Let the Whitewash Begin

This editorial from the Daytona Beach News-Journal is worth a read. It is pointed, and of course, on the nose.

Here's a taste,

Memos he signed condoning torture and bearing the Bush administration's seal notwithstanding, Alberto Gonzales isn't about to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday morning that he or President Bush supports torture in any way.

Gonzales wants to be the next attorney general, the nation's chief enforcer of the Constitution, which prohibits "cruel and unusual punishment" clearly enough. He wants his confirmation hearing to be a formality, not a showcase for contradictions.

He'll likely get his wish. Expect Gonzales to provide the paint, the committee to provide the brushes, and Thursday's hearing to be the inaugural whitewash of the second Bush administration.

The committee's membership, Republican or Democrat, has yet to raise much of a fuss about the administration's taste for gulag justice -- at Guantanamo Bay, at Abu Ghraib prison, at home through the USA Patriot Act and the Department of Homeland Security's thickening rulebook. The committee's members aren't about to fuss now, even though one of the chief architects of those gulag ways will be sitting in front of them for two hours.

There's more. They give it to the public, as well, for not really caring.

If the Ds had any balls at all, they would use these hearings to grill Gonzales like he was on trial. Let the Rs throw their fits. Let them defend him and make it as uncomfortable as possilbe for them. We've nothing to loose. The only ones that would hold it gainst us are those who would never support us anyway. Let the swing voters see what they've signed on for.

But alas, Washington DC is a balls free zone.