http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/02/04/MNG8TB5NLQ1.DTL
The Senate confirmed Alberto Gonzales as the nation’s first Latino attorney general Thursday, but Democrats registered a significant protest vote over his role as White House counsel in developing a widely condemned administration policy on the use of torture.
Gonzales was approved on a 60-36 vote — the smallest margin of victory for any Bush appointee this year — making the 49-year-old former Texas Supreme Court justice the most controversial member of the president’s second- term Cabinet.
The fight over his nomination also foreshadowed larger conflicts anticipated later this year between Congress and the Justice Department over renewing key parts of the Patriot Act and the department’s upcoming decisions about whether to charge hundreds of detainees in U.S. custody.