Black Box Report

This is big. Really big:

The White House is closing in on a nominee to replace Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, with former Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson considered one of the leading candidates, administration and Congressional officials said Tuesday.

Reports of Mr. Olson’s candidacy suggested that President Bush, in choosing the third attorney general of his presidency, might defy calls from Democrats and choose another Republican who is considered a staunch partisan to lead the Justice Department. Mr. Gonzales is departing after being repeatedly accused of allowing political loyalties to blind him to independently enforcing the law.

“Clearly if you made a list of consensus nominees, Olson wouldn’t appear on that list,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who led the Judiciary Committee effort to remove Mr. Gonzales. “My hope is that the White House would seek some kind of candidate who would be broadly acceptable.”

This is serious people. No fooling around. When I read this NY Times article this morning, it shocked me awake; it shook me to my core. Of course, the Times didn't follow up with the questions that beg, nay, scream to be answered. Strangely, I haven't seen these questions asked elsewhere on the blogosphere, but this is too important to let the MSM drop the ball again. So I'm going to ask them here, now.

Having replaced him with some sort of genetic doppelganger, or possibly a highly sophisticated android, what have the aliens done with the real Sen. Charles Schumer?

Of course, I'm assuming it must be an alien replicant or android, because, well...the real Chuck Schumer couldn't possibly be that gullible, could he? “My hope is that the White House would seek some kind of candidate who would be broadly acceptable???” Is he high? Where has he been for the last six years? What could he possibly be basing that hope on? What shred of evidence exists that this president - this president - is even remotely interested in consensus, compromise or doing anything but giving Democrats a thumb in the eye? This is the same old song and dance, and Chuckie's acting like he's never heard it before:

It's as if the White House only knows how to call one play: pick a partisan loyalist, and in the process, pick a fight…Alberto Gonzales allowed politics and partisanship to corrupt the Justice Department. If the point is to improve the DoJ, it doesn't make any sense to pick a notorious and shameless partisan to be the latest Attorney General who can't separate political interests from the law.

Oh no...they got Steve Benen too! "If the point is to improve the DoJ, it doesn't make any sense..." Just stop right there. The point is not to improve the DoJ. The point is to keep doing what Gonzales was doing in the DoJ, only not get caught being extremely stupid and sloppy about it.

Give the administration points for consistency, though:

(Olson)'s one of the chief architects of the White House strategy that seeks to render Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (who sits on the front lines on this nomination) utterly powerless in pursuing his investigation of the very scandals which led to Gonzales' resignation in the first place...To neuter the ability of Congress to enforce its oversight powers against the executive branch.

What better person to continue 'Fredo's work? And what better person to stick it to that meddling Leahy, who has the temerity to suggest that Bush pick a nominee with “a proven track record of independence to ensure that he or she will act as an independent check on this administration’s expansive claims of virtually unlimited executive power.” HA! Why do you think Gonzo got the job in the first place?

While I try and work out whether that last comment shows that Leahy has been captured by the aliens as well, his words leave me nostalgic. An independent AG. Ahhh, yes. I remember them well. Those were the days:

I'm so old I remember when the wise old men of Washington spent their days fulminating about Janet Reno's constant need to "prove her independence," which generally required her to appoint an independent counsel or special prosecutor on days ending in 'y.'

Whatever the merits of all of those investigations, the principle was correct. The top dog at the DOJ needs to not think of him/herself as the president's personal lawyer, and Democrats should make independence a necessary condition for confirmation.

Which would mean Olson will have to steal another election if he wants the job:

If Olson is the pick, I imagine the Democrats will pursue the same lines of criticism -- Olson as Florida recount lawyer, Olson as participant in the Arkansas Project -- that failed to prevent his confirmation as solicitor general in 2001.

I'd try an additional line of attack: I'd ask whether a guy who's already deeply immersed in electoral politics for 2008 can be an impartial AG. Ted Olson has endorsed Rudy Giuliani for president, he's editorialized on Giuliani's behalf, and he's the chairman of Giuliani's "Justice Advisory Committee." I'd make the point that he wasn't just a grubby partisan hack in the distant past, he's a grubby partisan hack right now.

Fair enough, but never underestimate Democrats uncanny ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory:

If Olson is indeed the nominee, how he fares should be considered a decent harbinger for 2008. If they confirm him...it means that the top Dems have learned nothing and '08 is seriously up for grabs.

But fortunately it seems that Harry Reid has escaped his alien abductors and tied his doppelganger up in the Senate cloakroom, because it looks like Capitulatin' Harry is off the scene and Boxer Reid is ready to throw a few:

Sure, Joe Lieberman will stomp his feet that another good fascist isn't being rubber-stamped into the administration, and David Broder and the rest of the Beltway class will attack Democrats for not confirming a member of the Cocktail Weenie crowd regardless of his record of gross partisanship. But if Bush wants to toss aside the imperative of finding someone who could pull the DOJ out of the partisan wreckage he and Karl Rove created, then Democrats might as well prepare for all out war now.

Now we just need to rescue the rest of the Senate Democrats from the aliens and get rid of their milksop impersonators.

Faced with a skeptical and increasingly harried congress, Gen. Petraeus knew that all stick and no carrot wasn't going to get him through his testimony. After all, this wasn't 2006, and Republicans weren't in charge of congress (if they were, there would have been no "new strategy", no surge, and certainly no need to report to congress on the status of progress in Iraq). So he put a carrot at the end of the stick and said while the surge needed more time, it was working just well enough that he was going to recommend that 30,000 troops the exact number of those sent in the surge to begin with - could be brought home next year.

The Some troops are coming home! Hooray!

Hey...waitaminnit...

Hitting pre-surge levels by mid-2008 isn't just a strategic goal. It's a practical necessity. Top military brass admitted more than a month ago that the surge cannot persist after April 2008 without extending tours to 18 months or instituting a draft. Simply put, we're out of troops.

Well, of course we are. Did anyone think we could continue the stop-loss extended tours indefinitely? This has been on the horizon for some time now, but Bush and Petraeus are trying to make lemonade out of those lemons, and in classic huckster fashion, they're trying to buy the publlic's goodwill by giving them a $100 bill - that they just picked out of our own pockets.

So we'll get back 30,000 of our men and women. 30,000 that many didn't want to send in the first place. 30,000 that were never going to be able to do what their commander in chief asked of them - provide "breathing space" for Iraqi political progress that was never going to happen. 30,000 from the 160,000 currently there, leaving 130,000...The same number we had there a year ago. Because things were going so well back then:

Shorter David Petraeus: Things are so godawful in Iraq it's going to take at least a year of increased troop presence to have even a glimmer of a hope of making things as godawful as they were in 2006. Oh, and by the way, people? I can't guarantee they won't get much worse.

An alternate theory is that the surge is working perfectly, it's just our definitions of the terminology that are wrong:

But surges take time, Petraeus pointed out. Did anyone really expect that the surge would bring a rapid improvement or a sudden onrush of success? Did anyone say that the surge would be quick, moving like advancing waves or an unexpected increase in electric current? Surges, of course, don't work that way, as every Democrat should know. Surges need to be given time to grow before we know if they are effective. It might be five to ten years before the surge has run its course and we know if it has ultimately achieved its goals. The alternative, as Petraeus warned, is to be "rushing to failure" in Iraq.

I'm willing to concede Mr. Swift has a point.

And along those lines, who would like to bet that, come mid-July 2008, things won't be going quite as good as Gen. Westmoreland Petraeus is anticipating? If the situation in Iraq "suddenly" got worse - to everyone's surprise - then we couldn't bring the troops home just yet. And we'll have to surge a little more:

The whole point of this exercise is to ensure that Bush's war continues until it's time for him to cut brush permanently. The surge can't have worked because then it could start ending, and the surge can't be not working because then it would a tragic waste of lives and money, so the surge is working just a little bit.. but might work a little bit more soon!

And so once again the Lucy van Pelt administration has planted the football and, once again, a nation of Charlie Browns is invited to kick it.

Word out of Washington is that the White House is set to announce its nominee to replace Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Former solicitor general Ted Olson has emerged as the likely pick, and that's a shame.

By all accounts he's a smart guy, but he's about as independent as Rosie O’Donnell is restrained. He's the same Ted Olson who represented bush before the Supreme Court in the Florida recount case back in 2000. He's also the same Ted Olson who was knee deep in the Arkansas Project, the conservative smear job campaign that attacked the Clintons during the 90's.

For a Justice Department still reeling from the prosecutor purge and warrantless wiretapping - any person with a conscience let alone a clue, would try and restore a hint of calm to a beleaguered agency with little over a year until a new administration takes charge. But doing the right let alone the smart thing has never been Bush and friends forte.

Politics is not supposed to be the job of the Attorney General and his charges, but the idea of an independent law enforcement branch is so comical to W., they've decided what the hell, let’s finish the way they started. Either they think Dems will shoot Olson down, scoring political points for the GOP or they just don't care or know any better.

No matter how you spin it, you have to wonder how they think America wins with this garbage. After 7 years they still don't get it.