Heckuva job, Alberto.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Sens. Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein are calling for a vote of no confidence in Attorney General Alberto Gon- zales, which prompts the question: For this you need to vote?

A vote of no confidence in Gonzales is like a vote of no confidence in the Chicago Cubs' chances of winning the World Series. Anyone who still expresses an eyedropper full of confidence in Gonzales is, like President Bush, merely gambling that the political damage from supporting the imploding attorney general will be easier to survive than the fallout from firing him.

The folks who (used to) work for Gonzales already have voted - with their feet. Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, the No. 2 executive in the Justice Department, resigned Monday. Gonzales aide Monica Goodling refused to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee investigating the firing of eight U.S. attorneys and then resigned. Gonzales chief of staff Kyle Sampson, initially made the fall guy in the attorney firing fiasco, resigned, as did William Battle, the Justice Department official who contacted most of the prosecutors to tell them they were being replaced.

Will the last person to leave the department please turn out the lights?

Other clues that make a no-confidence vote an exercise in overwhelming obviousness: Key Republicans are falling all over themselves calling for Gonzales' head. Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman, Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Sen. John Sununu of New Hampshire all say Gonzales should go. House Republican Conference Chairman Adam Putman of Florida also has said the attorney general should resign.

A couple of GOP heavyweights are slightly more circumspect, but they have positioned themselves to be on the right side of the issue when the time comes.

Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts said Gonzales "ought to think about" stepping down, and the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter, said, "I have a sense when we finish our investigation, we may have a conclusion to the tenure of the attorney general."

Then there is the Ashcroft Affair, a tale of political skullduggery that evoked images from "The Godfath- er," when Michael Corleone frantically raced to the hospital to prevent hit men from reaching his father, the grievously wounded Don Vito Corleone.

Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey testified Tuesday in the Senate that Gonzales tried to get his ailing predecessor, John Ashcroft, to sign off on the National Security Agency's surveillance program from his hospital bed after Comey refused to reauthorize the program because he believed it violated the law.

Comey described speeding to the hospital after learning from Ashcroft's wife that Gonzales, then White House counsel, and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card were headed to the intensive care unit where Ashcroft was recovering from serious gall bladder surgery.

Comey said Ashcroft "very strongly expressed himself" regarding his objections to a classified program and reminded Gonzales that as a result of his health problems, he had transferred his authority to Comey.

Gonzales and Card left without Justice Department approval, but that didn't matter, because they simply reauthorized the program under President Bush's signature.

Comey said the legal travesty was belatedly corrected only after an audience with Bush in which Comey indicated that he, Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller were prepared to resign in protest.

Readers who were aghast six paragraphs ago may have missed the punch line. Here it is: As White House counsel, Gonzales directly and willfully insulted the authority of the Justice Department he now purports to lead as attorney general.

It's beyond reason to expect that any professional Justice Department staff member could have any confidence in Gonzales after learning of his 2004 encounter with Ashcroft and subsequent disregard of an attorney general's legal opinion.

It won't hurt for Senate Democrats to hold a no-confidence vote in order to underscore the obvious. They even could declare that Gonzales is doing a heckuva job.

But it would make more sense for former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and soon-to-be-former World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz to sit down with Gonzales and tell him how these matters are best resolved.