Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has defied critics – and shows no signs of packing his bags, says the Christian Science Monitor. Members of Congress will have another chance to press for his ouster at his scheduled appearance tomorrow before the House Judiciary Committee. Even if he leaves, uproar about management at the Department of Justice is unlikely to subside. A steady stream of revelations -from allegations about partisan hiring in the Civil Rights Division to possible White House involvement in the US attorney dismissals – has guaranteed that.
The controversy is no longer just about fired US attorneys. The Justice Department itself has begun an internal investigation into whether Monica Goodling, Gonzales’s White House liaison, illegally took partisan affiliation into account when hiring lower-level prosecutors. The Senate Judiciary Committee wants to know whether a similar process occurred in Justice’s Civil Rights Division. Panel members have written Civil Rights Division official Bradley Schlozman to ask about allegations that job applicants were told to scrub GOP references from their résumés.