There should be a no confidence vote by the Senate on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales today. Here, the New York Times pulls no punches…if you’re a Senator and you care about the Justice System of this country you should vote “no confidence” regardless if you’re a Republican or Democrat. I couldn’t agree more. It is apparent that Bush will continue to stand by his man, but what kind of man would Gonzales be, if the vote goes badly against him, and he stayed? He is, as the Times says, a member of “hecka of job Brownie” club. If he stays, he has no honor or pride as a man, that he’d be willing to walk the halls of Washington as a tarnised and disrespected AG. He should go quietly. And what does it say about a President, who would stand by an AG that the U.S. Senate and 68% of the American public have no confidence in, not much. But what’s new. If he stays, then impeach.

A Test of the Senate

The Senate has scheduled a no-confidence vote today on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. No one who has followed the news needs to be told why it is necessary. Mr. Gonzales is the Michael Brown of the Justice Department, smilingly presiding over incompetence, chaos and malfeasance, while President Bush insists that he is doing a heck of a job. Today’s vote should get the support not only of Democrats, but of every Republican senator concerned about the American justice system.

The list of Mr. Gonzales’s misdeeds is long and serious. The Justice Department has enormous power to put people in jail, destroy reputations and affect the outcomes of elections. It must enforce the law impartially, but Mr. Gonzales has allowed political partisanship to drive his department.

…

James Comey, a respected former deputy attorney general, testified that if prosecutors have been hired based on politics under Mr. Gonzales, “I don’t know that there’s any window you can go to to get the department’s reputation back.” A strong majority of the Senate voting no confidence in Mr. Gonzales is an important place to start.