Bush Names Gonzales to Succeed Ashcroft

Yahoo! News - Bush Names Gonzales to Succeed Ashcroft

Well, talk about killing a bunch of birds with one stone.

Ashcroft was probably one of the biggest lightning rods for the Bush administration in the first term. It goes without saying that Gonzales will be confirmed by the Senate when the nomination comes up for a vote. The real question is whether he will be as conservative as Ashcroft without the "religious fundamentalist" baggage that liberals saddled Ashcroft with during his term as Attorney General.

It looks like Gonzales will end up being just as conservative as Ashcroft was. The memo about treatment of prisoners will draw criticism from the left, of course. There's the question of how he stands on other legal issues, such as abortion, gay marriage, and affirmative action.

What this does is it may remove his name from consideration when the inevitable Supreme Court vacancy appears. Or it might not, depending on how his confirmation hearing goes. Gonzales does have two knocks against him (in my book): he's a lawyer and he's a Harvard graduate. You can't avoid the first when dealing with the position of Attorney General, while the second is unfortunate, but what can you do?

I'm surprised that my first post is on lawyers, since I hate the profession so much. But it's as good a place to start as any.