I Got to Stop Wishin', I Got to Go Fishin'

Congratulations to Mr. Dan Carlson for correctly naming "Wagon Wheel" by The Old Crow Medicine Show as the Sunday Song of the Day. Dan, you should note that I'm still allowing you to receive the immense praise and adulation that comes from being a Song of the Day winner despite your blasphemous remarks against the beautiful game in your comment. I am a benevolent blog operator, but my grace is not without its limits.


I'm sure that all of you know by now that U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales officially resigned earlier this morning after communicating his desire to step down to President Bush this past Friday. I was actually caught off-guard by the resignation and thought that if Gonzales was going to resign, he would have done so at an earlier date. It seemed that as the coverage of the Department of Justice's handling of the firing of the 8 U.S. Attorneys began to subside, Gonzales had somehow decided to stick around until the end of President Bush's second term.


Now, the Gonzales resignation falls very closely to that of another key figure in the Bush administration apparatus, Karl Rove, and will probably cause many to wonder what exactly is ahead in the final year of George W. Bush's presidency. Whether you agree or disagree with the Attorney General's record on wiretaps, the aforementioned firing of 8 U.S. Attorneys, or the formulation of the Bush Administration's position on interrogation of enemy combatants, it seemed that public opinion had reached a critical mass that would not allow Gonzales to retain the top position in the D.O.J. without waging a significant public relations campaign to restore his standing as a leader with broad-based support.


As Gonzales steps down, the inquiry now becomes who will replace him as the chief law enforcement officer in the United States. Current Solicitor General Paul Clement will take over as the Temporary Attorney General until the President selects someone to serve in the remaining 17 months of the Bush presidency.










Clement's name has been floated in the permanent successor talks as well as that of Michael Chertoff, the current Secretary of Homeland Security and the former head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division.

I'm not sure if the President is going to pick Chertoff, Clement, or someone else that I have not mentioned, but I do know this: Whomever steps into the role of Attorney General has a tremendous opportunity to make large-scale policy decisions that will affect the long term future of the United States. It may be easy to dismiss the actions of one person in a behemoth of an organization like the United States Department of Justice, but the person who sits in the chair as the Attorney General has more power than almost anyone else in the federal government. (I know that the economics wonks who read this blog will immediately go into a long-winded explanation of the power that the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, such as Ben Bernanke or Alan Greenspan, wields but I'm sticking to my proverbial guns).

Being a former D.O.J. employee, perhaps I'm a bit biased on this point, but you would probably be shocked at how many ways that the Department of Justice affects your life as an American citizen on a daily basis. Because of that, take a vested interest in the person that President Bush selects to serve as the next Attorney General.

"Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government."--Thomas Jefferson