Sen. Dianne Feinstein's bill to restore Senate confirmation of U.S. attorneys comes up for a vote today.

Senators should pass this restoration overwhelmingly.

Feinstein's bill is officially known as the "Preserving United States Attorney Independence Act of 2007." A companion bill in the House, sponsored by Rep. Howard Berman, D-North Hollywood, has passed out of committee and awaits floor action. That bill should pass, too.

As Senate debate showed Monday, presidential appointment with Senate confirmation is an important check and balance in our system of government. That's as true for the nation's 93 U.S. attorneys, a key element in our federal system of justice, as it is with other federal appointments.

Yet that key check and balance was eliminated in filling midterm U.S. attorney vacancies through a last-minute Bush administration request in the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act in March 2006. The change was put in during a House-Senate conference committee by staff without the knowledge of members of Congress, an event that calls out for further investigation.

The change gave Attorney General Alberto Gonzales authority to appoint interim federal prosecutors to indefinite terms -- thus allowing the executive branch to avoid ever nominating a permanent successor and going through the Senate confirmation process.

Feinstein has clearly explained the implication of this expansion of executive power. It would allow the attorney general on the second day of a president's term to put in interim U.S. attorneys who would remain without Senate confirmation until the president leaves office.

A little history is in order. Since the mid-1800s, in the rare case where a U.S. attorney left office or was fired in the middle of a president's term, the courts named an interim replacement until the president nominated a permanent replacement and the Senate confirmed him or her. As Feinstein said Monday on the Senate floor, they "did so with virtually no problems."

In 1986, at the request of Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., Congress added a limited role for the attorney general. If a midterm vacancy occurred, the attorney general could name an interim U.S. attorney for 120 days. If that time passed without the president nominating a permanent replacement and the Senate confirming him or her, then the pertinent U.S. District Court would name a temporary replacement -- who stayed in office until the president nominated and the Senate confirmed a permanent replacement. This encouraged president and Senate to work together to get permanent replacements into office in timely fashion.

When you see this history, you see just how radical and insidious the Bush administration change was. We now know that the Bush administration explored the idea of replacing all 93 U.S. attorneys in 2005. Administration officials exchanged e-mails indicating that the changes to the Patriot Act would help facilitate firing U.S. attorneys and replacing them without Senate confirmation for the rest of the Bush presidency. Feinstein's bill would put things back to where they were before the change, ensuring that the Senate confirms U.S. attorneys.

This fiasco makes you wonder what else is buried in the USA Patriot Act that needs to be expunged.