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Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Fitzgerald would be better attorney general than Gonzales

Fitzgerald would be better attorney general than Gonzales
BY CAROL MARIN
March 21, 2007
Copyright by The Chicago Sun-Times


Gonzo, you're doing a heck of a job! But, pardner, it's time for you to leave your old Texas buddy, George W. Bush, pack up your office at the Justice Department, and hop out of town faster than a fried frog. Washington desperately needs a new sheriff in town.

I hereby nominate Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald to replace the embattled Alberto Gonzales as attorney general of the United States. Here, in no particular order, are what I regard as the compelling reasons.

No. 1: Fitzgerald Is Mediocre

Lordy, what an improvement that would be! Especially when you consider the abysmal performance of former Attorney General John "Cover the Breasts of Those Naked Statues" Ashcroft and his successor, Alberto "Rendition's Fine With Me" Gonzales.

Mediocre is not my term of art but rather, as the Washington Post reported Tuesday, the considered judgment of Gonzales' deputy, Kyle Sampson, who was forced to resign last week, the first casualty of a growing scandal. It was Sampson who ranked the 93 U.S. attorneys across the country, eight of whom were recently fired in what sure looks like an administration-orchestrated, ideological massacre of prosecutors who had the poor manners to pursue politicians who belonged to the president's party.

Though Gonzales is still manning the barricades at the Alamo, a bipartisan congressional posse was already forming when internal Justice Department documents this week revealed Fitzgerald's perceived mediocrity, being one of the U.S. attorneys who had "not distinguished themselves."

The geniuses at Justice apparently weren't all that impressed with Fitzgerald's successful prosecution of al-Qaida in 2000 in New York or a host of major convictions won during his tenure in Chicago. I'm guessing it was that darn Scooter Libby perjury trial that caused him to lose his luster.

Rather than be everlastingly grateful to Fitzgerald for not climbing further up the White House food chain to prosecute real villains like Vice President Dick Cheney, or West Wing anti-hero Karl Rove, for their vengeful outing of a CIA spy married to one of their critics, it looks like those ingrates actually considered Fitzgerald for their little hit list.

What better recommendation can one man have?

No. 2: Fitzgerald is from Harvard

Though President Bush, the un-student, somehow managed to get an MBA from Harvard, he is a Yale man through and through. That's where he did his undergraduate work and learned the Skull and Bones secret handshake. Despite his Texas twang, Bush is a moneyed blue blood.

Fitzgerald, on the other hand, is merely blue collar. He got his Ivy League education on a shoestring. His family and friends were not investors in oil wells or sports teams, thus unable to guarantee him a job and and large income.

Unlike the president, he reportedly does not go to bed early nor take long, brush-clearing vacations in Texas.

It's unclear whether Fitzgerald has ever even been to Texas.

Another point in his favor.

No. 3: Fitzgerald Would Be Scarier than Stephen King

Think about it.

Right now, Fitzgerald's office is overseeing federal probes of city, county and state government in Illinois. Hiring scandals, crooked contract deals, pay-to-play exchanges of campaign cash for government investment business, bid-rigging, minority-front companies, mail fraud and much much more.

There is nothing that Mayor Daley or Gov. Blagojevich would love more than to see Pat Fitzgerald run out of town on a rail. But yikes, if he was an even bigger boss than he is right now, it would send an arctic shiver down the backs of of every pol from here to Pike County.

That is not to say that I wouldn't like some very hard questions asked at Fitzgerald's confirmation hearings.

Chicago's top prosecutor, I believe, has been a little too glinty-eyed about the glories of the Patriot Act. The same Patriot Act that the FBI, his investigative partner in the war on terror, promised not to abuse but clearly has abused with abandon. The same Patriot Act that I bet even Fitzgerald didn't realize had, in its recently amended version, been slipped a legislative mickey, an overlooked clause empowering the Bushies to bypass Congress in replacing those purged eight U.S. attorneys who didn't play Republican ball.

In addition, I'd like to hear Fitzgerald elaborate more fully on why the Justice Department claims to have so much respect for the law but so little for the protections of a free press or value of confidential sources.

But even with those very real reservations, I'd still take Fitzgerald over Gonzales in a hot second.

Someone needs to arrive on the Washington scene fast and scrub the tarnish off the silver letters that read, "U.S. Justice Department."

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