Selective reasoning...

www.cnn.com/2007/US/03/22/navarrette/index.html

Sometimes I just have to imagine that Navarrette has a mini seizure every time he hears a Hispanic name/perceived insult to the Hispanic community and just completely loses all notion of reason.

Gonzales is certainly not the first person you would be building your case on when talking about perceived prejudice within the Democratic Party. Holding up Gonzales as a representative of the Hispanic community is a bit like holding up Condi Rice as the true bastion of the African American community (Condi is no Rosa Parks and Gonzales is certainly no Che).

The fact that Gonzales is the first Hispanic Attorney General also holds little sway with me, and I'd imagine with most Democrats other than Joe Lieberman.

an elite media that long opposed him

Now I'm no demagogue, so of course I have nothing on Navarrette, but I'd guess that this has more to do with him being the one who green lighted horrible torture at various US facilities and less to do with where his grandparents were born.

Leading this lynch mob are white liberals who resent Gonzales because they can't claim the credit for his life's accomplishments and because they can't get him to curtsy. Why should he? Gonzales doesn't owe them a damn thing.

Oh, of course, you dislike the Hispanic you must be a bigot. It can't possibly have anything to do with the aforementioned fascist tendencies and pro-torture policies that would make Jack Bauer blush. Liberals have hundreds of reasons to hate the guy without worrying about his heritage (he ok'd every single questionable Bush Administration policy as White House Council and after that earned him the big AG office, he continued to ok every asinine policy for his boss George. Then, when Dubya asked him to fire people just because they weren't political enough, he threw them in the fire with a fervor rarely seen. The guy's a train wreck from a liberal perspective).

Democratic politicians love posing with mariachis as they nibble chips and salsa on Cinco De Mayo. But it was a Republican -- George W. Bush -- who made history by nominating a Hispanic to serve as attorney general.

Here we go. What? Liberals aren't allowed to criticize a Hispanic, no matter how heinous his actions? Giving Dubya credit for nominating the first Hispanic AG is like giving him credit for nominating the first black (and woman) Secretary of State. I don't think either community was pushing very hard for those two to be the first anything.

Gonzales' persecutors are blind with rage, or maybe just blind. Surely they see that the push to dump the U.S. attorneys came from White House political adviser Karl Rove.

But, if Navarrette understood the hierarchy at all, he should realize that Karl Rove doesn't have the power to fire prosecutors (though you might expect the next Republican controlled Congress to change that). He needed someone with that power to throw the US Attorneys under the proverbial bus and Gonzales was more than willing to do it. The distinction between ruthless political operative and willing lackey is paper thin.

The attorney general does have one person in his corner. President Bush came out swinging Tuesday, insisting that Gonzales has his support and warning Democrats not to go on "a partisan fishing expedition aimed at honorable public servants."

Having GW Bush as your chief defender seems quite like having Screech as your tag team partner. Perhaps it looks like a good idea floating in your head but in the end it doesn't mean much.

I've interviewed Gonzales twice since he became attorney general. During the last interview, which took place three weeks ago in San Diego -- that is, before the controversy erupted -- I asked about the firings of the U.S. attorneys. He told me what he has told others: It was about performance.

And it's a well known fact that Mexican-Americans are genetically unable to lie to reporters so I just took him at his word.

An avid baseball fan, Gonzales even pitched an analogy. "What I care about is -- are we trading up?"

I'm sure Karl Rove's protege has years of great legal experience to bring to his job as US Attorney...or perhaps he's just good at making up charges against Dems in swing states.

As a political columnist, I cover liars for a living. And yet, I'd say Gonzales is pretty much as advertised by his old friend, President Bush: an honorable public servant.

And this brings us back to my initial point, I don't think Navarrette can be objective in a case like this. There is absolutely no reason to call Gonzales a "honorable public servant". He's a joke as Attorney General (Ashcroft literally looks better in comparison). He hasn't done a single good thing in his entire time in the position.

He comes across as a straight shooter.

People said the same thing about Dubya...and John McCain.

It may be that he made a whopper here in trusting his No. 2 not to hand over the hiring and firing of U.S. attorneys to a political hack like Rove. But then, Gonzales' critics aren't after the truth. They're after him.

I'm sure he knew absolutely nothing about the source of these firings. Give me a break. At best he signed something he hadn't really read just to help his buddy Bush. At worst, and more likely, he knew exactly what he was doing and sacrificed his deputy in order to save his own worthless ass. So he's either a horrible manager (didn't he fire a few people for that?) or he's an overzealous political operative who will do anything for his Republican masters.

Well, if they succeed in running him off without a fair hearing, many Hispanics won't forget the shoddy treatment afforded this grandson of Mexican immigrants. You watch. Democrats will have to intensify their efforts to win Hispanic votes in the 2008 elections. And there's not that much chips and salsa on the planet.

Here we have Navarrette presuming to speak for the entire Hispanic community. I don't think too many liberal Hispanics are looking up to Gonzales as the pinnacle of their community and I don't think the conservatives are ever going to vote Democrat anyway.

If he gets run off without a "fair hearing", whatever that even means, it'll be more about the fact that Bush outright refuses to have any hearings at all and less to do with the desires of Dems. I'm sure most Dems would love to hold all the hearings Gonzales would like before he leaves office but he just might find himself in jail instead of just out of a job. Gonzales might not want to open that can of worms though because he's done far worse things than just firing some US Attorneys.