In a Nutshell

MANIFESTO

Every so often, I find a piece that captures perfectly the attitudes of the Bushies and shows just how horrid the last six years have been. This week's Nation's lead editorial is such an offering.

In discussing the Bushies' transparent attempt to increase and retain their power through the firing of eight US Attorneys, the editors state,

The stakes in the Gonzales Eight scandal are far more profound than the hiring and firing of a few prosecutors. It is by now a shopworn cliché of the Bush Administration to say that the Constitution itself is at stake. But what other assessment is possible? Each of the Gonzales Eight—to a person, competent and admired prosecutors—lost a job because the President, Rove and other GOP bosses sought to warp fundamental American institutions, including elections, criminal investigations and sentencing, for political gain. That is the very essence of corruption ...

Democrats who have been reluctant to pursue investigations of torture, the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina should take two lessons [from this episode]. First, all are aspects of the same scandal: a White House determined to establish extralegal authority both abroad and at home. Second, hearings and subpoenas not only get out the facts but force the Administration to back down. In this case, at least, Congressional Democrats have begun—but only begun—to find their collective voice as a check on Bush's executive power grab.

The case of the Gonzales Eight makes it vividly clear that this Justice Department isn't only covering up illegality in the Nixon mode. From the President on down, the Administration sees no legal limits to presidential power, whether in a US Attorney's office in Phoenix or an interrogation room in Guantánamo. In such an environment, with such permission from the Oval Office itself, the Justice Department is the locus, the engine, the pumping heart of scandal.

Indeed, every move this mob makes is devoted to one goal only: the aggrandizement of power. The Nation is correct in showing this principle as it relates to the US Attorney story and does so in a way that's superior to anything I've seen in a while.