The Email That May Take Down Alberto Gonzales

I'm not too sure Gonzales will be taken down, but I doubted Rumsfeld would. What I am sure of is Cheney will be next to last to go and Bush absolute last if the purge continues.

An important point of contention in the rapidly escalating controversy over the recent mass-firing of U.S. Attorneys is whether the Bush administration ever intended to invoke its authority under Section 546 of Title 28. This provision, which was inserted at the last second into the Patriot Act reauthorization last year, allows the Attorney General to bypass the normal Senate confirmation process and simply install U.S. Attorneys at his discretion.

When he testified before Congress in January, Alberto Gonzales was adamant that the Administration had no intention of invoking this provision:

This is a good compilation over at The Anonymous Liberal.

I personally am delighted when their tactics come back and bite them in the ass.

Treasury Department misusing Patriot Act

Something has to be done about the Patriot Act. Its being abused in so many ways as to become a de facto replacement for the Constitution. And isn't it always nice when a piece of legislation can be called a sledgehammer? Just asking.

Under a little-noticed provision in the USA Patriot Act, the Treasury Department has ordered severe restrictions against foreign banks or countries for reasons beyond the stated purpose of the law and without producing evidence.

Section 311 of the 2001 Patriot Act was drafted to halt terrorist financing and money laundering, but the Bush administration has used it against an alleged source of terrorist financing - a bank in Syria - only once. The Treasury has invoked it more often to punish alleged human-rights abuses or offshore banking havens.

Although Congress has yet to examine the Treasury's use of Section 311, the provision is likely to add to the controversy over other sweeping powers the executive branch of government acquired under the Patriot Act. According to a recent audit, the FBI used the act illegally to obtain personal information about U.S. citizens, and the administration has agreed to abandon a provision that it used to replace eight U.S. attorneys for what Democrats charge were partisan political reasons.

"It becomes a form of expanding executive power that's difficult to check," said Shayana Kadidal, staff attorney for the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, a rights organization that's critical of many Patriot Act provisions.

Supporters view Section 311 as a diplomatic sledgehammer that gets results. Critics - many of whom refused to speak on the record, saying they feared retribution - complain that the provision denies suspects due process and presumes that the accused are guilty rather than innocent.

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