? Questions For Gonzales ?

(any you would like to add?)


In order to assure the American public that he is above reproach, Mr. Gonzales should address the following questions.

1) Do you think there are circumstances in which torture is legal?
2) Would you insist on strict compliance with the Geneva Conventions?
3) Would you recuse yourself from the Valerie Plame investigation
4) Would you recuse yourself from all Enron-related matters?
5) Would you recuse yourself from all Halliburton-related matters?
6) Why didn't you give Gov. Bush all the facts about Death Penalty cases?

from: http://www.ActForChange.com

-------
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=246536

Alberto Gonzales: A Record of Injustice

-As White House Counsel

GONZALES APPROVED MEMO AUTHORIZING TORTURE: GONZALES BELIEVES MANY <snip>

GENEVA CONVENTIONS PROVISIONS ARE OBSOLETE:
<snip>

GONZALES ADMITTED HIS VIEWS 'COULD UNDERMINE U.S. MILITARY CULTURE': <snip>

GONZALES BLOCKS INFORMATION FROM CONGRESS:
<snip>

-As Texas Chief Legal Counsel

DEATH PENALTY MEMOS: GONZALES'S NEGLIGENT COUNSEL:
<snip>

MEMORANDUM ON TERRY WASHINGTON: A CASE STUDY IN INCOMPETENCE:
<snip>

GONZALES TOLD GOV. BUSH HE COULD IGNORE INTERNATIONAL LAW:
<snip>

GONZALES GETS BUSH OUT OF JURY DUTY TO KEEP DUI SECRET:
<snip>

-As Texas Supreme Court Justice

GONZALES DOES ENRON'S BIDDING:
<snip>

ACCEPTING DONATIONS FROM LITIGANTS:
<snip>


-------
The Guv's Death Row Secrets
Naked City
BY JORDAN SMITH

July 11, 2003:


In the current edition of The Atlantic magazine, Alan Berlow writes about the content of the 57 executive clemency summaries of death row cases prepared by then-Gov. George W. Bush's general counsel, Alberto Gonzales, which Berlow obtained through Texas' open-records laws -- memos the state is now seemingly trying to keep out of the public's hands.

Gonzales -- the former Vinson and Elkins partner whom Bush subsequently appointed secretary of state and then a Texas Supreme Court justice, before asking him to come to Washington as his White House counsel -- is considered to be on Bush's short list of U.S. Supreme Court nominees. Back in Texas, as the guv's general counsel, Gonzales prepared clemency memos regarding Texas' death row cases for Bush to review prior to an inmate's execution -- memos that were, as Berlow writes, "Bush's primary source of information in deciding whether someone would live or die." In reviewing the memos, Berlow discovered that they contained a paltry amount of information "repeatedly to apprise the governor of the crucial issues in the cases at hand," such as "ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence." And so it went; Bush refused to stay executions in 56 of the 57 cases for which Berlow obtained memos.

Berlow wrote that although Gonzales intended the memos to remain confidential, he got them under the Texas Public Information Act. The governor's office fought disclosure, appealing Berlow's request to then-Attorney General John Cornyn for review -- an appeal Gov. Bush lost on June 23, 2000. In a letter to Assistant General Counsel Jack Hines, the AG's opinion read in part: "We have reviewed the submitted memorandum and find that it consists entirely of factual information," Assistant AG E. Joanna Fitzgerald wrote. "The memorandum contains no opinion or advice from the General Counsel, nor does it contain client confidences. Accordingly, the office may not withhold the memorandum."
<snip>

Berlow's article can be found online at www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/07/berlow.htm, and copies of three of the clemency memos in question can be found at www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/07/berlow-documents.htm...
-----------------------------
http://tiger.berkeley.edu/sohrab/politics/pres_papers.html

Bush Keeps a Grip on Presidential Papers
The New York Times, November 2, 2001
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON, Nov. 1 - President Bush signed an executive order today to allow a sitting president to keep secret the papers of a previous president, even if a previous president wants his papers made public.

<snip>

"Those claims are absurd," said Hugh Davis Graham, a presidential historian at Vanderbilt University who has seen the order. Mr. Graham said he viewed the executive order as the latest effort by the Bush White House to clamp down on the flow of information to the public.

The five-page executive order, drafted by the White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, would give either an incumbent president or a former president the right to withhold the former president's papers from the public.

"We thought it would be more appropriate to really give the primary responsibility regarding presidential records to the former president whose records they belong to," Mr. Gonzales said in a briefing for reporters, "and to have the incumbent president sort of be the backstop in making decisions about whether or not those documents should in fact be released."

..more..

----------------------------------------

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1111-10.htm

Gonzales Nomination Draws Cautions, Concerns of Rights Groups
by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON – The nomination by President George W. Bush of White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales to be the next Attorney General has been greeted with caution and concern by major U.S. human and civil-rights groups that called on the Senate to be especially probing in considering his record and convictions.

<snip>

As White House Counsel, however, Gonzales has been associated with a number of controversial positions, among them his expansive claims of “executive privilege” in order to withhold documents from Congress and his defense of some of the more far-reaching provisions of the USA Patriot Act. His office has also played a key role in screening Bush’s judicial nominees, a process that, according to critics, has been aimed at ensuring that they share the president’s rightwing views.

<snip>

Gonzales’ reluctance to apply international law goes back to 1997 when, as then-Gov. Bush’s legal counsel, he wrote a memo justifying Texas’ non-compliance with the Vienna Convention which is supposed to ensure that foreign consulates are informed of the arrests of their nationals in the United States and given an opportunity to provide legal representation to the accused.

Gonzales argued that the treaty did not apply to Texas because it was not a signatory of the Convention. Two days later, the state executed a Mexican citizen over Mexico’s protests that the condemned man’s rights under the Vienna Convention had been violated. Mexico’s position was upheld by the World Court earlier this year.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=43&ItemID=6962


Oppose the Nomination of Alberto Gonzales

by Ron Daniels January 05, 2005

“The best way for the American people to send a message to the Bush administration and the world that ‘we the people’ of the United States do not condone torture is to mobilize to reject the nomination of Alberto Gonzales.” - Ron Daniels, Executive Director, the Center for Constitutional Rights


The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) strongly opposes the nomination of White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales for the office of Attorney General of the United States. While we applaud the effort of recent Presidents to achieve greater diversity in their Cabinets and would be delighted to see the first person of Latino descent be elevated to this high office, the issue at hand is not about diversity, it is about the conduct of someone who has fundamentally aided and abetted efforts by those in the White House to disregard the rule of law.


We believe that at the behest of President Bush, Mr. Gonzales knowingly and willingly provided counsel and advocated policies calculated to evade or circumvent domestic and international laws prohibiting the use of torture to extract information from soldiers or detainees held in U.S. custody. We believe that the person entrusted to be the highest law enforcement officer in our country must not be someone who has shown such blatant disdain for the rule of law as Chief Counsel to the President of the United States. To confirm Mr. Gonzales would send the wrong signal to the nation and the world. It would be tantamount to condoning torture.


The evidence of Mr. Gonzales’s efforts to evade or circumvent domestic and international laws dealing with the use of torture is overwhelming. As White House counsel, he has consistently treated the law as an inconvenient obstacle to be ignored whenever it conflicted with the wishes of the President. Mr. Gonzales is the author of a leaked memo, dated January 25, 2002, that justified the suspension of the Geneva Conventions in the war in Afghanistan, calling these universally recognized international laws “obsolete” and “quaint.”

<snip>
____________

www.actforchange.org

Thu. January 6, 2005, 6:12 AM PST



Declaration Against Torture



ActForChange has teamed up with True Majority, MoveOn, Faithful America, Sojourners and Win Without War to call on Alberto Gonzales, nominee for chief law enforcement officer of the United States, members of the U.S. Senate, and other responsible government officials, to sign a Declaration Against Torture, unequivocally renouncing all forms of torture and abuse as instruments of American policy.

Take Action

from BFEE:grr::nuke:

emotion.. :toast:

TEN QUESTIONS FOR GONZALES

The Progress Report

The Senate has officially begun questioning attorney
general nominee Alberto Gonzales. Here are the
questions they should be asking.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/20908/

Ten Questions for Gonzales

The Progress ReportPosted January 6, 2005.

President Bush is asking the United States Senate to confirm his nominee to be attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, without all the facts. Despite repeated requests from senators, the White House still refuses "to provide copies of his memos on the questioning of terror suspects." Instead, the Senate will be forced to rely on "press reports or leaks" for information about his role in drafting legal memorandum that provided legal justifications for torture. Gonzales had personally promised Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) that he would "engage in an open exchange" regarding his testimony, but so far Gonzales hasn't bothered to answer Leahy's letters requesting the documents. In any event, there are serious questions – regarding his role in the prisoner abuse scandal and other issues – that need to be asked, and answered. We've drafted ten tough questions for Alberto Gonzales.

<snip>