NY Times has the scoop:

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, whose tenure has been marred by controversy and accusations of perjury before Congress, has resigned. A senior administration official said he would announce the decision later this morning in Washington.

Mr. Gonzales, who had rebuffed calls for his resignation, submitted his to President Bush by telephone on Friday, the official said. His decision was not announced immediately announced, the official added, until after the president invited him and his wife to lunch at his ranch near here.

Mr. Bush has not yet chosen a replacement but will not leave the position open long, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the resignation had not yet been made public.

Gonzales' resignation comes in the face of a serious effort to impeach Gonzales, led by Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) and 27 co-sponsors. Our own Impeach Gonzales petition has over 55,000 signatures.

The TV coverage is a fascinating contrast to the resignation of Karl Rove. Gonzales, after all, was simply taking his orders from Rove - but Rove left the White House as a conquering hero, while Gonzales is leaving as an incompetent and corrupt hack.

Of course Gonzales (like Rove) is also a criminal, having authorized torture, warrantless wiretapping, and the politicization of the Justice Department - all of which are felonies. Now that Gonzales no longer has the power to investigate himself, it is critically important that Congress and/or a Special Prosecutor fully investigate Gonzales' crimes.

David Swanson says Congress needs to do a few things:
1. Refuse to confirm a new AG until the White House complies with all subpoenas
2. Recognize what the threat of impeachment achieved in the case of Gonzo
3. Start impeaching Cheney ASAP

What's your advice for Democrats in Congress?

Update 1: Gonzo's likely temporary replacement is Paul Clement, a far-right ideologue:

Clement, who grew up in suburban Milwaukee, has a perfectly appointed conservative résumé.

The youngest child of an accountant father and a stay-at-home mother, Clement attended Georgetown University, where he studied international economics and cut his political teeth with two internships, first for then-Sen. Bob Kasten, R-Wis., and then in the Ronald Reagan White House.

After graduating, Clement deferred law school, while earning a masters degree in economics from Cambridge University. In 1989, he began at Harvard Law School, where he served as Supreme Court editor for the Harvard Law Review. Clement went on to prestigious clerkships for GOP appointees Judge Laurence Silberman of the D.C. Circuit and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

In 1994, he accepted a job in the D.C. office of Kirkland & Ellis, working in the high-powered appellate group led by one-time D.C. Circuit Judge and Solicitor General Kenneth Starr.

Clement called to take the job on the same day Starr signed on to serve as independent counsel in the Whitewater investigation. The senior partner’s absence worked out well for Clement, giving him the opportunity to play larger roles in cases and even argue two appeals as a young associate.

After 2 1/2 years at the firm, however, Clement found himself growing antsy. With Democrats in the White House, he took a job with Ashcroft, then a Republican senator from Missouri. Accepting a staff position on the Hill was an unconventional career move for an appellate practitioner, but ultimately sharpened Clement’s focus on pure litigation….

During his brief return to private practice, Clement collaborated with the conservative American Center for Law & Justice on two amicus briefs in Bush v. Gore, supporting George W. Bush on behalf of Republican voters….

Aside from [Ted] Olson, Clement is the only noncareer attorney in the solicitor general’s 19-lawyer office. The post for a political deputy was created in the early 1980s, in part to handle cases with an ideological edge. Clement’s unique role, as a top appellate litigator and trusted political aide, made him the natural candidate to assume responsibility for the DOJ’s terror docket, once it was consolidated in the solicitor general’s office.

Publicly, Clement has forcefully argued that the president has broad power in wartime to imprison those he deems enemies, indefinitely and without access to legal counsel. Clement’s allies suggest that behind closed doors he may counsel a more moderate stance.

No way in hell should Democrats accept him.

Update 2: The Busheviks are having a very hard time finding a permanent replacement. They floated Michael Chertoff's name over the weekend, but as Christy points out,

FEMA has lost and/or failed to account for a sum of money that is almost half of DHS’s entire budget

Chertoff would have a bit of a problem explaining that at confirmation hearings, so scratch his name off the list. Chertoff also defended alleged terrorist financier Dr. Magdy Elamir.

Other names include Ted Olson, who was far too visible during Clinton's impeachment and Bush v. Gore to be acceptable to Democrats.

The only acceptable name being mentioned is James Comey, but he has real integrity and would actually prosecute high crimes like torture and warrantless wiretapping - so there's no way in hell that Bush would nominate him.

Politico's Mike Allen, who is Karl Rove's ventriloquist's dummy, is pushing Fran Townsend, so keep an eye on her.

Speaking of Rove, when he running the White House there was a firm rule against letting someone resign without naming his replacement on the spot. So the absence of a designated successor shows Rove's successor Ed Gillespie doesn't have to clout that Rove had. As a result, we're is a free-for-all between various rightwing factions within the GOP.

Update 3: Here are the statements from leading Democrats:

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Commtitee:

"A Special Prosecutor must still be appointed to investigate the Attorney General's false statements to Congress and to investigate the apparent criminal violations of law by Attorney General Gonzales and others, including President Bush, by initiating the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program."

That's good - but what about torture? And what about continuing investigations by Nadler's House Judiciary Committee, since no Special Prosecutor is likely?

Update 4: John Nichols nails it as always:

As Counsel from 2001 to 2005, Gonzales blocked requests from the General Accounting Office for information about Enron officials meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force. He refused requests from congressional committees for information that the House and Senate had a right -- and a need. He made the legal case for torture, despite the fact that the Constitution bars cruel and unusual punishment. He outlined schemes for subverting the judicial system and its rules by making terror suspects eligible for military tribunals. He helped convince Bush to refuse to afford prisoners held at Guantanamo the basic protections afforded prisoner-of-war under treaties the United States had accepted as the law of the land.

As the nation's 80th Attorney General -- a position he took in February, 2005, after the Senate vote 60-36 to confirm his nomination -- Gonzales extended his representation of Bush into should be an independent federal agency. He defended the president's authorization of an illegal warrantless wiretapping program. He accepted the "extraordinary rendition" of suspects from U.S. custody to that of torture regimes. And he turned the Department of Justice into an extension of Karl Rove's White House political shop.

Revelations about the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys who were seen by the administration as insufficiently political in their investigations and prosecutions opened up an investigation that has begun to confirm a broad scheme to politicize the Justice Department's work in the area of voting rights -- a scheme apparently designed by Rove to suppress turnout by minorities and others who might vote Democratic...

The essential question with regard to Gonzales remains the same as the question that Leahy laid down when Rove said he would go: What are these people so desperate to hide?

The answer is that, just as Gonzales and Rove served Bush rather than the Constitution, they now seek with their resignations to protect Bush -- and Vice President Cheney -- from investigations that are necessary to any serious effort to restore the primacy of the founding document in the affairs of the nation.

Only a continued inquiry into the lawlessness of the soon-to-be-former Attorney General will achieve what is the essential purpose of this Congress: the restoring of the rule of law to a country deeply damaged by petty little men who chose personal loyalties and political expediency over their duty to the Republic.

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