There are no positive developments with the Bush administration. All movement is retrograde. Always. What this means is that the welcome resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is not something to applaud but, rather, an opportunity for mischief.

The rumor mill has it that Bush will nominate Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff to replace Alberto Gonzales. Democrats should absolutely refuse to confirm this nomination. But more on that below. Another concern is Bush’s reported intention to replace Chertoff at the DHS with his prep-school buddy Clay Johnson III. Clay Johnson III has no experience in Homeland Security and he is nothing more than a Bush stooge. Here is what Bush told Mr. Johnson when he appointed him as chief of staff in Texas.

“I want someone whose primary interest is me — George Bush — and who doesn’t hope to parlay this into something and isn’t trying to curry favor with this one or that one,” Bush told Johnson and his wife, Anne Sewell Johnson, over lunch.

We do not need another Bush loyalist taking charge of our Homeland Security. That’s nuts, and the Democrats should have none of it.

We saw the result of such practices in the response to Hurricane Katrina. And, while the Senate confirmed Chertoff 98-0 to his position as head of the DHS, that was before we witnessed his incompetence in dealing with an environmental disaster. We now know that we need a higher caliber person to head DHS.

The reality is that the Senate never, ever, should have confirmed Chertoff to anything…particularly Homeland Security. The man has to answer questions about why he represented an al-Qaeda connected man in the late 1990’s. Chertoff moved from representing a terror-supporter to the head of the criminal division at the FBI. Chertoff was in charge of the investigation into 9/11. Why was a laywer for al-Qaeda put in charge of investigating al-Qaeda?

For some asinine reason, Chertoff is considered one of the ‘good Republicans’ by the Democratic Establishment. That’s crazy. He got his big start working for Alphonse D’Amato’s witchhunt of a Whitewater investigation. He left that job, inexplicably, to represent a friend of Usama bin-Laden.

But this isn’t just about Chertoff’s links to terrorists. The Democrats should insist that the new Attorney General has no links to the Bush administration. We need total independence, not someone with a vested interest in covering up crimes they may have been a party to planning and implementing.

And, no AG should be confirmed until the administration turns over all subpoenaed material.