Democrats unite to oppose Gonzales

The Democratic senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee are showing some stiff backbone. All eight of them united to vote against Alberto Gonzales' (the infamous author of of the torture memo) nomination for Attorney General. The unified opposition meant that the vote went down along party lines.

The NY Times reports:

The Judiciary Committee's narrow endorsement, a day after many Democrats attacked Condoleezza Rice on the Senate floor over her nomination for secretary of state, signaled the minority party's willingness to do battle with the White House over another high-profile nomination, and Republicans acknowledged their disappointment over the strong show of opposition.

"I would like to have avoided a party-line vote," said Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who leads the committee. He said the vote could undercut Mr. Gonzales's strength as attorney general and attributed the close vote in part to "a very, very heavy aura of politics in the air" in Washington.

One by one, the eight Democrats at the committee meeting attacked Mr. Gonzales's record at the White House, saying he had devised policies that led to prisoner abuses in Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said Mr. Gonzales was too much of a "blind loyalist" for Mr. Bush to be an independent attorney general.

Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, surprised some colleagues by voting against the nomination. Mr. Feingold, the only Democrat on the committee in 2001 to vote in support of John Ashcroft's nomination as attorney general, had traditionally given the president broad deference to pick cabinet secretaries. But like other Democrats, Mr. Feingold said he found Mr. Gonzales's testimony at his confirmation hearing earlier this month "deeply disappointing" and said his actions at the White House on torture policies called into question "his commitment to the rule of law."

"Time after time," Mr. Feingold said, "Judge Gonzales has been a key participant in developing secret legal theories to justify policies that, as they have become public, have tarnished our nation's international reputation."

The Democratic caucuses in the House and the Senate are learning how to effectively play the role of the loyal opposition. While not in the majority, we must be effective as a minority so that the Bush administration and the GOP congressional leaders cannot drown this country's future under a flood of bad legislation, bad executive appointments, and bad policy.

In other news Thursday, the White House announced it was dropping its effort to relax media ownership rules, an important victory which is a step towards keeping media consolidation in check and preserving independent media.