Newsweek reports that Alberto Gonzales may have helped in cover-up of Bush DUI:

Senate Democrats put off a vote on White House counsel Alberto Gonzales's nomination to be attorney general, complaining he had provided evasive answers to questions about torture and the mistreatment of prisoners. But Gonzales's most surprising answer may have come on a different subject: his role in helping President Bush escape jury duty in a drunken-driving case involving a dancer at an Austin strip club in 1996. The judge and other lawyers in the case last week disputed a written account of the matter provided by Gonzales to the Senate Judiciary Committee. "It's a complete misrepresentation," said David Wahlberg, lawyer for the dancer, about Gonzales's account.

Bush's summons to serve as a juror in the drunken-driving case was, in retrospect, a fateful moment in his political career: by getting excused from jury duty he was able to avoid questions that would have required him to disclose his own 1976 arrest and conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) in Kennebunkport, Maine—an incident that didn't become public until the closing days of the 2000 campaign. (Bush, who had publicly declared his willingness to serve, had left blank on his jury questionnaire whether he had ever been "accused" in a criminal case.)

Of course, poor Alberto is having all these memory problems these days. He doesn't recall things the judge and prosecutor remember.

Bush flacks have been bellyaching about how the president's reckless past is old news. But that didn't stop these same people from attacking President Clinton over a Whitewater investment made around the same time. Of course, why should we expect consistency from politicians and their flunkies? Bush was a draft dodger, too, but they say that was entirely different. (Maybe they're right: Clinton was honest about it, while W did the weasel.)

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