Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
This report on DailyKos on the attorney general's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday includes this statement from Gonzales:
Specter: Now wait a minute, wait a minute. The Constitution says you can't take it away except in the case of invasion or rebellion. Doesn't that mean you have the right of habeas corpus?Gonzales: I meant by that comment that the Constitution doesn't say that every individual in the United States or every citizen has or is assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn't say that. It simply says that the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended.
Stunning. Absolutely stunning. It's time for Gonzales to step down. An attorney general this ignorant of the Constitution has no business doing that job.
Comments
Well at least he's towing the White House line. That statement seems right on par with how this administration has been operating for at least 5 if not all of the 6 years.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | January 19, 2007 9:33 AM
Un-friggin-believable! I've been saying for a while how regular American citizens desperately need a basic lesson in civics, but now it seems that the U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL needs one even more! Absolutely sickening!
Robert Parry has a good piece on this issue today:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_robert_p_070119_gonzales_questions_h.htm
Posted by: egbooth | January 19, 2007 9:57 AM
I just want to know how the hell that asshole ever passed a bar exam?
Posted by: Joe Shelby | January 19, 2007 10:00 AM
So the logic here is that since they cannot take it away from me, I never had it in the first place? He dosn't need a civics lesson, he needs a logic lesson. Does it not make sense that since it spells out exactly when it can be taken away, I must have it.
Posted by: Tulle | January 19, 2007 10:19 AM
Simple: the state bar association could give him what he wanted, a licence to practice law, if he performed various ritual tests. So he did. George W. Bush could give him what he wanted, the office of Attorney General, if he gave Bush the answers he wanted.
The content of those tests or answers is meaningless to him. They are merely a means to acquire power.
Posted by: Alex | January 19, 2007 10:50 AM
If that's what he said and what he meant, then he should be forcibly removed from office, as he isn't qualified to hold it. Also disbarred, as he isn't qualified to practice law.
Given the source, however, I have my doubts that that's what he said and meant. Do you know of anywhere besides a stinking scum-eater partisan leftist site that the testimony transcript can be found in full?
Posted by: wolfwalker | January 19, 2007 10:51 AM
I heard this, and more, from the weasel Gonzales's testimony on the radio last night.
Gonzales must think that we are stupid. How can the Constitutional requirement that HC (habeas corpus) not be taken away except in cases of invasion or rebellion, not be read as anything other than an individual right, that no individual's right to HC can be taken away by the federal government except in cases of invasion or rebellion. That's exactly what HC is, an individual right. I don't know how much clearer the Constitution could phrase it. If every individual is not supposed to have the right to HC (and HC had long existed before the Constitution as an individual right--that was the whole purpose of HC), just what is the Constitutional right supposed to mean? Nothing? Absolutely nothing? These people who purport to want to defend the Constitution, obviously want to shred it.
I don't want to denigrate Gonzales, who is obviously an apparatchick who is carrying water for others, some of whom are known and some of whom are not. But, let's understand something. Also during Gonzales's interrogation, he feigned ignorance of certain points that he had earlier promised to investigate. Sen. Leahey started to interrogate him as to those matters, but Gonzales pretty much refused to answer. If I had been a prosecuting attorney there, I would have interrogated Gonzales for an minute-by-minute indication of what he actually did, or didn't do, regarding obtaining information to respond to Leahey's question. The interrogation might have gone well into the wee hours of the morning, but, so what? It would have showed that Gonzales was lying when he pledged to obtain the information that had been previously requested.
Why Leahey and the Democrats did not do that, I will leave it to your imagination. As far as I'm concerned, the congressional Democrats are worthless in regards exposing the defalcations of the Bush malAdministration. Why? Because the Democrats figure that, if they get the next malAdministration, they will do the same, and use the Bush malAdministration as a prototype.
Buy Euros to protect yourself. The American malAdministrations have substantially devalued the US currency.
Posted by: raj | January 19, 2007 11:06 AM
George Orwell would be proud!
Posted by: Rocky | January 19, 2007 11:07 AM
Wolfwalker spewed:
Apparently when you get to the point where you can write "stinking scum-eater partisan leftist" without irony, you lose the ability to use Google, so here's a link to a stinking scum-eater partisan leftist site that provides video from C-Span of the transcript in question. Doubtlessly, of course, this video has been doctored by the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy to make it sound like Gonzales is a civil rights-hating judicial moron who seeks to undermine the Constitution at every step. Those baby eating liberals are sooooooo clever at that kind of thing.
Posted by: Jeff Hebert | January 19, 2007 11:12 AM
So, the appropriate follow up question would have been: "Well, who does have the right of haebeas corpus?" I wish I could find something a bit more specific regarding his views on this.
Posted by: David C. Brayton | January 19, 2007 11:13 AM
Oh, it's not ignorance,he is well aware of what he is doing - justifying the illegal and unconstitutional expansion of executive power by the Administration. It's what he was hired to do by our CinC, it's what he's been doing since he got his job.
Frankly, I think it's criminal, and as wolfwalker stated, he should be forcibly removed from office.
Posted by: Ken | January 19, 2007 11:17 AM
Re Wolfwalker
Well, I see that Mr. Wolfwalker has gravitated over here from Rosenhouses' blog where he claimed that the war in Iraq has been won but the media has told lies to fool the American people into thinking that the war has been lost. Apparently, he only believes what is reported on the right wing fascist news channel and the fascist c***suckers who report from there.
Posted by: SLC | January 19, 2007 11:22 AM
David wrote:
But the answer from Gonzales is so obvious: "Whoever we say has it. And no one else."
Posted by: Ed Brayton | January 19, 2007 11:27 AM
One word: Impeachment.
Posted by: Raging Bee | January 19, 2007 11:39 AM
Gonzales musta gone to Harvard Law School on a "Harriet Miers" scholarship.
Posted by: SharonB | January 19, 2007 11:56 AM
I certainly wish Gonzales or one of his apologists would explain in detail or try to defend what he meant by that statement.
I agree that what he said his completely outrageous, but I hope that he might apologize and clarify his statement. Maybe he didn't realize what he said was so outrageous until it was read back to him?
In a nutshell, it just scares me to no end that a person with so much power could so blatantly ignore our Constitution. If he stands by his words, he should go.
In fact, I'd love to see a powerful ultra-conservative who is adored by the Republican rank and file (Scalia?) give Gonzales and all the other yahoos a basic civics lesson (especially since Gonzales would never listen to a liberal Dem telling him that he's obviously wrong).
Posted by: doctorgoo | January 19, 2007 11:56 AM
Where are the Democrats? In this country if an MP had said something so patently offensive to our nationalism the opposition would have been all over the press about it. It usually doesn't achieve anything apart from raising awareness but at least that's something.
Given the Presidential nominations coming up would it be in the interest of Hilary or Barack to lead the calls for the AG to resign? What's in it for them by keeping quiet?
Posted by: David Durant | January 19, 2007 11:56 AM
David Durant said:
Do you think he would listen to the Democrats? I say, where are the True Conservatives and why aren't THEY taking on Gonzales?
Posted by: doctorgoo | January 19, 2007 12:01 PM
So as long as a single American has right to habeas corpus, we're square with the Constitution, got it.
Posted by: Lish | January 19, 2007 12:06 PM
Wolfwalker. Try here.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | January 19, 2007 12:11 PM
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, this whole 'true conservative Scotsman' thing is a fallacy. What you see is what you get.
Posted by: stogoe | January 19, 2007 12:12 PM
Doctorgoo makes a point I've been wondering about for some time. Ethical issues aside, the tactics of the Republican party are unsound. I was reading in The Economist that the Republicans lost suport everywhere but in the south. The article suggested that the Republicans were losing their traditional base and becomming a pure party of the south, a Dixiecrat party.
If that happens the Democrats will become the natural party of government. Why can't the Republican leadership see that their pandring to the south (or more specifically bible-thumping conservatives) is damaging their political prospects?
Posted by: James | January 19, 2007 12:14 PM
doctorgoo -
I say, where are the True Conservatives and why aren't THEY taking on Gonzales?
Didn't you know, their all liberal extremists now. I thought it was funny to see Bill Buckley accused of being a liberal. But after hearing a guy at a diner the other day, accusing James Baker of being a liberal, I had to consider that that one might take the cake. If your not a neo-con, dead on the party line, your just an extreme lefty.
Posted by: DuWayne | January 19, 2007 12:35 PM
doctorgoo wrote:
The distinction is between intellectual conservatives and partisan conservatives. The talking head conservatives in the media are invariably the latter group. But serious conservative thinkers like Bruce Fein have been hammering Gonzales and Bush for years over their unconstitutional actions.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | January 19, 2007 12:51 PM
Ed, your prediction of Gonzales answer about who has HC rights puts me in mind of the 1950 Suppression of Communism Act which empowered the Minister of Justice to decide who was and was not a Communist in South Africa. Perhaps the administration should look into it as a precedent (without conceding that looking at foreign practice contradicts their earlier criticism of coursts for looking at foreign practice in capital puishment cases).
Posted by: barkdog | January 19, 2007 1:12 PM
Why can't the Republican leadership see that their pandring to the south (or more specifically bible-thumping conservatives) is damaging their political prospects?
Look at the Republican leadership over the past decade. Lots of the bible thumpers and southerners in positions of leadership. The leadership is reflective of the base.
Posted by: MAJeff | January 19, 2007 1:14 PM
Spector's phrase "You may be treading on your interdiction [...]"
I know what all the words mean individually, but I am unclear of his meaning. My first take is that Spector means Gonzolas is coming close saying things he could be removed for (interdiction in the sense of being declared unfit).
Anyone?
Posted by: rpsms | January 19, 2007 1:31 PM
Think Progress has video of this exchange:
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/01/19/gonzales-habeas/
Posted by: Mike Horn | January 19, 2007 1:39 PM
They've been doing it with The Daily Show for years.
Posted by: Skemono | January 19, 2007 1:45 PM
So, someone takes a point of view that y'all don't like, and the instant response is namecalling.
So typical. So amusing. Such a waste of my time. When y'all are interested being better than your opponents, not simply a reflection of them with slightly different shibboleths, then maybe you'll be fit company for rational humans. Until then, please stay down in the mud with Kos and Buchanan and Coulter. It's where you most definitely belong.
Posted by: wolfwalker | January 19, 2007 2:43 PM
Thing is MAJeff, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, Focus on one part of the base long enough and it becomes the whole base. I would have thought a large tack to the centre (particularly on the religiousity - secularism scale) would draw in a huge number of Democrats and non-voters. And lets face it, what are the religious right going to do about it? Go back to the Democrats?
It seems that Powers that Be in your country are too stuck in existing paradigms. With voter particpation around 50% there's a pretty big gap in the market.
Posted by: James | January 19, 2007 2:50 PM
wolfwalker,
While I agree with you that Kos is very partisan, it doesn't change the fact that they didn't twist Gonzales' words or in any way take them out of context.
As for this:
You're way out of line there. You didn't take any point of view, you said this:
The first sentence questioned the accuracy of the report, (something you could have verified yourself if you were so inclinded). And your second sentence was just pointless name-calling.
Posted by: doctorgoo | January 19, 2007 2:54 PM
wolfwalker wrote:
So, someone takes a point of view that y'all don't like, and the instant response is namecalling.
So typical. So amusing. Such a waste of my time. When y'all are interested being better than your opponents, not simply a reflection of them with slightly different shibboleths, then maybe you'll be fit company for rational humans. Until then, please stay down in the mud with Kos and Buchanan and Coulter. It's where you most definitely belong.
Earlier wolfwalker wrote:
Given the source, however, I have my doubts that that's what he said and meant. Do you know of anywhere besides a stinking scum-eater partisan leftist site that the testimony transcript can be found in full?
The irony is too much! The goggles! They do nothing!
Posted by: Will | January 19, 2007 2:58 PM
Goddammit, too late.
Posted by: Will | January 19, 2007 2:59 PM
Thank you Will, I was just about to do the same thing. Wolfwalker is clearly way, way out of his depth.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | January 19, 2007 3:00 PM
Holy crap! Bye bye, Mr. Gonzales...
Posted by: 386sx | January 19, 2007 3:01 PM
Oh, yeah: if any of you are foolish enough to think that description of Kos was aimed at you, it wasn't.
And if any of you found it an unpleasant or offensive description, well then, rest assured that you never want to hear what I think of the conservatives who irritate me.
Posted by: wolfwalker | January 19, 2007 3:25 PM
Posted by: pough | January 19, 2007 3:28 PM
wolfwalker wrote:
Which is absolutely irrelevant. You were the one who absurdly said the following:
And yet you were also the one who did exactly what you accused us of doing when you earlier wrote:
And that was just because you didn't like that they reported - accurately - the testimony of Gonzales. Whether it was aimed at us or not, it was engaging in precisely the behavior you inaccurately criticized others for. There's a word for that: hypocrisy. You succeeded in making yourself look quite foolish.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | January 19, 2007 3:38 PM
Posted by: Mustafa Mond, FCD | January 19, 2007 4:02 PM
He's using the old trick of making a statement that's true if it's read absolutely literally (as in geek humor that involves reading English prose as if it were mathematical notation or programming-language code) but isn't meaningfully true. The Constitution doesn't have any language explicitly granting habeas corpus, any more than it has language explicitly talking about "separation of church and state" or "separation of powers" or "checks and balances." But the universal right of habeas corpus had, at the time the Constitution was drafted, been a basic part of English law (on which the Constitution was based) for over 500 years, so the Framers would have simply taken it for granted. And in any case, even the most conservative possible interpretation of the Ninth Amendment (namely that it only refers to rights that were universally acknowledged in 1787) would cover it.
Posted by: ebohlman | January 19, 2007 4:55 PM
Ebohlman,
The U.S. Constitution clearly mentions habeas corpus in Section 9 (see http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html). Perhaps you are right that the U.S. Consitution does not explicitly grant the right but the U.S. Constitution does explicitly protect habeas corpus.
Posted by: Alejandro | January 19, 2007 7:07 PM
I second David Durant's question: Where are the friggin' Democrats on this? If they don't object we are all screwed and need to buy euros,and l;ots of them, as suggested by raj.
Posted by: Tom | January 19, 2007 11:11 PM
The democrats are 100 percent behind the American Citizens, calling for Somebody (else) to do Something.
Posted by: Greg | January 20, 2007 8:21 AM
Posted by: Mustafa Mond, FCD | January 20, 2007 9:19 AM
Argh! The Constitution doesn't need to grant habeas corpus because it's one of those pesky inalienable right. Absolutely unbelievable that a so-called conservative - who believe such rights come from God, not the State - would even try this logic.
Posted by: Tony | January 20, 2007 4:28 PM