Lunatic fringe, I know you’re out there.

Out goes one nut job, and in comes another. A day after John Ashcroft quit the Attorney General post, Bush named hispanic Alberto Gonzales as his replacement. If Puritan Ashcroft saw the Constitution and civil liberties as a nuisance, then Inquisitor Gonzales sees them as walls to knock down.

Gonzales was a Texas Supreme Court justice under Bush from 1995-2000 until following Bush to Washington to serve as a White House legal counsel.

Gonzales is a right-wing extremist, pure and simple. He concocted the legal basis for torturing prisoners at Abu Ghraib and referred to the Geneva Conventions as “quaint” and “obsolete.” He also wrote the short, oversimplified memos Bush relied on the decide who got executed while governor of Texas. Mitigating factors were frequently glossed over or ignored completely. (In true Bush tradition, never let facts get in the way of killin'.)

Gonzales has been mentioned as possible nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, but Republican leaders are concerned he might be too moderate. Ouch.

If this is Bush “reaching across the aisle”, he’s reaching over with a spiked club. So much for bipartisanship. Didn’t even last a week.

Gonzales may have been Bush’s source for the notion (while Texas governor) that any environmental law constituted “taking” under the U.S. Constitution. In simple terms, Bush was saying if a corporation couldn’t pollute a piece of land then the government had to cut them a check (as “just compensation”). I hope this isn’t the kind of legal distortions we can expect from our top cop.

Gonzales is expected to be approved fairly easily by the Senate. No one wants to be labeled a racist (lots of hispanic votes out there to lose), and the Democrats want to save their heavy fighting for the right-wing extremist nutcase Bush will nominate for the U.S. Supreme Court.