U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif, has been pressing for answers for why the Bush administration has quietly replaced at least seven U.S. Attorneys around the country with interim appointees that will never have to be confirmed by the Senate.

Today, she got to grill Attorney General Alberto Gonzales about the matter, and when she didn't get the answers she asked for, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., stepped in and demanded Gonzales do the right thing. The blog Muckraker.com has been following this little drama, and to review the exchange between Feinstein, Leahy and Gonzales, click HERE.

Feinstein's gripe is both that the Bush administration is circumventing the advise-and-consent powers that the Senate has for such appointments and that the White House is possibly inserting replacements who are GOP political hacks.

Exhibit A is what happened in Arkansas, where federal prosecutorBud Cummins was abruptly replaced in December by Timother Griffin, the former the research director of the Republican National Committee.

Feinstein said it appears the White House has been able to pull off these switcheroos using a little-known provision put into the Patriot Act by Leahy's predecessor chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa.

Interesting, no?

--Sam Hemingway