Slippery is as slippery does

Updated What got me more than the deceit, denial, and double-talk dished out by Attorney General-nominee Alberto "Slippery" Gonzales during his coronation (not a typo) hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee was the utterly incompetent questioning by those who supposedly were challenging him.

I mean, I expected Gonzales to lie. I expected him to run away from his own words. I expected him to dodge his record. I expected all kinds of deceptions and evasions ranging from the merely clever to outright whoppers. That is simply the style of this entire particularly scummy administration. And yup, I got exactly that. What I didn't expect - well, wait, that's not exactly right: it's not so much that it was unexpected, more that it was so disappointing to see - was the way the Dummycrats let him get away with it so easily.

Committee chairman Sen. Arlen Specter [(R-PA)] kicks off the questioning with a softball. "Do you approve of torture?" he asks, and Gonzales assures him, "Absolutely not."

Like he was going to say anything else. But as near as I can tell without having read the transcript of the hearing, no one asked him what constitutes torture. Anyone at all, the cruelest, most inhuman dictator in all of history could say they disapprove of torture absent any definition of what the word means. Why didn't someone ask him if he approved of "aggressive questioning" of terror suspects - and when he said yes as I suspect even he would have to do in order to avoid looking like (as opposed to merely being) a real toad, ask him at what point "aggressive questioning" becomes torture? No one did.

Repeatedly repeatedly repeatedly, the Dims asked Slippery in different ways if Shrub could on his own authority authorize the use of torture. Repeatedly repeatedly repeatedly, Slippery said in different ways "this president has said we're not going to engage in torture under any circumstances." And repeatedly repeatedly repeatedly, no one responded by saying simply "That's not what I asked you." They just accepted his evasions, his blatantly obvious non-answers, and tried to ask the same question a different way - only, of course, to get a variation on the same non-answer.

Actually, there was one feeble attempt in that direction by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI).

Feingold asks, does President Bush have the power to authorize violations of criminal law? Gonzales makes some noise about "a presumption of constitutionality" and his oath as attorney general to defend congressional statutes, then gives his real answer: I'd take it very seriously if I ever advised the president to do such a thing. "So the president's above the law?" Feingold asks. No, Gonzales says, but he can choose not to enforce unconstitutional laws. That's not what I'm asking, Feingold complains. We don't torture people, Gonzales says. Feingold gives up....

"That's not what I asked you!" he should have said again and louder. "I didn't ask about the White House's policy and I didn't ask about theoretical possibilities. I asked a specific yes or no question about the president's legal authority and I expect a specific yes or no answer. One word, Mr. Gonzales, one word and no more: Does the president have the power to authorize violations of criminal law? Yes or no? I mean, it's a pretty poor excuse for a nominee for attorney general who can't give a legal opinion. That is part of your job, isn't it?"

No one laughed when he said he couldn't remember if he had agreed with the definition of torture described in the infamous 2002 memo addressed to him. No one gasped and leapt up when he told Feingold that the 2002 memo was no longer administration policy. "Wait a minute! You mean it was policy? Not just some legal opinion memo but policy? How was it implemented? When and where?"

No one stared in amazement when Slippery claimed "I consider the Geneva Conventions neither obsolete nor quaint." No one asked the obvious "Then why in flaming hell did you say they were?" Just as no one demanded he explain why, if we are, as he asserted, "a nation of laws and not of men," he expected others to accept a claimed policy of eschewing torture as a sufficient answer to questions about laws and powers. "Why should we just trust to your good intentions, Mr. Gonzales, good intentions which frankly do not seem to have been much on display in these matters? And even if you insist we can trust you, heaven knows why, are you saying we also should be equally trusting of any future administration? If so, what happened to the 'laws, not men' business? If not, why should this White House receive a special exemption you would deny to others?"

No jaws dropped when he said

he was sickened and outraged by photos of abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. He described the U.S. troops in those photos as "people who were morally bankrupt having fun." ...

"I respectfully disagree that there was some kind of permissive environment," he said.

"Are our armed forces full of equally 'morally bankrupt' people?"

"Of course not, Senator, that's an outrageous suggestion and an insult to the men and women in uniform."

"In that case, Mr. Gonzales, in the alleged lack of the sort of 'permissive environment' which the attitudes you have accepted and expressed in regard to treatment of prisoners helped to create, don't you find it in the least odd that this unrepresentative handful of 'morally bankrupt' people somehow all wound up in the same place? What would you, as the chief law enforcement officer of the nation, think of a defendant who based their defense on an equally improbable notion?"

No one had to keep themselves from retching when, in perhaps his only straight answer, he

refused to back away from his legal opinion to Bush that terrorists captured overseas by Americans do not merit the conventions' protections.

"My judgment was ... that it would not apply to al-Qaida - they weren't a signatory to the convention," he said.

Now, of course he said that because to say anything else would undermine the administration's case about its torture and confinement of prisoners at Gitmo and elsewhere. So he had no choice but to stand by that. But why did no one take up the challenge?

"Not signatories? What the hell difference does that make, Mr. Gonzales? I thought we were talking about basic human rights here, basic human decency. Are you really saying that the protections only apply to those who are parties to the treaty? That we're free to visit any sort of maltreatment on others?"

"As I've said, Senator, this administration had ruled out the use of torture."

"Again, Mr. Gonzales, that's not what I asked. I didn't ask about policy, I asked about authority. I didn't ask if we would, I asked if we could. I asked for a legal opinion, which is, again, part of your job. So answer the question I asked, not one I didn't. What about it? And while you're at it, what about the armies of nations who are not signatories? Are their uniformed soldiers likewise beyond the protection of the accords? And one more thing: You've also said that the Geneva Conventions do apply to those taken in Iraq. Explain the difference - in precise detail."

Oh, and look at the dynamic response when Slippery revealed that the White House is discussing seeking changes in the Geneva Conventions:

Sen. Charles Schumer later urged on Bush to consult Congress and he requested a congressional hearing. "My concern is not that these discussions are taking place, but that they are taking place in secret, behind closed doors, with no outside involvement," Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote the president.

Wow! That really takes my breath away! Such power! Such passion! "Aw, c'mon - talk with us about it, wudja? Gee whiz. I mean, if you really wanna change it, well, sure, golly, but y'know, tell us first? Please?"

And finally, at least for this exercise, no one went after him for his fatuous endorsement of the Traitor - excuse me, Patriot - Act.

"I believe that in part because of the Patriot Act there has not been a domestic attack on United States soil since 9/11," he said.

"Yeah, and the chain around my neck is helping keep zebras out of this hearing room. Mr. Gonzales, there has not been one successful terrorism prosecution under the Patriot Act. Not one. On just what basis do you make your extravagant claim? I want you to back it up, here and now."

Or, as I've said is going to be my mantra in dealing with similar wackos, put up or shut up. A demand no one made of him.

What a pathetic, wimpy, loser, ineffectual attempt at questioning. They are pretty much a waste of space.

Footnote One: Well, this didn't take long, did it?

"There's a lower standard, frankly, for attorney general than for judge, because you give the president who he wants," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., also appearing on "Today."

Didn't I predict that just the day before yesterday?

Footnote Two: Jesse Kornbluth at BeliefNet has some good comments on the hearings and some interesting background on Gonzales and his devotion to human rights. Look for the items headlined "Only the Victims Would Call It 'Torture'" and "Torture Does Work; Just Ask Gonzales."

Updated to add the two links in the second paragraph.