Latina Lista: AG Gonzalez Just Doing His Job

I like reading Marisa Treviño of Latina Lista, especially her work exposing the lunacy of our immigration policies and enforcement.

That's why I find her comments regarding Attorney General Gonzalez so disappointing.

In The Extent of Gonzales' Guilt Should Serve as a Wake-Up Call to Latinos (3.19.07), Treviño writes that she's shocked that the GWB administration sacked 8 federal prosecutors.

What was done to those eight federal prosecutors for only doing their jobs was a travesty, ironically, of justice.

The real question is not why they were sacked, but why they weren't sacked at the outset?

See, it's unusual for an incoming administration--such as GWB's in 2000--to keep all of the holdover prosecutors. But that's what Gonzalez and the GWB folks did. In contrast, Hillary and Bill fired all 100 prosecutors on day one and installed their own loyalists.

What is most unfortunate is that Treviño believes its a disgrace if Gonzalez resigns or is fired. She writes:

If Gonzales leaves his post, either by resignation or fired himself, it will be an act of disgrace for him, his family and the Latino community who still measures our progression and success on the backs of those who make it.

As in the case with the prosecutors, Attorney General Gonzalez is a political appointee. Part of the deal is that if called upon from above, he is expected to fall on his sword for the good of his patron. His ethnicity has absolutely nothing to do about it. So how would it be a disgrace for his family or the Latino community.

Perhaps Treviño has a point if she were embarrassed by Henry Cisneros' payoff to a girlfriend he then lied about, or Bill Richardson's role in moving Lewinski out of the oval office and into an out-of-town gig that paid her way more than she was worth. But even in those situations, I certainly don't take any responsibility for the stupid things those Latinos did.

In some ways, it's a sign of progress when Latinos in high places are free to embarrass themselves on equal footing with whites and blacks.

But rest assured that there's no shame in a Latino doing his/her job--including the political part of a political job.