Gonzales may be worse than Ashcroft

John Ashcroft was indeed an ideologue, but at core he had integrity, albeit to values often at odds with my own. I don't see the same integrity in Alberto Gonzales who "participated in a dramatic weakening of U.S. commitments to the Geneva Conventions and against torture" and was willing to justify doing so. Hence I have written to my own two Senators:

Senator Murray [or Cantwell],

I am deeply troubled by the appointment of Alberto Gonzales as the top law enforcement officer of the United States, when he has shown a callous disregard for the rule of reasonable international law vis-a-vis the Geneva Conventions in recent history.

Please ask TOUGH questions at the confirmation hearings. Also please urge your fellow Senators to vote against his confirmation if they cannot in good conscience see his selection as Attorney General to be supported on it merits. While I am not in favor of a filibuster in this case, or dragging it out beyond the asking of reasonable questions, I believe it is a case which calls for a large minority of our senators to dissent. Getting our more reasoned Republicans such as McCain, Collins, Hagel, and Snowe to oppose his nomination could make it an historically close vote for a confirmation and send a message to the Administration to avoid the nomination of contentious ideologues to such important positions.

So please vote for cloture, but against confirmation, and urge your fellows to do the same.

Sincerely yours,
Walker Willingham

I think that my Senators will be hearing a lot from me over the next four years.

[UPDATE: Senator Cantwell (or more likely her office's sophisticated email response robot) responded very quickly. She (it) assured me that the Senator took her role of confirming nominees very seriously, and that she did "intend to carefully review and observe the confirmation hearings and study Gonzales record as Judge before" arriving at a decision. No vote is expected until later this month. The hot air coming out of the White House did little to assuage me that it was anything much better than "tortured logic" that led to his confirmation.]