When Alberto Gonzales was nominated for Attorney General, some hispanic groups swallowed their doubts about his political history and supported him because he was a Latino.

Some of those groups are now expressing buyer's remorse.

"I have to say we were in error when we supported him to begin with," said Brent Wilkes, executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens. Gonzales, Wilkes said, has not aggressively pursued hate crimes and cases of police profiling of Hispanics. "We hoped for better. Instead it looks like he's done the bidding of the White House."

Janet Murguia, president and chief executive of the National Council of La Raza, the nation's largest Hispanic rights group, called Gonzales "a follower, not a leader."

Count me among those who never understood their support for Gonzales in the first place.

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Poor, poor Wolfie. He didn't deserve to lose his job at the World Bank. But for the big, bad media, it never would have happened.

The only good news is that Bill Frist has taken himself out of the running for his replacement.

Democrats followed through today with plans to ask for a no-confidence vote on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

"It is the sense of the Senate that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales no longer holds the confidence of the Senate and of the American people," it reads. Chiefly sponsored by Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California, the measure contains no preamble setting out the reasons behind the resolution, an omission made in hopes of drawing more votes.

The vote is scheduled for mid-June.

Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter Mary and her partner Heather Poe are the proud parents of Samuel David Cheney.

The White House sent out an announcement. Think Progress reports:

Under Virginia law, Mary’s partner of 15 years, Heather Poe, “will have no legal relationship with her child. She can’t adopt as a second parent. She won’t have her name on the birth certificate.” President Bush will still not say whether or not he supports gay adoption. 

Today is the day Monica Goodling testifies with immunity before the House Judiciary Committee on the U.S. Attorney firings.

Will she provide further ammunition for those hoping for an Alberto Gonzales' resignation? Or will she plead love of country?

I think it's the latter and she'll be defensive about the firing plan, trying to cast it in the best possible light.

The problem is, there may be no more light at the end of this tunnel.

Senator Arlen Specter predicts Alberto Gonzales will resign as Attorney General before the "no confidence" vote.

The New York Times in an editorial today explains why the scandal matters.

One question, though. I reported here in February, via the Washington Post, that Tim Griffin, the acting U.S. Attorney for Arkansas, named to replace Bud Griffin, said he would decline the permanent appointment. So why does the Times say:

As a result of the purge, Tim Griffin, a Republican operative and Karl Rove protégé, was installed as the top federal prosecutor in eastern Arkansas. Rachel Paulose, a 33-year-old Republican activist with thin prosecutorial experience, was assigned to Minnesota. If either indicted a prominent Democrat tomorrow, everyone would believe it was a political hit.

Griffin appears to be a lame duck.

As for Paulose, the stated problems with her are her management style, probably caused by her relative youth as opposed to inexperience. To be fair, many U.S. Attorneys don't have prosecutorial experience as the job is a political plum. They aren't appointed because they have crackerjack conviction rates. They are appointed because they've been recommended to their state's senators, usually as a result of political clout or efforts.

The issue is that once installed in the job, they are supposed to be apolitical in the way they mete out justice. So I think the Times' analogy is off in that respect.

The Washington Post re-invents former Attorney General John Ashcroft, casting him as a protector of civil liberties in comparison to Alberto Gonzales.

Who are they kidding? John Ashcroft may have had a moment on his hospital sick bed in which he balked at re-authorizing the warrantless NSA surveillance program, and he may have expressed reservations about indefinite detentions at Guantanamo, but he was just as abominable as an Attorney General, and in my opinion, more so than Alberto Gonzales.

From his push on the Patriot Act, to his initiating warrantless monitoring of attorney-client conversations, to his many failed terrorism cases, his connection to Abu Ghraib, his insistence on prosecuting medical marijuana cases even in states that had legalized it, his attempt to keep tabs on federal judges, his belief that the undocumented could be held indefinitely and most spectacularly, his crusade to increase the use of the death penalty in federal cases, over the objections of his own prosectors and a federal judge, he should not be re-evaluated for his one moment of lucidity.

He was the worst Attorney General ever.

A blast from the past: The criticisms of Senators at his confirmation hearings.

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The New York Times has an editorial today, "Their Master's Voice" about Bush's loyalty to his yes-men.

It’s a familiar pattern: Mr. Bush sticks by his most trusted aides no matter how evident it is — even to the Republican Congressional chorus — that they are guilty of incompetence, bad judgment, malfeasance or all three. (George Tenet, the director of central intelligence; Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; and the Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers spring to mind.)

And, of course, Alberto Gonzales.

Colorado Senator Ken Salazar has joined the roster of Senators urging Alberto Gonzales to resign.

Salazar, D-Denver, has long been considered one of Gonzales' few Democratic allies in Congress, and until today he had declined to join many fellow Democrats and handful of Republicans who have been calling for Gonzales to step down in the wake of a controversy over the firing of federal prosecutors last year.

In a press conference in Denver, Salazar said he has become concerned about a "politicization" of the Department of Justice. He said he spoke to Gonzales and urged him to resign, saying it was "time for the Department of Justice to get a fresh start."

Salazar is hardly a liberal Democrat. He's not only centrist, but a well known compromiser who values bi-partisanship.

I'm beginning to think Gonzales may actually resign. If it wasn't likely, I don't think Salazar would have taken a lead role in this.

Then again, perhaps Salazar, formerly the Attorney General of Colorado, just feels particularly strongly about the job.

The number of Republicans calling for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales rose to 5 today....and Democrats are calling for a "no confidence" vote.

Democrats proposed two versions of a nonbinding resolution expressing what senators of both parties have said for weeks: that Gonzales has become too weakened to run the Justice Department.

White House response:

"A 'no-confidence' vote is nothing more than a meaningless political act, not that that's stopped them before," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said. "The attorney general has the full confidence of the president."

Kelly O'Donnell asked Bush at a press conference today if he sent Gonzales to Ashcroft's hospital room to sign off on the extension of the warrantless NSA wiretapping program. Bush refused to answer. Instead, he said the program was and is necessary.

Update: New York Times article on the resolution here.

CNN reports. I'll look for a story with more details.

NYTimes says:

Breaking News 6:12 PM ET: Paul Wolfowitz to Resign as President of the World Bank as of June 30, Bank Official Says.

Update (TL): ABC News has more.

An internal panel tasked with investigating the lucrative pay and promotion package Wolfowitz arranged in 2005 for girlfriend Shaha Riza found him guilty of breaking bank rules.

The committee also found that he tried to hide the salary and promotion package from top ethics and legal officials within the bank. The report added that there is a "crisis in the leadership" at the World Bank. Wolfowitz is the first World Bank president to ever leave the bank under a cloud of scandal.

Wolfowitz is said to be angry and upset.

Via Atrios, Al Gore's new book takes us all to task:

A large and growing number of Americans are asking out loud: "What has happened to our country?" People are trying to figure out what has gone wrong in our democracy, and how we can fix it. . . . It is too easy—and too partisan—to simply place the blame on the policies of President George W. Bush. We are all responsible for the decisions our country makes. We have a Congress. We have an independent judiciary. We have checks and balances. We are a nation of laws. We have free speech. We have a free press. Have they all failed us? Why has America's public discourse become less focused and clear, less reasoned? Faith in the power of reason—the belief that free citizens can govern themselves wisely and fairly by resorting to logical debate on the basis of the best evidence available, instead of raw power—remains the central premise of American democracy. This premise is now under assault.

As is apparent, I spend a great deal of time writing about ending the Iraq Debacle. Particularly on ending it by not funding it after a date certain. To me it is easy to decry Republican disconnect from reality. But where is the condemnation of Democratic disconnect from the reality of the Constitutional mandate to the Congress to exercise its Spending Power? We are all to blame now. From those of us who always opposed the war, like Barack Obama, to those who learned what a mistake the Iraq Debacle was after supporting it, like Tom Friedman. The truth is that too few are accepting that Bush will never end the war and that the Democratic Congress must exercise its Constitutional power and end it - by not funding it.