Thanks to the latest scandal from La Casa De Bush — the firings of US attorneys for operating as something other than political hack artists — Alberto Gonzalez is pretty much on borrowed time.  An interesting feature of this issue is just how a key component in the hacking of the justice department came about:

Senators sparred over the firings while debating legislation that would revoke the president’s power to name replacement U.S. attorneys without Senate approval. Bush got the power to bypass the Senate confirmation process in a little-noticed amendment that was added to the USA Patriot Act last year.

Democrats said previous documents released by the Justice Department indicate that the amendment was part of a broader administration effort to politicize the Justice Department.

“U.S. attorneys who did not play ball with the political agenda of this White House were dropped from the team,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told his Senate colleagues. “How many other U.S. attorneys were approached by the White House, asked to play ball and did play ball?” (emphasis mine)

“Read the Bills act”, anyone?

Props.