One of the jobs that television, radio and print reporters MUST do over the coming weeks is to tell the public why it should CARE about the Justice Department probe. Most of our fellow commuters and neighbors probably do not think the firing of some federal prosecutors is a big deal.

IT IS A HUGE DEAL.

The U.S. attorney firings last year -- including seven on one day in December -- came after a two-year effort by senior White House and Justice Department aides that targeted prosecutors for removal based on their perceived loyalty to the Bush administration and the GOP. The ultimate goal of the firings was to replace the prosecutors with a new batch who would help rig the 2008 federal elections.

How can prosecutors working for the Justice Department do that? Think back to the travesty in the Florida election of 2000. It can, and likely will, happen again in several states. It will be up to the federal prosecutors in the state to come down hard on election fraud.

Now, if you pack the ranks of these civil service jobs with Bush and GOP loyalists, how likely are they to prosecute vigorously when the winner is a right-wing Republican?

Let's say for the sake of argument that you vote GOP. You feel pretty good when your candidate wins the election. Then you realize that the election was rigged. YOu realize that your friends or neighbors who voted for the Democrat had their votes stolen. Would you feel as good about the outcome? Would you be able to tell your kids or grandkids that we truly live in a Democracy?

The ongoing probe at the Justice Department and White House by the House Judiciary Committee has not got a lot of Americans on the edge of their seats. But it should. We need to know what Harriet Myers, former White House Counsel, and John Bolton, a chief of staff, were plotting and under whose orders. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales may have just been the messenger boy and the real architects of the firings may have been Karl Rove, George Bush or Dick Cheney.

Either way, we all have a lot to lose or win in this case. We have our democracy to lose if the government's prosecutors are in office only to convict people whose politics are different from the president's.

We have everything to win if we learn the truth about the plans this administration is putting in place for the next -- inarguably crucial -- presidential election.

Meanwhile, over on the Senate side of the building, the Senate Judiciary committee is on the verge of charging Gonzales with perjury. THAT case has to do with testimony he gave about his visit to a hospital room where former AG John Ashcroft was in bed in serious condition. Gonzales is believed to have made that bedside call to ask Ashcroft to re-authorize Bush's domestic spying program, a means of surveillance without a warrant to spy on American civilians (TSP). It followed a briefing with eight GOP lawmakers.

A four-page memo from the national intelligence director's office says that the briefing was about the terror surveillance program, or TSP.

The memo appears to contradict Gonzales' sworn statements earlier this week that the terrorist surveillance program was not the focus of the briefing.

Is this nitpicking? Should we even give a hoot?

The TSP, a means for the government to wiretap, bug, follow, enter the homes of and in general persecute a citizen without a warrant is a pretty big reason to be not only interested in Mr. Gonzales' tenure in the Justice Department, but damn mad he's still there.

When will we be rid of this man?