alberto -- dumb or mendacious?

Once again, a senior official in the de facto Bush Administration has said one thing, and facts have emerged that appear to contradict him. Attorney General Alberto "No organ failure, no torture" Gonzales said March 13 that he knew nothing, nothing about the plan to fire the 8 or 93 or however many US attorneys. It was all that bad man Kyle Sampson. But now there is evidence that he participated in a November 27 meeting at (in)Justice to discuss the firings.

The questions: Did Gonzales mean to mislead? Did he believe what he said? Or is he just incapable of remembering such an important meeting less than three months later?

Is Gonzales a liar, stupid, incompetent, or all three? No matter what the combination, he's clearly unqualified by any normal standard of serving as Attorney General. Of course, in Bush-Land, normal standards don't apply. Alberto is loyal to George W. Bush -- and he may well stay.

And speaking of this, EJ Dionne reminds us that although the de facto Administration is trying to play this as a "partisan catfight," there are actually troubling questions about whether the politicized Justice Department has been failing to pursue certain cases, like that of Abramoff. Note again that several of the fired were either investigating GOP corruption (like Randy Cunninghame) or were dismissed for failing to do enough on GOP allegations of voter fraud against Democrats...