No deals on Gonzales' successor.

Thus, if it is someone of the mold of Orrin Hatch, Mitch McConnell, or Washington AG Rob McKenna, or Deputy AG James Comey, we should not fight those nominations, provided that they have a clean record and have run their previous offices with a high ethical standard. However, if it is someone like Michael Chertoff, then we should fight his nomination tooth and nail and demand that our leadership show the spine necessary to subject him to vigourous questioning and then filibuster him if necessary. The independence of the office must be non-negotiable.

Let us put it this way -- the Attorney General's office must not be used for political prosecutions. The Attorney General's office must be used fairly and impartially so that the law is enforced fairly on both sides of the table. And the independence of the AG's office is important for another reason -- there will be a lot more investigations of the executive departments in the coming weeks and months. Therefore, we need someone who was not involved in these dealings. For Bush to appoint someone who was would be a conflict of interest as they would be investigating the very same dealings that they were involved in.

This is a key time in our nation's history, as we must define what the roles of the executive and the Congressional branches of government are. The next attorney general must be able to render an impartial opinion on the unitary executive theory that is not based on partisan politics, but is based on the law and the Constitution. They must be able to draw the line and say where the President's authority ends and where the Constitution says that enough is enough.

There is another area that must be decided as well -- the area of environmental law. For the past six years, the Bush administration has had increasingly lax enforcement of our environmental laws. We need an attorney general who will enforce our environmental laws as they were written and not according to the dictates of the President. I accept that this may not necessarily be what we like -- but the fact of the matter is that they must be able to show independence from the President.

During the course of the investigations that I mentioned above, our next Attorney General must be able to exercise judgement and know when to appoint an independent counsel like Comey did with Patrick Fitzgerald. They must be able to recuse themselves whenever there is a conflict of interest so that people like Scooter Libby are brought to justice. They must be able to appoint people who are dedicated to the pursuit of truth and justice no matter where it leads and not just propaganda.

We need an Attorney General who will not play for the camera, but who will actually do the work of investigating major crimes like potential terrorism. The next Attorney General should not have a propensity to play for the camera and issue phony terror alerts; that is not the role of that office. We need an Attorney General who will find and catch the people responsible for such crimes in conjunction with the FBI and the CIA. One of the biggest problems revealed by our failure to protect this country against the 9/11 attacks was the appalling lack of communication between the various intelligence and law enforcement agencies. We need an Attorney General who can improve this communication so that this sort of thing will not happen again.

And most importantly of all, we need an Attorney General who can explain to the President what the law says and not what the President wants to hear. For far too long, we have had a President who has been totally out of touch with the people of this country and who has been sheltered from bad news at every step of the way. If the President is making major decisions, they need to be able to have the kind of persuasive powers to dissuade the President from any course of action that violates US or international law.

When he first ran for office, President Bush promised that he would put aside partisan politics. But instead, we got one of the most partisan administrations in this country's history. And the reigns of John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales were among the most partisan tenures of the institution of the US Department of Justice in US History. The massive firings of US Attorneys who were only following the law and who had a healthy respect for the Constitution, the lies, and the weasel words of Gonzales are classic examples of what happens when an Attorney General puts party above country.

When the Republicans were in power and Bill Clinton was still President, their conduct in obstructing nominations for the sake of opposing them disgusted many people. Our leadership should not be in the business of opposing and obstructing for the sake of doing so. But our leadership should also not automatically approve whoever George Bush nominates. The fact that Bush lied over Iraq, No Child Left Behind, and many other issues should not be lost on Congress. Bush violated our trust a long time ago; therefore, why should we trust him to do the right thing? The Democratic leadership should set forth standards for the next Attorney General that are fair, reasonable, and non-negotiable -- and that means picking an Attorney General who does not put party above country.