Well, Schumer, Daschle, and Jay Rockefeller –three Democrat Senators of fine standing — declared victory, chastised Attorney General John Aschroft for not stepping aside sooner, and looked forward to the results of the investigation into Valerie Plame-gate. Joe Wilson said something, and analysts and scholars will be debating the relevance and impact of his comments until after they’ve finished their coffee. [See blog post from yesterday.]

There was some regret that Ashcroft replaced himself with a lifetime Justice Department attorney (U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald of Chicago, rather than the special counsel they had sought, but Daschle said he was content to “quickly get to the bottom of this urgent matter and swiftly bring to justice the person or persons responsible.” This was not, as the New York Times headline implies, the naming of an independent special counsel and an abject capitulation to Democrat demands.

The candidates for the Dem nomination were, of course, more hostile.

From this AP piece, we have that Lieberman was angry that Fitzgerald was “constrained by Department of Justice regulations that severely curtail the prosecutor’s autonomy.”

Candidate Dean complained that “the American people deserve a person whose honesty, objectivity and fairness are guaranteed to investigate this serious matter.”

Kerry sniped that Fitzgerald is a “Bush political appointee [who carries] the same baggage as John Ashcroft.” (On May14, 2001, the Chicago Tribune described Fitzgerald as a “politically independent, career federal prosecutor from New York.”)

Deputy Attorney General James Comey will remain the acting AG for the case of the leak regarding that woman, Ms. Plame, As a sidelight, Comey is the U.S. attorney who filed the federal charges against that woman with the napkins, Martha Stewart.