Despite Alberto Gonzales's dismaying performance before Senators last week, when he repeatedly refused to recant his earlier assertion that the President has the unilateral right to set aside Congress' laws against torture, it appears the fix is in. Gonzales will become the head of the Dept. of Justice (?!) and, as we are incessantly reminded, the first Hispanic Attorney General.

It's also widely assumed that Bush will later nominate Gonzales for the Supreme Court.

The likelihood of Gonzales being confirmed stems in part from the Bush administration's readiness to play the Johnnie Cochran-style race card. Republicans have increasingly taken to slandering as racist anybody who criticizes a minority Bush appointee. And, of course, Gonzales would indeed be the first Hispanic etc. etc.

Yet, what we haven't heard is much evidence that Hispanics particularly want to be represented by a national embarrassment like Gonzales.

Would you?

The best you can say for Gonzales is that he's a tool. He's a classic minion whose career over the last decade has consisted of concocting legal rationalizations for whatever George W. Bush wants to do.

What Bush wants to do is why VDARE.COM has its own questions for Gonzales—which the Senate appears unlikely to ask. Gonzales has been an enforcer in Bush's campaign to flood the country with immigrants, legal and illegal, and re-engineer it with racial quotas.

Thus the Bush Administration failed to do what it would take to get Miguel Estrada, a principled conservative opposed to affirmative action, confirmed to the federal bench. But Gonzales, who has repeatedly defended ethnic preferences, is a much higher priority.

Gonzales saved racial quotas in the 2003 University of Michigan cases Grutter and Gratz by gelding the anti-affirmative action briefs written by Ted Olson—the truly tragic figure in this Administration.

As Howard Sutherland, VDARE.COM's legal expert, wrote:

"According to Robert Novak and others, Olson's original drafts did argue against any consideration of race, rejecting the current shibboleth that government has a "compelling interest" in the racial composition of student bodies. But between Olson and Bush stood White House counsel, former Texas Supreme Court Justice and certified Bushbuddy Alberto Gonzales. Gonzales supports affirmative action and quotas. He revised the briefs to laud diversity and emphasize government's compelling interest in achieving it, excising any call to eliminate preferences other than explicit quotas. Olson apparently never got to make his case to the president—who apparently agrees with Gonzales anyway, in as far as he thinks about it at all."

Gonzales thus delivered a massive hint to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor that she should craft her Bakke-style pseudo-compromise preserving racial preferences. At VDARE.COM, we call the incoherent result the "Michigan Mess."

Moreover, Gonzales is so pro-illegal immigration that in his Senate testimony last week he used what I've called the "ultimate euphemism"—that illegal aliens are "lawful citizens."

That's not a slip of the tongue. Gonzales has a relentless prejudice in favor of authoritarian lawlessness, which is why the President wants to make him the nation's chief law enforcement officer. Here, for instance, are his semi-coherent thoughts from last Thursday's hearing on enforcing the immigration laws:

Gonzales: "There is no requirement, of course, upon state and locals to enforce federal immigration laws. It is purely voluntary. In fact, of course, some states have prohibitions [against?]. They couldn't, even if they wanted to. [They couldn't what?] In some cases, the department, as I understand it, has entered into with state and local departments in terms of memorandums of understandings in order to enforce this [?]. I certainly am sensitive to the notion that some local law enforcement people don't want to exercise this authority. Well, we're not saying that they have to. If they want to they can assist in fighting the war on terror, that's what this opinion allows us to do. Personally I would worry about a policy that permits someone, a local law enforcement official, to use this authority somehow as a club to harass uuhh they might be unlawful aliens but otherwise lawful citizens. [Emphasis added…!!] That would be troubling. That would be troubling to the President."

The National Council of La Raza (i.e., "The Race") has saluted Gonzales as a fellow-traveler in mestizo supremacist circles. According to WorldNetDaily (November 24, 2004):

"Alberto Gonzales served with distinction on the board of directors of one of NCLR's oldest and most respected affiliates, the Association for the Advancement of Mexican Americans in Houston, Texas," [Janet Murguia, NCLR executive director and chief operating officer] said. "Moreover, during his tenure as White House counsel, he has been one of the most accessible members of the White House staff to NCLR and other Hispanic organizations." [NCLR Press Release]

There's no doubt that if a white, or even an African-American, nominee for Attorney General was linked to a group that called itself "The Race," he would be asked to distance himself from it.

The white American establishment, however, is condescendingly unaware of the very existence of the concept of mestizo supremacism—even though that has been the official ideology of the Mexican government since 1928.

There is also the detail that Gonzales is flamingly inept. He recently vetted and endorsed the now-withdrawn nomination of the gangsterish Bernie Kerik to be Secretary of Homeland Security. But, Bush never fires anybody for incompetence, just for independence. And that's the single sin you can be sure Gonzales won't commit.

And don't believe the NRO crowd that only anti-American liberal wimps worry about little things like torture and tearing up the Geneva conventions. FBI G-men and military officers are also aghast at what Gonzales has done. Twelve high-ranking retired admirals and generals, including former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Shalikashvili, have criticized Gonzales in an almost-unprecedented open letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

After World War I, Winston Churchill forlornly reflected:

"When all was over, torture and cannibalism were the only two expedients that the civilized, scientific, Christian States had been able to deny themselves: and these were of doubtful utility."

I never thought I'd be nostalgic for the First World War. But the rapidity with which the Bush Administration, egged on by Gonzales, turned during their dramatically less desperate wars to torturing Afghan and Iraqi prisoners (70-90 percent of whom were arrested by mistake) makes the Great War look like a moral Golden Age.

One of the best things that happened to George H.W. Bush's administration was the Senate's 1989 rejection of the new President's nomination of their hard-drinking colleague John Tower as Secretary of Defense.

The senior Bush then put forward Dick Cheney, who proved as rational and capable during the First Gulf War as he showed himself hysterical and untrustworthy during the run-up to the Second.

Similarly, the junior Bush escaped serious damage when the atrocious Kerik's nomination collapsed quickly before the ex-bodyguard became a long-term blot upon the Cabinet.

Republican Senators should do their President a major favor and reject his unqualified legal lackey before Gonzales brings additional shame on the Administration and the country.

But, beyond that, they absolutely must reject him because his nomination is part of Bush's extraordinary attempt to abolish America through mass immigration and replace it with some Tex-Mex oligarchic paradise.

[Steve Sailer [email him] is founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute and movie critic for The American Conservative. His website www.iSteve.blogspot.com features his daily blog.]