It’s looks like we’ve got yet another excuse for why Cunningham prosecutor Carol Lam was fired. And this new excuse comes from someone who’s name almost certainly came up in the Cunningham investigation. More soon.

As mentioned below, now we’ve got yet another excuse for why former San Diego US Attorney Carol Lam was fired.

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) says the problem was that she wasn’t aggressive enough prosecuting lower-level drug cases.

Now, Hunter’s rationale for Lam’s dismissal is of particular interest because he is among that small group of sitting members of Congress who worked closely with Cunningham on bagging those earmarks for which Cunningham was later sent to the slammer. Hunter has never been directly accused of wrongdoing. But he was deeply tied in to the Wilkes-earmark clique. So there’s little doubt he would have felt the heat emanating from Lam’s investigation.

Glenn Greenwald discusses the essential corruption of the Washington press corps, and even includes a youtube clip of a few of the most corrupt.

The first question Harriet Miers asked fired US Attorney John McKay a few months before he was sacked: “Why Republicans in the state of Washington would be angry with” him.

This issue of White House personnel using RNC email accounts to get around governmental records archiving regulations could turn out to be a very big deal. Rep. Waxman has put the RNC on notice not to destroy any of these emails.

According to the National Journal, about 95% of Karl Rove’s email traffic has been on these RNC email accounts.

Now, I don’t know all the legal and constitutional ins and outs of this debate. But whatever claim the White House may have to protect everyone at the White House from congressional scrutiny by invoking executive privilege, this use of outside private email accounts may turn out to be too clever by half.

Can executive privilege even conceiveably cover emails from the Republican National Committee? By any definition, those aren’t emails written or received by anyone in their capacity as a presidential advisor. They’re private and have nothing to do with the president in his executive capacity.

A new poll finds that nearly six in 10 back the House Dem bill mandating withdrawal from Iraq by Fall 2008.

Yet somehow, your media commentators keep reflexively recycling the bogus claim that Congressional Dems are offering voters nothing.

Carol lam critic Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) blogs about Carol Lam’s immigration policy.

Breaking off the AP wire: DoJ official Monica Goodling to take the 5th at upcoming congressional hearing.

(ed.note: The original version of this post, which ran for just under ten minutes, incorrectly listed Kyle Sampson rather than Monica Goodling, as the the DOJ aide who plans to take the 5th at the senate hearing. We regret the error.)

For a long time a lot of us have wondered how it was that MZM, Inc., the highflying defense and intelligence contracting company of confessed Duke Cunningham briber Mitchell Wade managed to get its very first government contract ever from the Executive Office of the President (i.e., the White House) in July 2002. $140,000 for office furniture.

Now, Rep. Waxman (D-CA) asks.

You can read the letter from Monica Goodling’s lawyer to Congress here. It’s a verbose case for not talking.

Update: Kyle Sampson still plans to testify.