Protest Gonzales in Grand Rapids

Media Mouse is sponsoring a protest tomorrow morning. I don't know if I will be able to make it, but if you can, please feel free to do so!

From an email:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez is speaking at a luncheon at the Eberhard Center on the downtown campus of GVSU.

Protest his visit on the grounds that
1) he unjustly fired US Attorneys across the country, including Michigan US Attorney Margaret Chiara. These firings were political in nature and many in Congress have called for Gonzales to resign - see the video at http://impeachgonzales.org/;

2) Gonzalez is also an architect of torture in the US so- called War on Terror; and
3) Gonzalez has supporter the administration's efforts to illegally spy on people in the US.

We will meet at the walking bridge by the Eberhard Center at the downtown GVSU campus at 11:15am.

The luncheon begins at noon, so we want to greet people going to the luncheon coming from the main campus building.

Bring signs, we will have flyers to hand out. If you can't come sign the Impeach Gonzalez petition online at http://impeachgonzales.org/

Bits of Tid: August 1, 2007

Happy New Month - it is August 2007!!! "Should Al Gonzales be forgot..."

• Is impeachment in the near future for Gonzales?
• Oh, but don't feel lonely, Gonzo. Senator Ted "It's a Series of Tubes" Stevens is also in trouble.
• Bill Bradley:

  "Racial profiling seeps so deeply in our society that a wallet in the hand of a white man looks like a wallet, and the wallet in the hand of a black man looks like a gun."

  Hat tip: My Left Wing
• First Dick DeVos cursed the Tigers - now is Dubya doing the same?
• A man in Wisconsin won an award for bad writing:
  
  

  Gerald began — but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them 'permanently' meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash — to pee.

  Of the contest, the article states that
  

  Entrants are asked to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels.


Heck, I think I just might submit something for that award. Or maybe I should just stick to Lake Superior State's Banished Words List.
• Speaking of which - my latest pick for banishment:

  Having your work cut out for you - On the surface, it sounds like someone’s done something nice for you: "Hey, I cut out your work just for you." Uh, not exactly.

  
  A mention of the LSSU list on Daily Kos provoked a lot of responses.

Bits of Tid: July 26, 2007

• Thousands of people across this great land heard my delightful voice on Monday. I called into Thom Hartmann's radio program and discussed how tax cuts have NOT had the impact on our economy some claim they would. Michigan has some of the lowest taxes in the US - and one of the highest unemployment rates in the US, I noted. More on that later.


• That train-wreck sound you heard? That was Alberto Gonzales. As far as I'm concerned, Gonzales can either stay for the remaining eighteen months of the Bush Administration, or he can step aside and allow someone else to take his place, offering the possibility that the cloud that has hung over the Gonzales DoJ can be lifted. But as long as Gonzo's in charge at DoJ, that cloud will remain.
  
• Call it Daschle's Revenge? Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell just might be in trouble in his bid for a fifth term in the US Senate in 2008. Kentucky Attorney General Greg Stumbo announced that he is forming an exploratory committee to run against McConnell. SurveyUSA released a poll showing McConnell's approval rating the lowest it's been in recent years.


• My latest pick for LSSU's Banished Words List (I have a couple dozen of them, folks):
  

  Smart bomb - I didn’t know that some bombs could be more intelligent than others. Of course, nowadays it can seem as though some of our bombs are smarter than many of our politicians.

• On Monday the Tigers lost both games of a double-header to the White Sox, a team that was 16.5 games behind them in the standings. Then yesterday they won one - also against the ChiSox! Oh well, they still lead the division by a game and a half.


• Coming soon to Great Lakes, Great Times, Great Scott:
  • My endorsement for the Oval Office
  • A look at the upcoming local elections - the primary is twelve days away!
  • Re-framing the tax debate
  • A preview of Congressional races across the country in 2008
  • Combating apathy, particularly amongst young people
  • How you can become a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Denver!

Ehlers: Gonzales needs to go

I can't say I saw this one coming.

Republican Congressman Vern Ehlers of Grand Rapids says he thinks U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should step down.

Ehlers made the remarks before giving an update on the Congress and current events at a noon event at Calvin College.

Gonzales is under fire from the Democratically-controlled Congress for the recent firing of eight U.S. attorneys, including one from West Michigan.

Ehlers won't comment on the merits of the firings but says he disapproves of the way Gonzales carried them out.

If you ask me, the fact that Ehlers and another Republican congressman have called on Gonzales to step down, seems to weaken the argument that this is just a witch-hunt.

Thanks to Nazgul at Michigan Liberal for pointing this out.

Washington Post: Eyebrows raised in Mich. over prosecutor's firing

This is from the Washington Post:

In the aftermath of the surprise firing of U.S. Attorney Margaret M. Chiara, questions outnumber answers. Was she dismissed for political reasons? For poor performance? To make way for someone else? Western Michigan's legal community does not know what to think.

The Justice Department initially announced that the reasons were "performance-related," an explanation at odds with the current consensus in Grand Rapids. The chief federal judge firmly disputed it, as did Chiara, who said she was told her resignation was needed to clear the way for a political favorite.

Some defense lawyers speculate that Chiara, who once trained to be a nun, fell out of favor with the Bush administration over her personal opposition to the death penalty. The administration has pursued capital punishment in several states, including Michigan, that have no state death penalty or rarely use it.

Amid the competing theories, most everyone seems to agree that Chiara's forced resignation after five years, in the middle of a presidential term, is puzzling and that the administration's handling of the firing and its aftermath did a disservice to the 63-year-old career lawyer.

Republicans: Gonzales will - or at least should - resign

Going... Going... (almost) Gone-zales?

From the latest Evans-Novak Political Report: "It is impossible to find a Republican on Capitol Hill who believes either that Alberto Gonzales will survive as attorney general or that he should survive. That typifies the poor congressional relations of the Bush Administration that are rooted in arrogance."

"President Bush's gesture of phoning Gonzales to reaffirm his support is just that -- a gesture. His press conference last night to challenge the Democrats was a means of political positioning. As President Bush announced that Gonzales would appear on the Hill to testify, he was in fact throwing him to the wolves. At best, he has a few months left in office. Only a few Republicans on Capitol Hill have called for Gonzales's resignation so far, but the others are doing almost nothing to defend him."

Meanwhile, TrueMajority is offering Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream for a year if you can guess the day, hour, and minute at which Gonzo quits. I say 9:17 AM next Friday.

Fired US attorneys led nation in convictions

Sounds like the GOP ain't all that tough on crime after all.

Every day, the explanations for the firings of the eight U.S. attorneys are becoming less about competence and more about corruption. Some new statistics show that the prosecutors were in fact leading the nation in output:

• Six ranked in the top third of all U.S. attorneys for prosecutions, filing a combined 106,188 last year alone
• Five ranked in the top third for convictions, achieving 98,939
• Three were among the top five in the number of immigration prosecutions (including Carol Lam, whose firing was attributed to immigration by Karl
  Rove)

Now these were some busy folks. It is almost a wonder that the fired U.S. attorneys had the time to take the phone calls notifying them of their dismissals.