A couple great op-ed pieces coming in Sunday's
NY Times:
First, Adam Cohen makes a constitutional case for impeachment proceedings
to begin against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Impeaching Gonzales has moved beyond the hypothetical, now that Jay Inslee, Democrat of Washington, and five other prosecutors-turned-representatives have introduced a resolution to conduct an impeachment inquiry.
Then Frank Rich tears into Rove's wreckage:
What the Rove critics on the right recognize is that it may be even more difficult for their political party to dig out of his wreckage than it will be for America.
More from Adam Cohen's piece:
WHY IMPEACH GONZALES:
Congress has heard extensive testimony about how Gonzales' Justice Department has become an arm of a political party, choosing lawyers for nonpartisan positions based on politics, and bringing cases -- including prosecutions that have put people in jail -- to help Republicans win elections.
Gonzales' repeated false and misleading statements to Congress are also impeachable conduct. James Iredell, whom George Washington would later appoint to the Supreme Court, told North Carolina's ratification convention that "giving false information to the Senate" was the sort of act "of great injury to the community" that warranted impeachment.
Time for Gonzo to go.
If the House began an impeachment inquiry, Gonzales would most likely resign rather than risk the unpleasantness of the hearings, and the ignominy of being removed. Congress should think of it as a constitutional tap on the shoulder, to let the attorney general know that the time has truly come for him to go.
Frank Rich on the Rove "legacy":
The Rove strategy for a permanent Republican majority in tatters ...
Those Bush dead-enders are in a serious state of denial. Just how much so could be found in the Journal interview when Rove extolled his party's health by arguing, without contradiction from Gigot, that young people are more "pro-life" and "free-market" than their elders. Maybe he was talking about 12-year-olds. Back in the real world of potential voters, the latest New York Times-CBS News poll of Americans aged 17 to 29 found that their views on abortion were almost identical to the rest of the country's. (Only 24 percent want abortion outlawed.)
The GOP brand name tarnished:
Last weekend's Iowa straw poll was a more somber but equally anachronistic spectacle. Again, it's a young conservative commentator, Ryan Sager, writing in The New York Sun, who put it best: "The face of the Republican Party in Iowa is the face of a losing party, full of hatred toward immigrants, lust for government subsidies, and the demand that any Republican seeking the office of the presidency acknowledge that he's little more than Jesus Christ's running mate."
That face, at once contemptuous and greedy and self-righteous, is Karl Rove's face. Unless someone in his party rolls out a revolutionary new product, it is indelible enough to serve as the Republican brand for a generation.