Gridlock News

Someone from a high level in the current administration has lead some documents to the national Journal that indicate that Attorney General Gonzalez authorized to aides that were under instruction by the White House to hire and fire people in his name back in 2006.  The authorization was later slightly updated to indicate that all hirings and firings would have to be reported to Attorney General Gonzalez.

The department's Office of Legal Counsel feared that such an unconditional delegation of authority was unconstitutional, the documents show. As a result, the original delegation was rewritten so that in its final form the order required "any proposed appointments or removals of personnel" be "presented to the Attorney General... for approval, and each appointment or removal shall be made in the name of the Attorney General."

Source: NATIONAL JOURNAL: Secret Order By Gonzales Delegated Extraordinary Powers To Aides (04/30/07)

The fact that these documents were leaked seems to indicate that the White House is taking approach similar to what it did to destroy Valerie Plame.  The president had indicated that it was up to the Attorney General to win back the trust of Congress.  However the Attorney General failed to disclose to Congress that he had signed this authorization for his aides back in 2006.  Now someone is leaking this information showing the discrepancy the attorney general made and more importantly showing that he's failed to win congresses support after the president told them to do so.

This smells a lot like the Valerie Plame incident where the White House leaked information to high-level sources to achieve their political goals.  Again they are leaking information at high levels instead of acting in a more transparent fashion.  Could they be attempting to force the Attorney General to admit to recent mistakes as opposed to the big mistakes that he made in 2006 that were directed possibly by the White House itself?

This would defer the blame of the real problem that occurred to this lesser problem which could still cause the Attorney General his job, yet save the White House and President Bush any embarrassment.