The Daily Background

NYT reports today on a meeting of US Attorneys here in Chicago hosted by Pat Fitzgerald. It seems like Gonzales, who was in attendance, got hit pretty hard by his own US Attorneys:

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales endured blunt criticism Tuesday from federal prosecutors who questioned the firings of eight United States attorneys, complained that the dismissals had undermined morale and expressed broader grievances about his leadership
[…]
Several of the prosecutors said the dismissals caused them to wonder about their own standing and distracted their employees, according to one person familiar with the discussions. Others asked Mr. Gonzales about the removal of Daniel C. Bogden, the former United States attorney in Nevada, a respected career prosecutor whose ouster has never been fully explained by the Justice Department.
[…]
In Chicago, some prosecutors accused Mr. Gonzales’s subordinates of operating as if the prosecutors were an obstacle to be side-stepped instead of a resource to be tapped in developing departmental policy, one person said.

The Times also quotes Senator Specter (R-PA), ranking member of the Judiciary Committee saying “I can’t imagine a department being more demoralized with what’s going on there.”

One of the concerns that have been reflected both by Congress and also by some of the US Attorneys who were fired is that the firings, is the effect that the firings could have on future US Attorneys and those currently in office.

The idea is, if there is even the appearance, let alone the presence, of firing decisions based on prosecuting Republicans, then US Attorneys will be afraid to prosecute them in the future. The same goes for prosecuting “voter fraud” cases when the evidence isn’t there to support allegations local Republicans make.

The arguments for Gonzales’ resignation so far have been two-fold. First, wrongdoing. He claims he didn’t do anything wrong, but that his staff made mistakes. If that’s true, the it’s cause for the second reason for his resignation: his gross inability to maintain a reasonable amount of control over what goes on in his office. And this goes hand in hand with the emerging third argument that from this point onward, he cannot possibly be an effective leader of the Department of Justice.

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