Griper Blade: Is Team Bush Collapsing?

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is really feeling the heat. What I love about all of this is that it's not the attorney purge that's coming back to bite the administration in the ass, so much as it is the fact that they tried to hide the purge. In fact, had it not been for all the lying that went into the covering up the firings, this whole thing might've gone nowhere. As things are now, Gonzales is bailing on press conferences before anyone can ask him any questions.

Chicago Tribune (via Think Progress):

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales dashed out of a Chicago news conference this afternoon in just two and a half minutes, ducking questions about how his office gave U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald a subpar rating.

Gonzales, who increasingly faces calls for his resignation, was here to promote a new ad campaign and had planned a 15-minute press availability. He left after taking just three questions over a firing scandal consuming his administration.

Before leaving, Gonzales said he wanted to "reassure the American people that nothing improper happened here."

You know what they say about heat and kitchens -- Gonzales couldn't take it, so he got the hell out. And this was fun:

Agence France-Presse:

The noose tightened Tuesday around beleaguered US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, after a top aide, fearing criminal prosecution, refused to testify in a scandal over the dismissals of eight federal prosecutors.

Questions about what role Gonzales might have played in the affair intensified, after senior aide Monica Goodling invoked her Fifth Amendment rights to avoid potential self-incrimination and declined to answer lawmakers' questions about the firings.

"The hostile and questionable environment in the present congressional proceedings is at best ambiguous," her lawyer John Dowd said in a statement.

"More accurately, the environment can be described as legally perilous."

Nice spin, but you don't plead the fifth if everything's above board. Goodling believes she's committed a crime and can't answer questions honestly without penalty. IMO, they ought to give her immunity. That alone would be enough to make the entire Bush administration crap their pants.

There's obviously something to hide here. If the fact that Goodling pleaded the fifth isn't smoke enough, there's the fact that the White House was using non-government email accounts to discuss the firings. That way, they wouldn't have to keep records of the emails. But, once again, the cover up comes back to bite them in the ass -- they probably won't be able to claim 'executive privilege' to keep the emails private...

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