Gonzales: White House correspondents

by Mark Silva

This adds new meaning to the term, Gonzo Journalism:

We have watched this past week as a parade of celebrity guests signed up for seats at the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner this coming Saturday night -- Sarah and Todd Palin, reported guests of FOX News, Ben Affleck and Colin Powell, guests of CBS News, Ellen Burstyn and Kristi Yamaguchi, guests of the BBC.

But now The Sleuth reports on a certain high-value guest who will lend some enhanced interest to the Houston Chronicle's dinner party, which is going against conventions, perhaps, but is certain to get some memos out of its guest at the black-tie fete:

Alberto Gonzales, the former attorney general in the Bush administration, which, as we've all been reading lately, went to some legal lengths to authorize harsh interrogations of detainees in the "war on terror" -- such as waterboarding -- and which, by the graces of the Obama administration, may escape any legal liability for any of that.

The Washington Post's Sleuth suggests that "Gonzo would be a little bashful about showing up at a place that will be jam-packed full of the new guard in the Obama administration and the very Democrats in Congress who drove him from office. But no, he'll be there all right this Saturday night. Gonzales is a confirmed guest of the Houston Chronicle, his old hometown paper.

"The newspaper's Washington bureau chief, Rick Dunham, tells The Sleuth he invited Houston natives Gonzales and Margaret Spellings, the education secretary under President Bush, to be his guests because - why not? - they're from Houston.''

President Obama gets to deliver some stand-up comedy at this dinner, so it will noteworthy to see if there is any humorous take offered on the CIA's interrogations -- Bush once joked about those missing weapons of mass destruction, looking under the table for them, at a dinner like this. If not Obama, surely the hired comedian, Wanda Sykes, might take note of the audience to whom she is playing.

(Photo of Al Gonzales by Chris Graythen / Getty Images.)