WorldNetDaily
Stop Alberto Gonzales
Sat Jan 22, 2005 04:08
64.140.158.42
Stop Alberto Gonzales
Posted: January 21, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
This may be a first.
I, Joseph Farah, am joining with an informal coalition that includes the Communist Party USA, People for the American Way and the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund to block confirmation of the Alberto Gonzales as attorney general.
Granted, my reasons for opposing this guy are a bit different that the groups named above. But I agree with them that he must be stopped.
I never had much use for Gonzales, but the last straw came this week when he told the U.S. Senate he supports extending the expired federal assault weapons ban.
First of all, let me speak plainly: There is no such thing as an "assault weapon." The guns included in this ban, and previous misguided legislation passed by federal and state governments, are not automatics. They are not machine-guns. They fire one round at a time, like hundreds of other firearms that people use to hunt deer, shoot skeet or simply to protect themselves and their families from those who would take their lives, their liberty or their property.
I have challenged my colleagues in the press – time and time again – to define the term "assault weapon." They can't do it. There is no definition. They are firearms defined not by what they do, but by how they look – scary. Nevertheless, the press continues this subterfuge. It is disinformation and propaganda that is leading to the erosion of our inherent rights as Americans and our ability to preserve those rights.
What is an "assault weapon"?
I can define it for you: It's any weapon that looks mean. It's any weapon government officials want to take away from you. Taking them is the first step toward disarming all U.S. citizens in direct defiance of the U.S. Constitution.
Let's be clear on something: The Founding Fathers didn't write the Second Amendment to protect deer hunters or skeet shooters.
Deer hunting was not on the minds of the framers of our Constitution. They understood that without arms the people would be no match for the kind of powerful government we have in Washington, D.C., today.
So often, the gun grabbers portray themselves as crime fighters. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even in a representative republic, when civil order breaks down, as it inevitably does, law-abiding citizens are not safe without adequate firepower. The image of Korean store owners perched on top of their businesses during the L.A. riots is indelible proof of that simple fact.
Just a generation ago, nearly every politician in America understood the purpose of the Second Amendment and defended it vigorously.
The late Hubert H. Humphrey, a man who defined liberal Democratic politics in the mid-1960s had this to say on the subject: "Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be carefully used and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of the citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible."
Today, even so-called "constitutional scholars" like Gonzales – President Bush's nominee for attorney general of the United States, the highest law-enforcement position in the country – don't get it.
Or maybe he does. Maybe he just doesn't care. Maybe he's one of those lawyers who will twist and bend the Constitution to support his own political agenda. And maybe that political agenda is opposition to firearms in the hands of law-abiding Americans.
The gun grabbers understand they can't win the debate today by revealing their true intentions – taking all firearms away from law-abiding citizens as they have in some cities in America. So they wage their war on guns incrementally – banning classifications of weapons, dividing and conquering the opposition and softening up the people on the idea that the government has a legitimate power to ban guns.
Humphrey was right. So were the Founding Fathers. Tyranny is always possible. In fact, without a vigilant, armed civilian populace, it is inevitable.
There's only one ultimate defense against the imposition of tyranny here – 300 million well-armed Americans.
So, count me in opposition to Gonzales – along with the Communists, People for the American Way and MALDEF.
RELATED OFFER:
Are you ready for the Second American Revolution? Joseph Farah's book, "Taking America Back," exposes the weaknesses in America's current system and offers practical solutions that are real and doable – solutions that can revive freedom, morality and justice in our nation. Order your copy now in WorldNetDaily's online store, ShopNetDaily!
Joseph Farah is founder, editor and chief executive officer of WND and a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host. He is also the founder of WND Books. In addition to his daily column in WND, he writes a nationally syndicated weekly column available to U.S. newspapers through Creators Syndicate.
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42481
=====================================================
Alberto Gonzales: A Record of Injustice
As White House Counsel
GONZALES APPROVED MEMO AUTHORIZING TORTURE: An August 2002 Justice Department memo "was vetted by a larger number of officials, including...the White House counsel's office and Vice President Cheney's office." According to Newsweek, the memo "was drafted after White House meetings convened by George W. Bush's chief counsel, Alberto Gonzales, along with Defense Department general counsel William Haynes and [Cheney counsel] David Addington." The memo included the opinion that laws prohibiting torture do "not apply to the President's detention and interrogation of enemy combatants." Further, the memo puts forth the opinion that the pain caused by an interrogation must include "injury such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions—in order to constitute torture." The methods outlined in the memo "provoked concerns within the CIA about possible violation of the federal torture law [and] also raised concerns at the FBI, where some agents knew of the techniques being used" overseas on high-level al Qaeda officials. http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=246536
================================================
GONZALES BELIEVES MANY GENEVA CONVENTIONS PROVISIONS ARE OBSOLETE: A 1/25/02 memo written by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales said "the war against terrorism is a new kind of war" and "this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions." The memo pushes to make al Qaeda and Taliban detainees exempt from the Geneva Conventions' provisions on the proper, legal treatment of prisoners. The administration has been adamant that prisoners at Guantanamo are not protected by the Geneva Conventions. [Gonzales 1/25/02 memo; Newsweek, 5/24/04]
---------------------------------------------
GONZALES ADMITTED HIS VIEWS 'COULD UNDERMINE U.S. MILITARY CULTURE': The 1/25/02 memo shows Alberto Gonzales was aware of the risk that ignoring the Geneva Conventions could create for the military. One concern expressed is that failing to apply the Geneva Conventions "could undermine U.S. military culture which emphasizes maintaining the highest standards of conduct in combat, and could introduce an element of uncertainty in the status of adversaries," which is what happened at Abu Ghraib. Secretary of State Colin Powell strongly warned against taking this decision, as did lawyers from the Judge Advocate General's Corps, or JAG. This week, a federal judge ruled that "President Bush had both overstepped his constitutional bounds and improperly brushed aside the Geneva Conventions" when he established military tribunals in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to try detainees as war criminals.
------------------------------------------------
GONZALES BLOCKS INFORMATION FROM CONGRESS: Historically, senators have been allowed to review some memoranda by judicial nominees. But, in a letter [about nominee Miguel Estrada], Gonzales told the Democrats that the administration would not produce the memos, because to do so would chill free expression among administration lawyers and violate the principle of executive privilege, which protects the internal deliberations of the president's aides.
---------------------------------------------
As Texas Chief Legal Counsel
DEATH PENALTY MEMOS: GONZALES'S NEGLIGENT COUNSEL: As chief legal counsel for then-Gov. Bush in Texas, Gonzales was responsible for writing a memo on the facts of each death penalty case – Bush decided whether a defendant should live or die based on the memos. An examination of the Gonzales memoranda by the Atlantic Monthly concluded, "Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence." His memos caused Bush frequently to approve executions based on "only the most cursory briefings on the issues in dispute." Rather than informing the governor of the conflicting circumstances in a case, "The memoranda seem attuned to a radically different posture, assumed by Bush from the earliest days of his administration—one in which he sought to minimize his sense of legal and moral responsibility for executions."
---------------------------------------------
MEMORANDUM ON TERRY WASHINGTON: A CASE STUDY IN INCOMPETENCE: In his briefing on death-row defendant Terry Washington – a mentally retarded 33-year-old man with the communication skills of a seven-year-old – Gonzales devoted nearly a third of his three-page report to the gruesome details of the crime, but referred "only fleetingly to the central issue in Washington's clemency appeal—his limited mental capacity, which was never disputed by the State of Texas—and present[ed] it as part of a discussion of 'conflicting information' about the condemned man's childhood." In addition, Gonzales "failed to mention that Washington's mental limitations, and the fact that he and his ten siblings were regularly beaten with whips, water hoses, extension cords, wire hangers, and fan belts, were never made known to the jury, although both the district attorney and Washington's trial lawyer knew of this potentially mitigating evidence." Nor did he mention that Washington's lawyer had "failed to enlist a mental-health expert" to testify on Washington's behalf, even though "ineffective counsel and mental retardation were in fact the central issues raised in the thirty-page clemency petition" it was Gonzales's job to review. This all came at a time when "demand was growing nationwide to ban executions of the retarded."
------------------------------------------------
GONZALES TOLD GOV. BUSH HE COULD IGNORE INTERNATIONAL LAW: In 1997, Alberto Gonzales wrote a memo for then Gov. Bush to justify non-compliance with the Vienna Convention. The Vienna Convention, ratified by the Senate in 1969, was "designed to ensure that foreign nationals accused of a crime are given access to legal counsel by a representative from their home country." Gonzales sent a letter to the U.S. State Department in which he argued that the treaty didn't apply to the State of Texas, as Texas was not a signatory to the Vienna Convention. Two days later, Texas executed Mexican citizen Irineo Tristan Montoya, despite Mexico's protestations that Texas had violated Tristan's rights under the Vienna Convention by failing to inform the Mexican consulate at the time of his arrest.
------------------------------------------------
GONZALES GETS BUSH OUT OF JURY DUTY TO KEEP DUI SECRET: In 1996, as counsel to Gov. Bush, Gonzales helped to get him excused from jury duty, "a situation that could have required the governor to disclose his then-secret 1976 conviction for drunken driving in Maine." Gonzales argued "that if Bush served, he would not, as governor, be able to pardon the defendant in the future."
------------------------------------------------
As Texas Supreme Court Justice
GONZALES DOES ENRON'S BIDDING: As an elected member of the Texas Supreme Court, "Enron and Enron's law firm were Gonzales's biggest contributors," giving him $35,450 in 2000. Overall, Gonzales raked in $100,000 from the energy industry. In May 2000, "Gonzales was author of a state Supreme Court opinion that handed the energy industry one of its biggest Texas legal victories in recent history." Since Bush brought him into the White House, Gonzales has worked doggedly to keep secret the details of energy task force meetings held by Vice President Cheney
--------------------------------------------
ACCEPTING DONATIONS FROM LITIGANTS: In the weeks between hearing oral arguments and making a decision in Henson v. Texas Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance, Justice Alberto Gonzales collected a $2,000 contribution premium from the Texas Farm Bureau (which runs the defendant insurance company in this case). In another case, Gonzales pocketed a $2,500 contribution from a law firm defending the Royal Insurance company just before hearing oral arguments in Embrey v. Royal Insurance.
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=246536
Posted: January 21, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
This may be a first.
I, Joseph Farah, am joining with an informal coalition that includes the Communist Party USA, People for the American Way and the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund to block confirmation of the Alberto Gonzales as attorney general.
Granted, my reasons for opposing this guy are a bit different that the groups named above. But I agree with them that he must be stopped.
I never had much use for Gonzales, but the last straw came this week when he told the U.S. Senate he supports extending the expired federal assault weapons ban.
First of all, let me speak plainly: There is no such thing as an "assault weapon." The guns included in this ban, and previous misguided legislation passed by federal and state governments, are not automatics. They are not machine-guns. They fire one round at a time, like hundreds of other firearms that people use to hunt deer, shoot skeet or simply to protect themselves and their families from those who would take their lives, their liberty or their property.
I have challenged my colleagues in the press – time and time again – to define the term "assault weapon." They can't do it. There is no definition. They are firearms defined not by what they do, but by how they look – scary. Nevertheless, the press continues this subterfuge. It is disinformation and propaganda that is leading to the erosion of our inherent rights as Americans and our ability to preserve those rights.
What is an "assault weapon"?
I can define it for you: It's any weapon that looks mean. It's any weapon government officials want to take away from you. Taking them is the first step toward disarming all U.S. citizens in direct defiance of the U.S. Constitution.
Let's be clear on something: The Founding Fathers didn't write the Second Amendment to protect deer hunters or skeet shooters.
Deer hunting was not on the minds of the framers of our Constitution. They understood that without arms the people would be no match for the kind of powerful government we have in Washington, D.C., today.
So often, the gun grabbers portray themselves as crime fighters. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even in a representative republic, when civil order breaks down, as it inevitably does, law-abiding citizens are not safe without adequate firepower. The image of Korean store owners perched on top of their businesses during the L.A. riots is indelible proof of that simple fact.
Just a generation ago, nearly every politician in America understood the purpose of the Second Amendment and defended it vigorously.
The late Hubert H. Humphrey, a man who defined liberal Democratic politics in the mid-1960s had this to say on the subject: "Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be carefully used and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of the citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible."
Today, even so-called "constitutional scholars" like Gonzales – President Bush's nominee for attorney general of the United States, the highest law-enforcement position in the country – don't get it.
Or maybe he does. Maybe he just doesn't care. Maybe he's one of those lawyers who will twist and bend the Constitution to support his own political agenda. And maybe that political agenda is opposition to firearms in the hands of law-abiding Americans.
The gun grabbers understand they can't win the debate today by revealing their true intentions – taking all firearms away from law-abiding citizens as they have in some cities in America. So they wage their war on guns incrementally – banning classifications of weapons, dividing and conquering the opposition and softening up the people on the idea that the government has a legitimate power to ban guns.
Humphrey was right. So were the Founding Fathers. Tyranny is always possible. In fact, without a vigilant, armed civilian populace, it is inevitable.
There's only one ultimate defense against the imposition of tyranny here – 300 million well-armed Americans.
So, count me in opposition to Gonzales – along with the Communists, People for the American Way and MALDEF.
RELATED OFFER:
Are you ready for the Second American Revolution? Joseph Farah's book, "Taking America Back," exposes the weaknesses in America's current system and offers practical solutions that are real and doable – solutions that can revive freedom, morality and justice in our nation. Order your copy now in WorldNetDaily's online store, ShopNetDaily!
Joseph Farah is founder, editor and chief executive officer of WND and a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host. He is also the founder of WND Books. In addition to his daily column in WND, he writes a nationally syndicated weekly column available to U.S. newspapers through Creators Syndicate.
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42481
=====================================================
Alberto Gonzales: A Record of Injustice
As White House Counsel
GONZALES APPROVED MEMO AUTHORIZING TORTURE: An August 2002 Justice Department memo "was vetted by a larger number of officials, including...the White House counsel's office and Vice President Cheney's office." According to Newsweek, the memo "was drafted after White House meetings convened by George W. Bush's chief counsel, Alberto Gonzales, along with Defense Department general counsel William Haynes and [Cheney counsel] David Addington." The memo included the opinion that laws prohibiting torture do "not apply to the President's detention and interrogation of enemy combatants." Further, the memo puts forth the opinion that the pain caused by an interrogation must include "injury such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions—in order to constitute torture." The methods outlined in the memo "provoked concerns within the CIA about possible violation of the federal torture law [and] also raised concerns at the FBI, where some agents knew of the techniques being used" overseas on high-level al Qaeda officials. http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=246536
================================================
GONZALES BELIEVES MANY GENEVA CONVENTIONS PROVISIONS ARE OBSOLETE: A 1/25/02 memo written by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales said "the war against terrorism is a new kind of war" and "this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions." The memo pushes to make al Qaeda and Taliban detainees exempt from the Geneva Conventions' provisions on the proper, legal treatment of prisoners. The administration has been adamant that prisoners at Guantanamo are not protected by the Geneva Conventions. [Gonzales 1/25/02 memo; Newsweek, 5/24/04]
---------------------------------------------
GONZALES ADMITTED HIS VIEWS 'COULD UNDERMINE U.S. MILITARY CULTURE': The 1/25/02 memo shows Alberto Gonzales was aware of the risk that ignoring the Geneva Conventions could create for the military. One concern expressed is that failing to apply the Geneva Conventions "could undermine U.S. military culture which emphasizes maintaining the highest standards of conduct in combat, and could introduce an element of uncertainty in the status of adversaries," which is what happened at Abu Ghraib. Secretary of State Colin Powell strongly warned against taking this decision, as did lawyers from the Judge Advocate General's Corps, or JAG. This week, a federal judge ruled that "President Bush had both overstepped his constitutional bounds and improperly brushed aside the Geneva Conventions" when he established military tribunals in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to try detainees as war criminals.
------------------------------------------------
GONZALES BLOCKS INFORMATION FROM CONGRESS: Historically, senators have been allowed to review some memoranda by judicial nominees. But, in a letter [about nominee Miguel Estrada], Gonzales told the Democrats that the administration would not produce the memos, because to do so would chill free expression among administration lawyers and violate the principle of executive privilege, which protects the internal deliberations of the president's aides.
---------------------------------------------
As Texas Chief Legal Counsel
DEATH PENALTY MEMOS: GONZALES'S NEGLIGENT COUNSEL: As chief legal counsel for then-Gov. Bush in Texas, Gonzales was responsible for writing a memo on the facts of each death penalty case – Bush decided whether a defendant should live or die based on the memos. An examination of the Gonzales memoranda by the Atlantic Monthly concluded, "Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence." His memos caused Bush frequently to approve executions based on "only the most cursory briefings on the issues in dispute." Rather than informing the governor of the conflicting circumstances in a case, "The memoranda seem attuned to a radically different posture, assumed by Bush from the earliest days of his administration—one in which he sought to minimize his sense of legal and moral responsibility for executions."
---------------------------------------------
MEMORANDUM ON TERRY WASHINGTON: A CASE STUDY IN INCOMPETENCE: In his briefing on death-row defendant Terry Washington – a mentally retarded 33-year-old man with the communication skills of a seven-year-old – Gonzales devoted nearly a third of his three-page report to the gruesome details of the crime, but referred "only fleetingly to the central issue in Washington's clemency appeal—his limited mental capacity, which was never disputed by the State of Texas—and present[ed] it as part of a discussion of 'conflicting information' about the condemned man's childhood." In addition, Gonzales "failed to mention that Washington's mental limitations, and the fact that he and his ten siblings were regularly beaten with whips, water hoses, extension cords, wire hangers, and fan belts, were never made known to the jury, although both the district attorney and Washington's trial lawyer knew of this potentially mitigating evidence." Nor did he mention that Washington's lawyer had "failed to enlist a mental-health expert" to testify on Washington's behalf, even though "ineffective counsel and mental retardation were in fact the central issues raised in the thirty-page clemency petition" it was Gonzales's job to review. This all came at a time when "demand was growing nationwide to ban executions of the retarded."
------------------------------------------------
GONZALES TOLD GOV. BUSH HE COULD IGNORE INTERNATIONAL LAW: In 1997, Alberto Gonzales wrote a memo for then Gov. Bush to justify non-compliance with the Vienna Convention. The Vienna Convention, ratified by the Senate in 1969, was "designed to ensure that foreign nationals accused of a crime are given access to legal counsel by a representative from their home country." Gonzales sent a letter to the U.S. State Department in which he argued that the treaty didn't apply to the State of Texas, as Texas was not a signatory to the Vienna Convention. Two days later, Texas executed Mexican citizen Irineo Tristan Montoya, despite Mexico's protestations that Texas had violated Tristan's rights under the Vienna Convention by failing to inform the Mexican consulate at the time of his arrest.
------------------------------------------------
GONZALES GETS BUSH OUT OF JURY DUTY TO KEEP DUI SECRET: In 1996, as counsel to Gov. Bush, Gonzales helped to get him excused from jury duty, "a situation that could have required the governor to disclose his then-secret 1976 conviction for drunken driving in Maine." Gonzales argued "that if Bush served, he would not, as governor, be able to pardon the defendant in the future."
------------------------------------------------
As Texas Supreme Court Justice
GONZALES DOES ENRON'S BIDDING: As an elected member of the Texas Supreme Court, "Enron and Enron's law firm were Gonzales's biggest contributors," giving him $35,450 in 2000. Overall, Gonzales raked in $100,000 from the energy industry. In May 2000, "Gonzales was author of a state Supreme Court opinion that handed the energy industry one of its biggest Texas legal victories in recent history." Since Bush brought him into the White House, Gonzales has worked doggedly to keep secret the details of energy task force meetings held by Vice President Cheney
--------------------------------------------
ACCEPTING DONATIONS FROM LITIGANTS: In the weeks between hearing oral arguments and making a decision in Henson v. Texas Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance, Justice Alberto Gonzales collected a $2,000 contribution premium from the Texas Farm Bureau (which runs the defendant insurance company in this case). In another case, Gonzales pocketed a $2,500 contribution from a law firm defending the Royal Insurance company just before hearing oral arguments in Embrey v. Royal Insurance.
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=246536
- Alberto Gonzales: "He Has Endangered Our Soldiers — Democracy Now, Sat Jan 22 04:20
- An Open Letter to Alberto R. Gonzales — Church Folks for a Better America, Sat Jan 22 04:28
- Alberto Gonzales: Bush's 'Nazi Lawyer' — Edward Spannaus, Sat Jan 22 04:37
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