Gonzales on the rack

Rich is correct. As braindead as the Bush Administration in general and Gonzalez in particular may be, having a complete piece of garbage like Schumer wasting Senate time and resources on this is a much bigger scandal.
And he should be careful. There will come a day sometime in the not too distant future that a Dem president might do much the same thing while a Republican-majority Senate so sits. This is a dangerous and pointless precedent by egomaniac Schumer. he continues to be a whiny embarrassment.

Commission of a legal act (removing an "at will" political appointee) can involve the commission of an illegal act (for example, obstruction of justice). I offer no opinion as to whether that happened here--I'm not in a position to know. But it is false to say that "serves at the President's pleasure" necessarily ends the matter.

I'm surprised by these comments. I'm not watching at the moment, and have no doubt that the Senators are bloviating and pontificating in their usual obnoxious fashion. But if what appears to have happened actually did happen (that is, U.S. Attorneys were fired for not pursuing cases that would have helped the Republicans win elections), then that is very, very serious. And no, that is not typical among previous administrations. Indeed, if Bush (or Rove) knew about this he could be impeached for it. And I'm a Republican, folks. (I know people who work at the DOJ.)

It was a major error for the Bush Administration to allow anyone in the Administration to testify to the Congress about the reasons for the firings.
Nonetheless, Gonzales has demonstrated his incompetence for high office by lying, obfuscating, testifying without proper preparation and doing grave political damage to his boss and his party. There could be some kind of obstruction of justice here. But that possibility does not justify the Congress going on a fishing expedition in the absence of strong evidence that it exists. For better or for worse, federal prosecutors are political appointees and they can legitimately be removed for political reasons (assuming no obstruction of justice).

"Who runs the Justice Dept.?" Well, unless they've changed the Constitution, it sure isn't Schumer and the Congress. Though some of these "oversight" hearings make it sound like they think they run everything.

Gonzales would do his country and his president a favor by resigning. Yesterday would not be soon enough. It pains me to say this, having voted for GWB pretty enthusiastically both times, but there are SO many people in this administration who have been appointed to positions above the level of their ability. And the results have been awful, again and again.

Yep, Eric. It's reminiscent of how poorly Harriet Miers was apparently doing on the murder boards, notwithstanding spending a lot of prep time, before she threw in the towel.

Thank you, Kim. What she said.