The Gonzales Exit

Blogging: It's a timely sport. Meaning if you've spaced your password, you can't be all timely on the Gonzales thing. But some things are better on the second day. Pizza. Kugel. Who the next attorney general will be.

First of all, better late than never. President Bush, who takes loyalty to a high art form (even when it's totally unwarranted) got to put it all out there b/c the Gonzales Goodbye didn't come from his direction. Cough.

Secondly, Paul Clement, who is the current Solicitor General, will be the interim AG. He's a conservative. He's bright as hell. He clerked for Scalia. He's argued cases in lower courts on the Administration's approach to terrorism(1).

Third, from the peanut gallery, the speculation is delicious. Michael Chertoff, the head of Homeland Security? That will be held against him (see Katrina)(2) but actually Chertoff has a credible legal background, and served as United States Circuit Judge for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals(3).

Theodore Olson was the Solicitor General for a while(4), and his wife Barbara was killed on the Pentagon plane on 9/11, which automatically imbues him with a no-shit approach regarding terrorists. He's also legally credible, and every case I ever read involving him was sound. (In a bit of unrelated weirdness, 9/11 is also his birthday. However, I'm glad to report he's now happily remarried, to his fourth wife.)

The other choices are less noteworthy to me, but the interesting choice I saw bandied about yesterday (though not today) was Senator Orrin Hatch (R) of Utah. Extremely conservative guy but also, almost inexplicably, good friends with across-the-aisle Ted Kennedy(5). I can't recall Senator Hatch ever seeming like the Great Bridge of the Diametrically Opposed, and I don't imagine he would be in this role either. I further don't imagine any serious Democrat would take Senator Hatch's candidacy as some kind of appeasement.

I am personally very glad to see Gonzales gone, not because of his bungling of the judges being fired, but because of his involvement in 2002, while working in the Department of Justice, in narrowing the definition of torture(6). I believed and still do believe that anyone so bogged down in technically defining the extent to which pain needs to be present in the life of a detainee before the detainee is allowed to so much as visit with his own human rights has probably long since lost the forest for the trees and thus, he wasn't a suitable candidate to be upholding justice.


Sources, I got your sources right here:
1. http://www.usdoj.gov/osg/aboutosg/paul_d_clementbio.htm
2. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,294911,00.html
3. http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/chertoff-bio.html
4. http://www.usdoj.gov/osg/aboutosg/t_olson_bio.htm
5. http://www.infoplease.com/biography/var/edwardmkennedy.html
6. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48446-2005Jan4.html