Welcome to Gonzales Watch - Blawging the Ex-Attorney General

Constitutional lawyer and political consultant Bruce Fein calls for U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ impeachment in Wednesday’s edition of the Washington Times.

Fein argues that “[e]vidence continues to mount that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has committed an impeachable offense: namely, turning law into slabs of political calculation with ulterior motives.”

Citing James Madison for support, Fein maintains that Madison thought “impeachment would be proper for a civil officer who “suffers [his subordinates] to perpetrate with impunity high crimes and misdemeanors against the United States, or neglects to superintend their conduct, so as to check their excesses.”

Demoralizing U.S. Attorneys and their staff, creating increased public cynicism about the law, and turning federal judges and juries into skeptics of cases brought by federal prosecutors. Those are all reasons that Fine cits for Gonzales’ removal.

But the real kicker is his argument that, in keeping Gonzales’ as Attorney General “the greater danger to the nation’s checks and balances would be employing impeachment too infrequently rather than too readily.”"