EDITORIAL
Bush nominee needs close Senate scrutiny

At one level, President Bush's nomination of Alberto Gonzales to succeed John Ashcroft as U.S. attorney general should make every American proud.

Born to migrant farm workers and brought up in a house with no hot water or phone, he went to Harvard Law School, an elite law firm, the Texas Supreme Court and the White House. The U.S. Supreme Court could be his next stop.

That said, however, this is no time for senators to rubber-stamp this crucial appointment. We expect their questioning to focus particularly on four areas:

• "Litmus tests." Conservatives opposed to legalized abortion, their expectations high after Bush's re-election, are disappointed. "As a Texas Supreme Court justice, Gonzales' rulings implied he does not view abortion as a heinous crime," said the American Life League. Gonzales is also thought from the conservative perspective to be "soft" on affirmative action.

• Administrative skills. Most Americans will find Ashcroft's parting boast — "the objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved" — bizarre indeed. In fact, the Justice Department under Ashcroft was in many ways ineffective. Mass roundups of American Muslims after Sept. 11, 2001, produced hundreds of dismissed charges, dozens of misidentified suspects and a few minor convictions, many reversed. The realignment of the FBI to focus on internal security has been halting. Can Gonzales do better?

• Lawyering. The state of Texas executed 150 men and two women during Bush's six years as governor. Gonzales wrote memos on the morning of each execution, outlining the issues in each case. A reporter who obtained the memos after a protracted legal fight with Texas wrote:

" ... Gov. Bush frequently approved executions based on only the most cursory brief-ings. ... Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of ... ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence."

• Abu Ghraib. As White House counsel, Gonzales played a key role in setting policy on detaining and questioning people captured in the war on terrorism. He wrote or ordered memos that said that war excuses the United States from compliance with the Geneva Conventions, the federal war crimes statute and bans on torture. He played a key role in the decision to use Guant‡namo Bay as a global detention facility because it was believed to be outside the reach of U.S. courts (not so, the Supreme Court ruled in Rasul v. Bush, June 2004).

Gonzales mixes a Horatio Alger story with serious shortcomings that directly bear on his fitness to run a department that protects our rights just as much as it protects our safety. It's now up to the Senate to question Gonzales with the nation's interest, not partisan advantage, in mind.