The one, and perhaps only, hard piece of accountability that has come out of the widening US Attorney scandal is that the Congress passed legislation striking out the provision in the PATRIOT Act that allowed the Justice Department to appoint replacement federal prosecutors without seeking Senate confirmation.  The new law passed in both Houses with expansive, veto-proof majorities (94-2 in the Senate, 306-114 in the House). Any veto would be overridden, so the President has no choice but to sign the bill.

Except he hasn’t yet, and the hip-pocket veto has enabled Abu G to strike again – right in our own backyard of Los Angeles.

In a Senate Judiciary Committee business meeting Thursday morning, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) revealed that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales once again used an interim appointment authority at the heart of the US Attorneys controversy that Congress banned in a bill sent to the President for signature on June 4 […]

Tracy Schmaler, a spokeswoman for Senator Leahy, clarified the situation in an e-mail to RAW STORY.

“It just so happens the committee got notice yesterday, that on June 16, George Cardona’s 210 days as Acting U.S. Attorney in the Central District of California will have run out and the Attorney General will appoint him as an interim U.S. Attorney at that time. (i.e. still using the end-run authority because Bush has slow-walked signing the bill),” she wrote.

The Cardona appointment is interesting, to say the least.  It was reported in the LA Times just two weeks ago that a new hire for Cardona’s position was imminent.  The Los Angeles DA Steve Cooley called the pick, Thomas O’Brien, “the most apolitical person selected to that job in quite some time.”  Remember that the vacancy here was made by Debra Wong Yang’s departure to Republican law firm Gibson Dunn, the same firm whose client was Rep. Jerry Lewis, who Yang was investigating at the time.

So Lewis’ team had already bought out Yang (allegedly!), and now they were faced with the prospect of a hard-charging independent former DA in the role.  That must not have sat well with him.  So did Lewis tell the Justice Department to keep their handpicked loyalist in place until he made his way out of Congress (he’s rumored to be retiring)?

Marcy Wheeler also sees another angle here.

Finally, the move is especially curious because Gerry Parsky, a bigwig Republican who heads a Commission that picks judicial appointees in CA, has been particularly cranky about being left out of the process of naming USAs. And DOJ already went around him on this position specifically.

Once Yang resigned in November to pursue private law practice, it was up to the commission to make recommendations to the White House and the Justice Department. But Sampson and Goodling tried to generate candidates of their own. Interviews were scheduled with half a dozen people, many of whom had held political appointments in the department.

Parsky did not respond to e-mailed questions about his role in the process.

After word of the interview schedule leaked, Parsky called the White House and the Justice Department to complain, according to a person familiar with the process who requested anonymity because it involves a personnel matter. Goodling was allowed to proceed with the interviews, but was told she had to tell the candidates that they would have to reapply through the commission.

Ultimately, the commission is believed to have recommended two candidates; the only one interviewed by the Justice officials in Washington was a career prosecutor who has headed the criminal division of the Los Angeles office. The White House has not said whom it will nominate for the post.

Some people close to the selection process suspect Goodling and Sampson were attempting an end-run around the commission to install a politically connected Washington insider, possibly by using a law that permitted the attorney general to appoint interim U.S. attorneys without Senate oversight.

Indeed, Parsky was on board with the Thomas O’Brien appointment, according to the recent LA Times article.  Until it all fell through.

What the hell’s going on here?  Why is it so important to keep George Cardona in the Los Angeles USA seat, in defiance of a law passed by over 85% of Congress?  Does this have to do with investigations of members of Congress like Lewis (and, potentially, Ken Calvert)?  Will there be an effort to suppress the vote in the extremely ethnically diverse region, and must Cardona be the point person for that?  It’s very, very curious.

While San Diego has the rockstar of the fired US Attorneys, the Bay Area got its own taste of the Firings.  Certainly Kevin Ryan was no saint, but well, neither is the new US Attorney, Scott Schools.

What exactly is Mr. Schools up to? Well, he’s in the process of vindictively prosecuting the “Ganja Guru”:

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer demanded to know who in the Justice Department made the decision to continue pursuing Ed Rosenthal, whose conviction was overturned last year.  Newly appointed U.S. Attorney Scott Schools made the decision, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney George Bevan. Bevan said he was unsure whether Justice Department officials in Washington were involved.(AP 4/13/07)

So, do you think the smackdown of a federal judge will look very good when he has to appear before the senate to be confirmed? What about losing a civil trial for vindictive prosecution?

Syndicated columnist and member of the San Diego Union-Tribune editorial board Ruben Navarrette Jr. has been fluffing up Alberto Gonzales a lot recently (March 7, March 21), so it should come as no suprise that he’s continuing to shovel muck today in a special CNN commentary.  What’s shocking is the entirely new level to which he takes the insanity.

To be up front, there’s a halfway legitimate point in all of Navarrette’s mess, which is that accepting Gonzales as a scapegoat when it’s the White House and Karl Rove behind this whole mess, is not a victory.  I’m all for Rove paying for what he did as well.  But he frames his whole argument in disgusting racist terms and tries to marginalize anyone who would have a gripe against “an honorable public servant … [and] … a straight shooter” by assuming that there’s no way that criticism could be fair or justified.

He’s good enough to give us a rundown of the people who object to Gonzales’ performance as Attorney General and makes it pretty clear that the list at this point includes virtually everyone except President Bush.  But apparently that’s just because everyone is wrong, and most of them just hate a successful Hispanic.

Leading this lynch mob are white liberals who resent Gonzales because they can’t claim the credit for his life’s accomplishments and because they can’t get him to curtsy. Why should he? Gonzales doesn’t owe them a damn thing.

Yes, that’s right. It’s all those racist white liberals who insist on keeping minorities down and can’t stand it when one of them gets power,  It’s because he doesn’t genuflect at the altar of white people that he’s hated.  It can’t possibly have anything to do with his actual job performance.  Or his systematic evisceration of the Constitution of the United States.  Which is, ultimately, where the racial argument breaks down horribly.  Navarrette would have us believe that Gonzales can’t possibly be getting criticism that’s not infused with racist bitterness.  But the flipside of this argument is that, because of his race, he gets a free pass.  Well I’m sorry, but that isn’t how it works.  You do the job and you answer for your performance.

He also argues that Democrats just pose “with mariachis as they nibble chips and salsa on Cinco De Mayo” while the real uplifting of the Hispanic community, entirely and solely in the form of Alberto Gonzales, has been done by George W. Bush.  While absurdly simplistic and not particularly based in any reality that I’m familiar with, it doesn’t have anything to do with the firings of U.S. Attorneys.

It’s telling that a Gonzales apologist wants to talk about anything except the issue at hand.  Navarrette dispenses quickly and easily with the actual substance of the US Attorney issue by laying it all on Karl Rove, then whips up an emotional frenzy over non-issues, because he knows discussing the real complaints would be a losing proposition.  Gonzales is responsible for the Justice Department, and has a long history of doing a poor job in that position.  Perhaps Navarette has a point if his argument is that this incident, if isolated, would not be grounds for Gonzales’ departure.  But that dodges the crux of the problem.  Alberto Gonzales became Attorney General in August of 2005, and in that time, the Justice Department has delivered less and less justice by the day.  That is a failure of the job, and if this incident is the straw that breaks the camel’s back, so be it.

The commentary closes with an ominous, if absurdly condescending in every direction, prediction for Democrats in 2008:

Well, if they succeed in running him off without a fair hearing, many Hispanics won’t forget the shoddy treatment afforded this grandson of Mexican immigrants. You watch. Democrats will have to intensify their efforts to win Hispanic votes in the 2008 elections. And there’s not that much chips and salsa on the planet.

It sounds to me as though the lesson being pitched here is that the color of Gonzales’ skin is more important than the substance of his job performance whether you approve or disapprove of the job performance.  Hispanics will quit the Democratic party en masse, Navarrette imagines, because Democrats aren’t defending the country, they’re attacking skin color.

If Gonzales wants a fair hearing, guess what? He can have one.  In a revelatory change of course since January of this year (coincidence?), Congress will actually conduct legitimate investigations.  All Gonzales has to do is show up and solemnly swear.  Except, of course, that George Bush, the hero of racial equality in this story remember, doesn’t want the truth to come out.  Doesn’t sound particularly helpful to the Gonzales cause to me.  But then again, I see Gonzales as a man, not a color.  Ruben Navarrette Jr. may want to try it sometime.