I'm Smart! Not Like Everybody Says! Like Dumb, I'm Smart!

I am sad I missed Roland Burris' press conference:

Roland Burris is on TV giving a speech defending himself against allegations he lied about his role in being solicited and then trying to help raise money for Rod Blagojevich to help get the senate seat. And it's basically identical to a series of speeches Blago himself gave when he was swirling around the bowl: How dare you give me any crap for lying about that fundraising stuff when, my god, I just helped pass the Stimulus Bill, SCHIP and the Lily Ledbetter bill.

A-Rod's presser was less excruciating. Where do they get these guys in Illinois?

It was obvious from the moment anyone accepted an offer from Rod Blagojevich to be appointed that they had only a passing familiarity with ethics and standards. And now it looks like the dam is going to burst. The Senate Ethics Committee is opening a probe into Burris' possible perjury, and Illinois Rep. Phil Hare is calling for resignation:

“Senator Burris’ story has now evolved several times since he testified before the Illinois House Impeachment Committee in December. The only logical conclusion is that he is not being entirely straight with the people of Illinois.

“A cloud of corruption has hung over our state and its leaders for too long. The impeachment and removal of former Governor Blagojevich was a step in the right direction. But just as it looked like a new era in Illinois politics was possible, we suffer yet another setback. It is like a recurring nightmare.

“Given this latest revelation, I believe it is in the best interest of all Illinoisans that Senator Burris resigns. Our state and its citizens deserve the whole truth, not bits and pieces only when it is convenient.”

Citizens also deserve to have a full say in who is their representative in Washington. If Burris doesn't survive and removes himself from the Senate, there ought to be a special election. The new Governor can ask the legislature to approve one. This only highlights how broken the appointment process is for vacancies. It's not the exception, it's the rule.

Dance, Roland, Dance

This is the portrait of a politician whose days are numbered.

Senator Roland W. Burris of Illinois on Sunday defended his evolving descriptions of conversations he had with allies of former Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich in the months before Mr. Blagojevich appointed him to fill the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama.

“I did not donate one single dollar, nor did I raise any money or promise any favors of any kind for the governor,” Mr. Burris, a Democrat who was sworn in as a senator a month ago, said at a contentious news conference.

Mr. Burris tried to explain why he did not mention three phone conversations with Mr. Blagojevich’s brother — in which he now says he was asked for fund-raising help — during testimony last month before a committee of state lawmakers weighing whether to impeach Mr. Blagojevich.

“Anyone who suggests otherwise,” Mr. Burris added, “or would insinuate that my testimony in person or in writing is anything other than fully compliant with the committee and consistent with the truth is simply playing at partisan politics.”

This is pretty simple. Burris failed to disclose contacts with Blago's brother and some other allies, and did so under oath. You can call it perjury or not, but there was a failure to tell the whole truth. And just by virtue of accepting the appointment, Burris was willing to sully himself in order to get the job.

It's going to be short-lived. He'll get no support from the party establishment, who will coalesce around a primary challenger for expediency's sake. Nobody wants to defend a proxy for Blagojevich in 2010. He'll be a lame duck in a matter of months.

Walk The Plank

I think the country is so starved for some accountability for what this Administration has done that they would greet this like it was V-J Day:

The U.S. Inspector General may recommend criminal prosecution of departed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at the conclusion of an investigation, possibly as early as next month, the fired former U.S. attorney for Western Washington told a Spokane audience Friday [...]

McKay said he was summoned to Washington, D.C., in June and questioned for eight hours about possible reasons for his firing by investigators with the Office of Inspector General, who will forward their final report to Congress.

“My best guess is it will be released sometime next month,’’ and likely will include recommendations for criminal prosecutions of Gonzales and maybe others, McKay said.

Gonzales “lied about” reasons for the firings when questioned under oath in July by the Senate Judiciary Committee and now has hired a lawyer and is refusing to answer questions from the Inspector General, McKay said.

Don't get your hopes up too high, the OIG report will be in the form of a recommendation and not an indictment. But, the best course of action for all involved is if Gonzales is indicted on January 21, 2009, and he turns state's evidence and flips on the higher-ups (they don't call him Fredo for nothing). Real accountability obviously isn't about to com through the Congress; the criminal justice system is the only option left. But you have to wait until that pardon power is out of the hands of Cover-Your-Ass Boy.

As it happens I watched the excellent Frontline piece "Cheney's Law" tonight, which covered little new ground but showed pretty clearly how Gonzales was the willing dupe of Cheney and Addington inside the Justice Department. If anybody deserves to be tagged and bagged, it's him.

Marcy Wheeler has a lot more on this.

McKay says he got called to DC for an entire day of testimony. At about the same time, SJC was confirming with OIG that it was including Gonzales' "comforting" of Monica Goodling in its investigation, not to mention confirming that OIG would be able to conduct its investigation without interference. It was also ensuring that OIG would be able to investigate AGAG and other lawyers--even if they were acting "as lawyers" when they acted improperly. In other words, at about the time fired USAs were being brought back to DC to testify, SJC was making sure OIG could continue the investigation wherever it might lead--including toward Gonzales' own actions. There was an abortive attempt to get Paul Clement to appoint a Special Counsel, but that quickly fizzled.

Meanwhile, the White House was desperately trying to avoid any more incriminating testimony. Bill Mercer withdrew his nomination to AAG rather than have to answer the Senate's questions. Paul Clement and Fred Fielding were making intellectually suspect justifications for the White House and Harriet Miers to refuse subpoenas. Pete Domenici made a successful bid (thanks to Andrea Mitchell's crack reporting skills) to throw suspicion off him--only to resign several months later..

And then, in the middle of this, AGAG testified again--lying again, at least according to John McKay. And, perhaps not incidentally, both SJC and HJC started getting more explicit about Rove's involvement, and a whole lot more explicit about Gonzales' role in covering up Iglesias' firing.

Could get interestin'...

Lying To Congress Is A Crime

David Petraeus said over and over and over during his two days of testimony that "we aren't arming the Sunnis." It was not a slip of the tongue, there was no equivocation in the statement. He said that "What we have done is applaud when they ask if they can point their guns at al-Qaeda."

Of course, we knew that this was just a distinction without a difference. Spencer Ackerman noted that the NYT reported that the military is paying local tribes $10 per person to maintain security in their areas, and funding those tribes isn't all that different from arming them. And then there's this, from a CNN appearance in June:

[Question] (on camera): Will the assistance or the coordination with these former insurgent groups extend to arming [them] or helping them out in logistics in any sense?

GEN. BENJAMIN MIXON, U.S. REGIONAL COMMANDER IN IRAQ: It certainly will. We have seen this in counterinsurgency operations before, using local nationals, if you will, arming them, forming them into scouts, if you will. And that's the primary role that we want to use them in. They know the territory, they know the enemy.

So somebody is not telling the truth here. Either we're arming security units made up of Sunni tribesman, or we're just applauding. Are we supposed to be so ignorant to believe that Sunni tribes respond to applause like a Pavlovian dog? They are being supported in their efforts. Gen. Mixon says it's with guns.

We all know the danger of arming both sides of a civil war. We are entrenching Sunni tribal leaders in their own region while presiding over the ethnic cleansing in mixed areas like Baghdad. Since practically everyone in Iraq doesn't want a partitioned system, and really are interested in a strong central government on their own terms, civil strife and a battle for power is inevitable, and arming virtually everybody in the region ensures that will be a deadly battle.

General Petraeus came out even at best from his testimony, if not worse. I agree with Kos that the initial reviews have ranged from "cool to hostile." Gen. Petraeus' demurral to answer whether or not the Iraq occupation is making America safer proved his irrelevance to the ultimate debate, unable to answer Cindy Sheehan's key question "for what noble cause," unable and unwilling to understand the larger geopolitical question of how to best secure the nation, and how a myopic focus on Iraq damages that. If he is also found to be lying about the extent to which we are arming former Sunni insurgents who not long ago were killing Americans, and may still be, his credibility will be completely eliminated.

It's also a crime; I believe they call it perjury. For an explanation, contact Gonzales, Alberto at the US Dept. of Justice (until Friday).

The 25-Day Sprint

Well, Mitch McConnell has resigned himself to the fact that he can't stop the thundering momentum of WideStance Craig.

MCCONNELL: I heard from Sen. Craig this morning. He called me to give me an update on where he is in order to dispel, as he put it, any confusion that might exist with regard to his intention.

So let me relate to you his comment -- he said that he is going to try to get the case in Minneapolis dismissed, that if he is unable to have that disposed of prior to Sept. 30, it is his intention to resign from the Senate as he expressed last Saturday. If he is able to get he case favorably disposed of in Minneapolis it would be his intention to come back to the Senate, to deal with the ethics committee case that he knows he will have, and to try to finish his term.

So whatever confusion may have been created in the last few days, as of this morning that is his view about where he is headed.

So he's got 25 days for his high-powered legal team, led by the lawyer from the Michael Vick dogfighting case, to dismiss the case up in Minneapolis. How that can possibly happen, given that he has admitted to perjuring himself by saying that he pleaded guilty just to make it go away, is beyond me.

His lawyer is now trying to say on Hardball that he simply committed a misdemeanor and the Congress has no jurisdiction over it, so the Ethics Committee should back off and he should be permitted to stay EVEN IF he cannot rid himself of the guilty plea.

This is getting crazier and crazier. And the GOP must be screaming right now.

As for why Sen. Specter would give WideStance this advice to fight on, it's difficult to underestimate the clubbiness of the Senate. These guys have a sense of entitlement, and Specter more so than anyone. So it's obvious to me that he would speak out for protecting the rights of his fellow Senator. Would that he looked out for his constituents in this manner.

You Can't Kill Me I'm Already Dead!

It's the return of Craig.

Sen. Larry Craig is reconsidering his decision to resign after his arrest in a Minnesota airport sex sting and may still fight for his Senate seat, his spokesman said Tuesday evening. "It's not such a foregone conclusion anymore, that the only thing he could do was resign," said Sidney Smith, Craig's spokesman in Idaho's capital.

"We're still preparing as if Senator Craig will resign Sept. 30, but the outcome of the legal case in Minnesota and the ethics investigation will have an impact on whether we're able to stay in the fight — and stay in the Senate."

Apparently Arlen Specter got him in a room and told him he wuz framed.

I've been arguing that there wasn't really enough here to convict somebody. And I agree with Arianna that vice-squad busts are totally insane in a time of terror, and just because they're needed for a lot of Republicans doesn't mean that they're necessary.

But here's the thing: he already pleaded guilty. And the law is pretty clear on this, that you can't "un-plead" guilty without some seriously extenuating circumstances, and I don't think "I wanted it to go away" is one of them. In fact, by admitting that he was lying about pleading guilty in the first place, he's potentially eligible for perjury. And we all know how seriously Republicans take perjury.

So Craig has his head in the clouds if he thinks he can win this fight legally. And politically this is a disaster for the GOP. It keeps the story in the news, and highlights their hypocrisy, as they continue to lean on Craig to leave the stage while David Vitter sits casually in his Senate seat. The Republican Caucus can't vote a sitting Senator out; only he can make the decision. And right now it looks like Craig is being obstinate. Even Mark Foley had the sense to get out while the getting was good.

This is hilarious.

UPDATE: Too, too much. Roll Call got a hold of a phone call that Craig placed to the wrong answering machine explaining the whole thing:

Roll Call, a Capitol Hill political newspaper, posted a voice mail tonight that Craig may have inadvertently left at a wrong number Saturday morning. In it, Craig says he changed the wording in his speech and that "this thing could take a new turn or a new shape."

"Yes, Billy, this is Larry Craig calling. You can reach me on my cell. Arlen Specter is now willing to come out in my defense, arguing that it appears by all that he knows that I have been railroaded and all that.

"Having all of that, we have reshaped my statement a little bit to say it is my intent to resign on Sept. 30. I think it is important for you to make as bold a statement as you are comfortable with this afternoon, and I would hope you could make it in front of the cameras.

"I think it would help drive the story that I’m willing to fight, that I’ve got quality people out there fighting in my defense, and that this thing could take a new turn or a new shape, it has that potential. Anyway, give me a buzz or give Mike a buzz on that. We’re headed to my press conference now.

"Thank you. Bye."

I don't understand these people that are so desperate to hold on to power. Is it a pathology? I mean, Larry Craig will never win another election again. Why not go off into the sunset and hope that everybody forgets all about this?

My Point Finally Made

The fact that Sen. Craig (Wide Stance - ID) wasn't really guilty of anything illegal, yet pleaded guilty anyway, is something I called a firing offense.

...if a lawmaker thought that his civil liberties were being violated and he was being unfairly targeted for arrest, he could have brought it up in court. Someone who's supposed to be writing the laws of the nation cannot credibly claim to be duped. To me it's a firing offense.

This is explained far better by CNN Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin, who says that someone who admits to pleading guilty to something he didn't do just to make it go away is actually breaking the law with that action:

Toobin “…But what he did say today was, when I pleaded guilty in Minnesota, when I took an oath and swore to tell the truth to the judge when I plead guilty, I was actually committing perjury — I was lying to the judge saying that I was guilty, when in fact, I was innocent. Now, why he would do that and why he would think somehow pleading guilty would make this matter go away? Why he would think as a United States Senator, that becoming a convicted criminal would not become news, would not be relevant to the constituents who elected me or the taxpayers who pay my salary, I have no idea why he thought that. But that’s apparently what he thought.”

It's probably more relevant to the calls for his resignation that this guy committed perjury and was completely ignorant of the law in favor of saving his reputation. That's what I was getting at, but again I don't think that's why Republicans are collecting his scalp. They're making a purely political decision.

Drumbeat

The road to impeaching Abu G just got shorter:

A group of House Democrats will introduce a resolution calling on the Judiciary Committee to begin impeachment proceedings against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) will sponsor the measure. It will be dropped in the hopper tomorrow.

It's too early to say whether it will actually get anywhere.

Here's the text of resolution...

RESOLUTION
Directing the Committee on the Judiciary to investigate whether Alberto R. Gonzales, Attorney General of the United States, should be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary shall investigate fully whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to impeach Alberto R. Gonzales, Attorney General of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Ooh...

Prepare for the insaneosphere to lose its shit in 3, 2.... (although who knows, Fox frickin' News couldn't find a single conservative to defend Abu G yesterday.

Your Liberal Media

We've just come through a week where the Attorney General outright lied to Congress, where Senate leaders called for a special prosecutor to investigate him on charges of perjury, where even the New York Times has called for Abu G's impeachment if the Solicitor General fails to appoint a special prosecutor, where two members of the executive branch have been found in contempt of Congress, where Iraq appears to be slipping into a deep political crisis and a potential fracturing, to the extent that Nouri al-Maliki may be ready to demand Gen. Petraeus' ouster, where new evidence shows that Pat Tillman may have been killed for his political views, where this morning's paper brings us news of massive data mining on a scale that has yet to be disclosed:

To put this into perspective, remember that the White House has been willing to go to the public and make a positive argument for certain surveillance procedures (notably evasion of the FISA Court strictures) which appear to be illegal on their face. This must be much more serious and apparently something all but the most ravenous Bush authoritarians would never accept. It is supposedly no longer even happening and hasn't been for a few years. So disclosing it could not jeopardize a program. The only reason that suggests itself is that the political and legal consequences of disclosure are too grave to allow.

...with all of this stuff going on, Meet the Press had on this panel of the punditocracy...

NBC's "Meet the Press'' - Dan Balz and Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post, Andrea Mitchell and Chuck Todd of NBC News, Ron Brownstein of The Los Angeles Times and John Harwood of CNBC.

...and spent at least the first half-hour on the Hillary/Obama spat. Now, I've written about that too, but clearly it's not the only thing that's happened this week. Tim Russert opened the report with "what a week this has been!!!" and he looked almost ready to fall off his chair, hyperventilating at the prospect of getting to talk about Hillary for the next 18 months.

These are the least serious people in America, who are passing themselves off as the most serious people.

UPDATE: I also saw this Cokie Roberts/David Gergen exchange where Cokie, the ultimate concern troll, warns against Democrats moving leftward because "that is going to be a biiiiig problem for them 'just like it was in Vietnam.'" This is typical bias from the Washington Elites, who live in a total bubble and have no idea what the mood in the nation is like. Fareed Zakaria, who must get out more, first of all corrected that "way to the left" is not where any of the likely 2008 Democratic nominees are, and furthermore, distance from Mr. 28% Bush is unbelievably popular in the country. Digby says it best:

Roberts and Gergen are exalted Village elders. Roberts is supposedly a representative of "Democratic centrists" and Gergen a representative of "Republican centrists" but they are both really representatives of the establishment that represents the interests and prejudices of The Village. "The people" are abstract concepts they use in various ways to bolster their central argument that power is best left in the hands of "sensible" elders like themselves. When the people "speak" they are either "Real Americans" asserting their desire that sensible elders lead us out of the wilderness or dirty hippies who want to take the country into perdition.

If we do nothing else, we should ensure that the Democratic candidates pay no attention to these gasbags. That's not to say they shouldn't pay attention to the actual press narratives and the stereotypes that will inevitably emerge. But the punditocrisy should be shunned and ignored. They are promoting their own interests and those interests are always hostile to Democrats, who by dint of their more diverse coalition of Americans, are simply not as willing to bow down to the establishment. They are effectively agents of the Republican party simply because that is the party of authoritarian followers who will put their trust in the elite village elders. Democrats will never win by catering to them. Indeed, it is in our best interest to treat them as the hostile force they are --- it certainly didn't help to try to appease them with "centrism" as the last 20 years have proven in spades. Look at what they and the Republicans have done.

I Picked The Wrong Day To Run Errands

It's like the 24-hour news cycle hit the "hyperdrive" switch.

• Patrick Leahy has issued subpoenas for Karl Rove and Scott Jennings.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy said Thursday he will subpoena White House political adviser Karl Rove to testify about the firings of federal prosecutors.

"We've now reached a point where the accumulated evidence shows that political considerations factored into the unprecedented firing of at least nine U.S. attorneys last year. Testimony and documents showed that the list was compiled based on input from the highest political ranks in the White House, including Mr. Rove and Mr. (Scott) Jennings, and today I will subpoena Mr. Rove and Mr. Jennings."

Jennings is deputy director of political affairs at the White House.

• Chuck Schumer and other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee called for a special counsel to investigate Abu Gonzales on perjury charges. This comes after Schumer said on CNN that an investigation should start without delay.

• The Justice Department sent a letter informing the House Judiciary Committee that they will not enforce the contempt of Congress charges to Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten, citing that contempt charges don't apply when executive privilege is invoked. This of course means that we're headed for the courts on that issue (which will take quite a while, and enhance the opportunity by the Bush Administration to run out the clock) for a final Constitutional showdown. The US Attorney will have the final decision to prosecute, of course, which is about as likely as me sprouting a third arm in my back.

• Bob Gates is backtracking furiously to end the spat between a neocon undersecretary and Hillary Clinton, who merely asked the Pentagon to do its job and draw up contingency plans for withdrawal from Iraq (not unreasonable considering there are contingency plans for just about every foreign policy situation, including attacking Canada). Gates admitted that it's good for democracy to have this debate and was totally on the defensive about it.

• Stocks are tumbling and are now down 600 points in a week.

Most of these stories point to the Democrats understanding the failings of trying to reason with the Bush Administration, and how they know that there is no political downside to making these kinds of challenges.

Game Set And Match

I believe they call this documentary evidence.

Documents indicate eight congressional leaders were briefed about the Bush administration's terrorist surveillance program on the eve of its expiration in 2004, contradicting sworn Senate testimony this week by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales [...]

A Gonzales spokesman maintained Wednesday that the attorney general stands by his testimony.

At a heated Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, Gonzales repeatedly testified that the issue at hand was not about the terrorist surveillance program, which allowed the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on suspects in the United States without receiving court approval.

Instead, Gonzales said, the emergency meetings on March 10, 2004, focused on an intelligence program that he would not describe [...]

A four-page memo from the national intelligence director's office says the White House briefing with the eight lawmakers on March 10, 2004, was about the terror surveillance program, or TSP.

The memo, dated May 17, 2006, and addressed to then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert, details "the classification of the dates, locations, and names of members of Congress who attended briefings on the Terrorist Surveillance Program," wrote then-Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte.

It's OK, because Abu G is going to clear it up with Congress. OK, he's going to have his spokesman clear it up. Actually he doesn't know what the spokesman's going to say. But it's all fine.

Anyway, what he lied about is classified, so you totally can't know about it, so you don't know if he lied. So there.

This is a clear case of perjury, repeated and willful perjury, a lie to cover up another series of lies. It's time to impeach Alberto Gonzales.

UPDATE: The best "defense" of Abu G that can be mustered:

On the other hand, former GOP House Intelligence Chairman Porter Goss, "does not recall anyone saying the project must be ended,' spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise Dyck said.

As long as nobody said it should end, that constitutes an endorsemdent. By extension, as long as nobody says that I DON'T own the million dollars I just found in the street, I'm allowed to keep it.

Impeach Alberto Gonzales

I signed the initial petition urging Senators to vote No on Alberto Gonzales and block his appointment to the Attorney General spot. It was clear even then that he didn't have the distance from the President needed to carry out equal justice, nor the ability to distinguish right from wrong, having been an endorse of the legal policy of torture that has damaged our moral stature. So it is with little surprise that we've come to this moment, where Abu G can lie to the Congress repeatedly; where he can simply refuse to answer questions without citing any privilege, basically telling a legal body "Eat me"; where he can continue his policy of firing US Attorneys, politicizing the Justice Department and acting as an arm of the White House and the Republican Party without accountability.

I mean, this is just a blatant lie:

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales testified yesterday that top congressional leaders from both parties agreed in March 2004 to continue a classified surveillance activity that Justice Department officials had deemed illegal, a contention immediately disputed by key Democratic lawmakers.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), who were briefed on the program at the time, said there was no consensus that it should proceed. Three others who were at the meeting also said the legal underpinnings of the program were never discussed.

"He once again is making something up to protect himself," Rockefeller said of the embattled attorney general.

This doesn't even approach telling the truth. He's asserting that Democrats agreed to a program when they didn't. It's easily refutable. Tom Daschle and Jane Harman said the same thing, that Gonzales is out of his mind suggesting this.

This is someone who was openly laughing at Congress during his hearing yesterday. He somehow thinks that being in the clear means being free to lie. I don't see how you could do anything but impeach this pathetic figure. And I don't think that would cost you with the American public; quite the opposite, anyone who defends this maroon will see their approval ratings tank. This is a total incompetent running the Justice Department, who has damaged that institution markedly. If anyone deserved a forced removal from office, it should be him.

And as I said yesterday, none of these investigations should stop until indictments are handed out, and a lot of pressure should be put on the next President not to pardon them.

Joseph Palermo gives a nice summation of Gonzales' crimes in office and why he, the "low-hanging fruit" (and boy is it low. It's on the ground), should be impeached.

Attorney General Idunno Fibs Again

I'm on deadline today and won't have much of a chance to participate in any bloggy goodness. But I did see that Alberto Gonzales is trying to set a record for how many times you can lie to Congress and get away with it. He was boxed in by his multiple statements about the domestic spying program, saying first that there was no disagreement within the Justice Department about the program, and then when confronted by James Comey's claim that several members of the Department were ready to resign over it, claimed that Comey was talking about a different program than the warrantless wiretapping which has been revealed to the American people by the President. This contradicted an earlier statement from June, and the Attorney General repeated that contradiction today. My favorite part is how he tried to explain it:

Gonzales said that he misspoke when he said at a press conference in June that he and former deputy attorney general James Comey were referring to the same warrantless wiretapping program.

“I clarified my statement two days later with the reporter,” Gonzales told Schumer. “What did you say to the reporter?” Schumer asked. “I did not speak directly to the reporter,” replied Gonzales.

“Ok,” Schumer continued, “what did your spokesperson say to the reporter?” “I don’t know,” Gonzales said. Schumer then summed up the exchange:

In all due respect, you’re just saying, well, it was clarified with the reporter and you don’t even know what he said. You don’t even know what the clarification is. Sir, how you can say that you should stay on as Attorney General when we go through exercises like this where you’re bobbing and weaving and ducking to avoid admitting that you deceived the Committee?

Hey, bobbing and ducking and weaving has worked thus far, why not go with what you're best at?

(By the way, how much you want to bet that Dan Eggen has NEVER been contacted by the Attorney General's office about retracting the statement?)

Well, the Senate is going to open a perjury investigation, and my hope is that they will see it through AFTER Bush leaves office, charge this clown, and put him in jail. That's the message that has to be sent to Republicans who act as if they are above the law.

There are so many other crazy things Gonzales said today, I could fill a book. TPM Muckraker did, so I would be duplicative. This is embarrassing to the very notion of justice in this country.