“This is not about your intelligence, this hearing is not about your competence, it’s not about your integrity, it’s about your judgment and your candor. We’re looking for candor, old buddy. I love you, but you’re not very candid so far.”

- Joe Biden, from Alberto Gonzales’ confrmation hearing

“It was not my role to direct that we should use certain kinds of methods of receiving information from terrorists. That was a decision made by the operational agencies, and they said we need to try to get this information what is lawful and (we) looked to the Department of Justice to tell us what would in fact be within the law.”

“The president has said we’re not going to engage in torture. That’s a hypothetical question. The president has not authorized or condoned torture.”

- Alberto Gonzales, from the same hearing

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Goodbye, sanctimonious moralist! Hello, weasly technocrat! If you’re a fan of the Bush administration, you can’t help but be excited by this dramatic shift.

Not a policy shift, of course, but a shift in the way we talk about what we do. And that’s important. Years from now we’ll look back on the early days of this century and ask ourselves, “What exactly was the rationale behind our move towards becoming an authoritarian corporate theocracy?” Was it a nationwide intensification of belief and Christian values led by men of faith and rectitude? Or was it a cynical exploitation of the religious and the traditionalists by coldly agnostic millionaire puppet-masters? Or was it a little of both? It’s an exciting time to be alive!

Here’s the difference in our Justice Department. When, in 2006, organized prayer in public schools becomes legal, you can expect Gonzales’ explanation to be not at all like what Ashcroft would have said:

ASHCROFT: “It’s a return to the principle of freedom of religion that is directly in line with the faith and morality of our founding fathers.”

GONZALES: “Within the context of recent court decisions, it was the determination of the legislature that the right of any non-federal institution, whether partially federally funded or not, to effect its own policies cannot be abridged. It’s not for this department to make that decision, only to carry it out to our best ability.”

Neither explanation is a lot of consolation to the little Jewish kid who has to sit quietly while his classmates praise Jesus each morning, but it’ll be interesting for the rest of us to watch dynamic new lyrics being set to the same old tunes.

So don’t worry. We’ll still get a society where our kids are brought up ignorant of sex until the moment that they conceive a child, at which point they’ll be obligated to carry it to term. We’ll still get a nation where suspects can be reclassified to allow for the insertion of hot wires into their assorted orifices during the course of friendly questioning. We’ll get the ID cards and the wiretaps and the media monopolies and the $20 bills adorned with the Ten Commandments and the de-nippled paintings in our museums and the electronic homing implants for ex-cons. We’ll get all that. It’ll just sound different.