President Bush announces in early November that White House counsel Alberto Gonzales is his nominee for attorney general.

The facilitator
When Alberto Gonzales briefed George W. Bush on the cases of Texas death row inmates up for clemency, his memos were so shabby they seemed intended solely to make it easy for Bush to send prisoners to their deaths.

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By Alan Berlow

Jan. 6, 2005  |  Now that conventional wisdom has focused attention on "moral values" as our paramount national concern, it might be worth spending a few minutes considering how President Bush's nominee for attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, dealt with one of those values -- human life -- on 57 occasions.

Gonzales' values, to say nothing of his legal judgment, have come in for scrutiny of late due in part to his supposedly aggressive questioning of homeland security nominee Bernard Kerik as well as to two highly controversial memoranda Gonzales authorized for Bush that laid out the case for torturing prisoners taken in the "war against terrorism." Whether Gonzales' central role in designing policies that may have led to the abuses at Abu Ghraib and other military facilities should disqualify him for the job of attorney general will be a major focus of his Senate confirmation hearing set to begin Thursday morning.

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