Alberto Gonzales, the nation’s first Hispanic attorney general, announced his resignation Monday — ending a nasty, monthslong standoff over his honesty and competence at the helm of the Justice Department.

Talk about dropping context. The quite simple fact of the matter is that the first of those concepts forecloses the possibility of the latter in anything having to do with the concept and context of Justice.

If one is honestly seeking justice, then competence has rarely ever applied to that particular institution. We’re talking about organisms (I’m choosy about the concept "human," too) who — as just one example — pursue sick and dying people, and those in pain, and lock them up for the "crime" of exercising their legal rights in local and state jurisdictions (not to mention moral rights, universally) to ease their own suffering with whatever substances they see fit to use.

Gonzales ought to live the rest of his life in shame.