Tomorrow, On The Alberto Gonzales Show...

Headline of the week: 'Gonzales says memory of firings hazy '

Yikes! Sounds like Gonzales has a case of the ever-chronic Republican amnesia.

Our upstanding Attorney General wrote an op-ed in this past Sunday's Washington Post, preemptively defending himself before his testimony to the Senate, which will occur tomorrow (it was postponed due to the Virginia Tech shootings).

He laments that the administration's efforts to politicize the Justice Department, use 'voter fraud' charges as a means to disenfranchise minorities, launch a massive cover-up "to identify where, among the 93 U.S. attorneys, changes in leadership might benefit the department" has "become an unintended public controversy". He's the real victim here.

The Attorney General has, of course, been holed up for weeks rehearsing his testimony (badly too, it seems), which shouldn't arouse any suspicion at all.

All this as new reports confirm the substance of the scandal that his critics have suspected from the beginning. The Albuquerque Journal reported on Sunday that-

Former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias was fired after Sen. Pete Domenici, who had been unhappy with Iglesias for some time, made a personal appeal to the White House, the Journal has learned...

...In the spring of 2006, Domenici told Gonzales he wanted Iglesias out...

...At some point after the election last Nov. 6, Domenici called Bush's senior political adviser, Karl Rove, and told him he wanted Iglesias out and asked Rove to take his request directly to the president...

...Iglesias' name first showed up on a Nov. 15 list of federal prosecutors who would be asked to resign. It was not on a similar list prepared in October...

There is also now evidence that Milwaukee U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic, who also at one point refused to pursue bogus voter fraud cases, was originally on the list to be fired. He was ultimately spared, though. Could this be because he did eventually pursue a corruption case against a Democratic state administration (which was later reversed because the evidence was 'beyond thin')? There's a pattern here.

Sen. Specter said he intends to ask Gonzales to explain the firings case-by-case.

And now ABC News reports that revealed emails contradict Gonzales' testimony. OOP.

Will Gonzales survive the week? Common sense says no, but since has this administration operated with common sense? After all, if the President dumps him, where on earth will he find another loyalist at this stage (see the war czar debacle) willing to ignore all the other scandals in the shadows and also pursue his Decider-y constitutional interpretations?? With no obvious fallback AG around, Bush and Gonzales must hang on for dear life. Still not sure how this one turns out.