Attor­ney Gen­er­al Alber­to Gon­za­les Resigns — washingtonpost.com:

Attor­ney Gen­er­al Alber­to R. Gon­za­les announced his res­ig­na­tion today, end­ing a con­tro­ver­sial cab­i­net tenure that includ­ed clash­es with Con­gress over the fir­ing of nine U.S. attor­neys and over the use of war­rant­less wire­taps in the war on terror. 

… Gon­za­les will step down on Sept. 17. In a brief state­ment, he called his 13 years in pub­lic ser­vice a “remark­able jour­ney,” but he gave no expla­na­tion about why he chose to resign now after resist­ing months of pres­sure to quit.

How­ev­er, per­sis­tent reports over the last sev­er­al months have indi­cat­ed that he was not being per­mit­ted to resign until the admin­is­tra­tion could line up some­one will­ing to replace him, but not will­ing to dis­con­tin­ue his most con­tro­ver­sial defens­es of the Administration.

An admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial said that Gon­za­les had told Pres­i­dent Bush of his deci­sion on Fri­day, but the announce­ment was with­held until the two met face to face on Sun­day at Bush’s ranch in Craw­ford. Bush planned to make a state­ment short­ly before noon from Waco, Tex. Gon­za­les took no ques­tions from the press as he announced his plans, but he said that even his “worst days” as attor­ney gen­er­al were “bet­ter than my father’s best days” as a migrant work­er in Texas.

Or some­one tor­tured in a secret prison thanks to a legal memo penned by Mr. Gon­za­les. Or even a U.S. attor­ney fired for refus­ing to pur­sue polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed cas­es. Being an Attor­ney Gen­er­al in an admin­is­tra­tion will­ing to make the law up as it went along has undoubt­ed­ly been a thrilling adven­ture, and it’s nice to know that some­one out there enjoyed it.

Michael Chertoff is con­sid­ered a like­ly suc­ces­sor, though his “gut feel­ing“s might prove as dif­fi­cult to under­stand as Gon­za­les’s mem­o­ry trou­bles have been.