The Washington Post aptly described Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' reply to yesterday's testimony by Kyle Sampson as the "Homer Simpson " defense. Sampson's answers to the Senate inquiry were damning to Gonzales and directly contradicted Alberto's earlier statements. Now that the AG is caught lying he will have to make up new lies to cover the ones he has already uttered. He is trying to scam the Senate and the American people into believing that he didn't do anything seriously wrong. Yet, once a liar is caught, it is hard to be seen as believable anymore.
From The Washington Post:
You just cannot make this stuff up. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' former chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, spends much of his Thursday deflating his former boss' story about the eight fired U.S. Attorneys and how does the Attorney General respond? By issuing a written statement late in the day that essentially says this: Yes, Sampson may have been keeping me in the loop on the firings after all but I wasn't really paying attention ("never focused" was the exact phrase) to what he was saying. It's the Homer Simpson defense to the Kyle Sampson story and if this were a Little League game they would have invoked the 10-run rule by now and sent Gonzales go home to Texas to once again become a lucrative private attorney.
But, alas, the Attorney General is still with us, at least for today, his credibility and reputation tattered and the wolves-- not just Democrats, mind you, but increasingly creeped-out Republicans-- howling at the door. Even if Gonzales is now telling the truth about his role in Firegate, even if somehow his story can be synched up with Sampson's, we all deserve so much more from our Attorney General that the next 18 days or so-- leading up to Gonzales' testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee-- will be excruiating. How badly does an Attorney General have to behave, how badly does he have to lead, how much prestige and trust does he have to lose, before he is forced, by his own conscience if nothing else, to make way for someone else? You tell me.
The only one doing the howling is going to be Gonzales. He'll be begging for mercy soon enough, but for now he will continuing lying his ass off until he is firmly pressed into the corner with nowhere to go. Until then he'll blame anyone, do anything and say whatever it takes to shield himself from the responsibility of his actions. Just like everyone else in the Bush Administration.
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