The Daily MuckThis weekend has seen a flurry of Gonzales’ related news, with The New York Times doing its fair share. We’ll be covering it all in depth, but here’s a nice little sentence that might get lost in the shuffle: “Mr. Gonzales is expected to be sidelined from any significant part in the debate on Capitol Hill this summer over legislation eagerly sought by the administration to update terrorist surveillance laws.” (NY Times)
Gonzales last week wasn’t just testifying about visiting John Ashcroft or firing U.S. Attorneys. He was also insisting that when he had testified previously that there had been no FBI abuses of the Patriot Act, what he had meant was that there had been no “intentional, deliberate misuse of the Patriot Act.” Apparently, he forgot about this one. (Washington Post)
Via War and Piece: The Senate Judiciary is planning to listen to the testimony of another former Justice Department official. Jack Goldsmith, former chief of the Office of Legal Counsel, will make an appearance in the upcoming weeks. Odds are Goldsmith won’t be Gonzales’ biggest fan; while at the Department, he wrote the opinion that challenged the legality of the NSA eavesdropping program in 2004. (Newsweek)
Senator Leahy (D-VT) reiterated his statements that Gonzales must clarify his testimony or face further consequences that might include a special prosecutor or direct Congressional action. (Associated Press)
The New York Times has tried to shed some light on the semantic parsing that is Gonzales’ testimony; they reported this weekend that the unspoken “other intelligence activities” have some something to do with the well-known (but never officially unacknowledged) NSA data-mining program. (NY Times)
Shocker. A Bush political appointee with no field experience blocked the publication by his agency because the conclusions did not mesh with the administration’s agenda. This time the topic was encouraging American support in addressing global health problems as a means of combating poverty. (LA Times)
Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV) has been under investigation by the Justice Department for the dubious use of earmarks. As a sign of good faith, he agreed to recuse himself from his Appropriations Committee responsibilities for matters surrounding the agency investigating him. And he did- at least, until he decided to vote against funding for the FBI this year. (Roll Call)
McClatchy Newspapers follows a long line of articles about what precisely can (and in all likelihood, will) be done to resolve the looming battle between Congressional oversight and executive privilege. (McClatchy Newspapers)
Sen. Specter (R-PA) expressed some retroactive concern about the appointment of two conservative justices to the Supreme Court, and he might have an ally on the subject: the American people. Thirty-one percent of the public think the court is “too conservative,” as compared to nineteen percent in 2005. (Washington Post)
The stage look set to drop a finalized ethics bill back into Congress, and voting could happen as early as this week. If it passes, it will be a huge boost for the Democratic leadership, despite worries that the bill has been watered down from its original format. (Politico)
The British government has no intention of making life easy for newly appointed Prime Minister Gordon Brown. On the eve of his first meeting with President Bush, a parliamentary committee released a report that criticized the recent practice of extraordinary rendition. (NY Times)
