Via Oreo at Daily Kos, Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) will introduce a resolution before the House Judiciary Committee tomorrow asking that an inquiry be initiated to determine whether there are grounds to impeach Alberto Gonzales.

RESOLUTION

Directing the Committee on the Judiciary to investigate whether Alberto R. Gonzales, Attorney General of the United States, should be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary shall investigate fully whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to impeach Alberto R. Gonzales, Attorney General of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Contrary to Big Tent Democrat who favors Gonzales' impeachment, I don't have a position on it. Generally, I'm inclined against impeachment proceedings as an unnecessary usurption of Congressional time and money that could be better spent elsewhere.

Gonzales is a bigger detriment to the Republicans in 2008 if he remains as Attorney General. He will tarnish Bush's legacy permanently and Republican candidates will face a backlash because of him. If he goes early, voters may get over it by then.

More....

In an interview with Mark Knoller of CBS news that airs today, Vice President Dick Cheney voices support for Alberto Gonzales and says he was truthful with Congress.

In the 13 minute interview, which you can watch here, Cheney also discusses Scooter Libby.

Contrary to Bush who said he accepted the jury's verdict but thought the sentence was excessive, Cheney says Libby's jury got the verdict wrong.

I don't know when the interview was conducted, but I assume it was yesterday or today since Cheney was in the hospital getting his pacemaker battery updated Saturday. I don't have time to watch the interview now, but I wonder if the Knoller asked Cheney if he was the one who sent Gonzales and Card to John Ashcroft's hospital room in March, 2004. A New York Times editorial Sunday said Cheney directed the visit, but no one else seems to have confirmed that.

More....

Christy at Firedogake writes about the numerous U.S. Attorney vacancies around the country and yesterday's New York Times article about them. She posits the vacancies put us at risk. The Times reported:

Among the 93 United States attorneys, who serve as the chief federal prosecutors for their regions, there are 24 vacancies. The White House has announced nominations for only six of those offices, which means that several of the jobs may remain unfilled for the rest of the Bush administration.

The Times quotes senior department officials as saying "the work of the department has been severely disrupted by [Gonzales'] troubles.

I think it's worth noting that a big (if not the biggest)reason for not being able to fill the vacancies is that very few people are going to leave current jobs to take the U.S. Attorney's job when the appointment will expire in less than 16 months if a Democrat is elected. Even if a Republican is elected, new U.S. Attorneys may be appointed.

The job is, after all, a political plum. It's awarded based on recommendations from the district's senators, it almost exclusively goes to a member of the President's party and very often it's based on the person's contributions, including fundraising efforts, to the successful presidential candidate.

As for the U.S. Attorney firing scandal and Gonzales' problems disrupting the work of the Department, I haven't seen it in the Districts I practice in. I don't doubt morale is suffering and I don't know of any Assistant U.S. Attorneys who are happy with the situation, but work goes on in the federal courts, people get sent to jail daily, new cases are being brought, existing cases are being argued and Justice Department guidelines are being followed. In other words, the war on drugs, war on civil liberties and trend towards draconian sentences continues unabated.

I've spoken to AUSA's who are embarrassed and critical of Gonzales, but it's not affecting their work. Every district without an appointed U.S. Attorney has an Acting U.S. Attorney. The vacancies are in name only.

In the NYTimes, TNR's Noam Scheiber writes:

During the 1980s and ’90s, the [DLC] played a vital role in curbing both the perception and the reality of liberal excess inside the Democratic Party, and its efforts paved the way for Mr. Clinton’s ascendance. The council’s medicine worked. The centrist wing of the party won important battles on welfare reform, crime and the budget. By the late ’90s, Americans trusted Democrats to run the economy and keep their neighborhoods safe.

But George W. Bush taught Democrats of all stripes that their differences with one another were minor compared with the differences between them and Republicans. For seven years, Democrats have faced a radical administration that operates in bad faith. Yet there was the Democratic Leadership Council, still arguing that teachers unions endanger the republic.

. . . Today, the council has almost no constituency within the Democratic Party. About every five years, the Pew Research Center conducts a public opinion survey to sort out the country’s major ideological groupings. In 1999, Pew found that liberals and New Democrats each accounted for nearly one-quarter of the Democratic base. By the next survey in 2005, New Democrats had completely disappeared as a group and the liberals had doubled their share of the party. Many moderates, radicalized by President Bush, now define themselves as liberals.

On a variety of issues the council, and not the party’s liberal base, is out of touch with the popular mood. A recent Washington Post poll found that 60 percent of independents, along with 70 percent of Democrats, favor withdrawing from Iraq by next spring.

Precisely. I completely agree with Noam Scheiber here. However, I think Scheiber is wrong to argue that the DLC should just go away. What they should do, in my view, is understand this:

And that is FDR's lesson for Obama. Politics is not a battle for the middle. It is a battle for defining the terms of the political debate. It is a battle to be able to say what is the middle

It is a lesson for Obama AND the DLC. Both should work to help Democrats define our agenda as the middle.

Ed Kilgore on impeachment:

Citing the Clinton precedent, M.J. Rosenberg writes:

"[I]mpeachment is no longer the political nuclear bomb it once was, especially if one knows in advance that conviction and removal from office is unlikely to occur. Accordingly, impeachment proceedings are essentially the best means of getting information to the public which is otherwise unavailable."

I'm glad M.J. is beginning with the premise that actual impeachment and removal of Bush ain't happening, at least based on the current dynamics. I do not share his optimism about impeachment proceedings serving as a "lever" to bring Bush to heel, given everything we know about the man. Nor do I really understand Josh's suggestion that initiating a pre-doomed impeachment effort will somehow serve as a legal precedent reducing the impact of Bush's scofflaw behavior.

So the fundamental question remains whether Democrats want to take up the "I-word" as a political exercise. And other questions quickly follow.

Matt Yglesias responds:

At the end of the day, the argument Ed's making really is an argument from craveness -- it's the argument that Democrats should fear the results of playing with fire, not the argument that there are no crimes in this neighborhood.

It amazes me that Matt, like Josh Marshall, actually do not want to think about taking meaningful and effective steps to actually check abuses by the Bush Administration. [Ed Kilgore does consider them.]They seem to assume it is impeachment or nothing. This is not craven. It is shockingly ignorant. Ever heard of the Spending Power? Inherent contempt? Apparently not.

I about the 50 State Strategy before. Now, The Nation delivers a field report from North Carolina on how it is doing:

Suddenly, though, things actually are running, as Johnston notes after the meeting commences. "The county has twenty-two precincts," he informs the folks. "And I'm proud to announce that every one of them is organized as of just the other day." It might sound dull as dirt, but this is the kind of meticulous organizing--and pride taken in it--that has long been key to GOP dominance in places like Wilkes. The fifty-state strategy kicked off in 2005 by that other Yankee, DNC chair Howard Dean, has begun to level the playing field by putting field organizers, media directors and fundraisers into both "red" and "blue" states to stimulate grassroots organizing and year-round party-building.

Of course, it's not the national strategy alone that's bringing record numbers out to county conventions, precinct parties and Jefferson-Jackson Day dinners. The main event this morning is going to be a heaping helping of the other ingredients in the Democratic resurrection across so-called red America--fury and frustration.

"Good morning everyone!" comes the booming drawl of Seth Chapman, the longtime clerk of court in neighboring Alexander County who's pondering a 2008 challenge to the archconservative Republican Congresswoman from these parts, Virginia Foxx. "Isn't this something--in Wilkes County of all places! I'll tell you what, I've been over here before when there was maybe six of us. This is great. How on fire the Democratic Party must be in Wilkes County--and rightfully so. You have suffered for centuries!"

Good stuff. Read the whole article.

The Washington Post reports that President Bush is the most unpopular president "in the history of modern polling" with the exception of Richard Nixon.

Bush's disapproval rating is now at 65%. Nixon's, 4 days before his resignation, was 66%.

The historic depth of Bush's public standing has whipsawed his White House, sapped his clout, drained his advisers, encouraged his enemies and jeopardized his legacy. Around the White House, aides make gallows-humor jokes about how they can alienate their remaining supporters -- at least those aides not heading for the door. Outside the White House, many former aides privately express anger and bitterness at their erstwhile colleagues, Bush and the fate of his presidency.

As for his plans for the rest of his term:

In a credibility contest between James Comey, the former number 2 in the Justice Department who earned a reputation as a tough-minded but honest prosecutor, and Alberto Gonzales, there's no contest at all. When Gonzales, during today's Senate testimony, contradicted Comey's earlier testimony about Gonzales' visit to a hospitalized John Ashcroft, Gonzales' testimony was greeted -- at least by some senators, including Republican Arlen Specter -- with the scorn it deserved.

Mr. Specter signaled that he did not accept Mr. Gonzales’s explanation about the hospital incident. “What credibility is left for you?” the senator asked at one point.

Mr. Specter has accused Mr. Gonzales before of dodging questions, and he did so again today. At one point, the senator said, “I see it’s hopeless.” At another point, he said acidly, “Let’s see if somewhere, somehow we can find a question that you’ll answer.”

The challenge is not just to find a question that Gonzales is willing to answer, but one he's willing to answer truthfully.

(Update: Firedoglake is live-blogging the hearing -- Part 1 and 2 so far.)

Attorney General Gonzales, scheduled to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, says in his prepared testimony that he has no intention of resigning.

"I could walk away, or I could devote my time, effort and energy to fix the problems," Gonzales said.

"Since I have never been one to quit, I decided that the best course of action was to remain here and fix the problems. That is exactly what I am doing."

More quotes from his statement are here. Why should he get the opportunity to fix problems he either created or negligently allowed to occur on his watch?

As to the topics he'll be quizzed about, TPMuckraker lists these:

From Glenn Greenwald. Irony writ large:

This week's issue of The Weekly Standard features a cover story by Hugh Hewitt blogger Dean Barnett. Entitled "The 9/11 Generation," it argues that America's current youthful generation is courageous and noble because it has answered the call of military service, in contrast to the cowardly Vietnam era baby boomers who chose protest instead. . . . The crux of Barnett's homage to what he calls the "9/11 Generation" is expressed as follows:

In the 1960s, history called the Baby Boomers. They didn't answer the phone.

To begin with, while Barnett contrasts two significant groups of the Vietnam era -- those who bravely volunteered for combat and/or who were drafted (Jim Webb and John McCain and Chuck Hagel and John Kerry) and those who protested the war -- he revealingly whitewashes from history the other major group, the most ignoble one, the one which happens to include virtually all of the individuals who lead Barnett's political movement: namely, those who claimed to support the war but did everything possible to evade military service, sending their fellow citizens off to die instead in a war they urged.

(Emphasis supplied.) I dunno. Barnett may have wanted to not slam them but the retort is so obvious that one wonders how he could not anticipate it.

Via recontext, this SFChronicle article has Speaker Pelosi's thoughts on contempt of Congress, impeachment and ending the Iraq Debacle:

Congress this week will take the next step to force the Bush administration to hand over information about the dismissal of U.S. attorneys and the politicization of the Justice Department, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Saturday. . . . Pelosi spokesman, Brendan Daly, said . . . it would be former White House counsel Harriet Miers, who defied a House Judiciary Committee subpoena to appear. . . . Pelosi also reiterated Saturday that she would not engage in what would perhaps be the biggest confrontation possible with the White House -- seeking the impeachment of Bush over the Iraq war. . . . "Look, it's hard enough for us to end the war. I don't know how we would be successful in impeaching the president," Pelosi said.

Expect the howls to be deafening from impeachik quarters. I'll be howling too if Pelosi does not acknowledge the Congressional power of the purse to end the war and the power of the Congress to use inherent contempt to enforce its subpoenas.

If Sen. Russ Feingold thinks this will placate impeachniks, I think he is in for a rude awakening:

As you know, over a year ago I introduced a resolution to censure the President for his illegal wiretapping program, and for the way he misled Congress and the public before and after the program’s disclosure about whether his administration was following the law. I appreciated the strong support I got from all of you for that effort. You really helped galvanize support for that push for accountability, and encouraged people all over the country to recognize how damaging the President's actions were to our basic freedoms. So, as I announced a little while ago on Meet the Press, I plan to introduce two censure resolutions in the Senate in the coming weeks. These will be broad resolutions, one of which will address the war in Iraq, including the administration's efforts to mislead the nation into, and during, the war, mismanagement of the war, and its attempts to justify this Iraq mistake by distorting the situation on the ground in Iraq. The other condemns the administration's abuse of the rule of law. Because, of all this administration's outrageous misconduct, those are truly the worst of the worst.

For the record, I supported censure of the President when Feingold first proposed it in January 2006.