Hey- if you can't see how more phoney voter fraud investigations would help the republican party, er, I mean, the American People, then you must work for Al Queda or someting. It's all obvious.

We can surely assume that Gonzales's oped was carefully drafted and vetted, yet he still said the following:

During those conversations, to my knowledge, I did not make decisions about who should or should not be asked to resign.

So here's the attorney general of the United States (1) unaware of whether he made a decision; and (2) admitting that he allowed -- or at least thinks he allowed -- someone else to decide whether to fire United States attorneys who had been appointed by the president and confirmed by the senate.

The problem with Gonzales is that by not owning up to the fact from the outset that politics was the sole reason for terminating the U.S. Attorneys, he created an issue for the opportunistic Democrats. Thus, Gonzales not only demonstrates poor leadership, but poor decision making , which render him infit to continue serving as Attorney General of the United States.

Exactly.

If Gonzales admitted from the start that the reason some US Attorneys were teriminated was because they were investigating White House allies, or refusing to investigate innocent Democrats, I would assure you that he would be in even more trouble than he is in now.

Mr. Lubet--

If you read the interview with former DOJ attorney Metcalf linked to by Jonathan Adler's post lower down on VC, Gonzalez's amazing non-knowledge is explained by the consensus decision-making model Metcalf describes:

"But the process of agency functioning, however, became dramatically different almost immediately after Gonzales arrived. No longer was emphasis placed on accomplishing something with the highest-quality product in a timely fashion; rather, it became a matter of making sure that a "consensus" was achieved, regardless of how long that might take and with little or no concern that quality would suffer in such a "lowest common denominator" environment. And heaven help anyone, career or noncareer employee, if that "consensus" did not include whatever someone in the White House might think about something, be it large, small or medium-sized."

As he then explains:

"...by operating in this way, they manage to avoid any singular responsibility for the result, or any part of it, which is another way of saying that they see themselves as running no risk of blame if anyone beyond the group has any problem with what they've done at any point."

Thus, Gonzales does not "know" that he made the decision, because, in his view, "nobody" really made the decision as it was made by "the group." In my experience, this is a not-uncommon way of thinking in certain organizations. I have deposed several corporate executives who make the same distinction between "signing-off" on a decision, as opposed to "making it," preferring to attribute the actual "decision" to "the team" or "the group." That is, they define "making the decision" as the process of coming up with the course of action, while the exercise of decision-making authority is not the "decision" but merely a "sign-off." Each individual in the group "discusses" but never decides.

Good grief. The justice department originally considered firing ALL of the US Attorneys in order to provide cover for the few they wanted to install in key places. How can a man involved in those discussions possibly turn around and claim that he was simply involved in making a couple of sage personnel changes? It boggles the mind.

Sampson said he even suggested firing U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald of Chicago while Fitzgerald was prosecuting Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff for perjury. Sampson said he immediately dropped the idea, which he raised at a White House meeting last year, when he received negative reactions from then-White House Counsel Harriet E. Miers and her deputy, William Kelley.

Incredible that the judgment of Harriet Miers may have been the only thing keeping the administration from firing Patrick Fitzgerald. If the current scandal was a case of the administration shooting itself in the foot, firing Fitzgerald would have been the administration blowing its head off with a rocket launcher.

Yeah, what Gonzo doesn't point out is his belief that Karl Rove wanting something makes it per se proper, thus, it cannot have been done for an "improper reason."