Sheridan: Con-Law

ALBERTO GONZALES, DEAD MAN WALKING

A man whose initials are A-G refuses to resign.

He appeared on TV Thursday as he was questioned by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Grilled, well-done, would be a better description. He looked like a kid trying to deny stealing the cookies while having crumbs all around his mouth.

The world knows it's time for Alberto Gonzales to go, but that would mean an unseemly end to an American feel-good story, son of Mexican immigrants, brought up in a house with earthen floor and no running water, making it all the way to law school, Texas Supreme Court, White House Counsel, U.S. Attorney-General, and potential first Hispanic on the U.S. Supreme Court.

But when you get caught stealing the cookies and your defense is that you don't remember how you got crumbs on your face, and what crumbs are you talking about, the world starts laughing at your defense and says it's time for you to face the verdict.

Pres. Bush, George W., has already been forced to let go of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. His Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, who also has crumbs on her face, along with Karl Rove, the political Darth Vader of the White House, had to withdraw her Supreme Court nomination last year.

The war in Iraq is said to be lost.

And the war's architect, Paul Wolfowitz, is also on the ropes at the World Bank, another Bush appointment.

Bush will have no one left, pretty soon. He can't stop the war, and admit defeat, so he keeps throwing more American lives into the meat-grinder, as even more Iraqis, civilians, die in bombings committed by other Iraqis, over sectarian power issues.

If Bush suffers Gonzales and Wolfowitz to be run out town, he might as well ride the rails out himself, as these are proxies for him. The country seems largely to be turning its back on the war, the Administration and the president.

Aside from that, things are going wonderfully. A crazed gunman murdered 32 students at Virginia Tech the other day and no one seems able to figure out how that happened, despite warning signs as big as billboards, or how to prevent the next such massacre. Meanwhile, in Baghdad, in Mr. Bush's War, 179 civilians were murdered in bombings the same day.

January 20, 2008 is when we're rid of George W, once and for all. He can't run again. U.S. Constitution, Amendment 22.

The editorial below states a generally held view of Pres. Bush's man, Alberto Gonzales:

ALBERTO GONZALES: GOOD LAWYERING, BAD LAWYERING

When you represent or advise a client, you have two choices:  either you control the legal advice you give or your client does.

If the client controls the advice you give, you are not acting as a lawyer, but something else, something not polite to label or describe.

When you control the advice you give, despite the client's expressed or presumed desire, you are acting according to the best and highest tradition of the legal profession.

This is true even if your client is the President of the United States.

This is true especially if your client is the President of the United States.

Whether your client follows your advice or not is his funeral.

But you owe him your best.

Your best must be the best your mind is capable of producing given the time and circumstances allowed.  There's a difference between deciding on the spot in trial and having two weeks and assistants to help research and write an opinion letter or memorandum.

Either way, you owe a duty to your client, yourself, and maybe the profession to do your honest, level best.

That means acting with integrity.

You must advise your client on the difference between right and wrong, especially when he seems hell bent on taking the moral shortcut.  Backdating something, fudging something, shading testimony, withholding evidence, or worse, insisting that you do one of these.

Is your lifetime legal license worth doing some temporary shady thing that may turn out wrong for your client?  That he'll deny and blame on you, since he was willing to cheat in the first place?

Does your duty extend to crossing a legal line?  A moral or ethical one?  Performing below standard?  Failing to get needed assistance when you aren't expert enough yourself?

Here's  a critique of the President's lawyer, Alberto Gonzales, nominated by his client, the President of the United States, to be Attorney-General of the United States of America, written by Phillip Carter, previously a U.S. Army officer, who now writes for Slate, the on-line MS-NBC magazine.

Stay tuned for the Senate hearings, as the Senate must advise and consent to nominations for A-G.