Did You Miss Alberto Gonzales?

The drought is over. With Congress on vacation and the Attorney General in Baghdad, devotees of Justice Department injustices have had a dry August, but the stream of scandal is starting to flow again.

Gonzales has been advising the new Iraq government on how to treat detainees.

“I spoke about the importance,” he explained, “of just making sure...that they're dealt with humanely. That they're treated fairly. These are very, very difficult issues. They're issues that we wrestle with in our own country.”

Sure enough, back home in Washington, lawmakers are wrestling with a number of issues about the Attorney General. In a letter this week, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy asked the Justice Department's Inspector General to probe whether Alberto Gonzales has made false or misleading statements.

At the same time, Director of the FBI Robert Mueller has turned over his notes about the bedside meeting with John Ashcroft to the House Judiciary Committee, and they raise new questions about Gonzales’ credibility.

Meanwhile, one Congressman, Rep. David Obey has stopped wrestling, as Congress Daily indicates: “He’s one sneaky, lying S.O.B., to put it bluntly. He’s the most authoritarian attorney general in the history of the republic. He’s the most dangerous. I never thought I’d long for the days of John Ashcroft.”

For the insatiable, TPM Muckraker has winnowed a thick crop to pick the Attorney General’s “Top Six Fibs.”