Alberto on C-SPAN

I was fortunate yesterday evening to catch 45 minutes or so of Alberto Gonzalez’s Senate Judiciary Committee Testimony on C-SPAN. During the day, I had tried to tune into the hearings on CNN, but all I got were shots of the diabolical Orrin Hatch and our AG moving their mouths soundlessly, while the CNN reporter declared that Gonzalez was responding to the senators’ questions in a “dogged, lawyerly way.”

I was indeed lucky to come across the hearings again while surfing around before the ball-game, and this time I could actually hear them. The Braves were rained out, so after a good belt of the hearings, I had the further pleasure of seeing two nearly all-white teams, Houston and Cincinnati, going at it in the Republican confines of Marge Schott Field.

But back to the Gonzalez “re-confirmation hearing,” as Arlen Spector described it. Senator Hatch began by saying that he was delighted to still have Gonzalez around after a whole month, given that the predatory Democrats had been howling for his scalp within a week. But even Hatch looked slightly squeamish when he had to listen to the replies that issued forth from the Attorney General’s mouth. In the 45 minutes I listened, he must have said “I don’t recall” at least 10 times.

The eight US Attorneys were fired for blatantly political reasons. They were fired for investigating major corruption cases against top Republican politicians. There’s plenty of “transparency to that,” to use Gonzalez’s phrase.

All in all, it turned out to be a pretty good day. The coup de grace for me was the news that Republican Congressman Doolittle was forced to resign his post on the House Appropriations Committee after his home was raided by the FBI in connection with the Abramoff K-Street scandal. There is poetic justice in the fact that Doolittle represents the town of El Dorado in California.

This is what happens when the US government is run like a US corporation. Being a Republican means never having to say you’re sorry. Just hang on to your golden parachute and jump one-by-one, until November 2008.