Gonzales testimony of "I don't recall" leaves questions unanswered.

Hours and hours of testimony from Gonzales and other DOJ officials and the main question has yet to be answered. The question? Who in the Bush White House conceived the plan to fire these attorneys? Gonzales seems to know little of what is happening in his department, so the Senators say all signs seem to point to someone in the WH.

David Iglesias puts forth his advice to congress, from McClatchey Newspapers:

David Iglesias, the former New Mexico U.S. attorney and one of the eight fired last year, said investigating the White House's role is the logical next step - one that would follow existing clues about Rove's involvement.

"If I were Congress, I would say, `If the attorney general doesn't have answers, then who would?' There's enough evidence to indicate that Karl Rove was involved up to his eyeballs."

Iglesias said another clue that the White House may have been the driving force is the relative lack of Justice Department documentation for the firings in the 6,000 pages of documents turned over to Congress.

"If you want to justify getting rid of someone, you should have at least some paper trail," Iglesias said. "There's been a remarkable absence of that. I'm wondering if the paper trail is at the White House."

Even if Gonzales decides to step down - he says he won't despite widespread Republican disappointment with his performance - Democrats say they'll continue their probe into whether politics inappropriately influenced the firings.

"The arrow points more and more to the White House," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "The one thing I can assure you of: This is not over, far from it."

That's why some Republicans think Gonzales should stay on the job.

snip

Rove has acknowledged passing along complaints to the Justice Department, and a former Rove aide was chosen to replace one of the fired U.S. attorneys. E-mail traffic between Gonzales' chief of staff, who's since resigned, and a Rove deputy, reveals another connection.

Another e-mail released as part of the investigation shows a Rove deputy kept Rove abreast of turns in the controversy via Rove's Republican Party e-mail account rather than Rove's White House e-mail address.

The White House isn't authorizing Rove to testify publicly or to testify privately but with a transcript.

And when Congress told the Republican National Committee to turn over all pertinent e-mails, the administration instructed the RNC to give the e-mails to the White House, not to Congress. That standoff appears headed to court.

It always seems to come back to Rove!

A Side Effect of the US Attorneys Firing?

In the Minneapolis office of the US attorney, Rachael Paulose, 3 of her staff have decided to quit. Now, while the Atty General's office is up for grabs and Gonzales is fighting for his job, these 3 have decided to return to prosecuting cases.

Here's the rest from AP:

3 U.S. attorney's lawyers resign posts
By PATRICK CONDON, Associated
Press Writer

Three lawyers in the U.S. Attorney's office in Minneapolis resigned their management posts and will return to prosecuting cases, the office said Friday. The moves come as the U.S. Justice Department is under fire for its replacement of eight U.S. attorneys last year.

Jeanne Cooney, spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose, confirmed that John Marti, a first assistant U.S. attorney, Erika Mozangue, head of the office's civil division, and James Lackner, who heads the office's criminal division, have "decided to go back to being prosecutors," Cooney said.

She said she didn't have any further information about their decisions. Paulose wasn't immediately available for comment.

Paulose, 34, had replaced former U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger after he resigned in early 2006. Prior to her appointment, she had served as senior counsel to U.S. Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty.

The three resignations come as Congress investigates the U.S. Justice Department's firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year and whether the moves were politically motivated. Its findings so far have torpedoed morale at Justice Department headquarters in Washington and in U.S. attorneys' offices nationwide.

Heffelfinger, who has said he left of his own accord, was not among those eight. However, Paulose was one of 15 federal prosecutors appointed after Congress changed the USA Patriot Act to let the Justice Department fill vacant U.S. attorney jobs without judicial review. She was confirmed by the Senate in December 2006.

Every day there is something new! What will happen next?

Here's even more from Think Progress:

The Justice Department has faced criticism not only for firing well-respected U.S. attorneys, but also for replacing them with loyal Bushies.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota demonstrates the havoc that ensues when the Bush administration places politics over justice. Four top staffers to Rachel Paulose, the U.S. attorney in Minnesota, have voluntarily demoted themselves in protest of Paulose’s “highly dictatorial style” of managing. Paulose has also “earned a reputation for quoting Bible verses and dressing down underlings.”

According to news reports, the staffers’ dramatic moves were “intended to send a message to Washington — that 33-year-old Paulose is in over her head.” The Bush administration tried to prevent the resignations by sending a “top justice official to Minneapolis Thursday to mediate the situation. The mediation failed.”

A look at Paulose’s background indicates that she was handpicked by the Justice Department because of her personal connections, rather than her professional qualifications:

She was a special assistant to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, worked as a senior counsel for deputy attorney general Paul McNulty and is best buds with Monica Goodling — the assistant U.S. Attorney who recently took the Fifth rather than testify before Congress.

Add to the suspicions the fact that Minnesota’s former U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger stepped down just as the White House was developing its hit list.

And it all goes back to the White House.

Gonzo Meter from SLATE

Slate has a Gonzo Meter, the DeathWatch. The hot seat gets hotter! Today's Chance of a Gonzales Departure: 75 percent.

Check it out!

H/T to Alice on the Sam Seder Show blog.

And for a little fun check out Fiore:

Sen. Schumer Calls For Alberto Gonzales To Resign

From Think Progress with the video:

Today on CBS’s Face the Nation, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign. Schumer said Gonzales has “been even more political than his predecessor, Attorney General Ashcroft,”

Maybe a little more pressure and Gonzales will go the way of Rumsfeld.