Summary
Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee opens hearings on President Bush's nomination of White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales for attorney general. Under anything resembling normal circumstances, Mr. Gonzales would be a shoo-in. The son of Mexican immigrants who served in the Air Force before attending college - the first in his family to do so - the former Texas Supreme Court judge has a degree from Harvard Law School and has served as Texas secretary of state. Unfortunately, Senate Democrats view the Gonzales hearings as their first opportunity of the president's second term to challenge one of his nominations, and it certainly won't be the last.
Given Mr. Gonzales' extraordinary career in law and government, it would seem that the Democrats don't have much to go on. What they'll try to do is tie Mr. Gonzales to the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay on the flimsy premise that he "approved" what went on there. In fact, for the most part we expect that the hearings won't even be about him, his career or his qualifications. Instead, we'll hear a lot of talk about a 2002 memorandum that Mr. Gonzales approved and which the Democrats will stretch to reach as far as Cuba and Iraq. On this point, let us be clear: The debate of the appropriate interrogation methods used on captured terrorists is a debate worth having. For particulars on that debate, we'd like to refer readers to the article by attorneys Lee A. Casey and David B. Rivkin Jr. on the opposite page.See the full content of this document
Extract
The Gonzales Hearings
By choosing this course of questioning, however, t...
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