Michael Bérubé - American Airspace

Senate confirms Gonzales, 60-36

Me: Hey, check this out, Janet, three-eighths of the Senate opposes the nomination of a torture-justifying hack to the highest law-enforcement position in the United States! You can say the glass is five-eighths empty if you want, but me, I’m looking on the bright side!

Janet: Yeah, what the hell, it’s only torture. It’s not like he didn’t pay taxes on a nanny or something.

Posted by on 02/04 at 11:29 AM

a nanny who may not have actually existed

Posted by julia on 02/04 at 01:35 PM
Ugh! I hope at least 1 of those 60 think he is fit to be AG but not a supreme court justice.

Posted by on 02/04 at 01:52 PM
Who are the five Dems who voted to confirm this boot-licking toady, anyway? I’m too lazy to look it up.

And who are the four who failed to vote?

Posted by on 02/04 at 02:44 PM
Not paying taxes on a nonexistent nanny is even worse, you know. Actually, I think that Kerik’s (apparently threadbare) cover story was really a complex postmodern political allusion to Zoe Baird’s undocumented driver and nanny--

Posted by on 02/04 at 02:47 PM
Roland: here’s the dishonor roll of Democrats voting to confirm:

Mary Landrieu (D-LA)
Bill Nelson (D- FL)
Ben Nelson (D- NE)
Ken Salazar (D- CO)
Mark Pryor (D- AR)

and one deeply moral man from a blue state,

Lieberman (D- CT)

Posted by on 02/04 at 03:03 PM
Oh… Don’t let’s start talking about Lieberman! A world without Joe is a world without sunshine, gobstoppers and bunny rabbits. He is only trying to brighten everybody’s day.

And if he’s just a republican crony in disguise, it’s not because he’s eyeing a cushy appointment, but because he knows that his cushy appointment is what is best for you.

Always thinking of the little fellah, that Good Joe Lieberman!!

Posted by Ryan on 02/04 at 03:27 PM
Does this mean:

Three-eighths of the Senate is opposed to
fraternity pranks? Isn’t that what the
“torture” has been reduced to? Rather than
a throwaway comment by Rumsfeld, maybe it’s
an effort to condition Americans for a
future when they send their kids to war
instead of college.

I haven’t figured out what this means if we go
with the “cheerleaders do pyramids all the
time” angle. Shouldn’t all the Senators
in this godly country of ours oppose
cheerleader pyramids, no matter where they
take place?

Posted by on 02/04 at 03:33 PM
well, i did notice on the Daily Show’s clips last night, that after the big W SotU rally, Joe-mentum got what looked to me very much like a “Judas” kiss from the Boy King (although to Stewart it apparently had more of a Mafia undertone.)

anyway, i wonder what THAT means?

is it usual for the President to grab Congresscritters with both hands and plant a big wet one on their left cheek in one of those moves that looks like he’s maybe going to head-butt you at the last minute instead of kiss you kind of things? it’s not like he was kissing EVERYONE...and i would have thought he’d have started with Sen. Man-on-Dog, if there was going to be some kind of big group sex thing happening.

is Joe marked for something now? was it a warning? has he been branded? ‘chipped? did he whisper in his ear, “vote to confirm my Torturer General, or your cat gets it!”?

any ideas?

-L.

Posted by Librarian on 02/04 at 03:43 PM
It was more like a Michael (GW) /Fredo (Joe) kiss, except that instead of killing him off in a rowboat on Lake Tahoe, he keeps him on the payroll as some sort of half-witted Corleone Family apologist for the rest of his miserable days.

Posted by norbizness on 02/04 at 04:39 PM
My glass is all full, baby, because 60-36 adds up to 1-0 in the scorebook. And Joementum continues his winning ways. The only question now is, where is the bar for disqualification? We didn’t get a chance with Kerik, so we need a guinea pig. Could Oliver North for SecDef make it through? How about Supreme Court Justice O.J. Simpson? He’s got a lot of legal experience and he’s black. What say ye, Senator Obama? What does it take to get Dick Lugar and John Warner and other so called moderates to vote against you? Anyway, in my most recent post, I give some advice to the Spineless Six. I’m a shameless click whore in need of a fix.

Posted by corndog on 02/04 at 05:00 PM
No, let’s talk about Lieberman—and not to single him out necessarily. What is being revealed in a vote for someone who cannot oppose torture in an unqualified way? Depraved indifference to human life ordinarily associated with Nazis, Stalinists, and those who resort to indiscrimminate acts of terrorism? The expression of a savage nationalism that sounds like Judeo-Christianity against a category of evil others? A form of unvarnished racism that conceives of Arab as sub-human? All of the above?

Posted by on 02/04 at 05:43 PM
Fellas, Mike mis-typed. He intended to write:

..and one <Irony alert on> deeply moral man <Irony alert off> from a blue state, Lieberman (D- CT)

Didn’t you, Mike?

Posted by on 02/04 at 08:20 PM
Daniel, this humble blog doesn’t have those fancy html <irony alert> things. This is why I have had such trouble with irony from the outset.

Posted by on 02/04 at 09:13 PM
Let’s not forget that as abominable as Gonzales’s memo was, it’s less clearly illegal than the myriad of sins euphemized by the “nanny excuse.” The New York Post has had a field day with Kerik.

If I were more cynical than I am, I would suggest that Kerik was nomination-challenge bait: an easily debunked candidate so that the democrats could feel as though they’d exercised some of their outrage and so that the republicans could rediscover their minoritarian outrage.

The more charitable view is that the head of the department of homeland security doesn’t matter all that much.

Posted by on 02/04 at 10:49 PM
Yeah, the Post has (mostly because they’re more beholden to Al D’Amato than Rudy Giuliani, who would sell out his mama for carfare, politically speaking) but when the stories came out about his being invited to inaugural parties every. single. one. in a major news source used the nanny story as though nothing had come out since.

Posted by julia on 02/05 at 09:05 AM
What’s also being confirmed in all of this is the Senate’s acquiescence in the argument over the president’s overriding power to act. Gonzales himself advanced the argument in legal opinions favoring the president with royal perrogatives. Given the proper tailwind, he found, the president is free to do anything.

Constitutionally, this is a solecism. The Senate, for its own foundational reasons, has cause to argue this point, but instead, by advancing the man to the Attorney General’s office, consents to his view.

So now we have an Attorney General whose known opinion is that the President may at times do what he will. This may include using the Attorney General’s own offices, for all I know, without conflicting with Alberto Gonzales’s views on the matter at all.

Posted by on 02/05 at 11:40 AM
I voted for Salazar because he went around talking about being for Coloradoans. I guess he is for Hispanic Coloradoans for Torture, a new group that will hold its first meeting tomorrow night at midnight, white hoods required.

Posted by Carol on 02/05 at 11:48 AM
Worth noting: most of the Democrats fought this as hard as they possibly could. Levin, Feinstein, Feingold, Dodd, Reed, Kennedy, Byrd, Obama, Leahy, Durbin, Reid--one after another they got up there and laid it on the line, honestly and forcefully and honorably. I was getting a little verklempt, honestly. (I expected them to lose this vote; I expected a handful Democrats to defect. I didn’t expect the rest of them to make such a strong stand.)

I think Durbin was more responsible than anyone, but Reid deserves a lot of credit to. I may have underestimated Harry.

It’s also now clear why they didn’t filibuster. Didn’t have the votes, thanks to the six. Joe’s gotta go.

Posted by on 02/06 at 08:43 PM

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Senate confirms Gonzales, 60-36

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