Embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says he will not resign.

And, he's about to go on the road.

Starting in the next few days, Mr. Gonzales will be meeting with most of the current United States attorneys as he makes a long-scheduled trip to several cities to promote Justice Department programs.

Sen. Arlen Specter says the subpoena fight could take up to two years to resolve.

Let's not restrict the U.S. Attorney firing scandal to those who got fired. According to the Justice Department's lead prosecutor in the tobacco lawsuit,

Bush administration political appointees repeatedly ordered her to take steps that weakened the government's racketeering case.

Sharon Y. Eubanks said Bush loyalists in Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales's office began micromanaging the team's strategy in the final weeks of the 2005 trial, to the detriment of the government's claim that the industry had conspired to lie to U.S. smokers.

The specifics of her allegations:

Below the Fold.

Henceforth, if you subpoena our clients to appear before a Grand Jury, we’ll make a deal with you. Our clients will answer questions in the secrecy of the Grand Jury room, but there can’t be any court reporters there, or witnesses, and there can only be one or two Grand Jurors, and they can’t be fluent in English. And oh, no oaths. We're sure you'll agree that these conditions are fair, reasonable and respectful.

Fired U.S. Attorney David Iglesias has an op-ed in today's New York Times.

United States attorneys have a long history of being insulated from politics. Although we receive our appointments through the political process (I am a Republican who was recommended by Senator Pete Domenici), we are expected to be apolitical once we are in office. I will never forget John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, telling me during the summer of 2001 that politics should play no role during my tenure. I took that message to heart. Little did I know that I could be fired for not being political.

He goes on to describe the telephone calls from Sen. Peter Domenici and Congresswoman Heather Wilson.

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The LA Times and other news sources have given this list of names circulating around the White House for possible replacements of Alberto Gonzales:

People close to the administration said that any list of possible candidates would include Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff; Larry D. Thompson, the deputy attorney general under John Ashcroft; and Theodore B. Olson, the solicitor general under Ashcroft.

Prediction: It won't be Ted Olson. For the same reasons he will never make it to the Supreme Court. Larry Thompson might not want the job, he's doing great at Pepsico. Even Chertoff must know he hasn't wowed anyone with his tenure at Homeland Security -- think of his Katrina performance. But he was a federal judge and prosecutor before being named to Homeland Security, so he might be easy to convince.

I like Larry Thompson, he's fair and he's been both a defense lawyer and a prosecutor. The criminal defense bar likes him, and that's something when it comes to a prosecutor. I've endorsed him before, and I'd do it again.

But, I wonder, with only 22 months left in his Presidency, will Bush take chance on a non-loyalist Attorney General or someone outside his immediate circle ...or will he find someone from his dad's reign to help bail him out. That's more in keeping with his character and his pattern of appointments. When things get tough, he raids his dad's cabinet.

Conservative publication American Spectator has a new twist on PurgeGate: Alberto Gonzales is being done in by his own employees at the Justice Department.

As another Department of Justice paper dump related to the botched firings of eight U.S. Attorneys takes place on Capitol Hill today, it is becoming increasingly clear that Department of Justice insiders have been using the controversy to perpetrate what some Bush Administration loyalists are calling a "coup." Those activities appear to be occurring in the offices of the Deputy Attorney General and the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys.

Catch this:

The American Spectator has learned that members of McNulty's staff are supporting the possible nomination to one of the vacant U.S. Attorney slots of a former government lawyer who had an affair with a colleague and now resides with not one, but two women in what some in the DAG's office have termed a "tri-sexual" relationship.

"That residential situation would be adjusted if the name was put forward," says someone familiar with the thinking in McNulty's office.

I think Page Six needs to get on this one.

Here are the first 50 pages (pdf) of e-mails released by the Justice Department today pertaining to the firing of U.S. Attorneys.

Seven more batches are available here.

Update: The New York Times provides some preliminary analysis. The Daily Background finds a Randy Cunningham link to Lam's firing.

ABC News on the new documents. See also, ABC News on the Bud Cummins resignation.

TPM Muckraker is seeking reader assistance in pouring over the 3,000 pages of released documents.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald was on the low ranking list, during his tenure over the Plame investigation.

The LA Times reviews the new documents and shows how DOJ tried to limit the fallout.

Joe Lieberman desperately grasps for attention and relevance. After urging Dem primary voters to not vote against him just on "one issue," after insisting on his Dem bona fides, after promising that he would caucus with Dems in his independent run, Joe now says he might switch to the GOP.

Why does he do this? Because he is no longer a Faux Dem, he is just Joe Lieberman, Bush and Cheney's best friend, not a very interesting profile. Not much of an attention grabber.

Glenn Greenwald eviscerates a typical nonsense column by Michael Barone, resident GOP shill at US News & World report. Glenn is his usual trenchant self and I recommend you read his post in its entirety, but I want to focus on something different. Barone writes:

In their assessment of what is going on in the world, they seem to start off with a default assumption that we are in the wrong. . . . If something bad happens, the default assumption is that it's their fault. They always blame America -- or the parts of America they don't like -- first.

I am not sure who "they" are, but if Barone is speaking about people like me, I have certainly blamed Bush and the Republicans First since they launched the most disastrous set of policies this country has ever encountered from its leaders. We blame Bush and the Republicans for the Iraq Debacle and all the debacles, scandals, corruption and abuse of the Constitution that have occurred because it is THEIR FAULT! IT was and is THEIR policies. It was and is their scandals. It was and is THEIR abuses. Who should we blame for that? As usual, Barone is of the no accountability school . Any decent Republican shill would be.

As Sen. Patrick Leahy promises subpoenas to testify will issue Thursday to Karl Rove, Harriet Miers and others, Adam Cohen of the New York Times posits that criminal laws may have been broken.

“I do not believe in this ‘We’ll have a private briefing for you where we’ll tell you everything,’ and they don’t,” Mr. Leahy said on “This Week” on ABC, adding: “I want testimony under oath. I am sick and tired of getting half-truths on this.”

Cohen consulted with Congressional staff and law professor Stephen Gillers and comes up with this list of possible crimes:

• Misrepresentation to Congress: 18 U.S.C. 1505
• Calling Prosecutors: 18 U.S.C. 1512©
• Witness Tampering: 18 U.S.C. 1512(b)
• Firing the Attorneys: 18 U.S.C. 1512©

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The Salt Lake Tribune profiles Kyle Sampson today, and how he got into the Bush Administration (through his law school pal, Elizabeth Cheney, Dick's daughter) and his rise within it.

Update: More Gonzales analysis at Newsweek's Disorder in King George's Court. Gonzales is portrayed as being "truly befuddled."

The Chicago Tribune has some new details about the difficulties Attorney General Alberto Gonzales overcame in his life:

Gonzales' father was arrested for drunken driving five times in 17 years covering much of Gonzales' childhood and adolescence. Pablo Gonzales died in an industrial accident in 1982 when Gonzales was at Harvard Law School.

A younger brother, Rene Gonzales, died under mysterious circumstances in 1980. In 1991, the same year Alberto Gonzales became one of the first Hispanic partners at the white shoe Houston law firm of Vinson & Elkins, his younger sister Theresa pleaded guilty to possession of cocaine with intent to deliver. Nine years later, while Gonzales was on the Texas Supreme Court, his mother and another brother signed over their houses to a bail bondsman to raise bail for Theresa after she was charged with the same offense.

Most of these details did not arise in his Senate confirmation hearings, even though they might reasonably have been thought to affect his views about crime, drug and alcohol policy, and sentencing--all issues overseen or influenced by an attorney general.

What does the omissions of these details mean?

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