Release of PFAW Gonzales Must Go Toolkit
Today Thursday in Washington, all eyes were on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. Some members of Congress who have not yet made up their mind on Gonzales are treating Thursday's hearing as the AG's "day in court" - a last chance for him to defend himself.

But how does one defend an indefensible record?

Now is the time to ramp up our efforts to make it known to Congress, the White House and the public that Gonzales Must Go. That's why PFAW has built a resource page for activists like you to use in your communities and in your own grassroots advocacy.

The resources on this page combine to form a toolkit for activism. From it, you can:...

• - Submit a letter to the editor of your local newspaper


• - Educate yourself on Gonzales' record of failure and the most effective message points to spread the word to your friends, neighbors, blogs, talk radio shows, etc.


• - See which national political leaders and newspaper editorial boards have come out against Gonzales


• - Download flyers to distribute throughout your community

This is about so much more than just the political firings of U.S. attorneys. This is about Gonzales' entire troubling record, and the blatant abdication of his duty to represent the American people and the Constitution over the political interests of the president.

Check out the toolkit now. Write a letter to the editor. Call your senator. Send the link to your friends. And feel free to print any document on the page for redistribution.

http://www.pfaw.org/go/GonzalesMustGoToolkit

Gonzales. Must. Go.

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Civil Liberties

Alberto Gonzales has advocated for George W. Bush's abuses of the law and disregard for the Constitution, and helped advance faulty legal reasoning to justify the administration's assault on civil liberties.

• Abuse of National Security Letters (NSL) to Invade Americans' Privacy - In March, the Inspector General of the DOJ released a 199-page report which found that the FBI engaged in widespread and serious misuse of its authority under the Patriot Act to issue National Security Letters, resulting in the illegal collection of vast amounts of data on thousands of American citizens.
• Warantless Wiretapping - Alberto Gonzales was deeply involved in advocating and defending the Bush Administration's decision to allow the National Security Agency (NSA) to engage in domestic eavesdropping without warrants, in direct violation of federal laws which plainly prohibit domestic spying without a warrant.
• Stripping Habeas Corpus Rights - As White House Counsel, Gonzales was one of the central architects of the military commissions that civil rights organizations decried for their lack of due process protections. He helped to weaken severely U.S. commitment to the Geneva Conventions - which he referred to as "quaint" - and to create the legal framework that supported the torture that took place at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.

Even many of the president's right-wing allies have had enough. Several prominent conservatives just released a letter to the White House calling for Gonzales' resignation that aptly states, "He has brought the rule of law into disrepute, and debased honesty as the coin of the realm."

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Voting Rights

The Right's idea of election reform is minimizing ballot access, particularly for minorities, students, and the poor. Right-wing legislators, officials and activists pursue policies like restrictive voter ID laws under the guise of fighting mass "voter fraud" - a problem studies have proven not to exist. The
U.S. attorney scandal has brought to light the Right's voter fraud witch hunt - there's been evidence to suggest that some of the prosecutors were removed because they would not pursue politically motivated voter fraud indictments that were not supported by the evidence.

This is indicative of Gonzales' whole tenure as attorney general, presiding over a Justice Department that has failed to protect voting rights.

Another example: when the state of Georgia passed legislation to require photo identification from every voter in order to cast a vote, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 required that the state get approval from the Department of Justice before the law could go into effect. Career attorneys in the Civil Rights
Division concluded that the law would have a disproportionately detrimental effect on minority voters, who are less likely to have access to identification documents. In 2005, under Gonzales' leadership, DOJ political appointees overruled the decision, and allowed the law to go into effect. Since that time, federal courts have twice enjoined the state from enforcing the law, calling it an illegal "poll tax," and a state court judge came to a similar conclusion, issuing yet another injunction.

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DOJ: Department of Right-wing Politics?

Like the White House, the Justice Department continues to stonewall and hide some critical information regarding the U.S. Attorney purge, denying the transparency in government essential to an effective democracy. But what officials have been unable to conceal is the blatant and apparent politicization of the department of government meant to protect the rule of law.

Fired U.S. attorneys were replaced with Bush loyalists hand-picked by Karl Rove and other White House strategists. In the Eastern District of Arkansas, for example, U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins was replaced by one of Rove's top aids, Tim Griffin.

Gonzales helped to foster a culture of cronyism in the Department of Justice, symptomatic of the culture so pervasive throughout the Bush administration of rewarding loyalty rather than merit or competence.

Monica Goodling, Gonzales' senior counsel who has invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify to Congress for fear of self-incrimination in connection with the U.S. attorney firings, earned her powerful position as one of the top officials at DOJ not with a resume full of substantive experience, but rather with a law degree from Pat Robertson's Regent University 'Law School' and an intense devotion to President Bush and the right-wing movement. Goodling reportedly "forced many very talented, career people out of main Justice so she could replace them with junior people that were either loyal to the administration or would score her some points."

This is Alberto Gonzales' legacy. The American people deserve better. The Judiciary Committee hearing today may be for him an exercise in futility, as Gonzales' last-ditch attempt to answer for his failure can only dig his ditch deeper.

http://www.pfaw.org/go/GonzalesMustGo - that's where to take action if you have not already. Tell your friends.