Barack Obama at the Dem debate: “The time for us to ask how we were going to get out of Iraq was before we went in.” That and other items in our Election Central Debate Roundup.

Paul Kiel and Spencer Ackerman are live blogging the Alberto Gonzales hearing at TPMmuckraker, where they will have commentary and video highlights.

I must say this surprises even me …

A few months ago, [Condi Rice] decided to write an opinion piece about Lebanon. She enlisted John Chambers, chief executive officer of Cisco Systems as a co-author, and they wrote about public/private partnerships and how they might be of use in rebuilding Lebanon after last summer’s war. No one would publish it.

Think about that. Every one of the major newspapers approached refused to publish an essay by the secretary of state. Price Floyd, who was the State Department’s director of media affairs until recently, recalls that it was sent to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and perhaps other papers before the department finally tried a foreign publication, the Financial Times of London, which also turned it down.

As a last-ditch strategy, the State Department briefly considered translating the article into Arabic and trying a Lebanese paper. But finally they just gave up. “I kept hearing the same thing: ‘There’s no news in this.’ ” Floyd said. The piece, he said, was littered with glowing references to President Bush’s wise leadership. “It read like a campaign document.”

Floyd left the State Department on April 1, after 17 years. He said he was fed up with the relentless partisanship and the unwillingness to consider other points of view. His supervisor, a political appointee, kept “telling me to shut up,” he said. Nothing like that had occurred under Presidents Bill Clinton or George H.W. Bush. “They just wanted us to be Bush automatons.”

I was actually remembering, only last night, how President Bush ran his 2000 campaign on a platform which charged the Clinton administration of making ‘everything about politics’. And how this crew was going to clean things up.

Politics is inevitably a very big part of governance. And to some degree that’s as it should be. But there’s truly never been an administration that has so relentlessly and cravenly politicized every nook and cranny of the governmental structure as this one. I’m not even sure there was anything like it in the 19th century, though the vast differences in the nature of the state itself make comparisons extremely difficult.

“We are going to try a dozen different things. Maybe one of them will flatline. One of them will do this much. One of them will do this much more. After a while, we believe there is chance you will head into success. I am not saying that we are absolutely headed for success.”
—A senior U.S. military officer, quoted in The New York Times, on the new new New Way Forward in Iraq

A short time ago in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing at which Alberto Gonzales is appearing, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) posed the question we were pondering this morning: Did Karl Rove or his crew give political briefings to officials at the Justice Department, as they did at more than a dozen other departments and agencies?

Here is Kennedy’s exchange with Gonzales:

So Gonzales claims he is not aware of any such briefings at DOJ, saying he thinks he would know about them if they had occurred (of course there’s been a whole lot going on in his department that you would think Gonzales should know about but hasn’t). As for whether such briefings elsewhere in the federal government violated the Hatch Act, Gonzales said, “We’ll look to see whether or not there’s something there.” Left unsaid was that Gonzales was White House Counsel when some of the earliest briefings were being given.

You may have also noticed in the clip Kennedy’s emphasis on today’s WaPo report that Rove’s political briefings were given to Peace Corps officials. That has to be a particularly bitter pill for Kennedy since the creation of the Peace Corps was one of the crowning accomplishments of his brother’s presidency.

Law professor Frank Askin has more on the history of Congress’ inherent power to enforce its own contempt citations.

On Monday night the Democratic candidates engaged in the first ever YouTube-fueled presidential debate. In case you weren’t able to witness the revolution in real time, we bring you a highlight reel of the action in today’s episode of TPMtv. Thanks to all readers/viewers who wrote in with suggestions!

Alberto Gonzales really is a national embarrassment. Even Arlen Specter displays a sneering contempt for the man. And that was before Gonzales began today’s soft-shoe shuffle in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

How many U.S. Attorneys has he fired? He’s not sure.

Why is he the man to fix the department he broke? That’s a good question, he admits.

Why didn’t the President’s new executive order on torture specifically ban waterboarding? “[S]ome acts are clearly beyond the pale, and that everyone would agree should be prohibited,” he testified. “There are certain other activities where it is not so clear, Senator.”

And so on.

We have ongoing coverage of the hearing at TPMmuckraker.

There were serious questions shortly after former Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA) was shipped off to prison about whether federal prosecutors had (or should have) secured Cunningham’s ongoing cooperation as a condition of his plea agreement. At one point, the Pentagon’s lead investigator in the case complained publicly about his access to Cunningham, and The New York Times reported that Cunningham was not cooperating.

But it appears that Cunningham is now cooperating, at least to some extent:

Cunningham arrived Sunday night in the custody of federal prison authorities, wore an orange jumpsuit and was placed in a fifth-floor special segregation unit in the downtown federal jail.

Law enforcement sources said Cunningham was brought to San Diego from a prison in Tucson, where he has been serving his sentence of eight years and four months, for follow-up interviews with federal prosecutors.

The prosecutors are preparing for three trials of Cunningham’s alleged co-conspirators: Poway defense contractor Brent Wilkes, former CIA official Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, and New York mortgage broker John Michael.

Cunningham is expected to remain in San Diego until prosecutors are certain they no longer need his help to prepare for the trials, according to federal law enforcement sources who requested anonymity because they are not supposed to speak publicly about ongoing investigations.

His presence should not be interpreted to mean he has cooperated enough to earn a reduction in his sentence, the sources said.

That last line is telling. There may be some tension remaining, but over what and to what extent, remains unclear.

In a related matter, the San Diego Union-Tribune also reports that admitted Cunningham briber Thomas Kontogiannis is also cooperating with the feds in the upcoming trials. His cooperation did not appear to be a condition of his guilty plea either.

Since Alberto Gonzales has about as much credibility left as professional cycling, maybe it’s no surprise that members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are hinting that Gonzales may be subject to an inquiry into whether he perjured himself before the committee in denying that there was any serious dispute within the Justice Department about the legality of the President’s warrantless wiretapping program. (Spencer Ackerman and Paul Kiel have the details.)

While it may not be surprising per se, think about what it means for the institutions of justice in this country that the sitting Attorney General of the United States is suspected of perjury, by senators from his own party, who are willing to say so publicly, in matters involving national security and the fundamental constitutional rights of American citizens; yet, the President does nothing but voice his support for man.

I suppose we should not be surprised, but we should also not lose our capacity to be outraged.