John's Blog

The resignation of the torturer in chief was noted by his patron, the President, as an unfortunate day for American democracy. "It's sad that we live in a time when a talented and honorable person like Alberto Gonzales is impeded from doing important work because his good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons," President Bush lamented on Monday.

What good name? After all, Bush picked Gonzales to be the nation's highest law enforcement official only after Gonzales had proved his mettle for the job as White House counsel. His legal advice to the President was that torture is a legitimate option, because Bush's self-defined "war on terror" wiped out all prior legal restraint and in particular "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners."