Take Gonzales, please!

So far, Texas’ pleas for mercy have met stony silence from the other 49 states. Discredited Bushites, driven from their power perches in Washington, shamed before the nation and barely ahead of indictment, are flocking into the Lone Star State. Not one single other state has offered to take them!

When former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his retinue announced that they, too, would join the stream of grimy red-faced asylum-seekers streaming into Texas, our mighty groans swelled to a crescendo sufficient to drown out the sighs of relief and cries of jubilation from the rest of the world.

“Why do they have to come here?” we gasp. Texans feel that we have always done our part. Texas took in some of the victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Historically, Texas has always opened its heart to refugees, including worn-out politicians, all the way back to Tennesseans Sam Houston and Davy Crockett. Now, when our capacity for compassion is stretched to the limit, why has no other state in the Union stepped up to offer to take some of the Bushies?

When Gonzales finally caved before the endless streams of revelations of his dishonesty and depravity, when Americans realized that this reviver of torture and defiler of the Constitution was also a fibber, they drove him from office. “But drive him where?” we asked collectively in Texas. “Why do we have to take him?”

On the news that Gonzales and his dirty-handed crew would be coming here, Texas newspapers listed a rogue’s gallery of former Bushites already nesting in Texas’ bosom. Where do Americans think the underhanded Karl Rove will lurk? What about propagandist Karen Hughes? Harriet Miers, who had her moment of fame when she tried out for the Supremes and was found wanting — yes, she’s in Texas! The list drags on. The former Bush campaign manager and FEMA director, Joe Allbaugh, directs Iraqi construction work from his home in, yes, Texas! Former Budget Director Albert Hawkins has inserted himself into the Texas Department of Health. Bush frontman Scott McClellan is here, along with Rod Paige and Dan Bartlett.

Worst of all is oily man Don Evans, a longtime Bush associate and former Commerce secretary, who is right here in my hometown of Dallas planning the worst disaster of all — the Bush transformation of Southern Methodist University from an unassuming Ivy-League-type school into an eternal radiator of Bushism that will include a secretive library, a misleading museum and a non-think tank!

We collectively quake at the future, when it is virtually inevitable that the Big Enchilada and Laura themselves will take up residence in posh Highland Park, right next to SMU, and hold court for reactionaries in Texas for the rest of their unnatural lives. By then, we’ll be up to our necks in disgraced politicians.

It isn’t our fault. At least part of the egregious blame belongs to the other 49 states who are selfishly guarding their own borders and basically telling suffering Texas to go suck an egg!

Jim Lane (flittle7 @yahoo.com) is a labor activist in North Texas.