"Mr. Attorney General, would you mind extinguishing that trouser flame?"

Our highly esteemed colleague, the vociferous and aptly-named Rude Pundit, has one of the best posts about the ongoing controversy surrounding Little Elian Alberto VO5 Gonzales and his getting caught in a few pesky li'l lies back in Texas that I've yet seen. It appears that this incident might have some legs, and wouldn't it be something if the AG nomination were to somehow be lost to him thanks to a little back room maneuvering just to spare Preznit (then-Governor) Pretzelphobe the embarrassment of having his DUI conviction in the '70s revealed? All that torture memo brouhaha barely made a dent in the nomination process, but a little thing like getting a client out of jury duty could end up being the deal-breaker. Of course, being disbarred is probably not enough to keep the Rethugs in Congress from voting for Alberto VO5's confirmation anyway (see DeLay, Tom), but doesn't the prospect of an Attorney General who has lost the license to practice law just drip with a special kind of irony?

Or is that just par for this particularly crooked course?

Loving the Rude Pundit's writing as we do, we just want to close with this delicately-stated quote outlining his personal feelings about the man tapped to step into John Ashcroft's Crisco-filled shoes:

"Fuck Gonzales's story of being born to poor children of migrants. Fuck his working himself up from poverty to make his Mexican family proud. That doesn't mean that Gonzales is incapable of enabling evil. That doesn't make Gonzales automatically a good person. And it certainly doesn't mean Alberto Gonzales is predestined to be Attorney General."

Thanks, RP, we couldn't have said it better ourselves.