It's finally been made official: As of the end of August 2007, Alberto Gonzalez will no longer be attorney general of the United States of America. Rumors leaked out last week but official press releases have hit the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. It's been said that he phoned up George W. Bush and resigned via telephone, probably while en route back to the state of Texas. A replacement has not yet been chosen, but given how Bush operates he already has someone lined up and ready to install. It's a little like Patch Tuesday in how …

Another bill's been put into circulation that I think everyone should know about. Representative Lamar Smith of Texas has put forth legislation that would require every ISP to keep records of what their users do on the Net to assist. For every customer an ISP has, every IP address they are given, every DNS request they make, every outgoing connection, and every incoming connection attempt would be recorded and archived on the off chance that a subpoena came in. Failure to do so would mean fines and jail time for not complying with this proposed law. On top of that …

This should be enough to give anyone pause: Alberto Gonzalez, the Attorney General of the United States of America argued before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Constitituion does not grant habeas corpus rights, but only says that they can be suspended. Let's think about this a little: Saying that a right can be suspended implicitly states that there is a right that can be suspended to begin with. Senator Arlen Specter, who headed up the committe, nearly went into a fitof apoplexy when he heard this after asking if Gonzalez's logic took a wrong turn at Albequerqe: "The Constitution …

Alberto Gonzalez has decreed that federal judges can't decide on matters of national policy, and though he didn't name any names he certainly made a couple of references that those in the know will get. In essence doing so is activism, and he's gone to great lengths to give his opinion of 'activist judges', which he seems to think are those who don't always agree with him.