ABU GONZALES-- THE NEVER ENDING SOON TO END SAGA

One more time, Karl; who stays and who goes?

The Bush Regime doesn't count Republican Senator Arlen Specter among its most reliable stooges, although he has been a fairly dependable rubber stamp (even more so than Lieberman) for most of their hideous agenda. At one point they threatened to disregard his seniority and not allow him to become Chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Apparently they got him to agree to a certain amount of toein' the line and he was chairman, until the Democrats swept half a dozen Republicans out of the Senate in November-- and Specter and the rest of the Republicans out of their committee chairs. It looks like support for Alberto Gonzales wasn't part of the toein' the line extracted from Snarlin' Arlen. Yesterday he suggested it's time for Gonzales to say goodbye. A failure to do so, he said on Fox News Sunday, would be "no doubt, bad for the Justice Department."

Republicans made their anger at him clear in a blistering hearing over the dismissals on Thursday. In his testimony, Mr. Gonzales cited a faulty memory at least 50 times in responding to questions about the dismissals.

After the hearing, aides to Mr. Gonzales reportedly called the absence of a demand for his resignation from Mr. Specter a “positive barometer.” But Mr. Specter said Sunday that they were misreading him.

“I don’t think they should be celebrating that, because the attorney general’s testimony was very, very damaging to his own credibility,” he said. “Charges are being made that the Department of Justice was the political arm of the White House.”

Mr. Specter said that it was up to President Bush to demand a resignation, but that Mr. Gonzales’s presence “is bad for the Department of Justice.”

“It is harmful,” he said. “There has been a very substantial decrease in morale. There’s no doubt about that.”

In today's Newsweek Michael Isikoff writes that "GOP senators-- hoping for a strong performance-- were visibly pained when Gonzales couldn't remember a crucial Nov. 27, 2006, meeting (noted on his calendar), when he was briefed by his chief of staff about the firing plan. "Senator, I have searched my memory. I have no recollection of the meeting," Gonzales told GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions. The A.G. was even unable to recall a meeting where President Bush passed along complaints about the three U.S. attorneys-- a talk that Bush himself has publicly recalled. (Gonzales said he now "understands" he had such a conversation.) With that performance, Gonzales lost the Hill."

Congressman Doody (R-FL), the third-ranking Republican in the House leadership is just a little twit but when he called for Gonzo to step down Friday he was speaking for the entire GOP House leadership-- the "position that a group of top House GOPers privately delivered to Bush earlier in the month. 'He's done something I didn't think possible. He's lost the confidence of almost all the Republicans in Congress,' said one top GOP strategist who is close to the White House, anonymous when talking about sensitive personnel matters. A big GOP concern: Gonzales's continued presence will make it hard to move measures important to the party's base, like immigration reform, through the judiciary committees, said the strategist."

At this point, though, the entire affair is about petulant Bush's childish sense of ego. "One White House adviser (who asked not to be ID'ed talking about sensitive issues) said the support reflected Bush's own view that a Gonzales resignation would embolden the Dems to go after other targets-- like Karl Rove. 'This is about Bush saying, "Screw you",' said the adviser, conceding that a Gonzales resignation might still be inevitable. The trick, said the adviser, would be to find a graceful exit strategy for Bush's old friend."

One of the fired prosecutors, David Iglesias, said that if this was his case he'd be putting Gonzales aside for now-- since he said he doesn't know anything about anything-- and start some serious investigations into Karl Rove and his White House operation.


UPDATE: EVEN A RIGHTIST HACK LIKE GINGRICH TELLS BUSH TO PULL HIS HEAD OUT OF HIS ASS AND GET RID OF ABU GONZO

Newt Gingrich, a Republican who wants to be president, "chastised Bush on ABC's This Week for letting 'personal loyalty transcend service to the nation' by not forcing Gonzales to step down." Like all but the most narrowly partisan DC gameplayers, he told Bush to get rid of him for the good of America.