Aug. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Star Atlanta Falcons player Michael Vick finally admitted he helped run a dog-fighting ring in Virginia. At a somber press conference yesterday, he apologized for his cruel crime and for lying about it earlier.
``Not for one second will I sit right here and point the finger and try to blame anybody else,'' the quarterback said.
As coincidence would have it, President George W. Bush showed up on television minutes later lamenting the resignation of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The president did what the athlete did not. He directed blame elsewhere.
``Months of unfair treatment,'' Bush said, ``has created a harmful distraction at the Justice Department.''
Not a word about how Gonzales' own conduct had created that harmful distraction.
Bush called it sad that Gonzales's ``good name was dragged through the mud for political purposes.''
And yet he expressed no sorrow that Gonzales had accused U.S. attorneys of poor performance to explain their dismissals, only to be disproved by the glowing evaluations many had received.
Vick finally acknowledged that his critics were right. But Bush keeps thumbing his nose at those who complain that Gonzales, at the behest of the White House, fired U.S. attorneys who refused to let partisan interests dictate their prosecution decisions.
After lashing out at critics, Bush hopped on a plane headed for a fundraiser for Senator Pete Domenici, of all people. The New Mexico Republican is one of the partisans who pushed the White House to fire that state's U.S. attorney, David Iglesias, for not indicting Democrats before last November's election........
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