Alberto Gonzales: Worst Attorney General Ever?

Shorter Senate hearing: Alberto Gonzales is a moron; will remain Attorney General anyway.

Okay, so now here's the longer account (I watched most of it via C-SPAN online)...

The day started out ominously enough for ol' Abu Gonzo when Sen. Specter referred to today's testimony as Gonzales' "reconfirmation" hearing. Amazingly enough-- just to show how alone he is on this issue-- the most succint summary of his pathetic showing comes from National Review's Byron York-

"It has been a disastrous morning for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. The major problem with his testimony is that Gonzales maintains, in essence, that he doesn’t know why he fired at least some of the eight dismissed U.S. attorneys. When, under questioning by Republican Sen. Sam Brownback, Gonzales listed the reasons for each firing, it was clear that in a number of cases, he had reconstructed the reason for the dismissal after the fact. He didn’t know why he fired them at the time, other than the action was recommended by senior Justice Department staff.

Later, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham returned to the subject. 'Mr. Attorney General, most of this is a stretch,' Graham told Gonzales. 'I think most of them [the U.S. attorneys] had personality disagreements with the White House, and you made up reasons to fire them.' Gonzales disagreed but had nothing to support his position. Throughout the morning, Gonzales insisted that he is the man in charge of the Justice Department, and accepted responsibility for the firings, but his testimony suggests he had little idea what was going on."

What a great Attorney General! It's like a braindead mix of John Mitchell and John Ashcroft.

As expected, the best internet coverage of the hearing is from the gang at Talking Points Memo. Via their TPM Muckraker site, you can see these highlights... AG Gonzales admitting to Sen. Feinstein that their previous performance-based excuses for the firings was pretty much bull; Sen. Feingold catches the AG in a contradiction when he stated he was sure the firings weren't for inappropriate reasons after he had stated he didn't know the reasons for the firings; Sen. Schumer rips into Gonzales about why San Diego attorney Carol Lam was fired and who exactly is running the DoJ; Sen. Whitehouse confronts Gonzales about the 'low bar' he set in defending the firings; and finally Sen. Coburn tells him that "the best way to put this behind us is your resignation".

Still unclear if Gonzales can survive this, but his masters in the White House certainly will.

Finally, on the substance that fueled this story, McClatchy Newspapers has a must-read story on the Bush administration's efforts to use claims of 'voter fraud' in key battleground states to push for investigations and laws that would have the unintended consequence of restricting low-income and minority voters. This is to the U.S. Attorney purge what Nixon's post-Pentagon Papers spying/political sabotage obsession was to Watergate.

Sen. Cardin, though, explained to Gonzales today what voter fraud really looks like.

[UPDATE: Video of an MSNBC summary report on today's events.]