Gonzales to Resign:
The Washington Post is reporting that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will resign this morning. CNN is reporting that the President will nominate Michael Chertoff as his replacement, and name Clay Johnson to head the Department of Homeland Security.
UPDATE: It's official. Gonzales has resigned. In a public statement, Bush announced that Solicitor General Paul Clement will serve as acting Attorney General until a replacement is confirmed. No word yet on whether Chertoff or someone else will get the nod.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Gonzales to Resign:
- The Chertoff Rumor:
- Could Gonzales Be Going?
What gives? Has the 24/7 cycle of CNN/Fox/Blogosphere made the old approach obsolete? Or is this just double-reverse spin move?
Maybe AGAG thought it was a good time become Howard is on vacation.
JHA
Don't bring that kind of talk in here.
True, the apparently anointed Paul Clement is the fourth ranking DOJ officer, but he already has a full time job with specific duties. Beyond that, what about this executive order from last December that suggests U.S. Attorney Michael J. Garcia (S.D.N.Y.) is next in line unless the AG has designated other officers under 28 U.S.C. 508?
www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/12/20061208-9.html
It's more like volleyball, when one person serves the ball and the rest of the team rotates one position.
Okay-back to work.
Same as before. At Justice, the appointees are generally out of touch anyway. They get to put it on their CVs and it sounds important, but they spend most of their time flying around and giving speeches while the career managment makes all the decisions. DoJ could probably function indefinitely with no appointive slots filled at all.
That makes me wonder if this was a relatively impromptu change of course. This comes fairly late in that recess window, and the fresher the news of the resignation is, the more leverage it gives Congress. Is it possible the administration saw its window for a recess appointment closing, and blinked?
Somehow i get the feeling that this will be an unfulfilled promise. Gonzo has sporadic fits of selective amnesia, Rove et al say they cant be compelled to testify or show up...the dem congress likely won't do anything serious about it and the Repubs can now simply argue that the dems (and handful of R's) got what they wanted out of their investigations and hearings thus far - Gonzales is out, time to move on - nothing to see here.
Uh, how does that make any kind of sense when Gonzales is not resigning until after the Senate is back in session?
Why risk sullying that good reputation by closer association with George W. Bush and his cynical attitude toward gaming the law?
As it is, Clement will be fortunate if his stint as acting AG does not bring him too close into that orbit. So far, the worst that could be said about Clement is that he has advocated, and sometimes lost, some questionable legal theories before the Supreme Court. But at least he was advocating in court for a client.
Clement already has been put in the hot seat over the Gonzales mess, a situation that is not mooted by the resignation. It is even possible that the next step ethically demanded of Clement in a DOJ internal investigation is what precipitated Gonzales' resignation.
It doesn't. I hadn't read the announcement closely enough.
;-)
Nick
I seem to recall there is some statutory time limit on how long you can have an "acting" in an appointive post. I remember it came up during the Jimmy Carter Admin., which tended to ignore the rule.
That would be an aggressive choice, not at all out of character for this president. Silberman has legal stature (and critics), is a longtime anti-FISA hawk, and already has taken senior status on the D.C. Circuit. As a footnote, Clement already worked for Silberman once, as his clerk.