BREAKING: Alberto Gonzales Resigns

As heard 10 minutes ago on CNN.

Update: Of the three news alerts I receive, the Times was first, having sent its e-mail at 8:07 am. The Politico was second, at 8:47, and the Post was third, at 9:03.

Update (8/29/07): Looks like U.S. News was actually the first to break the story—last week. As its Washington Whispers blog reported last Friday night,

The buzz among top Bushies is that beleaguered Attorney General Alberto Gonzales finally plans to depart and will be replaced by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

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What's Harder to Fire Than a Tenured Professor?

An abiding loyalist and potential fall guy, embodied perfectly in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

If you're wondering why the "Judge" inspires such bipartisan scorn, consider this dispatch from Slate's Emily Bazelon, concerning his congressional testimony earlier this week:

When Gonzales says to [New York Senator Chuck] Schumer, "I'd like to look at my responses" at the press conference, Schumer is ready to smoothly reply, "We'll bring them up to you right now."

"Good," Gonzales says, which he must immediately regret, because it's a trap. After some whispering from the row of aides sitting behind him, Gonzales says that he "did misspeak" at the June press conference, "but I went back and clarified it with a reporter." Which reporter? More whispering. "Dan Eggen, at the Washington Post, two days later." Schumer presses. Gonzales repeats, "I clarified my statement to the reporter." Then, after more questions and more whispering, "I didn't speak directly to the reporter." There's an intake of breath around the room, and it's not just from the women wearing pink whose hats and banner and mouth tape read "Fire Gonzales."

"What did your spokespeople say to him?" Schumer asks.

"I don't know," Gonzales answers.

Additional reasons Gonzo should spend more time with his family here.

Also, pigs do fly: tenured fraud Ward Churchill, of the University of Colorado at Boulder, has been given the boot. My take on the incident that exposed his notoriety, which occurred at my now-alma mater, here.

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The Daily Digest

Green Sea Turtle

Starting today, I'm renaming the Daily Dose, the Daily Digest.

CBS fired Don Imus for a sexual and racist remark he made on the air. But CNN's Jeffrey Toobin, who was shown Imus's contract, asks, "How is CBS going to argue that what he said was so controversial and so offensive that it isn't what they asked for in the contract?" According to Toobin, Imus's contact included a clause that CBS wanted him to be "irreverent" and "controversial": "Company [CBS Radio] acknowledges that Artist's [Imus'] services to be rendered hereunder are of a unique, extraordinary, irreverent, intellectual, topical, controversial and personal character and that programs of the same general type and nature containing these components are desired by Company and are consistent with Company rules and policies."

Two conservative heavies, Ramesh Ponnuru and Pat Toomey, debate the issues of the day on Laura Ingraham's radio show. Listen here.

Radley continues to highlight the important but underreported aspects of governmental motorcades: "[A] couple of weeks ago I noted that the troubling thing about Gov. John Corzine's crash wasn't that he didn't use his seat belt (which only imperils his own safety), but that he felt he was so important that he could have his motorcade fly down the highway at 90+ miles per hour, shunting everyone else on the road out of the way (which imperils everyone on the highway). . . . Well, now we learn that Gov. Corzine held a press conference yesterday in which he apologized (whether it was for not wearing his seatbelt or for thinking he's so important that he can put everyone else on the road at risk isn't clear). He then got into his car and sped off in his motorcade, which once again routinely broke the speed limit while taking the injured governor back to his mansion."

Somebody had to say it: Alberto "Gonzales's tenure is more scandalous even than the mess he created by firing eight federal prosecutors" (my hyperlink). Cato's Tim Lynch lays out the case why the AG should resign. Meanwhile, Marshall Manson observes that Gonzales's recent congressional testimony "illustrated just how laughable the notion of his nomination to the Supreme Court really was. It also revealed how thoroughly ill-prepared Gonzales would have been for the intellectual rigor of the Court."

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Another Daily Dose

Cuba is sui generis in U.S. foreign policy. Even as we negotiate with North Korea and seek channels to Syria and Iran, we continue to snub this little socialist island in ways both big (no trade) and petty (no travel). This obstinate ostracism has failed, which is why Congressmen Flake and Rangel have proposed legislation repealing the travel ban and encouraging people-to-people and academic exchanges, family visits, and religious and humanitarian programs. Such incremental reform will surely promote democratization without the 82nd airborne.

Reporting from his home base in Iowa, David Yepsen does his best Dana Milbank in reporting-by-quoting a Republican fundraising dinner last night in Des Moines. Nine of the party's presidential candidates showed up to give speeches to a crowd of 1,000 activists in what was one of the largest gatherings of GOP candidates so far in the campaign.

Two days before before his much-anticipated testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and after Newsweek reported that his murder boards were disastrous, Alberto Gonzales takes to the op-ed page of the Washington Post. Not only is this good strategy—publicizing your side of the story is a first principle in crisis communications—but the op-ed is also newsworthy because it announces the formation of a DOJ investigation.

If, for some inexcusable reason, you've never seen the Sopranos, this NYT article provides an overview, sans spoilers.

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The Daily Dose

If the U.S. attorney scandal has left you confused, you're not alone. The reason, as David Freddoso ably explains, is that while some of the firings seem to be legitimate (as in Carol Lam's failure to pursue administration priorities), others were seemingly intended to roadblock investigations into Republicans (as was the case with Paul Charlton, John McKay and David Iglesias). (Related: Charles Krauthammer explains why this "unnecessary scandal" is Gonzales's fault, and Dahlia Lithwick and Jack Goldsmith explain why the Justice Department will never, and should never, be entirely apolitical.)

Politicians uniformly speak of an energy crisis. We're "addicted to oil," declared President Bush in his 2004 SOTU address. His possible successors would bathe in ethanol if it would win them the Iowa caucuses. The solution, however, outlined by Heritage's Michael Frank, is to increase domestic supply by reducing regulatory bans and burdens. (If you think we're running out of oil, click here.)

Good news for the globe-trotting, liberty-dispensing Tom Palmer: as Christopher Hitchens reports, the soon-to-open American University of Iraq will offer not only an M.B.A. course but also, in the words of Azzam Alwash, one of its directors, "the ideas of Locke, the ideas and writings of Paine and Madison."

One big reason Democrats won November's midterms was because they recruited Blue Dog candidates. Or did they? According to the Capitol Briefing blog (as summarized in the Weekly Standard), through the first seven weeks of the 110th Congress, out of almost 4,000 total votes cast by the 42 new House Dems, a mere 20 were against positions advocated by the Democratic caucus' leadership. Only 14 of the 42 had cast even one roll call vote deviating from the party line. Pat Toomey drives home the point: "The Club for Growth PAC is targeting these freshmen in the hope that they will live up to their word and put American taxpayers ahead of the Democratic Party leadership."

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