Sheriff Gonzales Shoots Astray

With the Washington establishment increasingly singing the eulogy of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, chief legal affairs correspondent Chitra Ragavan takes a close look at where he came from and where he has erred.

"Over the past three months, Gonzales's explanations and those of his top politicos as to why eight U.S. attorneys were fired in the middle of Bush's second term have changed, and changed, and changed," Ragavan writes. "The first lone-wolf iteration, as it were, was that Gonzales's chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, had come up with the plan without Gonzales's say-so, after nixing an idea for a broader purge from then White House counsel Harriet Miers to fire all 93 U.S. attorneys."

Meanwhile, the odds of Gonzales resigning before the end of the month at the online betting house Intrade.com are sitting at 47 percent as we write. Could today's document dump significantly raise or lower the odds?

Stay tuned for a closer look at ousted Southern California U.S. Attorney Carol Lam as well.

Video: The U.S. Attorneys Scandal

Etc.: Why Did Clinton Fire All the U.S. Attorneys? at the News Desk on USNews.com