March 11 (Bloomberg) -- Democratic Senator Charles Schumer said Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should resign because the Justice Department has become too ``political.''

``For the sake of the nation, Attorney General Gonzales should step down,'' Schumer, of New York, said on CBS's ``Face the Nation'' program. Gonzales ``doesn't accept or doesn't understand that he is no longer just the president's lawyer, but has a higher obligation to the rule of law and the constitution.''

Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, said on the same program that whether Gonzales should step down is ``a question for the president.''

``I do think there have been lots of problems,'' Specter, who like Schumer is a member of the Judiciary Committee, said.

The Justice Department is facing an uproar in Congress over the firings last year of eight U.S. attorneys, with the majority Democrats questioning whether the Bush administration forced out the prosecutors to influence politically sensitive investigations.

Pressure intensified when the department's inspector general released a report last week concluding that Federal Bureau of Investigation agents violated the privacy of U.S. citizens in collecting intelligence under provision of a law intended to fight terrorism.

President George W. Bush, asked yesterday in Uruguay about the inspector general's report, said he has ``confidence in'' Gonzales. The president was traveling today to Colombia and administration spokeswoman Dana Perino in Bogota said Bush's statement yesterday stands.

Longtime Adviser

Gonzales, 51, became attorney general in 2005 after serving as White House counsel in Bush's first term. He's been an adviser to the president since Bush was governor of Texas and was appointed by Bush to the state's Supreme Court in 1999.

Another Democratic member of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, stopped short of calling for Gonzales to step down. Still he said on CNN's ``Late Edition'' program that the attorney general ``has lost the confidence of the vast majority of the American people'' and of Congress.

Six former U.S. attorneys said in congressional hearings last week that they were pressured by lawmakers on sensitive cases and then warned by the Justice Department not to talk about their firings. Gonzales has defended the dismissals.

Job Performance

The department has argued the prosecutors were fired based on their job performances or because they failed to carry out administration policy priorities. Seven were dismissed in December, and another was let go earlier last year, replaced by an aide to White House political adviser Karl Rove.

Separately, the inspector general's audit released March 9 said the FBI improperly used so-called national security letters to collect telephone, banking, e-mail records and other data without judicial review. The FBI also understated by thousands the number of letters it issued, the report said.

The data was collected under the Patriot Act, a law passed after the Sept. 11 attacks to give law enforcement broader authority to investigate suspected terrorists. Gonzales has led the administration's defense of the Patriot Act against criticism from civil liberties advocates.

As White House counsel, Gonzales helped develop U.S. policy toward ``enemy combatants'' captured in Afghanistan and Iraq, writing rules that limited the rights of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jesse Westbrook in Washington at jwestbrook1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: March 11, 2007 13:45 EDT