Gonzales; Impeachment

The senate can censure Alberto Gonzales every day between now and January 20, 2009, if they want to. It will not make any difference. Short of impeaching him, there is nothing the congress can do to get rid of Gonzales. He will not resign. Bush will not fire him. Bush needs Gonzales exactly where he is because he knows that the days of rubberstamp confirmation hearings are over, and that he will not win confirmation of another lackey.

This is Bush's dilemma. As long as Gonzales remains attorney general, he remains the center of the U.S. Attorney firings scandal. No sane, intellectually honest person will claim to believe that Gonzales was acting without direction from the White House. As long as Gonzales remains at the Justice Department, the story will not die. This means that Bush has little choice but to spend the rest of his presidency watching this scandal unfold, and getting closer and closer to him.

Karl Rove will go before Gonzales goes. Rove's scalp is the only thing that could conceivably get the heat off of Gonzales and Bush. In fact, it would not surprise me if, at some point in the next few months, Rove cops to some non-criminal form of culpability in the scandal, announces that he is resigning to spend more time with his best friend Rhett Hard, and accepts a teaching job as George B. Cortelyou Endowed Chair and Professor of Political Science at Regent University. At this stage of the game, Bush can afford to lose Rove much more than he can afford to have an independent attorney general who is committed to the rule of law.