Today’s Must Read: Success! Alberto Gonzales says he’s “weathered the storm.”
Breaking: For the first time, House Dems have scheduled a straight up-or-down vote for today on whether to withdraw from Iraq.
In today’s episode of TPMtv, our questions for Alberto Gonzales…
In case you think too many Republicans are getting restive with Bush administration corruption and incompetence, there are still sycophants and lickspittles like Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT) to carry on the honored tradition. Cannon is on the House Judiciary Committee and says about today’s Gonzales hearing âI hope heâs clear, direct and unapologetic. Iâm really tired of innuendo and repeated use of the word corruption. If [Democrats] canât produce tomorrow, the story ought to disappear.â
Then again, Cannon was the employer and key enabler of convicted Abramoff crook David Safavian. So I guess he’s not crazy about the word ‘corruption.’
We’re covering Alberto Gonzales’ hearing today over at TPMmuckraker.
Some early gems:
Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) sets the tone for the hearing.
Gonzales answers a question with “”I think I may be aware of that.”
Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) pushes Gonzales to hurry up and indict Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA).
I am woman, hear me spin!
Up in Minnesota, those four career prosecutors who voluntarily demoted themselves to protest how Rachel Paulose, the fresh-faced, hard-right new U.S. attorney there, was running the office are still unhappy. Now it’s about Paulose’s not-so-subtle suggestions in the media that the four stepped down because they couldn’t deal with having a young, female boss. You can read their letter to her here.
AG Gonzales explains that he’s referred to eight US Attorneys being fired rather than nine because those eight were “part of this process” of firing the eight US Attorneys. So Todd Graves didn’t count. Apparently he was a special case.
Gonzales on why White House Counsel Harriet Miers wanted Lewis prosecutor Debra Yang fired: Because she was sensitive to Yang’s financial situation and that she wanted a more lucrative job. Said Gonzales: “Ms. Miers may have known about Ms. Yang’s concern about being able to remain on the job due to financial reasons.”
See the video here.
Needless to say it’s always helpful to fire someone when they’re looking for more profitable employment.
Joe Trippi, the Web guru for John Edwards, blasts Hillary and Obama’s Iraq plans as “baloney” and holds forth on the new netroots landscape in a wide-ranging interview with Election Central.
How’d he do?
New story out from Murray Waas at National Journal:
The Bush administration has withheld a series of e-mails from Congress showing that senior White House and Justice Department officials worked together to conceal the role of Karl Rove in installing Timothy Griffin, a protégé of Rove’s, as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.
Here’s our analysis of what it all means.