Expanded AG Powers

Whatever It Is, I'm Against It and TPM Muckraker discuss the rule granting power to the US Attorney General (Fredo Gonzo Gonzales in this case) to decide whether a death penalty case is adequately defended.

The LAT finds another unnoticed provision of the renewal of the Patriot Act: the authority to decide whether prisoners in death-penalty cases received adequate counsel is no longer held by federal judges, but by Alberto Gonzales, who in his own person epitomizes the words inadequate counsel.

  W3IAI

During Gonzales' hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) grilled him about the [Rios Rico murder] case. Was it true that he'd only spent 5-10 minutes examining the case? Did he really think that was a "significant amount of time" on such a weighty issue?

Gonzales, characteristically, couldn't remember the case or anything about it:

[YouTube video]

"Well, Mr. Attorney General, I'm not totally unfamiliar with this sort of thing," Specter concluded. "When I was district attorney of Philadelphia, I had 500 homicides a year. I didn't allow any assistant to ask for the death penalty that I hadn't personally approved. And when I asked for the death penalty, I remembered the case."

  TPM Muckraker

You may well have done, Senator Specter, but, Senator Specter, you're no Alberto Gonzoles.

Besides, he doesn't have to remember anything. Except that he'll decide whatever he's told to decide.

Of course what we're really talking about here is the fact that those fools who voted to expand the Patriot Act hadn't even read it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.