In case you haven't heard, President Bush announced the nomination of federal judge Michael Mukasey as his next (and hopefully last) attorney general.

Mukasey was appointed by Ronald Reagan, has a rep as a law and order guy and yet the Dems will probably not oppose him. Why? Because they likely suggested him among others to the White House as being acceptable. Highly unlikely the WH is looking for yet another fight with the Senate and looked for a compromise candidate.

How could Mukasey, a strict law and order guy, a right winger in most things, be a compromise candidate? Well, as a judge in the Jose Padilla case he stood up to the Bush's then AG (that would be Alberto Gonzales) and told them they needed to follow the law in prosecuting people. He was apparently suggested by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and since Schumer would be a key senator in the confirmation process, that is the telling clue.

The fact the WH is avoiding a fight over this nomination is telling as well. They really don't have the forces to take on a unified Dem team but fortunately for them, they don't have to. The national Dems keep backing away from the big fights: defunding the war and/or impeachment because they don't have the votes in the Senate. Maybe they're right but some people think they should try. There's still 16 months of this Administration and so far they have reduced America to being something less than a super power, ravaged the military, the treasury, and can't even clean up after a hurricane. They're so incompetent it boggles the mind but at least they've stopped fighting over the AG. Let's hope this one can restore some professionalism at the Justice Department. It's long overdue.

If you thought that by resigning, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would be putting an end to the relentless scrutiny of his shameful time in office, think again. But the continuing examination of the politicization of the Justice Department -- and justice itself -- as witnessed under Gonzales's guidance comes not from blood-thirsty Democrats eager to peel away still more scalp from the soon-to-be-former AG's cranium. No, this time the inquisitor is the Justice Department itself. From today's Washington Post:

The Justice Department's inspector general indicated yesterday that he is investigating whether departing Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales gave false or misleading testimony to Congress, including whether he lied under oath about warrantless surveillance and the firings of nine U.S. attorneys.

The disclosure by inspector General Glenn A. Fine in a letter to Congress signals an expansion of the department's internal investigations into Gonzales's troubled tenure, probes that were not previously known to be focusssed so sharply on the attorney general and his testimony.

Hundreds of questionnaires have been sent out to former DOJ employees asking about improper questions they were asked during their interviews that seemed designed to ensure that only the most loyal of loyal Bushies were hired. In fact, the Inspector General is looking into a whole lot of questions involving Mr. Gonzales's improper, and potentially illegal, activities.

Loyal Bushies can continue to try and console themselves with the mantra, "U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president!" But the fact remains that Gonzales is in no way out of hot water, whether he has a job, or not.

So it's true: Gonzales is out, and my theory about a trial balloon is a bust as well. Trial balloons usually take a little longer. Ultimately Gonzales is not out because he fired some U.S. attorneys, or anything else he did or did not do in his official capacity. He's out because he got caught lying to senators. You don't do that and live to tell about it. The practical effect is that you have many very angry senators, and some of them are just on your side.

Nancy Pelosi says this about the potential new AG:

The nominee must also pledge to cooperate with ongoing congressional oversight into the conduct of the White House in the politicization of federal law enforcement. Hearings on the nominee will provide Congress with another opportunity to examine the new, flawed FISA law and will aid in our efforts to improve it.

So the president's nominee must promise to cooperate with Democrats on their agenda. I think we have some insight here as to why Bush has resisted a new confirmation battle for so long. It should be interesting, but wait!

The rumors were true. Alberto Gonzales, perhaps the most incompetent, least qualified Attorney General ever, has resigned. Gone the way of Michael Brown and Donald Rumsfeld, the man who had the full confidence of the president, but no one else, has decided to pack it in:

Earlier this month, at a news conference, Mr. Bush dismissed accusations that Mr. Gonzales had stonewalled or misled a congressional inquiry. "We're watching a political exercise," Mr. Bush said. "I mean, this is a man who has testified, he's sent thousands of papers up there. There's no proof of wrong."

As Nixguy mentioned, the speculation is that Michael Chertoff will be nominated as his replacement. Chertoff seems to be the fix-it guy. Cleaning up after one disastrous Federal employee after another. Funny that Gonzales should choose the very week of the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina to say goodbye. It must be a cursed section of the calendar for Bush. And so much for the stick-to-your-guns moxie that Bush seemed to wield for so long. Once again, after the president repeatedly went to bat for one of his troubled underlings, he has abruptly changed course. Go figure.

HT to Volokh, the buzz of the day is that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has run out of luck and time.

The buzz among top Bushies is that beleaguered Attorney General Alberto Gonzales finally plans to depart and will be replaced by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. Why Chertoff? Officials say he's got fans on Capitol Hill, is untouched by the Justice prosecutor scandal, and has more experience than Gonzales did, having served as a federal judge and assistant attorney general.

Of course there's very little to go on, but this smells very much like a trial balloon, a deliberate leak from the White House, so it may be true. The problem of course is that there is only about a year and a half left for the Bush administration, and a lengthy confirmation battle might chew up a lot of that time. If the administration is serious, they will want someone that can be confirmed post-haste.

Or this could all be a big red herring. So far, President Bush has given absolutely no indication that he was open to replacing his attorney general.

I have to take exception to David's post about this morning's Washington Post article, U.S. Attorney Became Target After Rebuffing Justice Dept. Although I loath to defend Alberto Gonzales, this article was designed to elicit the exact reaction that David came out with this morning. He's in good company - the first sentence in the post on the article at MSNBC's First Read blog states "An unbelievable accusation against the Justice Department in today's Washington Post".

I was going to write on this, even before reading David's post, primarily because I thought the article was so misleading. The crux of the story is not that the Justice Department attempted to derail the OxyContin case, but that Justice contacted the U.S. Attorney prosecuting the case, John L. Brownlee, to tell him to slow down and not to settle yet! Brownlee ignored the advice, and settled anyway.

What the article fails to mention (because it would put the whole affair in a different light) is that the settlement prevented the filing of criminal charges against the officials of the company, which was the purpose of the entire FDA/Justice Department investigation. The Brownlee settlement allowed criminals involved in the deaths of over 200 people to walk free. That's reason enough to slow settlement negotiations down, as someone at Justice attempted to do. It is true that as a result of the settlement the defendants were fined a huge amount of money. However, last I checked, choosing to pay a fine was not one of the options that a defendant can choose when he or she is prosecuted for criminally causing the death of someone, especially when the deaths number in the hundreds. Based on that alone, the Justice Department was right to try to slow down Brownlee. And right to fire him.

From today's Washington Post comes yet a further example of why the politicization of the Justice Department and the federal prosecutors who "serve at the pleasure of the president" is such a travesty. We already know that when determining the criteria for which prosecutors the president might fire, Justice Department officials considered factors that included whether or not the prosecutor in question was investigating republicans, or refused to pursue bogus voter-fraud charges in hotly-contested districts. Well, add another revelation to the list:

The night before the government secured a guilty plea from the manufacturer of the addictive painkiller OxyContin, a senior Justice Department official called the U.S. attorney handling the case and, at the behest of an executive for the drugmaker, urged him to slow down, the prosecutor told the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday.

John L. Brownlee, the U.S. attorney in Roanoke, testified that he was home the evening of Oct. 24 when he received the call on his cellphone from Michael J. Elston, then chief of staff to the deputy attorney general and one of the Justice aides involved in the removal of nine U.S. attorneys last year.

Brownlee settled the case anyway. Eight days later, his name appeared on a list compiled by Elston of prosecutors that officials had suggested be fired.

You see, being a "loyal Bushie" also means ignoring criminal behavior of pharmaceutical companies. Never mind the public interest, never mind justice, this administration has an agenda to follow, damn the consequences. All that's really surprising is that the pleasures of the president seem to include Oxy.

OK I tried, I really tried to get through this article at the Washington Post. My goal was to get up to speed about the whole Gonzales/NSA/perjury story. After reading through the end of the article I think I have a vague idea about what's going on, but I can't be sure because I fell asleep halfway through.

• The NSA is doing a lot of secret stuff nobody can talk about.
• McConnell, the White House and the AG are all trying to get their stories straight.
• Some Democrats are talking perjury.

If I, as a politics junkie, think this whole story is a big snoozer, what about the rest of the non-freak population? Trust me, they aren't paying attention at all. Alberto Gonzales who? I won't deny that the outrage on the left is real, or even that there might be good reasons for it.

I'll stipulate for the sake of argument that he perjured himself. Now what? Impeach him? Leaving aside the question as to whether that's even possible, is that the sort of thing the Democrats want to spend their energy on? They have a bunch of budget bills, the rest of their agenda and Iraq. Do the Democrats really want to come to the end of 2007 saying to their supporters, "well we didn't get anything good done, but we did get Bush to replace his AG?"

There are two events today that may bear watching today. One is Sen. Arlen Spector's staff who released a statement saying some developments could come as early as this afternoon.

Specter aides released a statement late Monday that suggested a bombshell to come on Tuesday afternoon. "Given the difficulty of discussing classified matters in public, I think it is preferable to have a letter addressing that question [of Gonzales' veracity] from the administration ... by noon tomorrow, which will be made available to the news media," Specter wrote in the statement. "The administration has committed to producing such a letter."

Between the lines and reporter questions is a hint something is up. I recall Rumsfeld and others stayed on long after many thought they should leave. I'm not sure this Administration can let Gonzo go and if so are planning to put another confidant in place as the AG. Does Karen Hughes have anything better to do? There are not many in the inner circle left are there?

The other news is Rupert Murdoch who owns roughly 20% of our media (including Faux News) has been trying to buy the Wall St. Journal but hasn't succeeded yet. It may come down, not surprisingly, to what he is willing to pay. Now I may disagree with a number of editorials in the WSJ but it does its job representing the corporate community and there are some independent voices there. Is anyone else fed up with the lack of diversity in mainstream media or in having so much owned by five or six extremely wealthy people? I hope the Bancroft members with integrity hold this raid off. This decision could come today as well. What else will happen? Seems every day there's a fresh surprise. What's your guess?

Though evidently there are a few still out there in the blogosphere. In fact, Chris Wallace, and Fox News Sunday put out a call to Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee to come forth and defend the embattled Attorney General, and guess what? In what may be a first in political history, the microphones were silent. It seems that the only GOP guy up to the task was the ever-reticent presidential candidate, New Gingrich, who laid it on the line without much prodding. Watch:

Yes, it seems that everyone except the aforementioned bloggers knows a bogus story-line when one hears it. After watching his outlandish performances before congress, those who would continue to defend Alberto Gonzales show themselves to be the most die-hard partisans.

If you watched Alberto Gonzales's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, you may still be marveling at the fact that our attorney general, the highest ranking law enforcement officer in the country, continued his parade of lies and obfuscation. The revelations about Gonzales's late-night visit to John Ashcroft's hospital bed provided him with a whole new topic to wax ignorant over, resulting in surreal exchanges like the one below:

As to the question of who was lying -- Monica Goodling in her assertion that Alberto Gonzales had improperly coached her own testimony before Congress, or Gonzales by claiming that poor Monica didn't really understand the meaning of their conversation -- the A.G. blamed the episode on hysterical female delusion.

If Gonzales thinks that his troubles will be over as long as he trudges up to Capitol Hill every so often, he is, once again, mistaken. And for Republicans who'd keep him in office in the hopes that this whole episode will blow over and not dampen their chances of re-election, well, that's a shaky wager.

Democrat John Conyers has issued subpoenas for former Bush administration staffers, Harriet Miers and Sara Taylor, but they are still not talking.

The two former aides are now private citizens, and some congressional officials have argued that it is not clear Bush's executive privilege claim covers them even though White House Counsel Fred Fielding told lawyers for Miers and Taylor that the president was directing them not to answer questions or provide any information about the firings.

...

So opens the latest round in the dispute over the administration's firing last winter of eight federal prosecutors. The congressional probe, now in its seventh month, has morphed into a broader standoff over what information the president may keep private and what details Congress is entitled to receive as part of its oversight of the executive branch.

President Bush has the right to deliberate with his staff without those conversations becoming public knowledge. This is pure common sense. Both Miers and Taylor are upholding this principle and are right to do so.

Not to say there isn't a congressional oversight role here, but the least Conyers could do is tell us what the alleged crime is here. And no, firing a U.S. attorney for political or even arbitrary reasons is not a crime.

I see a court fight ahead.

Senator Patrick Leahy was on "Meet the Press" on Sunday, stating that he "might" seek a charge of contempt of Congress against President Bush and/or others for his citing of executive privilege in refusing to answer subpoenas issued by congress regarding the fired US attorneys. Also noted somewhat later in the article I linked to, the administration has offered Leahy and other senior committee members private meetings to discuss the issue with current and former Bush administration officials. As that wouldn't give Leahy and the Democrats the circus atmosphere they are lusting after, he refused the offer. The good senator also entertained us with the following quote, which shows just how far from reality the fight has become:

"The bottom line on the U.S. attorneys investigation is that we have people manipulating law enforcement," he said. "Law enforcement can't be partisan. Law enforcement can't decide, 'Well, we'll arrest this person because they're a Democrat but not this person because they're a Republican,' or the other way around."

I would suggest that Republicans ask Senator Leahy to back up this accusation -- show proof that the administration was planning to have the new U.S. attorneys arbitrarily arrest Democrats. Or only arrest Democrats.

Here is what Rudy Giuliani had to say when asked whether Scooter Libby should be pardoned for the crimes of perjury and obstruction of justice:

I think the sentence was way out of line. I mean, the sentence was grossly excessive in a situation in which at the beginning, the prosecutor knew who the leak was and he knew a crime wasn't committed. I recommended over a thousand pardons to President Reagan when I was associate attorney general. I would see if it fit the criteria for pardon. I'd wait for the appeal. I think what the judge did today argues more in favor of a pardon because this is excessive punishment.

Well, the Supreme Court doesn't seem to agree. Today they issued a ruling in a virtually identical case in which a defendant was found guilty of the same crimes as Libby, and given an even longer sentence. The judge in the case followed sentencing guidelines, and added time, just as in the Libby case, becuase the proven crimes hindered prosecutors from discerning whether the origial ones had been committed.

But for that matter, Guiliani himself doesn't seem to agree with Giuliani. That is, the Giuliani who was once a prosecutor. Back then (1987) perjury certainly was a big deal to Rudy:

As a young prosecutor and later as a U.S. attorney, Giuliani supervised many prosecutions for perjury, including several that flowed from a string of Wall Street insider-trading cases that helped make him a national figure and paved the way for his bid for New York Mayor. Giuliani saw perjury and obstruction as significant enough problems in pursuing white-collar crime that he urged Congress to impose a mandatory prison sentence to brokers who lie to investigators.

So, Rudy, the difference now is what, exactly? Never mind, we already know the answer.

And not only is he still attorney general, Alberto Gonzales is going even further to tighten political control over U.S. attorneys. So says Andrew Zajac in a Chicago Tribune editorial today:

Atty Gen. Alberto Gonzales so far has survived a political crisis over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, a rare potential vote of no-confidence in the Senate and numerous calls for his resignation.

His response? Gonzales recently proposed tightening the leash on the men and women who prosecute federal crimes across the nation.

Gonzales described what he delicately calls "a more vigorous and a little bit more formal process" for annually evaluating prosecutors. What that means, as he explained it, is hauling in every U.S. attorney for a meeting to hear, among other things, politicians' beefs against the prosecutor.

He's kept his position and is going full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes! Chutzpah like this, up to a certain point, one has to admire. It has a certain suicidal foolishness to it which I find refreshing.