Colombia: Next Candidate, Please

The job of Attorney General in Colombia is about as secure as that of a high- wire acrobat. In January, Attorney General Carlos Mauro Hoyos Jimenez was kidnaped and brutally murdered by henchmen of the Medellin cocaine cartel for advocating the reinstitution of a Colombian-U.S. extradition law. Now his replacement, Acting Attorney General Alfredo Gutierrez Marquez, 63, has resigned. The reason: cocaine traffickers had used an airstrip on a ranch owned by his brother Libardo, 70. Gutierrez may have lacked the right attitude for his job anyway. Three weeks after assuming his post, he suggested that the best way to defeat the drug lords was to legalize cocaine.