House Judiciary Comm. will issues subpoenas to Rove and Miers tomorrow

They're not messing around in the House Judiciary Committee. John Conyers (D-MI) and Linda Sanchez (D-CA) are ready to rumble. The subpoenas get issued tomorrow to Rove, Miers, Sampson and others. Speaker.gov has the details.

It's so much more fun to be in the Majority. Read More......

The polar bears are drowning

The enviros have finally realized that the polar bears are drowning and it just might make a compelling ad campaign. I've only been saying this for - what? - two years now? Anyway, very glad to see it, and kudos to whomever at NRDC got people off their butts. Now let's see if this Web site translates into a real ad campaign beyond just YouTube.

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Iraqi insurgents blow up car with children inside, used kids as decoys to trick troops into thinking car was safe

Jesus. Read More......

FBI complaint filed against religious right leader for impersonating White House official

Here is where things get fun :-)

1. The anti-gay religious right preacher, Ken Hutcherson, the guy who got Microsoft to dump its support for gay rights, before Microsoft then dumped Hutcherson and stuck with the gays, traveled to Latvia with an anti-gay Holocaust revisionist, claiming to be a "special envoy" speaking on behalf of the White House to Latvian government officials and to the US ambassador himself. The White House denied that they ever appointed this guy to anything, nor that they helped him at all with his trip to Latvia. More here.

2. Religious right preacher guy strikes back at the White House, naming names of his contacts there and he says he has a video proving the White House named him a "special envoy." More here.

There is also now audio purported to be the religious right preacher claiming to speak on behalf of the White House.

3. And today, someone filed a complaint with the FBI accusing the preacher of violating federal law by falsely representing himself as a representative of the White House. More here.

Hutcherson hates being branded a liar. But that's exactly what the White House did yesterday. Read More......

Bush just gave a testy press conference about US Attorneys scandal

Someone's getting nervous or he wouldn't be doing a press conference - Bush hates these things - and he wouldn't be so testy, but he is. You see, no one did anything wrong. It's all just Democrats being political. Yeah, well, then why is Bush so anxious on the stand, I mean the podium? And why is he so terrified about having White House staff sworn in under oath, like regular Americans?

"I'm sorry, frankly, that this bubbled to the surface the way it has." Yeah, I bet you are. Read More......

Louisiana's Governor, Kathleen Blanco, not running for re-election

Blanco's out. She's not running again this year. Good thing cause she was a disaster. That clears the Democratic field for former Senator John Breaux. Read More......

White House refuses to let Karl Rove or Harriet Miers testify before congress about US Attorney scandal

No testimony. Nothing in public. And nothing under oath. Hiding something are we? Read More......

Open thread

A rare commodity. Read More......

94 to 2 vote shows how radioactive Gonzales-US Attorneys issue is to GOP

My God. They didn't just revoke Bush's power to appoint US Attorneys without going through the Senate, they revoked it with a 94-2 vote. That's unheard of, short of voting on mom, apple pie, and Chevrolet. The GOP, the party that never met a filibuster it didn't like, is freaking.

The Senate voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to end the Bush administration's ability to unilaterally fill U.S. attorney vacancies as a backlash to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' firing of eight federal prosecutors.

....the Senate by a 94-2 vote passed a bill that would cancel the attorney general's power to appoint U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation. Democrats say the Bush administration abused that authority when it fired the eight prosecutors and proposed replacing some with White House loyalists....

Essentially, the Senate returned the law regarding the appointments of U.S. attorneys to where it was before Congress passed the Patriot Act, including the unilateral appointment authority the administration had sought in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks.

(Hat tip, ThinkProgress.) Read More......

Re-enacting the war in Iraq on the streets of DC

An absolutely fascinating protest. I'm really bummed I totally forgot this was happening, wanted to go film it. Oh well. Good article from the Post. Read More......

Iraq, in memoriam

The fine folks at Brave New Films have once again conceived a product of impressive quality and heart-breaking poignancy. To mark the anniversary of the war, they crafted a video memorial to honor those who lost their lives serving in Iraq.

The images and stories bring home what is, for many, a war that exists outside of daily life. Millions of Americans don't know any of the soldiers who fight or even the families they leave behind. This project (which I should note is not a partisan effort) helps to change that, by showing a collection of one-minute clips featuring friends and family talking about their loved ones, at once celebrations and memorials of lives -- and more specifically, fathers, mothers, children, brothers, sisters, friends -- lost in Iraq.

Putting a face on necessary wars help us understand the sacrifices being made, strengthening our resolve against enemies that must be defeated; putting a face on unnecessary, ill-conceived, mismanaged wars of choice should strengthen our resolve against those who perpetuate a continuing national nightmare and also strengthen our support for those who have been affected by the malfeasance.

Meet Gilda Carbornaro . . . and Celeste Zappala . . . and Martha Moore . . . and so many others. See them in this remarkable online memorial, with an abbreviated version here, and remember. Read More......

Daily Show on "ex-gays" who think they can cure away the gay

My friend Wayne Besen is in the segment. It's hysterical. Seriously, these religious right people are insane. If you are ever dealing with a gay issue and the religious right is fighting you, show this video - I'm not kidding. The doctor in it - well, non-doctor - is really one of THE "experts" on how to become an "ex-gay." He's one of the religious right's top guys. Watch it quickly before Daily Show has YouTube pull the segment, which they will.

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Bush risks starving our troops by threatening veto of their funding

Oh, it's how he'd describe it if we were the ones vetoing it, so why not. More from CNN. Read More......

"You have no idea," said one Justice official, "how bad it is here."

It's raining subpoenas! From US News (via TPM Muckraker)

"You have no idea," said one Justice official, "how bad it is here."

The fear that virtually any piece of communication will have to be turned over has paralyzed department officials' ability to communicate effectively and respond in unison to the crisis, as has the fact that senior Justice officials themselves say they still don't know the entire story about what happened that led to the crisis. So they are afraid that anything they put down on paper could be viewed as lies or obfuscation, when in fact, the story is changing daily as new documents are found and as the Office of Legal Counsel conducts its own internal probe into the matter.

The paralysis will affect the calculations that Gonzales must make this week as to whether he should stay or go. If Gonzales doesn't resign, there's little doubt that he will get few of his initiatives through for the rest of his tenure and that his people will spend months churning out documents at the behest of angry Democrats who will be investigating virtually anything that moves.

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Bush still hearts Alberto, for now. But he loves Karl more.

The White House is making a big deal about a phone call Bush made to Gonzales this morning. Whatever. In the battle for their President's affection, Alberto loses. Bush still loves (and needs) Karl more.

Ed Henry just explained the situation quite succinctly on CNN:

The White House is going to protect Karl Rove before they're going to protect Al Gonzales. The fact is they can get another Attorney General. Karl Rove is their lead guy here at the White House. They're going to protect him at all cost.

Karl Rove's brilliance got Bush down to around 30% approval in the polls and helped insure Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. If they want to fight to save him, let them.

Also, watch the Bush team try to spin the idea that this scandal is dying down. It's not. It's just heating up. Even the traditional media types, who get spun and lied to by Bush officials all the time, should know that. Read More......

Bush admin. document dumps shows officials dumped on Fitzgerald

Kyle Sampson, Chief of Staff to Alberto Gonzales, rated Patrick Fitzgerald as among those who had "not distinguished themselves." That assessment was provided to Harriet Miers while they were figuring out which prosecutors to fire. And, coincidentally, it was in the middle of Fitzgerald's CIA leak investigation:

Mary Jo White, who supervised Fitzgerald when she served as the U.S. attorney in Manhattan and who has criticized the firings, said ranking him as a middling prosecutor "lacks total credibility across the board."

"He is probably the best prosecutor in the nation -- certainly one of them," said White, who worked in the Clinton and Bush administrations. "It casts total doubt on the whole process. It's kind of the icing on the cake."

Fitzgerald has been widely recognized for his pursuit of criminal cases against al-Qaeda's terrorist network before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and he drew up the official U.S. indictment against Osama bin Laden. He was named as special counsel in the CIA leak case in December 2003 by then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, who had recused himself.

Fitzgerald also won the Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service in 2002 under Ashcroft.

In Bush world, receiving an award for distinguished service means one is undistinguished.

Oh, but there were no politics involved. That's what the Bush operatives are saying -- and we know they would never, ever lie. Ever. Read More......

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Why is NBC giving Tom DeLay so much face time? Sunday, DeLay was on Meet the Press. Today, he was the first guest on the Today Show. Although, Meredith Viera did kick him around this morning.

Gonzales is still the Attorney General, but it's early.

Crank it up. Read More......

Bush administration leaves traill of manipulating global warming reports

What a relief to have an active democracy again in the US. Maybe we can get back to facing hard truths in the real world again instead of the ExxonMobil fantasy land.

A House committee released documents Monday that showed hundreds of instances in which a White House official who was previously an oil industry lobbyist edited government climate reports to play up uncertainty of a human role in global warming or play down evidence of such a role.

In a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the official, Philip A. Cooney, who left government in 2005, defended the changes he had made in government reports over several years. Mr. Cooney said the editing was part of the normal White House review process and reflected findings in a climate report written for President Bush by the National Academy of Sciences in 2001.

They were the first public statements on the issue by Mr. Cooney, the former chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Before joining the White House, he was the “climate team leader” for the American Petroleum Institute, the main industry lobby.

He was hired by Exxon Mobil after resigning in 2005 following reports on the editing in The New York Times. The White House said his resignation was not related to the disclosures.

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State Farm Insurance gives another look at Katrina cases

It's amazing what the threat of a class action lawsuit can do. It's also a sad statement that it has taken so long to help victims of the hurricane. Bush friend and Mississippi governor Haley Barbour is now praising this action but one wonders where this guy has been for so long while the people of his state have been suffering. Shouldn't he have been standing up for the victims instead of helping GOP donors get juicy contracts and coddling the insurance companies?

State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. will re-examine more than 35,000 policyholder claims filed after Hurricane Katrina and "make millions of dollars available" for additional payments, Mississippi Insurance Commissioner George Dale said Monday.

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Congressional Black Caucus negotiating with racist FOX to host Dem presidential debate

So what if FOX has launched repeated racist attacks on Obama and the black community at large, including comparing black churches to white supremacists? I mean, why should the Congressional Black Caucus let a little thing like racism get in the way of, well, whatever it is that they supposedly care about? I've always heard the Black Caucus is one corrupt organization. This would appear to be more evidence that it's not just rumor. More from AP. Read More......