A little peer pressure

Ouch! Gonzo's Harvard Law School Class of '82 has called him out in a personal letter to him that they also published as a full-page ad in the New York Times on Tuesday, I guess just in case his staff -- if there are any who haven't resigned -- tries to shield him for reality the way he shields his boss from it.

So it has been with dismay that we have watched your cavalier handling of our freedoms time and again. When it has been important that legal boundaries hold unbridled government power in check, you have instead used pretextual rationales and strained readings to justify an ever-expanding executive authority. Witness your White House memos sweeping aside the Geneva Conventions to justify torture, endangering our own servicemen and women; witness your advice to the President effectively reading Habeas Corpus out of our constitutional protections; witness your support of presidential statements claiming inherent power to wiretap American citizens without warrants (and the Administration’s stepped-up wiretapping campaign, taking advantage of those statements, which continues on your watch to this day); and witness your dismissive explanation of the troubling firings of numerous U.S. Attorneys, and their replacement with others more "loyal" to the President’s politics, as merely "an overblown personnel matter." In these and other actions, we see a pattern. As a recent editorial put it, your approach has come to symbolize "disdain for the separation of powers, civil liberties and the rule of law."

As lawyers, and as a matter of principle, we can no longer be silent about this Administration's consistent disdain for the liberties we hold dear. Your failure to stand for the rule of law, particularly when faced with a President who makes the aggrandized claim of being a unitary executive, takes this country down a dangerous path.

On Our Radar thanks his former classmates now of New Jersey -- Robert Chesler of Roseland and Catherine Redlich of Ridgewood.

Next at bat? So, with Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling long resigned, and now No. 2 Paul McNulty taking a hike, who's left to prop up Gonzoles? Michael Elston, with whom Jesus' General blog has some fun. Elston's brother, Rick, is some piece of work.

P.S.: In case you wonder if I can't see Gonzo's pic is out of focus, I can. I pulled it from his official government bio Web site. Good media production, huh? If only Halliburton were in the photography business ...