Yes, I know, this is not exactly hot news. You didn't need me to tell you Gonzales quit, since it was splashed all over the mainstream media and the blogosphere in great detail.

I must eat humble crow as a prognosticator, however, having offered to bet anyone that Gonzales would leave the day that Bush leaves. I was flat wrong. I remained silent until now, because I didn't understand why I was so wrong. I still don't and neither the MSM or the blogosphere has helped to enlighten me.

Greg Palast believes that Karl Rove quit in order to work his dark magic for the next Republican presidential candidate, but I am skeptical of that explanation, since Rove's magic has dramatically faded in the last couple of years. That explanation, even if true for Rove, wouldn't explain Gonzales's exit, since Gonzales has no marketable skills beyond his willingness to betray every principle he swore to uphold if ordered by his boss to do so.

I briefly considered what one might call the Lew Alcindor substitution. As a graduate student at UNC Chapel Hill, I watched UCLA, on March 3, 1968, crush UNC for the NCAA Mens Division basketball championship. Most humiliating, though, was Alcindor's being taken out of the game long before it was over. Perhaps Bush is demonstrating that he doesn't need Gonzales any more—that he can act with impunity for the rest of the game without having the nations' chief prosecutor in his hip pocket.

The Alcindor explanation doesn't make much sense, either. Gonzales was Bush's insurance policy that covered his whole administration and he will not get another Gonzales confirmed by the Senate, even with the Democrats as feckless as they have been since returning to majority status.

It is difficult to believe that Gonzales left to avoid impeachment or because he was about to be indicted. He's the attorney general of the United States; without a special prosecutor, there is no way he will be indicted by his own department. The Democrats lack a sufficient majority in the Senate to remove Gonzales even if the House of Representatives voted to impeach.

Sidney Bumenthal, Writing in Salon, contends that Rove was the puppeteer pulling Gonzales's strings:

From the beginning of his rise with George W. Bush until the day of his abrupt resignation, Alberto Gonzales was anointed, directed and protected by Karl Rove. At the Department of Justice, Gonzales served as Rove's figurehead. In the real line of authority, the attorney general, a constitutional officer, reported to the White House political aide. Bush did not nickname Gonzales "Fredo," after the weak brother in "The Godfather," without reason.

As White House counsel and attorney general, Gonzales operated as the rubber stamp of the two great goals of the Bush presidency -- the concentration of unaccountable power in the executive and the subordination of executive departments and agencies to partisan political imperatives. Vice President Cheney directed the project for the imperial presidency, while Rove took charge of the top-down politicization of the federal government. Gonzales dutifully signed memos abrogating the Geneva Conventions against torture, calling them "quaint," and approved the dismissal of U.S. attorneys for insufficient partisan zeal.

Thus when Rove left, goes the argument, Gonzales the puppet collapsed.

There may be some truth in this. Gonzales is clearly not the sharpest tack in the box, and his usefulness to the Bush administration largely rested on his unswerving loyalty and obedience to Bush, Cheney and Rove.

Still, there is something extremely odd about all these people close to the president leaving 17 months before the end of the administration that makes me feel that there is more to these departures than what has been said up to now. Too many dogs are not barking in the night. This blogger is not privy to what Washington whispers, but something tells me that Gonzales's departure is related to Rove's departure and that this is a big deal.

Time will tell.