discussions about U.S. attorney removals is accurate.''

Whereas Gonzales is accused of having selective memory, Democrats want to attach to Sampson something akin to selective believability.

...

This non scandal should be an embarrassment to Chuck Shumer and the Democrats if they were capable of shame. There is no evidence that Gonzales or the Bush administration did anything illegal or unethical in firing attorneys that serve at the pleasure of the President. Clearly they failed to do some legal things to please him. The Democrats are left with a phony storm over different recollections of how the entirely legal conclusions were reached.

The silence of the past week does indicate how much better the world can be when Congress is not in session.