GONZALES COMES UNDER MORE HEAVY CRITICISM-- THIS TIME FROM REPUBLICANS WHO ARE A STEP AWAY FROM DEMANDING HE RESIGN

Alberto Gonzales hasn't resigned yet and I haven't heard that anyone in Congress is planning on a bill of impeachment-- yet. Funny, though, the closest anyone has come is Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter when he said Gonzales is to blame for the whole mess and "suggested that Gonzales's status as the nation's leading law enforcement officer might not last through the remainder of President Bush's term, pointedly disputing the attorney general's public rationale for the mass firings. 'One day there will be a new attorney general, maybe sooner rather than later,' Specter said at a committee hearing where a new round of subpoenas to the Justice Department was considered."

And the relatively moderate Specter isn't the only Republican uncomfortable with Gonzales' criminal rampage. Extreme hard right Republicans Jon Kyl (AZ), John Ensign (NV) and Jeff Sessions (AL), who have been willing, even eager, to rubber stamp every single deprecation perpetrated by Cheney and Bush and their whole revolting crew, seem unable to swallow this one. Sessions called the way Gonzales handled the mess "unhealthy," the strongest criticism he has made of the Bush Regime in 6 years. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal Ensign "charged that the Justice Department botched the dismissals of U.S. attorneys and suggested he was misled as to why the Nevada chief federal prosecutor, Daniel Bogden, was removed from office." Like Kyl and Sessions he's trying to pass it off as a kind of bureaucratic mistake instead of a Hitlerite or Stalinist perversion of justice.


And if Republicans feel uncomfortable with the tame Justice Department hearings over this affair, they're going to be in for a real shock when Henry Waxman gets going on the whole Plame scandal a week from tomorrow.

Chairman Henry A. Waxman announced a hearing on whether White House officials followed appropriate procedures for safeguarding the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson. At the hearing, the Committee will receive testimony from Ms. Wilson and other experts regarding the disclosure and internal White House security procedures for protecting her identity from disclosure and responding to the leak after it occurred. The hearing is scheduled for Friday, March 16.

In addition, the Committee today sent a letter to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald commending him for his investigation and requesting a meeting to discuss testimony by Mr. Fitzgerald before the Committee.

And if Waxman isn't enough, Jane just told me she's going back to DC to cover them too!


UPDATE: FOR ALL THE BLUSTER WE'RE HEARING...

I mean, where's the beef? Some of this stuff is just a lot of political positioning, of course. I mean who pays any attention to a duplicitous windbag like Schumer? But when you have someone who takes this stuff seriously, a Pat Leahy, for example, you have to wonder why nothing consequential is happening. Even mild-mannered Dianne "Why Can't We All Just Get Along" Feinsteinn got worked up over this, especially over the whole Carol Lam episode. "I'm a woman and I don't like to see a woman treated this way. I'm not going to see a woman done in like this for political chicanery."

Both Leahy and Specter were especially sensitive that the attorneys' reputations have been damaged by the firings. "They are all tarred with a pretty tough brush by the attorney general's letter," said Leahy. Specter added: "They will never recover their reputations. There will always be a black mark." Well... a black mark from the Bush Regime will be looked at as a gold star in the (very near) future. Meanwhile, though, Leahy and Specter should draw up impeachment papers for Gonzales. That might send the Regime a valuable lesson to live by for the remaining two years.