What a load of crap. How is it that these cretins keep coming up with this shit, and no one but Salon seems to care? This should be on the front page of every newspaper, and the top story on every newscast. Sadly, it seems Britney Spears' genitalia holds more interest with the press than the slow and steady erosion of habeus corpus.

The Bush crowd just makes stuff up as they go along – without even trying to make their own assertions and interpretations internally consistent. Their assumption is that they and their analyses will be treated as legitimate by the press, public and opposition party, even if questioned. So far, that assumption is a safe one.

It's time the left went beyond claiming the emperor has no clothes and started acting like it.

Gonzales is a lawyer, and I'll bet he did pretty well in his classes on Constitutional law when he was in school. He knows perfectly well that the Constitution doesn't need to grant rights such as habeas corpus; we have those rights, unless the Constitution explicitly gives the government the power to take them away. It is terrifying to me that Congress is willing to allow the nation's top lawyer to get away with saying things that are so obviously contradictory to the fundamental principles of American law, and the freedom which depends on that law for its preservation. Any one of the deliberate, evil lies that have come up during his testimony should be sufficient for impeachment, disbarment, and charges of criminal negligence.

I know ad-hominem attack is both cheap, and dumb, but I can't help myself.

Alberto Gonzales is a syncophantic asshole, and that's all there is to that.

Make that *evil* syncophantic asshole.

I can tell you where he's going with his novel legal theory: the President gets to say who has rights, and who doesn't.

There will be no-one more relieved than I will be when this entire crew of evil bastards slithers into retirement. I just wish my tax money didn't have to pay their fat pensions. But, there's a price to everything.

Gee, Consumer Reports recalled its flawed report on infant car seats, and Toyota just recalled a bunch of vehicles -- would it be possible for Harvard Law School to recall Att. Gen. Gonzales for a tune-up on his law degree, and give him a do-over on his Constitutional Law courses?

Seems to THIS non-lawyer that the U.S. Constitution is worded so as to recognize that people have inherent rights and powers -- we don't simply have rights that are explicitly GRANTED to us.

It is simple logic that one must first HAVE a right, before one can prohibit someone else from taking it away! There would be no reason to prohibit removing habeas corpus except in special and specific circumstances if we didn't have an expectation of habeas corpus in the first place.

Permit me to end with a resounding "DUH!"

Backing up Daniel Dvorkin's letter, "we have those rights unless the Constitution explicitly gives the government the power to take them away". I have to disagree that Mr. Gonzales did well in his Constitutional Law class. He has never read the ninth and tenth amendments. So in case he might be reading this (LOL):

Amendment IX: The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X: The powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Mr. Dvorkin is absolutely correct, and the Constitution explicitly states that the Constitution starts with the rights being of the people, and then limits them as necessary. We have the right to the Writ of Habeas Corpus, because the Constitution prohibits taking it away.

Every time this inept putz opens his mouth he confirms he got his job by ass-kissing and bootlicking.

The difficulty with letting anti-intellectuals interpret the Constitution is that they do not have either the intelligence or education necessary to the task.

Gonzalez is as clear an example of a "Know-Nothing" as this country has seen in many, many years. And he lacks the philospohical understanding that the Founders assumed any interpreter of the Constitution would bring to the task.

Habeas Corpus is not specifically granted in the document because it was a given in English Common Law, from which our Constitution sprang. Additionally, concepts like Habeas Corpus were philosophically understood by the Founders to be part and parcel of the Natural (i.e., God-granted and inherent) rights of Man (capitalized so as not to exclude the distaff side).

When Gonzalez makes statements like this one before Congress, he shows not only his ignorance and the paucity of his understanding but also demonstrates his inability to understand.

The People of this Great Republic are extremely fortunate that, even though all of the Founders understood the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights to be inherent, natural, God-granted rights of Man, the Founders went ahead and incorporated those rights into the Constitution via the first 10 Amendments. For without the Bill, ignorant autocrats like Bush, Cheney and Gonzalez would be able to deny the grant of those rights, too.

At first glance, my eye caught this as "Terrifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee..."

Gonzales is a ghoul. It is repugnant that someone charged with defending our liberties is so eager to invent ways to destroy those liberties. He ought to be disbarred.

Perhaps by arguing that we don't necessarily have the rights the Constitution bars the gov't from abridging, Gonzales is laying the legal groundwork of the privatization of rights and rights protection.

Perhaps he and the neocons envision a brave new world where the rights we apparently don't have can by purchased via membership in an organization - a Corporate Legal Action Network (CLAN for short) - which would grant and protect the rights of its members in its territory. Of course, those commie liberals who distrust big business could form and join a Cooperative Legal Action Network.

Conflicts among members of the same CLAN would be settled by the CEO of CLAN or his designated subordinates, while conflicts between members of differing CLANs or the CLANs would be settled by the interplay free market forces (the CLANs offering the best protection will tend to out-compete/defeat those that don't) without interference from the Federal Government.

Under-priveledged or impoverished people who can't buy CLAN membership or whose CLAN was unable to complete with the others will simply have to look at their choices in life and make betters ones.

However, the system isn't completely without mercy. Individuals in such a situation would be free to purchase a lower-priced membership and become a Special Economically-Reduced Freeman (SERF) in a CLAN, albeit with reduced benefits and protections.