The Administration line on Alberto Gonzales's resignation is that he made the decision on his own, after weeks of consideration. On Friday, at the end of a two-week vacation in Texas, the Attorney General called President Bush and told him "that he felt it would be in the best interest of the [Justice] department," if he stepped down, according to a senior Administration official. The President "reluctantly accepted that decision," the official says, and later asked Gonzales and his wife, Becky, to come down to Crawford, Texas, where Bush has been on vacation.

New conceptions of time