President Bush has nominated White House counsel Alberto Gonzales to replace John Ashcroft as attorney general.
Several groups have already announced opposition to Gonzales including the Center for Constitutional Rights, People for the American Way and Human Rights First. Gonzales helped pave the legal groundwork that led to the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib. In 2002 he claimed in a memo that that the war on terrorism renders obsolete portions of the Geneva Conventions.

He has been extremely close to Bush over the past decade. As governor of Texas, Bush appointed him to be gubernatorial counsel, Texas Secretary of State and to serve on the Texas Supreme Court. When Bush became president, he chose Gonzales as his presidential counsel. And now Gonzales appears set to become attorney general.

If his nomination is approved by the Senate, Gonzales will become the country's highest ranking Latino official ever. He addressed reporters in the White House after President Bush announced his nomination.


Alberto Gonzales, Attorney General Nominee speaking in the The Roosevelt Room on November 11, 2004.
Karen Greenberg, executive director of New York University School of Law's Center for Law and Security. She recently co-edited a three-volume collection that examines the evolution of the Bush Administration's policy of torture in the questioning of prisoners.
Rep. John Conyers, Congressmember from Detroit. He is the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee and one of the authors of a letter to the General Accounting Office calling for an investigation into the November 2 elections.