Please Don't Go (With Update)

This made me a little sad:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is likely to resign before the Senate takes up a no-confidence resolution, according to Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee. A vote on such a measure could come as early as this week.

"I have a sense ... that before the vote is taken, that Attorney General Gonzales may step down" because of the likelihood that such a resolution would pass, Specter said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "It is a very forceful, historical statement. ... And I think ... that he would prefer to avoid that kind of an historical black mark."

Reading this made me a little sad because part of me wants Gonzo to stay right where he is. I feel this way because he is doing a shitload of damage to the Bush Administration -- which Jimmy Carter recently called "the worst in history" -- and it is important for this country that history does indeed view the Bush Regime as the worst ever because we must never go down this same road again.

But after Bush leaves office, there will undoubtedly be a big push by the Extreme Right to rehabilitate the Bush presidency -- after all, BushCo pretty much embraced and implemented every idiotic Right Wing idea in existence -- and leaving Gonzo in office until the end of Bush's term will make that rehabilitation effort far more difficult than it would be if Gonzales resigned.

But then I remembered that the office of Attorney General really does need to be above politics -- even John Ashcroft realized that -- so the best thing for the country right now would be a Gonzales resignation. It would be a good start, anyway.

This New York Times editorial summed up the situation nicely:

The Justice Department is no ordinary agency. Its 93 United States attorney offices, scattered across the country, prosecute federal crimes ranging from public corruption to terrorism. These prosecutors have enormous power: they can wiretap people’s homes, seize property and put people in jail for life. They can destroy businesses, and affect the outcomes of elections. It has always been understood that although they are appointed by a president, usually from his own party, once in office they must operate in a nonpartisan way, and be insulated from outside pressures.

This understanding has badly broken down. It is now clear that United States attorneys were pressured to act in the interests of the Republican Party, and lost their job if they failed to do so. The firing offenses of the nine prosecutors who were purged last year were that they would not indict Democrats, they investigated important Republicans, or they would not try to suppress the votes of Democratic-leaning groups with baseless election fraud cases.

Anyway, I am a bit conflicted here between embracing the short-term gain for the country that would result from Gonzo's resignation and the long-term benefit that would result if he stayed put.

UPDATE: I'm so f*#king tired of Democrats either apologizing for telling the truth or apologetically issuing "clarifications" when they tell the truth:

Former US president Jimmy Carter on Monday tempered his biting criticism of serving President George W. Bush after calling his administration "the worst in history."

Following a White House denunciation of Carter's original remarks, the Democratic former leader said he had intended to describe Bush as the worst president since scandal-plagued Richard Nixon.

"My remarks were maybe careless or misinterpreted. But I wasn't comparing the overall administration and certainly not talking personally about any president," Carter told NBC.

"I have been very careful and still am not to criticize any president personally," he said, while restating his opposition to Bush's policies on Iraq and the Middle East.

Wrong, Jimmy -- what you should have said is that your comment was misinterpreted, and that you didn't mean that Bush is the worst American president in history, but is the worst leader of any country in history.

That's how you respond when the corrupt bastards on the Extreme Right attack you for telling the truth -- you raise the stakes, and you never apologize.