We all know and love Justice Department crooner (and all-around ladies’ man) U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales for hits like the “Patriot Act Rights Trample“, “We’re All Terrorists on the Dance Floor (Unless You Dance With Me)“, “We Will Always Have Gitmo” and “Porn is Bigger than All of Us“. But now, he is being asked to “leave the building”. I guess that’s what happens when you (allegedly) fire your back-up dancers and treat your citizens like a bunch of easy groupies. Snip from La Times’ Gonzales is urged to quit ‘for the nation’:
Schumer, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, charged that under Gonzales the Justice Department had become even more politicized than it was under President Bush’s first attorney general, John Ashcroft.
“And so,” Schumer said, “I think for the sake of the nation, Atty. Gen. Gonzales should step down.”
Appearing on the same program, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, did not go so far as to suggest that Gonzales step down.
But he said that a report released Friday by the Justice Department’s inspector general raised questions about the investigatory powers given to federal agents under the Patriot Act, which Congress reauthorized last year.
Resignation, Specter said, is “a question for the president and the attorney general, but I do think there have been a lot of problems. Before we come to conclusions, I think we need to know more facts.”
Specter said the inspector general’s report showed widespread violations of Patriot Act requirements designed to protect privacy rights of U.S. citizens.
Stating that the act has been “very badly abused,” Specter said Judiciary Committee hearings planned for this month — including one with FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III — not only should look at the failures but should include “very active consideration about withdrawing some of those powers.”
Link.