Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Senate Is Not Happy with Gonzales

Excellent. The Senate just revoked Bush's power to appoint US Attorneys without going through the Senate and what's more they revoked it with a 94-2 vote. Do you ever remember a vote that overwhelmingly slapped down a President like this? They have effectively turned the clock back to pre Patriot Act days when the Senate had to confirm U.S. Attorney appointments. This is a major development and and impressive change in the wind.
The Senate voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to end the Bush administration's ability to unilaterally fill U.S. attorney vacancies as a backlash to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' firing of eight federal prosecutors.

....the Senate by a 94-2 vote passed a bill that would cancel the attorney general's power to appoint U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation. Democrats say the Bush administration abused that authority when it fired the eight prosecutors and proposed replacing some with White House loyalists....

Essentially, the Senate returned the law regarding the appointments of U.S. attorneys to where it was before Congress passed the Patriot Act, including the unilateral appointment authority the administration had sought in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks.
I must say you can't get more emphatic than that without a mob and a rope.

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