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Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is a son of a bitch
Gonzales says that federal judges aren’t qualified to rule on issues of national security policy, i.e., terrorism cases. Instead, these rabble-rousing judges should just defer to the infinite wisdom of the President and Congress, instead of applying “an activist philosophy that stretches the law to suit policy preferences.”
Because, you see, only Gonzales and the Bush Administration can stretch the law to suit policy preferences, damn it!
Gonzales also says that the Bush Administration, in looking for federal bench candidates, is looking for folks who understand “the inherent limits that make an unelected judiciary inferior to Congress or the president in making policy judgments…That, for example, a judge will never be in the best position to know what is in the national security interests of our country” Apparently Gonzales has forgotten the fact that the federal judiciary is actually an equal branch of the government, not the bastard step-brother. Sure, judges shouldn’t be making flat-out policy, but many of the cases he would probably cite as “activist philosophies” creating policy are probably just applications of the law to Bush policies, finding those policies not so legal. Which, to Bush and his cronies (e.g., Gonzales), is no good.
Gonzales is still probably better than his predecessor, Ashcroft, but not by much.
