Something I’ve written about on this blog almost since its inception was an early scandal for then-governor of Texas Bush. As governor, he was called for jury duty, and made a big deal about how he was just an ordinary guy, and would of course serve on the jury. From CNN in ’96:

GOP Gov. George W. Bush, saying that it’s “a feeble excuse” to say he’s too busy or too important for the task, reported for jury duty today. He said he doubted he’d be called for a trial given his job. He has the power to commute sentences in criminal cases, and has strongly and publicly favored limiting damages awarded in civil trials. Reporters asked Bush if he thought he’d be elected jury foreman. “I had enough trouble getting elected governor in Travis County,” a traditionally Democratic area, he joked.

Right from the start, Bush had to squirm to avoid incriminating himself. Bush “overlooked” a section of the jury questionnaire (a legal document) which asked him about his criminal record; had he filled it out honestly, he would have revealed that he himself had been arrested for DUI. But he was doing his best to lie by omission on that one, and no one questioned the governor on how he filled out the form.

His smug confidence in having avoided that particular bullet, however, was soon shattered: he was selected to serve on a drunk driving case for an Austin, TX strip club dancer. Maybe he recognized the significance of that news, but I’ll bet that it was Alberto Gonzales that had to explain it to him: if he came to serve on that case, the lawyers involved would almost certainly ask Bush if he himself had ever been arrested on the same charges that he was now being called upon to consider as a juror. Oops.

Here comes Gonzales’ weasel. As Bush’s legal counsel in ’96, he had to get Bush out of hot water. Bush had already made big noises about how he was just an ordinary guy and would of course serve. But now he needed that “feeble excuse” like never before, and Gonzales provided it:

In separate interviews, [presiding judge] Crain—along with [defense attorney] Wahlberg and prosecutor John Lastovica—told NEWSWEEK that, before the case began, Gonzales asked to have an off-the-record conference in the judge’s chambers. Gonzales then asked Crain to “consider” striking Bush from the jury, making the novel “conflict of interest” argument that the Texas governor might one day be asked to pardon the defendant (who worked at an Austin nightclub called Sugar’s), the judge said. “He [Gonzales] raised the issue,” Crain said. Crain said he found Gonzales’s argument surprising, since it was “extremely unlikely” that a drunken-driving conviction would ever lead to a pardon petition to Bush. But “out of deference” to the governor, Crain said, the other lawyers went along. Wahlberg said he agreed to make the motion striking Bush because he didn’t want the hard-line governor on his jury anyway. But there was little doubt among the participants as to what was going on. “In public, they were making a big show of how he was prepared to serve,” said Crain. “In the back room, they were trying to get him off.”

But now, before Congress, being interviewed for consideration of his nomination to the highest legal position in the country, Gonzales tried to pretend that he didn’t really help Bush out in his attempt to evade jury duty and an admission to drunk driving. Specifically, he claims that he did not “request” that Bush be excused; instead, he “discussed” it. The wording suggests that he was not the instigator:

Gonzales last week refused to waver. “Judge Gonzales has no recollection of requesting a meeting in chambers,” a senior White House official said, adding that while Gonzales did recall that Bush’s potential conflict was “discussed,” he never “requested” that Bush be excused. “His answer to the Senate’s question is accurate,” the official said.

Of course, if he did not make the request, then who did? And is he now trying to claim that the defendant’s attorney, the prosecutor and the judge are all lying or completely mistaken in their separate but identical recountings of the event?

Get ready to have an all new weasel be our next Attorney General. At least Bush is being consistent.

How much do you want to bet that as Gonzales retires, the White House will try to dismis all investigations in regards to the Justice department, effectively saying, “Hey, Gonzales is gone now, the matter is closed”?

I’ve had enough of the post-resignation testimonials about Gonzales to make me seriously ill, particularly from the president himself. A lot of right-wingers seem to be sighing with relief, glad to see him gone, but at the same time chiming in on the whole he-was-an-honest-guy-smeared-by-the-Democrats meme. As if illegally, brazenly corrupting the Justice Department with partisan politics was not bad enough. As if the USA firings and the subsequent, multiple lies under oath weren’t a problem (do I even need to mention the Clinton impeachment here?). As if Gonzales’ shameless advocacy for torture wasn’t enough of a brand of illegitimacy.

Gonzales fought to hide Dick Cheney’s allowing energy industry leaders to write government energy policy. He has been a force behind the more abusive elements of the “PATRIOT” Act and other violations of Constitution rights since 9/11, including warrantless wiretapping–which in order to push through, Gonzales went to the hospital bed of John Ashcroft to pressure him to sign his approval for it. Yeah, a real saint. And let’s not forget that this is the guy who tried to argue that Americans don’t have the right to Habeas Corpus.

It is ironic that right-wingers are all teary-eyed about how badly those goddamned vicious liberals are mistreating this great man, when Gonzales himself claimed that the Geneva Convention’s use of the words “outrages upon personal dignity” and “inhuman treatment” were so vague that we should be allowed to torture people.

And how did this great legal mind get his start? By doing dirty work for his boss, Texas Governor George W. Bush. Bush, you see, had been arrested for drunk driving years before, and wanted to cover it up. But he ran into trouble when he pulled a PR stunt. Bush had received a call to jury duty, and decided to make PR hay out of it. Saying that it was “a feeble excuse” to claim he was too busy or too important for the task, he went to court. He failed to fill out the legally required part of the juror’s form that required a listing of his criminal record, but that wasn’t the scandal. No, it was when Dubya, by chance, was assigned to a drunk-driving case, and realized that he would be asked, under oath, if the had ever been arrested for drunk driving.

Alberto Gonzales to the rescue!

…before the case began, Gonzales asked to have an off-the-record conference in the judge’s chambers. Gonzales then asked Crain to “consider” striking Bush from the jury, making the novel “conflict of interest” argument that the Texas governor might one day be asked to pardon the defendant (who worked at an Austin nightclub called Sugar’s), the judge said. “He [Gonzales] raised the issue,” Crain said. Crain said he found Gonzales’ argument surprising, since it was “extremely unlikely” that a drunken-driving conviction would ever lead to a pardon petition to Bush. But “out of deference” to the governor, Crain said, the other lawyers went along. Wahlberg said he agreed to make the motion striking Bush because he didn’t want the hard-line governor on his jury anyway. But there was little doubt among the participants as to what was going on. “In public, they were making a big show of how he was prepared to serve,” said Crain. “In the back room, they were trying to get him off.”

Gonzales lied about this episode when he was being reviewed by the Senate for confirmation. An auspicious start to his stint as AG, just as was his start in politics in Texas.

While working for Bush in Texas, Gonzales was also hip-deep in another Bush scandal, again involving perjury. In this case, Gonzales helped Bush get excused from testifying in a corruption case. Bush was heavily involved in Texas political corruption. In 1996, Eliza May was appointed as director of the Texas Funeral Service Commission, and started doing her job all too well. She started investigating a funeral home business that had given sizable donations to Bush and his father. The business’ representative went to Bush’s chief of staff, and May was soon fired from her job. She filed a whistleblower lawsuit, and Bush was subpoenaed in it; Gonzales help get Bush out of having to testify, in a way that Bush literally perjured himself (but, like so many other times Bush broke the law, was never prosecuted for). In that case, Gonzales also received a memo which noted that two Texas funeral commissioners had ties to the funeral home–illegal, but Gonzales did nothing. His defense? Even back then, Gonzales was using the “I forgot” excuse, and claimed he didn’t recall such a memo.

This is the great man that the president is memorializing tonight. A criminal, a liar, a corrupt political crony.

In other words, his kind of guy.

Well, it has been a busy few days in the Wilson-CIA scandal. The White House is trying to muddle the issue and attack both Democrats in Congress and Ambassador Wilson; a White House counsel who has made his career covering up after Bush scandals is acting like he’s interested in finding the culprit, which would make Bush look very bad; the conservative reporter who decided to shill for the administration attack and outed the illegal information is quoting sources that it wasn’t a crime, though his sources are notoriously shady and shaky; the Chief of the Justice Department is investigating a crime that was likely committed by a good friend of his, and Bush & co. are acting enraged that anyone would question his objectivity; and Ambassador Wilson himself pretty much has outed Karl Rove as the perpetrator of the federal crime, whom Bush Sr. indirectly called “the most insidious of traitors.”

First of all, the White House is trying to muddle the issue by not talking about Wilson specifically, but rather the far wider issue of leaks in general, which they have often blamed Congress for. Josh Marshall has good sources and examples of this obfuscation. Conservative spokespeople on the news shows are slipping in the comment whenever they can that the Bush White House doesn’t leak much; does anyone have the facts on that?

But quite frankly, I don’t trust the neo-cons when they cry about leaks coming from the other side. Remember Oliver North? Back in the days of Iran-Contra, North loudly and publicly accused the Congress of leaking information on how a plane with Achille Lauro hijackers bound for Tripoli was intercepted, claiming that the leaks compromised national security and condemning Congress for their disregard for the lives of our agents. Newsweek Magazine, which received the leaked information, later made public the fact that it was none other than Oliver North himself who leaked that information.

The Bush administration is also trying to make a big show with the “no stone unturned” act, by subpoenaing practically every piece of paper since Wilson went to Niger, including conversations with reporters not immediately connected with the story, and any and all documents that have their names (as if a White House staffer would be dumb enough to actually write down that they were leaking classified information). Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel leading the probe, seems intent on burying the investigation in worthless side-tracking.

Gonzales, by the way, has a history of covering up Bush scandals. In 1996, when Bush got the call for jury duty while governor in Texas, he made a big PR play of it, claiming that he was an ordinary guy and it would be “a feeble excuse” to say he’s too busy. Bush failed to fill out the section on “prior arrests” (a crime, but no one fussed), but was about to be pinned to the wall on his drunk driving rap when he got assigned to a DUI case–a case where lawyers were sure to ask Bush, under oath, if he’d been arrested for drunk driving before.

Alberto Gonzales to the rescue. He orchestrates a hasty exit for Bush, claiming (on rather lame legal grounds) that the governor should not serve on the jury of a defendant who might plead clemency with the governor later. I don’t know how many DUI’s ask for pardons from the governor, but I’d be willing to be the number is somewhere south of “one.”

Meanwhile, conservative pundits and politicians are using any variety of lame excuses–Wilson’s wife hasn’t been killed yet, it’s all a political gambit, what reason would there have been for the leak. None of it is relevant, of course, to the fact that a crime was committed, but the GOP will try their best to take everyone’s eyes off the ball over the next several days. Robert Novak, who was the only journalist who shilled for the Bushies in releasing the illegal information, claimed yet again that he has a reliable source in the CIA that says Mrs. Wilson was only an analyst, and not an operative. But then again, Novak also had it on reliable sources that major news of WMD found in Iraq would be released in mid-September, so there you go.

That already is shown up as political dissembling. A revised story is already making the rounds that Mrs. Wilson used to be an operative, but is now an analyst. Ambassador Wilson, appearing on Ted Koppel’s Nightline, spoke as candidly on the issue as security would allow, telling Ted Koppel to “check his sources” on that–suggesting that his wife was not at all an analyst, pointing to the fact that the CIA would not have made the referral to the Justice department had she been one.

His other revelation, and a much greater one, was that he was called by a reporter who told him that he’d just gotten off the phone with Karl Rove, who had told the reporter that Wilson’s wife was “fair game”–and Wilson said he’s be very willing to give the name of the reporter to investigators. He also pointed out that CIA information and political actions intersected at Rove’s office, and any investigation would naturally start there.

Which leads us to the Justice Department, headed by John Ashcroft, the man who lost an election to a dead man, couldn’t stand a bare-breasted statue of justice, and is campaigning to strip you of your civil rights in the name of security and under the cover of fear. Ashcroft is the head of the department which is poised to investigate Rove, and Rove has political ties to Ashcroft, having worked on his campaigns–and reportedly was instrumental in getting Ashcroft his job as Attorney General. How much more conflicted can you get without being directly related?

Only in the Bush White House could this cronyism and deep conflict of interest be not only withstood, but actively defended–a White House where a former CEO and present stockholder in Halliburton is vice-president, and his firm just “happens” to get awarded billions of taxpayer dollars in non-competitive contracts in Iraq, where Ken Lay, one of the most infamous criminals in recent business history not only was Bush’s financial mentor but was key in directing Bush’s energy policies, just happens to escape charges against him for the vast criminal acts he participated in.

The White House has already positively claimed that Rove did not make the calls, despite the fact that the investigation has hardly even started yet and that the president claims that he “wants to know” who did it. The White House also pooh-poohs claims of conflicts of interest, and says it is “appropriate” for Ashcroft to investigate his friend, client, and possibly the man who got him his job.

One would expect that the White House at least avoid the appearance of impropriety, but they’re not even close to that. Bush makes Clinton look like a boy scout, though a lecherous one; the only difference between the two is that Republicans forced investigations into Clinton’s peccadilloes, while the same Republicans are staunchly refusing to investigate massive fraud and corruption in an administration of their own party.

You’re at a bar on a warm Saturday evening in New England, and there is a group at the table next to you. At least one of the members, a 30-year-old man, is drinking several beers; the young woman next to him, only 17 years of age, is not old enough to drink yet.

They finish their drinks, and head for the exit; you note that the man who had been drinking several beers is fishing his car keys out of his pocket, and you wonder if anyone in his party will stop him from getting behind the wheel. After they leave, you may wonder if they get home in one piece, and wonder at the judgment of the driver–after all, he was not so drunk that he would lose the ability to understand that you don’t drive while in that state. You might wonder what kind of person knowingly drives drunk, what kind of character it takes to do that.

You pay the bar tab, and your group’s designated driver takes you home; on the way, you see a car pulled over by a policeman on the side of the road. You see that the driver is being given a sobriety test, and you recognize him: it’s the guy from the bar. Perhaps there is some justice, you think, but wonder how many times that guy drove drunk before he finally got caught.

The night was Saturday, September 4, 1976, and the driver was a future president of the United States. Bush’s passengers were tennis star John Newcombe and his wife, in addition to his underage sister, Dorothy. Bush had indeed, by his own admission, drunk “several beers” before getting behind the wheel. A police officer, Calvin Bridges, reported that Bush was swerving off the road when he pulled him over. Bush failed the sobriety test, and later tested a 1.0 on a blood-alcohol test, just exceeding the legal limit at the time. Maine’s legal limit today is 0.8, and had he been arrested today, Bush would have spent two days in jail for having a minor in the vehicle.

Bush received a $150 fine, and his driver’s license was suspended in Maine for no less than six months (several reports say two years). Bush, however, went to court to have his license reinstated about a month after his arrest, even though he did not take a rehabilitation course that is required for reinstatement. Although, by later confession, Bush was in his heavy-drinking period that would last until he was about 40, Bush testified in court that he drank only once a month, and had “an occasional beer.” The court granted his request remove the suspension on his license.

What is just as questionable as Bush’s decision to drive drunk that night with his underage sister in the car is how Bush related this event to the American people while trying to get himself elected to the nation’s highest office.

At first, he did not relate this to the American people at all; in fact, he lied about it several times.

In 1998, Dallas Morning News reporter Wayne Slater asked Bush if he had ever been arrested. Bush replied, “After 1968? No.”

In November 1999, on Meet the Press with Tim Russert, Bush was asked, “If someone came to you and said, ‘Governor, I’m sorry, I’m going to go public with some information.’ What do you do?” Bush replied, “If someone was willing to go public with information that was damaging, you’d have heard about it by now. You’ve had heard about it now. My background has been scrutinized by all kinds of reporters. Tim, we can talk about this all morning.”

Also in 1999, Bush told CBS News Correspondent Lee Cowan that there was not any “smoking gun” about unrevealed incidents in his past.

In November 2000, Bush told a press conference that he did not go to court about the DUI, when he in fact did so.

And then there was the infamous 1996 juror incident. At that time, Bush was randomly selected for jury duty. Wanting to make a PR stunt out of it, Bush made a big deal about how he was just an ordinary guy, and of course, he would do his duty and serve on the jury. He claimed to the press that it is “a feeble excuse” to say he’s too busy or important. When he was given the forms for jurors to fill out, there is a section where jurors are required to detail prior arrests and court proceedings they experienced. Bush left that section blank. Apparently, the court did not want to bother the governor with such legal niceties, so he was not required to fill it out as everyone else is. But then Bush ran into a bigger snag: by chance, he was assigned to a drunk driving case, and, as a potential juror, he would without doubt be asked, under oath, if he had ever been arrested for drunk driving before.

Time for a feeble excuse to come to the rescue. Bush asked to be dismissed from jury the night before the trial, and was helped by Alberto R. Gonzales, his legal counsel. (Bush later appointed Gonzales to the Texas Supreme Court, and later as a legal counsel in the White House.) The excuse? “It would be improper for a governor to sit on a criminal case in which he could later be asked to grant clemency.” Huh? How often was Governor Bush asked to grant clemency for drunk driving? He was obviously taking positive action to hide his past from the public.

During the previous year, Bush had also taken another step to hide his past: On March 31, 1995, George and Laura Bush were given new driver’s license numbers; Bush’s was #000000005. Bush was born on July 6, 1946, and his license was not near expiration. The reason given for the change was “security,” but there was no precedent for Texas governors doing this. The change destroyed the records of his previous license, which would have detailed any arrests. This bears on the many rumors that Bush was also caught DUI in Texas, which would in turn explain why Bush mysteriously performed community service, for Project P.U.L.L., an inner city Houston program for troubled youths, from 1972. There may yet be other arrests we still do not know about.

And when the arrest came out in public, did Bush take full personal responsibility, as he likes to claim that he does?

Heck, no. He lied some more, of course. He started by claiming, “I have always been honest with the American people.” Uh, yeah, right. He then turned on the person who released the information, calling it a “dirty trick.” The timing of the announcement may have been (albeit a very clumsy “dirty trick”), but the DUI arrest was not. And he even tried a bit of revisionism, claiming that he was not pulled over because of his erratic driving, but rather because he “was driving too slowly.” Makes it sound less damaging that way–but nonetheless is just still another lie.

And how did Bush take full personal responsibility for lying to the American people about it for so long? He used his daughters as a publicity shield. He said he wanted “to be a good role model for his daughters.” Which, of course, is bogus, because any good parent, especially when it comes to alcoholism, knows that the best way to deal with such things with your children is to be honest and up-front. Of course, this course of action might explain why these same daughters have been repeatedly arrested for underage drinking. It might give Bush an excuse for lying to the people, but it also makes him a bad father.

This is the person we have leading our country, sending our young men and women to die in battle, making decisions that will affect this nation’s prosperity and security for decades to come.