Does Michael Mukasey have some kind of deal with the president? As Paul Kiel notes here, Sen. Leahy (D-VT) says that before the Judiciary Committee goes anywhere with Mukasey’s nomination, they want the information and documentation about the US Attorney firings that Alberto Gonzales had kept bottled up for months. Does he comply? Or is this where the fight is going to be?

This week at TPMCafe Book Club, we’ll be discussing The Conservatives Have No Clothes: Why Right-Wing Ideas Keep Failing, by Greg Anrig, Jr., vice president of programs at The Century Foundation. Among those joining the discussion will be William Niskanen, Bruce Bartlett, Ross Douthat, and, hopefully, Grover Norquist. Greg gets things going with an opening post on his book.

President Bush tucked it in at the end of his announcement this morning. The new acting attorney general will be Peter Keisler, an assistant attorney general who had just announced his own resignation and whose nomination to the D.C. Court of Appeals has been held up for months by Senate Democrats. So it will be Keisler, a diehard conservative and controversial figure, who occupies the DOJ top spot until a new AG is confirmed, instead of Solicitor General Paul Clement, who Bush first announced as acting AG last month, when Alberto Gonzales’ intended resignation was made public. Paul Kiel has the details.

So while putting forward what purports to be a consensus nominee, in Mukasey, Bush also puts a lightning rod in as acting AG. Presumably, Bush wants to keep the heat on Dems to confirm Mukasey, by making them face the prospect of a long Keisler tenure if the Mukasey nomination is held up. This is especially true given Democrats’ demands that the White House and DOJ comply with document requests pertaining to the U.S. attorney firings and the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program before the Senate considers confirmation.

Did the government of Syria take a delivery of nuclear components from North Korea only to have the Israeli Air Force destroy the equipment in a high stakes air raid two weeks ago? That is the story you’ll read in the Times of London. And the Daily Telegraph, on a related note, reports that “Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, who has been pushing for a diplomatic solution, is prepared to settle her differences with Vice-President Dick Cheney and sanction military action.”

The problem of course is that — how delicately to say this — the British press isn’t that reliable. Yes, yes, yea, yea, I know I’ll catch hell for saying that. And I’m an avid reader of British papers. But as I learned while doing full-time reporting on intelligence and national security topics the British press — even, perhaps especially prestige outlets like the Telegraph, the Times, and the FT — turn out to be far more porous than the American papers to agitprop of this kind, sundry false-flag bamboozlement and even cases where particular reporters (if not the papers themselves) were not above planting false stories at the behest of various European intelligence agencies.

And given what great shakes the US media is these days, that’s saying something.

But what did happen in the Syrian desert a couple weeks ago? Most if not all the articles I’ve seen speculating about a Syrian nuclear program as the target of the raid have had quotes from the always presumptively suspect meddler John Bolton. See for instance today’s editorial in the Jerusalem Post. But something of some consequence seems to have taken place. The very sketchy evidence available suggests that it was a substantial operation. And both the Syrians and the Israelis (no doubt for distinct reasons) are being extremely tight-lipped about what happened.

Other possibilities include a raid to take out weapons shipments being transshipped through Syria to Hezbollah or a probing raid to test beefed up Syrian air defenses.

Not only had President Bush publicly announced that Paul Clement would step in as acting AG until a new nominee was confirmed, but the Justice Department even slotted his photo in as acting AG on its website.

2008 Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain (R-AZ) went on Meet the Press Sunday to debate the war in Iraq with Senator John Kerry (D-MA). With McCain’s deluge of devastating points and dizzying rhetorical takedowns, Kerry was clearly no match. The real contest was the debate between McCain and video tape of McCain and others from earlier in the week. We match the two toe-to-toe and let the viewer decide the ultimate debate champion in today’s Sunday Show Roundup episode of TPMtv …

‘Wingers mobilizing against Mukasey? Whatever else he may be, Mukasey clearly isn’t a Harriet Miers type appointment — that is to say, manifestly not qualified for the job and also not clearly a movement right-winger, which is what really deep-sixed Miers’ nomination. Incompetence and cronyism just provided more weapons. They weren’t what really did her in.

But the conservative support or acquiescence in this appointment could prove as brittle. Hay is already being made of the fact that in 2003 Sen. Schumer (D-NY) put Mukasey’s name forward as one of five possible appointees to the Supreme Court who he viewed as “ideologically moderate.”

A big part of the equation here, of course, is President Bush’s extreme unpopularity and his general political impotence. There’s little to be gained any more by kow-towing to this president and much, by any number of measures, to be gained by bucking him.

On a different level, there are at least four possible agenda items the White House has to consider sending Mukasey up to the senate. 1) Ease of confirmability, 2) Getting investigations/subpoenas dealt with, 3) moving war on terror anti-rule of law agenda, 4) moving general conservative agenda.

Cheney’s big agenda item is probably #3; and he probably doesn’t care much about the other three. #2 probably matters most to everyone else at the White House. #4 probably matters most to ‘wingers who are less and less invested in Bush by the day.

Then again, don’t forget #2a — Mukasey’s background is in public corruption. And apparently he’s a bit of a stickler about these things, from, say, the Pat Fitzgerald school (or maybe it’s vice versa). In any case, that may not be great news for Sen. Stevens and various members of the House who are hanging by a thread.

Could get interesting.

He’s one of the key figures in the Duke Cunningham bribery case, but Thomas Kontogiannis remains a mystery man. At a hearing today to consider revoking his bail because he had traveled to Greece without the judge’s permission, prosecutors reported to the court that the travel had been “at the direction of agents and other representatives of the government.” Hmmm . . .

MoveOn has started running an ad in Iowa criticizing Rudy Giuliani for resigning from the Iraq Study Group. Later this week, expect some fireworks when the (formerly?) pro-gun-control Giuliani appears before the NRA’s national convention.

Three GOP senators may break with their party and sign on to Sen. Jim Webb’s troop readiness bill.