I believe this post is about Alberto Gonzales (but I can't quite recall)

So this is the obligatory post about the resignation of Alberto Gonzales.

Those of you that read this blog enough will not be surprised that I am not fond of Mr. Gonzales. There are, of course, certain ideological and practical reasons for this. I think, however, that the nub of my critique of the man runs a bit deeper than that.

When I was a Young Idealistic Drunk Bureaucrat, I used to believe that there were reasonably capable and competent people at the top of most organizational structures. While I may have disagreed with their political persuasions, I could be assured that they knew which Tab A fit into Slot B, metaphorically speaking. To use a sports analogy: though my mechanic rooted for the Cleveland Browns, he still knew how to fix my blown gaskets.

Indeed, I still believe that the highest complement that you can pay a Bureaucrat is that he or she is competent.

As I got older and more grizzled, I came to understand that those in power are not necessarily more competent than me (as indicated in the highly cynical Rule #16 over yonder), but I clung to the notion that at least at the highest levels of Federal Government, this competency was possible.

Gonzo proved me wrong.

Very wrong.

It's not so much that he was a crony (he was) or that he was a shyster (he was), but that he seemed totally and utterly overwhelmed by his job, a job that, according to the U.S. Senate at the time, he was supposed to be qualified for. He always seemed confused by principles intrinsic to U.S. laws that are reviewed in the first few days of the first year of Law School: little things like Habeus Corpus or "The Rule of Law." Something tells me that you could've pulled any law school drop out from Starbucks and you could have had an equally competent Attorney General.

Or worse: you could have gone to Greyhound station and the guy masturbating in the corner and it would have been an improvement.

If nothing else though, Gonzo did one thing that no one ever thought possible: he made John Ashcroft look good.

Good riddance.

Wethrinaer jagh Gonzales

I'm a fun loving masochist, so I spent all last evening watching clips from Alberto Gonzales's testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary committee. When that got too painful, I started hitting my head repeatedly with a frying pan.

The frying pan was a whole lot more fun.

Watching the Attorney General give testimony is like watching Tom Green's "comedy": it's painful, unfunny, stupid, and at the end you wonder why this guy still has a career. Alberto's logic is so tortured, you can see why he argued for keeping Git-mo open.

I keep waiting for Sen. Leahy to leap over the bench and bash his head into the witness table shouting "I DON'T RECALL MOTHERFUCKER!". This is, coincidentally one of the series of snuff fantasies that I have about the Bush administration.

Some of the more pornographic fantasies involve both indictments AND impeachment?

Anyway, the more I think about it and the more I watch his miserable, miserable testimony, and the inevitable slouching towards a constitutional crisis, the more I think there's only one way for Abu to avoid lying to Congress: Alberto must become born again and start speaking in tongues.

Next time every time that Leahy, Biden, Durbin et al. ask a question, Alberto needs to respond with "Eeeeeeooooohhhh taaaaaaah veqlargh lasta lalaithamin squirlokel." He can claim that he's a vehicle for the voice of God and, when the Senators invariably ask him to respond in English, Alberto can claim that his religious beliefs are being suppressed.

Now, my understanding is that Gonzales is a Roman Catholic, and they're not too big on the whole "speaking in tongues" thing. Alberto's more into the whole "blindly obeying a supposedly morally infallible guy far removed from the real world", and as a Catholic he follows the Pope too. That kind of thing is hard to give up.

The hard part is if the Committee asks him to put his answers in writing. In that case, Alberto is going to have to "pour out his spirit" through indecipherable Gothic Runes. If they ask him to type, he'll have to use his head and bash it against the keyboard.

The last one is dangerous: he may be mistaken for your run-of-the-mill blogger.