Bush, Gonzales Attempted Their Own Twisted Saturday Night Massacre

In 2004 Alberto Gonzales, and Andy Card, acting for the White House, attempted to go around the authority of the Acting Attorney General, James Comey, who had refused to sign off on their warrantless wiretapping scheme. They did that by going over, and simultaneously under, his head, to out-of-commission Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was in the hospital.

It's the Saturday Night Massacre through a worm hole. They had different goals, obviously, but both Bush and Nixon tried to subvert the Justice Department. It led directly to the beginning of serious and publicly-supported impeachment proceedings against Nixon in 1973, and it should do the same against Bush today.

• Card and Gonzales try to get Comey to okay their wiretapping scheme. He refuses. They refuse to be refused. (Nixon orders Elliot Richardson to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. He refuses. Nixon fires him.)

• They go a medication-addled Ashcroft, who is hospitalized - that's why Comey had to take over - to get a signature from him. Ashcroft refuses, and has to remind Gonzales and Card that he's not the AG at this time. They refuse to be refused again. (Nixon orders Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fired Cox. He refuses. Nixon fires him.)

• Gonzales and Card say screw the legal OK - let's implement the illegal program anyway. (Nixon orders new Acting AG Robert Bork to fire Cox - and Bork does it.)

This makes Gonzales partly the forever-disgraced Robert Bork, as well as partly the forever-disgraced Richard Nixon. What an accomplishment! And it makes Bush purely Nixon.

Time for the Articles, Members of Congress, time for The Articles.

• Want resignation references to make the comparison more apt? According to Comey's testimony today:

...only when faced with resignations by a number of Justice Department officials including Comey, his chief of staff, Ashcroft's chief of staff, Ashcroft himself and possibly Robert Mueller, the director of the FBI, did the White House agree to make changes to the program that would satisfy the requirements of the Justice Department to sign off on it.

And add to that that there's plenty of evidence that they shouldn't have signed off on it even after the "changes."

Again: Time for The Articles.