I have to admit I'm following the Department of Justice shenanigans a little obsessively. There's a little bit of everything there. Some basic Schadenfreude at seeing a few Bush cronies sweat a little. The folksy comedy of the Attorney General finding various ways to say "I have no idea what the hell I've been doing or whether it was right." The creepy gangster scene of Bush cronies barging into Ashcroft's hospital room in the middle of the night, trying to get him to sign things while sedated. But what most people don't know is that this is also a science fiction story.

See, no one's been able to explain who came up with this list of U.S. Attorneys to be fired. Gonzales denies it, his aides deny it, Monica Goodling says it was just sort of circulating around. But if you've read the right books, it's easy to see what happened.

1.
Needing advice on office management, Alberto Gonzales opens a psychic gate to the future, transmitting a distress signal to a society of highly evolved Republican beings in the 24th century.

They prepare their foremost scholar of ancient political science, Monica Goodling, to travel back in time and help organize Alberto's department. She will pose as a graduate of a conservative religious university, with vague legal credentials—a typical cover for time agents.

2.
An outline of U.S. culture and events from 2006-2007 is burned into Monica's mind in a rapid immersion tank: "High School Musical", Shotgun Cheney, Kevin and Britney, some wars, and so on. In this exhaustively studied era, one mystery remains: between seven and nine U.S. Attorneys were fired, for reasons that never became clear. Could Monica be the scholar who will finally uncover the truth?

Practicing her 21st-century handwriting, she copies the list of names and brings it on the journey.

3.
On arriving in the present day, there is much to do: graduating from "Regent University", working on the 2000 election campaign (being careful not to interfere with its inexplicable outcome), joining the Justice Department as a humble Assistant Deputy Statuary Breast Draper, and, finally, organizing Alberto's office.

Now and then, Monica asks casually about the firings of U.S. Attorneys. And gradually she realizes the bizarre truth: no one knows what she's talking about. "What? Why? There's no reason to do that." It never happened.

There's only one explanation: a rogue agent of the future Democrats got there first. History has been changed; Monica's world is no more!

4.
Hoping to find some loophole in the Laws of Temporal Service, Monica tries desperately to make spiritual contact with her own time. The effort leaves her brain drained; as she wanders the halls of Justice in a daze, clutching a handful of notes, her training temporarily deserts her. She drops her notes on Alberto's desk!

The next day, 50 people pass through the Attorney General's office and see a list of names on his desk with the word "fired". And as anyone would, they just assume it's a done deal.

The attorneys lose their jobs—and Monica's reality is saved—but in this new timeline, no one made the decision. They were fired by the universe.