I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the Bush administration should have abandoned the idea of firing U.S. Attorneys in 2008 because they could not count on Republicans to stop an investigation. His comments appear in Esquire’s Meaning of Life issue.
Al Kaman of the Washington Post picked out some choice quotes from Gonzales.
“We should have abandoned the idea of removing the U. S. attorneys once the Democrats took the Senate,” Gonzales said. “Because at that point we could really not count on Republicans to cut off investigations or help us at all with investigations. We didn’t see that at the Department of Justice. Nor did the White House see that. Karl [Rove] didn’t see it. If we could do something over again, that would be it.”
Gonzales also said, “Of course the White House was consulted about these decisions [on the firings], because these were presidential appointees, and of course Karl [Rove] would have some kind of role in that. But the decision was made on what I believed to be the consensus recommendation of the department leadership.”
One of the fired U.S. Attorneys was David Iglesias of New Mexico. Iglesias has long been critical of Gonzales and the decision to fire U.S. Attorneys including himself.
In the Esquire piece, Gonzales also discusses Abu Ghraib, the infamous Senate hearing where he said “I don’t know” 120 times and other issues from his tenure as U.S. Attorney General.
