Politics: Mixed Loyalties

Apparently, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales didn't realize how silly he would sound saying that Miguel Estrada was given the ABA's highest rating in interviews this weekend, considering that Bush-Cheney operative Fred Fielding -- do you mean Fred Fielding from the Bush-Cheney transition team? Yes I do -- was a member of the so-called "non-partisan" standing committee that the ABA uses to evaluate presidential nominees. Fielding also helped to create C. Boyden Gray's GOP judicial right-winger hit-squad the Committee for (in)Justice.

Gonzales, who I believe is a principled conservative, must have problems with this type of assignment from the Bush White House. He, like Colin Powell, came to this White House seeing promise and bringing with them a lot of respect from both sides of the aisle. Powell has seen his dignity and respect crucified on the increasingly farcical question of justification of the Iraq war. Sadly, Gonzales, who has kept his name out of the headlines through much of the White House's effort to stack the federal bench with right-wingers, had to go on to Fox News spewing this crap about double standards and whatnot. No doubt Karl Rove sent Gonzales because he's Hispanic, and Estrada's nomination has split the Latino interest groups. But Rove and everybody else had to know that Fred Fielding was both an ABA recommender and an employee of the transition team. So Gonzales gets hung out to dry, like Powell on Rove's election-winning war in Iraq strategem.

With hope, some of the principled but conservative thinkers will see the disastrous course this totally political White House has set the nation on. With hope, they will speak out, and America won't have to endure what will surely be an economic, international relations, civil rights and civil liberties disaster if the Bush White House's political plans are all implemented.

But you've got to admit, that's going to require a lot of hope.