Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned this morning. He gave no definite reason for his resignation, but that is in keeping with his standard operating practice, which is to act without providing justification for anything.
I am sure cheers are coming from every corner of the liberal world, but you won't hear it from me. I am disappointed that Gonzales is gone. Gonzales was the focus of much hatred in this country, and he was the one person I thought the emasculated Congress might actually impeach. My hope was the Congress would impeach Gonzales, and that in the impeachment proceedings useful information would come out. Gonzales was so godawful that he was the one person a majority of Republicans would vote to remove from office.
My next hope was that, once emboldened with the Gonzales impeachment, Congress might take aim at Cheney. According to polls, the majority of Americans think Cheney should be impeached, so this would not be a leap.
My opinion is that we need a showdown in this country. I watched Sen. John Warner of Virginia discussing the Iraq War on "Meet the Press" yesterday, and while I sensed that Warner is frustrated with developments in Iraq, I was frustrated to see the Warner was not ready to publicly oppose the President. It was all "let's have faith in the process" stuff.
The only process stuff I want to see is impeachment hearings. Congress needs to confront the President right here and right now and make him understand that he is not Dictator-in-Chief.
I worry that this resignation will diffuse some of the anger and buy Mr. Bush some time. In fact, I am certain this is why Gonzales hung on so long. The Bushes calculated that if they waited long enough to cut Gonzales loose, they could temporarily delay impeachment talk by allowing the Gonzales side show to absorb all the heat. If Gonzales held on long enough, by the time he resigned there wouldn't be enough time left on the clock for impeachment hearings to play out. The President is no longer counting on resurrecting his popularity. He is wasting time, our time, until the clock runs out and he can write pardons for all his friends (and maybe for himself) and skip out of town.
(Here's a cynical scenario for you: Bush waits until the last day of his presidency, then issues pardons to all of his cronies in the White House. Then, at 5 minutes to inauguration, he resigns, Cheney takes over, and pardons Bush. Unlikely, but possible.)
The rumor is that Gonzales will be replaced with Michael Chertoff. I have no end of expletives for this choice. Chertoff was in charge of the Katrina rescue effort. When Katrina landed, Chertoff was in Atlanta at a meeting on the influenza epidemic. Chertoff was ignorant about what was happening until the third day after the storm, when he checked his email and saw requests that he get further involved. This idiot is GW Bush's idea of the best candidate to be Attorney General.
Nice. Bush should be impeached just for thinking that.