Beware Alberto Gonzalez.

David Henderson is both a research fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and an instructor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. In August 2002, before the invasion of Iraq, he hosted White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez at a class attended by young military officers. During his remarks, Gonzalez sought to justify going to war without a congressional declaration, something already being planned by the administration. He also supported the government's decision to imprison U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism without charging them with a crime or allowing them a lawyer.

Writing about the meeting in the San Francisco Chronicle, Henderson said that he "counted 13 questions from the military officers and one faculty colleague [and] 12 were hardball questions that challenged Gonzalez's expansive claims for presidential power." At one point, Gonzalez sought to reassure his questioners: "Condi Rice and others and I don't want the president to look like some monster who destroyed our freedom," he said. "Trust us." Henderson promptly reminded him that the "Constitution is not based on trust, but on distrust."

Henderson's words of admonition proved to be perceptive. In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 treachery, this same Alberto Gonzalez had written a memo claiming that the president had the right to waive anti-torture law and other international treaties protecting prisoners of war. The memo described some of the Geneva Convention's protections as "obsolete" and "quaint."

Other actions by Gonzalez should worry conservatives. Years ago when he served as a member of the Texas Supreme Court, Gonzalez angered the pro-life movement when he sided with the majority of his colleagues in a ruling holding that a minor needed no parental approval to obtain an abortion.

Gonzalez, who is President Bush's choice to replace outgoing Attorney General John Ashcroft, has long been suggested as a potential Supreme Court justice. Some who favor that idea feel that his appointment as attorney general is an excellent way to usher him into a place on the high court. Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and the committee's senior Democrat, Vermont's Patrick Leahy, expressed confidence that he would easily win confirmation to become the nation's chief law enforcement officer.