Gonzales on the rack

I'm listening to Alberto Gonzales's Senate testimony live, and boy, is he ever getting roasted. He's in deep, deep trouble. He's being evasive, he's shuffling blame off to his staffers, and he's demonstrating that he was really disengaged from running his office. He comes across as having been a rubber stamp for whatever the political operation of the White House wanted. When asked directly why he fired David Iglesias, Gonzales hemmed and hawed over the answer, but then said something very revealing: that Iglesias had "lost the confidence" of Republican Sen. Pete Domenici.

Excuse me, but who runs the Justice Department, the Attorney General or a Republican senator from New Mexico?

Sen. Schumer pointed out in the beginning that he was not going to accept "these US Attorneys serve at the president's pleasure" as a statement that ends the matter. It's true, as far as it goes, said Schumer, but if the president decided to fire every US Attorney with an IQ over 120, that wouldn't make the decision correct or defensible, and certainly doesn't make it beyond question or review. This might come as news to some, but the President of the United States is the nation's chief executive officer, not the Vicar of Christ.

Gonzales will be gone by this time next week.