by Bill Shein
March 30, 2007

“It will be very difficult for the White House or the attorney general to improve the situation because the attorney general has lost the confidence of so many senators.” — Sen. John Sununu, R.-N.H., calling for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — As the scandal surrounding the firing of eight federal prosecutors continues to grow, only one senator still believes that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should keep his job. And he seems unlikely to change his mind.

“I think he should stay on,” said Sen. Billy Lehman, who represents the homerooms located on Corridor B of John F. Kennedy High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. “While few, if any, members of the U.S. Senate still support the president’s man at Justice, I stand here today, during recess, to say that Al Gonzales has my complete confidence.”

Elected to Kennedy High’s student government as a freshman two years ago, Lehman has long been known as an iconoclast among his teenage colleagues. For example, when the student senate voted last year to require better labeling of cafeteria “mystery meat” sandwiches, his was the sole dissenting vote.

“For decades, American students have benefited from the stress-reducing laughter produced by jokes about ‘mystery meat,’ and I, for one, will not vote to deny future generations the same benefit,” he said during an emotional press conference on the football field. “Frankly, a school cafeteria without ‘mystery meat’ is not a school cafeteria at all.”

Lehman’s contrarian position on the status of the attorney general has raised eyebrows, largely because of his own role in the controversial 2006 dismissal of all three members of Kennedy High’s Junior Prom Committee. Those fired had all campaigned for Lehman’s opponent during a recent election.

According to one student government aide, Lehman was also angry that the committee rejected his suggestion that pop star Neil Diamond — Lehman’s favorite singer — perform at the junior prom. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the matter.

Lehman, who chairs the powerful Student Activities committee, pushed through the firings by citing “poor performance.” But e-mails released in a recent “document dump” show that he had once praised the Prom Committee for its “thorough and competent work on behalf of the junior class.”

Recently, Lehman’s approval rating plummeted when he proposed a pre-emptive invasion of a rival high school. He later said that he was “obviously joking.” He was also criticized for seeking the ouster of the school’s well-liked ambassador to the Model U.N. Several e-mails later revealed that he planned to install his girlfriend in the post.

Ironically, support for Lehman — once considered the frontrunner in next fall’s contest for student-body president — has withered in response to his support of Gonzales and the continuing fallout from the Prom Committee scandal. Sen. David Koffman, a sophomore and long-time Lehman protégé, yesterday broke ranks. He said that Lehman has “mixed politics and personalities into too many policy decisions. It has to stop.”

Contacted by the school paper, Lehman aide Karl Rove (no relation to President Bush’s advisor of the same name) criticized the “intensely partisan” atmosphere surrounding both the Prom Committee scandal and Lehman’s support for Alberto Gonzales.

Rove said that Lehman would not provide testimony in the ongoing investigation into the Prom Committee firings unless there is no transcript, no oath, and no use of spoken words. However, he suggested that Lehman could provide testimony in the form of interpretive dance, or perhaps via a game of charades or Pictionary.

“There’s a fundamental principle here,” Rove said. “And while I’m not sure what that principle is, I’m not going to let Sen. Lehman set a precedent for violating it.”

Contacted about Sen. Lehman and the Prom Committee firings, a Justice Department spokesman said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Please don’t call here again.”

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Bill Shein’s memoir, “Too Many Nuclear Wedgies: My Time in Student Government,” is out in paperback.