Court Jester

Alberto Gonzalez is performing for an audience of one, his patron George Bush. Bush gets a kick out of watching Gonzalez get up the noses of the senators on the Judiciary Committee. The more outrageous the obfuscation, the more contempt shown to Congress, the better. The administration can say that the senators are playing politics, it can run out the clock in the last year and a half, and above all it can telegraph its notion that the executive is not answerable to the legislature. Where Bush and Cheney get this last idea is moot, considering that it is obviously wrong, flying in the face of the whole idea of a constitutional republic. Meanwhile the Attorney General tries to outdo himself with each appearance, confident about the warm embrace he'll receive when he goes back to the man who would be king.