“The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved.”

�from John Ashcroft‘s resignation letter

Despite Ashcroft’s delusions of grandeur here, the next Attorney General will certainly have a lot on his plate when it comes to keeping Americans safe from crime, terrorism and the occasional nude statue. And since Ashcroft was such a polarizing figure in the first Bush administration, would the President replace him with another right wing cheerleader, or attempt to mend fences by appointing someone more moderate?

Ladies and gentlemen, we give you your next Attorney General: White House counsel Alberto Gonzales. While nothing is certain until he is confirmed, the Democrats won’t likely be able to keep this appointment from going through. Only a few things seem to be known about Gonzales, especially if one reads the summaries in the papers: He’s Latino. He’s maybe kind of centrist on social issues, at least compared to Crisco John. He’s Latino. He’s been a Bush aide for years. And did we mention he was Latino?

Oh yeah, and there’s one other thing. Remember the memos that were going around a while back, the ones which called the Geneva Convention “quaint” and “obsolete”, the ones which laid the groundwork for indefinite imprisonment of “enemy combatants” and were written mere months before the Abu Ghraib prison scandal? Well, Gonzales was the guy who wrote them:

In a Jan. 25, 2002, memo to the president, he stated that the Geneva Conventions’ legal protections for prisoners of war should not apply to al Qaeda or Taliban prisoners because the war on terror “renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.”

For those of you who are celebrating Ashcroft’s departure, you might want put the good champagne back into the basement. In addition to the memos listed above, Gonzalez was also a key architect of many of the Patriot Act provisions, and he has already said that he would follow in Ashcroft’s footsteps. The protective tarps may come down from the statues at the Justice Department, but other than that not much is going to change. And with Patriot Act II around the corner, the disappearance of our civil liberties will continue. But with Ashcroft out of the picture and a much less divisive figure standing in his place, will anyone notice?