Confirmed as of now The NY Times is reporting Alberto Gonzales has telephoned in his resignation.

WACO, Tex., Aug. 27 — ­ 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.

Gonzales, who had rebuffed calls for his resignation, submitted his to President Bush by telephone on Friday, the official said. His decision was not 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 Attorney General’s resignation had not yet been made public.

Why President Bush is so stubborn about keeping Gonzales as AG is a puzzle to me. If he won’t let him go then Gonzales should have the decency to resign, as he is not serving the president very well.

From the Washington Post comes the story that Gonzales is being investigated by the DOJ Inspector General and the counsel of the Office of Professional Responsibility.

Fine has the authority to refer cases for possible criminal prosecution if warranted, and both he and Jarrett can recommend disciplinary action for violations of internal ethics guidelines or other rules of professional conduct.

The revelation further expands the publicly known contours of the Justice Department’s internal investigation, which is examining the removal of the prosecutors and whether any laws or policies were violated in the hiring of career prosecutors, immigration judges and others.

In her May 23 appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, Goodling testified that the backdrop of her conversation with the attorney general was her prospective decision on whether to transfer to another job or leave the department. “Let me tell you what I can remember,” Gonzales said, according to her account. He then asked whether Goodling “had any reaction to his iteration,” she said.

Goodling testified that the conversation made her “a little uncomfortable” because of ongoing investigations into the issue — including one begun several days earlier by the OPR. “I didn’t know that it was maybe appropriate for us to talk about that at that point, and so I just didn’t,” Goodling said. “As far as I can remember, I just didn’t respond.”

Gonzales said in testimony before both the House and Senate judiciary committees that he had not talked to potential witnesses about the events surrounding the firings. “I haven’t wanted to interfere with this investigation and department investigations,” Gonzales said on April 19.

Several legal experts said the federal laws that could apply to wrongdoing such as witness tampering, suborning perjury or obstruction of justice all require evidence of corrupt or improper motives on the part of a potential defendant. Gillers said Goodling’s description of her meeting with Gonzales amounts to a “vague narrative” that would potentially pose difficulties for a prosecutor.

“It really depends on what the person’s intent was, and you can infer intent from words and conduct and tone,” said James A. Cohen, an associate professor at Fordham University Law School and an expert on witness-tampering statutes.

The Congressional investigations will go on, but the possibility of being charged with tampering with witness demands Gonzales must go now.

The presumption is innocent until proven guilty and so far no charges have been brought, but being under the cloud of an investigation does not allow Gonzales to do his job properly and only drags this out.

The Senate came up 7 votes short to move a resolution of no-confidence in Attorney General Gonzales to the floor for full debate.

Since we aren’t a parliamentary style of government a vote of no-confidence means nothing. If they want to get rid of him they’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way: impeachment.

Republicans blocked the Senate’s no-confidence vote on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Monday, rejecting a symbolic Democratic effort to prod him from office despite blistering criticism from lawmakers in both parties.
The 53-38 vote to move the resolution to full debate fell seven short of the 60 required. In bringing the matter up, Democrats dared Republicans to vote their true feelings about an attorney general who has alienated even the White House’s strongest defenders by bungling the firings of federal prosecutors and claiming not to recall the details.

Republicans did not defend him, but most voted against moving the resolution ahead.

Short of impeachment, Congress has no authority to oust a Cabinet member, but Democrats were trying anew to give him a push.

Why, oh, why can’t our congress get on to business that matters and is not just a sense of the Senate or a sense of the House, which means nothing?

This man has not served the president well, but passing resolutions isn’t the answer.

I think the impeachment train has left the station too because this administration will be gone in 18 months. It would take congress that long to organize a trip to the bathroom.

When the whole story of Wolfowitz and his girlfriend came up he said he had run it by the powers that be and no one objected.

Even if that’s true, and I have no reason to believe it isn’t, he let down the president he serves by not resigning immediately and waiting until he could get a monetary deal to leave.

Now Mr. Wolfowitz has has made his deal to leave by June 30 and who knows how much the pie had to be sweetened to get him out of there?

President Bush is loyal to a fault and Wolfowitz and others have taken advantage of that loyalty. The problem is they don’t show that loyalty to the president in return.

Look at Gonzales. If he had any loyalty to the president he would have resigned instead of making up more and more stories about the US Attorney firings, dripping pieces of information like a leaky water faucet at each hearing.

There’s no crime in firing the US Attorneys for any reason, but Gonzales wouldn’t come out and tell the whole truth at one time, but instead stonewalled, and has made this story have legs when it never should have.

He has also not served the president well by pushing for prosecutions of border patrol agents doing their jobs instead of prosecuting the law-breakers.

President Bush kept George Tenet in as CIA chief as a holdover from the Clinton Administration. Tenet, by his own admission, had more access to President Bush than he ever had with President Clinton, but as soon as he left he started turning the knife in the back of the president. The knife he had obviously already used to stab him.

He won the Presidential Medal of Freedom and gladly accepted it, while he now goes around trying to discredit everything to make it look as though the president were just itching to go to war with Iraq and used Tenet as the excuse.

Loyalty is our president’s biggest problem. He’s loyal to a fault, but those who work for him are looking for ways to disparage him and make a few dollars while they’re at it.

Good riddence to Mr. Wolfowitz, and hopefully the president will tell Mr. Gonzales good-bye too. He’s an embarrassment.