2 down, more to (hopefully) go

John Ashcroft and Don Evans (Commerce Secretary) "resigned" in the dead of the night in DC. Thank goodness. Evans wasn't on my list, but only because I thought Bush prized his loyalty over his competency.

But Commerce is a plum job and whomever Bush thinks helped him get reelected the most (Mr. Diebold, Matt?) will most likely get it. The best part of being Commerce Secretary is after you step down anyway, where you command huge salaries for your connections.

Back to Ashcroft. In his letter, he praises Bush and himself with lots of phony statistics (in reality crime is actually up, and the prosecution of the War on Terror has been a unmitigated disaster) but here comes the kicker "Yet, I believe that the Department of Justice would be well served by new leadership and fresh inspiration. I believe that my energies and talents should be directed toward other challenging horizons." What other challenging horizons are you talking about John?

Once upon a time, the Singing Senator who lost to a dead man and the dead man's wife thought he would use the AG spot to run for president in 2008. I think we can safely say that Ashcroft knows that ain't going to happen. Two words: PATRIOT ACT.

courtesy of NYTimes.com

Hopefully, whomever heads the DOJ (which had a rather Orwellian tone to it under Ashcroft's administration) and DOC will be more moderate and less representative of the hyper-conservative religious and ueber-pro-business wings of the GOP. But I am not going to hold my breath.