Welcome to Gonzales Watch - Blawging the Ex-Attorney General

Wall Street Journal editorial board member Kimberley Strassel has a column this morning attacking Sen. Charle’s Schumer’s criticism of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, calling the New York Democrat’s actions an effort to “ride the steady drip-drip of negative Bush headlines all the way to more Senate seats and the Oval Office.” She poo-poo’s Schumer’s introduction of the new Senate ‘no-confidence’ resolution on Gonzales.

Incredibly, she argues that former Deputy Attorney General James Comey’s testimony on how then White-House Counsel Gonzales and Andrew Card tried to override Attorney General John Ashcroft’s conclusion that a warrantless domestic surveillance program was unconstititonal, and get Ashcroft to do an about-face when he was seriously ill and hospitalized. Strassel says that Comey’s testimony was somehow “staged,” and that Schumer “cooked up this dramatic event…a week in advance.”

Strassel’s greatest fear? That Schumer’s efforts could ultimately “hamstring the president’s surveillance powers.” Wouldn’t that just be illegal and unconstitutional alleged “surveillance powers?”

She conveniently forgets to mention that Schumer originally supported the war in Iraq, and that he has been realist on continuing the war on terror, wherever it is in the world. Earlier this year, Schumer reiterated this set of beliefs, arguing that “if we beef up human intelligence, provide our military with stronger and more adept strike forces, and work in a more multi lateral way, we could focus on the small groups of terrorists without fighting large-scale wars like we are in Iraq.”