The US Senate was to hold a no-confidence debate on US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales yesterday, despite the White House's continued support for him in a controversy over the firings of US prosecutors.
As the debate loomed, White House spokesman Tony Snow insisted US President George W. Bush wanted to keep Gonzales in the job on Sunday.
Yesterday's discussion came almost a week after a former White House aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was sentenced to jail for perjury and weeks after Bush's former deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz agreed to resign as president of the World Bank over a favoritism scandal.
The Senate is now to act on a motion of no-confidence in Gonzales, who faces pressure to resign over allegations that he fired eight US prosecutors because they showed insufficient loyalty to Bush's Republican Party.
Asked whether Bush's backing for Gonzales would be shaken if Republicans rounded on him by supporting the no-confidence vote, Snow said: "Not a bit. Purely symbolic vote."
"It is obvious that the president has the right to hire and fire people who serve at his pleasure," Snow said. "Nobody's found anything untoward in terms of what happened."
Democratic Senator Richard Durbin however questioned why Bush was willing to back the unpopular Gonzales while agreeing to replace General Peter Pace as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to avoid a divisive showdown in Congress focusing on the Iraq war.
"Here's a man who has ... said things on Capitol Hill which he's had to recant and staff people said things were being done at the Department of Justice that shouldn't be," Durbin said. "And the president is willing to stand by his man."
Bush has resisted pressure for Gonzales to go, including from several lawmakers in his own party. The row began in March when evidence from e-mails and testimony from a top former aide linked Gonzales to the sackings.
Bush last month expressed confidence in Gonzales, saying the Department of Justice was investigating the sackings of the federal attorneys last year.
The supposedly "symbolic" gesture follows some real censures of former top officials of the Bush administration.
Wolfowitz is to step down from the World Bank on June 30 after damaging allegations of favoritism involving his girlfriend, a bank employee.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS