Guys, let's have another discussion about this since I couldn't play last time. What happened is no different that has happened in the past towards the end of a Presidential term--Bush appoints new Republican US Atty's that will be ****canned by the new Democrat President in '08 BUT even this short stint as a US Atty puts another potential Republican Federal Judge out on the street--they literally refer to it as bench stacking. What is different, is that these folks blabbed it. The AG shouldn't have to resign over it, because his hypocritical critics know damn well that Bush wasn't the first Pres to do this. The stupid part was saying it was for performance--all he had to do was call them to Washington, tell them the score, line them up cushy jobs and everything would have been fine (trust me--this was how it was done in the past, specifically I can tell you with Clinton). For instance--Bush was so out of touch, they cited absence from the office on Iglesias. Said he had been absent more than any other US atty in the country--46 days. Guess where he was for 36 of those days........???????--Serving in the f'ing US Navy Reserve.

As for former US atty's automatically getting snapped up into mega-jobs, I don't think that is always the case (but certainly is a likley possibility). There are two former US attys that live in my neighborhood who are for the most part sole practicioners who primarily do plaintiff's work and occasionally represent white collar criminal defendants in Federal Court.

In closing , I don't think Gonzales should have to resign over this issue, but his naivete in the way the whole thing went down makes him look pretty unqualified for the post, imo. That the dems are acting like this is unprecedented is utter BS--they did it too.