I didn't, and don't, like John Ashcroft. His stint as the Attorney General of Jesusland eroded the rights of American citizens, as well as the faith of the populace in their government. In an administration filled with intolerant, irrelevant religous kooks, his intolerance, kookery, and complete oblivion to the world as it truly is was exemplary. During the administration's first four-year attempt to destroy this country, only Field-Marshall Rumsfeld had his head further up his posterior orifice than Ashcroft.
I could go on and on about exactly how worthless of a mammal Ashcroft is, but this page is not about John Asscroft. Rather, it is about another of the Great Deceiver's boot-licking toady henchmen, Alberto Gonzales, the greasy, slick-talking Texas lawyer who, like so many of his profession, holds no respect whatsoever for truth or honesty. Alberto Gonzales, the Torture Czar.
It is said, in the places where they say such things, better the evil you know, than an evil you don't. John Ashcroft may have done his best to destroy America as we know it, and he's definately not on my nondenominational winter-holiday card list, but the Torture Czar? Even in this administration, he's a remarkable piece of work who (almost!) makes Asscroft look like a saint.
Among his many, many offenses, or at least those that have so far come to light, Senor Gonzales is principally at fault for the administration's decision to torture, degrade, and humiliate inmates in hell-hole prisons such as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. He was instrumental in crafting the administration's disregard for the Geneva Convention, which he dismissed as "quaint" and "irrelevant", in their sadistic abuse of prisoners. He is the spineless yes-man who allows the Great Deceiver to run rampant, ignoring and unchecked by the constraints of such antiquated concepts as the Constitution of the United States. He is the miserable and worthless little weenie who endorsed and approved a ridiculously vague and permissive definition of torture, as used by our government, giving them reign to deny prisoners - foreign or domestic - the most basic of human rights.
A long-time croney of the Great Deceiver, Gonzales has been telling lies and breaking laws in his service for more than a decade. Enough other subservient goons have already been rewarded by this administration for their dishonesty, deceit, unlawfulness, and immorality; the Torture Czar should not be, as well.
Alberto Gonzales is dangerously un-American, a menace to this country, a danger to the world, and must not, under any circumstances, be allowed to become the next Attorney General.
The Senate stands now poised to vote on the appointment of this immoral lunatic to one of the most exploitable and abusable positions of power in this country. As the chief law-enforcement-officer in this once-great nation, a man with such wanton disregard for the truth, for liberty, for the Constitution; a man who will stop at nothing to approve and endorse and excuse the maniacal whims of his master, is intolerable and inexcusable. His appointment to office would be the last, tumultuous step towards an Orwellian future. Ashcroft has already done such damage to federal, state, and local law-enforcement, that it will take them a decade to recover under the best of circumstances. Their future, under the guidance of a conscienceless reptile like Gonzales is unthinkable.
I have generally not considered myself a blogger, nor part of the blogosphere, and for the most part I pay them and theirs little notice. I, being an experienced junior grand-master of the ancient art of cynicism, do not often approve of mass protests, petitions, and similar symbolic-but-useless actions, because, frankly, nobody gives a damn, when all is said and done. Another day dawns, the world doesn't look so bleak anymore, and everybody's forgotten what all the fuss was about.
Rarely - very rarely - there is an exception. Alberto Gonzales is one such exception. If he is appointed, all too soon, there will be no more protests, petitions, or symbolic-but-useless actions. Free speech and all the other trivial niceties of a free society will be gone. There will be no more bright dawns filled with hope and opportunity, only a bleak, eternal twilight of ruthless oppression and tyrrany, and everyone will, in time, forget all those who once made a fuss, who once had the right to make a fuss.
Together with Kos and company, as well as hundreds, if not thousands, of other bloglike sites on the net, I stand opposed to the appointment of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General, and urge Congress - as well as my fellow Americans - frightened, cowed, disenfranchised, disillusioned, defeated - to stand proud, with honor and courage, and reject absolutely this utter, utter bastard.