This may be the week that ends Alberto Gonzales' tenure as U.S. Attorney General. That's what Senator Arlen Specter believes. On CBS' Face the Nation, Sen. Specter (R-Pennsylvania) said he thought Gonzales would avoid the black mark of having a Senate "no confidence" vote.
Specter said, "Votes of no confidence are very rare. Historically, that is something which Attorney General Gonzales would like to avoid. I think that if and when he sees that coming, he would prefer to avoid that kind of a historical black mark."
And that is just what Democrats in the Senate are planning. Senators Schumer (D-New York) and Feinstein (D-California) are calling for a "no confidence" vote on Gonzales as early as this week. It would be a nonbinging resolution, but it would put even more pressure on Gonzales who has to work with the Senate (and it would look bad in the history books, as Specter says).
Of course, Bush says that Gonzales still has his full confidence and support, even after his pitiful appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee. During that appearance, he told the Senators over 170 times that he "could not recall" incidents. I don't think he could recall anything but his name that day. If nothing else, he should resign for "medical" reasons - his total lack of a functioning memory.
I'm not sure one of Bush's loyalists could do anything bad enough to get Bush to ask for his resignation, but a majority of the Senate seems to have had enough of Gonzales. When a "no confidence" vote is taken, it looks like enough Republicans will join the Democrats to get the resolution passed.
His participation in the unjust and purely political firing of several U.S. Attorneys was bad enough, but last week we learned just how low Gonzales is willing to stoop for his master, George Bush. We now know he was willing to go to the hospital to try and pressure a seriously-ill John Ashcroft into signing off on Bush's unconstitutional surveillance plan (and you know the plan had to be bad if even Ashcroft thought it was unconstitutional).
I hope the Senate proceeds with the "no confidence" vote and anything else they could do to get Gonzales to resign. He is an embarrassment to the Department of Justice, the state of Texas, and to our nation as a whole.
The cartoon above was by Mike Keefe in the 5/18/07 Denver Post.
