Gonzales has done things that even Ashcroft thought were beyond the pale.

I think if you think just of torture and habeas, Gonzo has been much worse than Ashcroft.

The basic point is Gonzo did what he was told.

I certainly agree that no confirmation of an AG should take place unless the appointee has real bipartisan credentials. The Resident won't do this, for obvious reasons, so Democrats will have to continue to hammer at DOJ politically.

-keep asking goner questions about rove, bush, and others who had a hand in this. it's one more step down the path to impeachment

-keep demoralizing republicans, and convince the moderates that it's time to switch parties

-keep the meme of 'bush scandals' in the mainstream, softening resistance to impeachment

-give the democrats a chance to look righteous, united, serious, etc., further contrasting them with the scandal ridden republicans and making things better for our side in 08

who knows what horrors lie uncovered in the emails that this will force out? we already know about fake vote 'fraud,' i bet there are real, juicy crimes discussed in some of them. again, more evidence for a case for double impeachment, and president pelosi.

david swanson, posting in tomdispatch, offers this bleak assessment, which seems to parallel your own, jeralyn...

How to hold the executive branch to account? The current dilemma seems like a real mystery, something our Constitution just does not provide a solution for. Even if we could get rid of Gonzales, who would replace him? Who, appointed by George Bush and Dick Cheney, would obey and enforce the law? The answer is simple enough: Nobody.

If Bush puts in another crony, then we'll go after that one. And the next one. And the next one.

You can't expect a conservative do govern as a liberal nor a liberal to govern as a conservative.

What you can do is stop whining about things that will pass in a few short years and help poor and needy people.

Just for the record: I work with non-profit agencies to house low income people as well as families with needy children. It doesn't matter if it's Bush, Clinton, or anyone else in power.

Remember, FDR imprisoned 120,000 US citizens for no reason than the color of their skin and their ethnic origin, tried to pack the supreme court, ignored presidential precedent by running four times, and yet the country survived (and even flourished).

The point is, as TL says, that they're prosecutors and that's what they do.

So, be careful what you wish for - you might get it.  Said another way, can you imagine the following scenario:

Gonzo goes.
Bushie, seeing McCain's numbers and sanity cratering, decides to shift his support elsewhere.
To give him a leg up on winning next year, Bushie decides to get a proven crime-fighter for the job and nominates (or even recess appoints) Rudy Giuliani to the job.

Right now, Gonzo's a bleeding wound on the admin.  The longer he stays, the more they bleed.  The most generous thing anyone can do to the Admin is to give them a fresh start with a new AG, which is why stone Rethugs like Coburn, Huckleberry Graham, Sessions and Specter were calling (directly or indirectly) for Gonzo to go.  Their calls for Gonzo to go were deeply loyal to the Rethug party because they know well enough that what I've said in this paragraph is true/accurate.

That Gonzo's inept is a boon to liberty-loving people everywhere - he's too inept to do anything but carry Bushie's water and protect him (which was the whole point of his testimony, anyway).  Someone with a brain and some competence could do serious, irreparable damage to the country in his job, even in the few months remaining on this Admin's term.

yet some have come forward and made efforts to come clean.

orrin hatch is so in the thick of it. even before the valerie plame scandal, i remember watching c-span and seeing orrin hatch on the floor of the senate bragging about how the thing that he likes most about having his job as senator, is being able to use his position to get back at all those people that speak badly of him.

similarly, he has bragged of enjoying reading raw fbi files on people. mentions of hatch on the web, re the current doj scandal, have his name repeatedly coming in reference to having business in the vice president's office, etc.

elsewhere, this morning, microsoft tried hedging their bets, (they are positioned as big players in the escalating war-on-sex), playing both sides against the middle. they offered to sell to kids in poor countries, discount software. but within hours of the hearing ending, msnbc was back to its "predator" propaganda programming, spanning literally hours.

i remember in the run-up to the hysteria of the constant hatch "protect acts", ad infinitum, that the media was practically 24/7 on the propaganda-mill spewing out lies, mythical nunmbers, and non-stop fear. the air-time lasted for months and months and months of virtually non-stop propaganda. the effect was the conditioning of people into hysteria in the run-up to their draconian laws. the resulting crusade represented billions and billions of dollars in air-time. how does one even begin to counter that dose of programmed-conditioning?

they were nearly silent on the topic today. that was a huge clue. they broke many laws to get those laws in place. surely all this will come out in a matter of time.

dianne feinstein used to be in bed with orrin hatch on this topic. perhaps the carol lam firing by these people helped her to distance herself from hatch. or perhaps it was because of her disgrace from recently being labeled a war profiteer through abusing her office. but she redeemed herself somewhat in the recent hearing.

the wikipedia article on carol lam quotes orrin hatch as saying, "it's amazing to me she wasn't fired earlier ..."

gonzales assured all at the hearing that prosecutions will go forward. it is difficult to believe that hatch is not significantly behind this. he taunted the ag about their meetings together at the white house. the mormon church makes it no secret that they hope to populate government with enough of their members to outlaw all forms of pornography. yet there is some resistance to the mormons, recently.

That might be a god send.  If Congress can finally grow some huevos, impeaching Gonzales opens the door to impeachment up the chain.  I mean, the barrier will have been broken and Congress might be less apprehensive about using impeachment as a means of dealing with an administration of derelicts & criminals.

Sure, maybe it's a distraction, but there are a lot of commitees, lots of investigations needed.