Tony Snow gave us the new line for the White House on Carol Lam today.

According to Snow, there’s nothing odd about the fact that the Attorney General’s Chief of Staff, Kyle Sampson, discussed the need to get rid of Carol Lam just a day after she informed the Justice Department of her decision to execute search warrants against a key CIA official appointed by the Bush White House. Indeed, Snow says that the Justice Department emails expressed concern about Lam’s lax immigration enforcement policies as far back as January 2005.

And yet, that’s not true.

To be specific, Snow appears to be referring to a March 2005 spreadsheet of US Attorneys in which the 93 US Attorneys were rated according to effectiveness and political loyalty. It is true that Lam’s name was stricken out on that list. She was one of three of seven of the firees similarly noted on that March list.

But the list doesn’t mention immigration policy as the reason that Lam is listed. And it’s actually highly questionable what that list means.

The ratings for all 93 US Attorneys except for seven of the eight firees were redacted from the list. So it’s impossible to know what the scratch-through over Lam’s name really means without knowing how many others were similarly rated. A January 2005 email suggests that between 15% and 20% of the USAs were slated to be fired. For all we know, half the US Attorneys had their names stricken on the list.

What’s more, to date, former Arkansas US Attorney Bud Cummins is the only one of the eight fired US Attorneys for whom poor performance has never been alleged as a reason for dismissal. And yet Cummins’ name is scratched out as well.

The point is that while Snow wants to point to the March US Attorney ‘ratings list’ as evidence that the desire to fire Lam long predated both the Cunningham controversy and the May 2006 emails, they simply don’t show that.

Secondly, the references to Lam’s immigration enforcement record in the May 2006 email are more than a little questionable. The May 11 2006 email from Sampson to the White House’s Willaim Kelley which refers to the “real problem we have right now with Carol Lam” makes no mention of immigration policy. (That’s the email that comes right after she said she was going after the CIA appointee.)

The only mention of immigration policy comes three weeks later (May 31st, 2006) in an email from Sampson to DOJ’s Bill Mercer. But look at what Sampson says. “Has ODAG ever called Carol Lam and woodshedded her re immigration enforcement? Has anyone? If the AG ordered 20 more prosecutors to S.D. Cal. to do immigration enforcement only, where would we get them from (remember the premise: AG has ordered it)? Please advise.”

Now, this email can be read a few different ways. But look closely at what’s being said. This is allegedly more than a year after the White House’s and the DOJ’s disgruntlement with Lam began. And the AG’s Chief of Staff has to ask around to see whether anyone has ever even raised the issue with Lam. (Indeed, according to Lam’s testimony, the DOJ never raised the immigration issue with her during her entire tenure.) I would submit that the most logical reading of this email is not to reference longstanding displeasure with Lam’s immigration policy enforcement leading to her dismissal. A more logical reading is an effort to find a rationale for firing Lam and inquiring to see whether a paper trail or record exists to back that rationale. Firing Lam for an issue Washington had apparently never even brought up with her would be pretty iffy.

In any case, the emails we have so far are just too few, far between and ambiguous to make any sense of why Lam was canned. But the White House and the Justice Department are claiming that she was dismissed for lax immigration enforcement and that the emails show this concern went back to early 2005.

A lot of you have written in over the last few days with kind words about our coverage of the US Attorney Purge story. So, on behalf of all of us, thank you. We really appreciate it. Reporting and particularly digging into issues that aren’t getting the attention they deserve are the centerpiece of our mission. On Friday, I mentioned our plans to expand our muckraking endeavors. In addition to more breaking news and more reporting, we plan on hiring at least one reporter-blogger to report to you directly from Capitol Hill every day. We think there’s more news there to dig into, more stories that aren’t being told. And starting tomorrow we’re going to launch a subscription drive to raise funds for that purpose, just as we did when we originally launched TPMmuckraker. More on this tomorrow and more details on the muckraking activities we’ve got planned for the coming months. Stay tuned.

The GOP frontrunner — Rudy Giuliani — has gotten divorced twice.

By contrast, the entire field of Dem Presidential candidates has divorced a total of… how many times? Guess.

Join us as we dissect Karl Rove’s cover story for the firing of Carol Lam.

Like a fish that keeps growing in size with every retelling, the size of this DOJ document dump keeps growing and growing and growing. The latest we’re hearing is that it’s going to be 2000 pages — hard copy. To be released momentarily. Supposedly.

White House: Gonzales will weather the storm!

That’s what a “senior Bushie” is telling the Daily News’ Ken Bazinet.

Is Alberto #9?

White House floating names of Gonzales successors. These must be fun times over at Main Justice.

Here are some of the first scans of those emails from the Justice Department tonight. Start looking through. Tell us what you find.

The AP sent this note to editors this evening: “The Senate and House Judicidary committees now say they do not intend to provide to the media tonight paper copies of more than 3,000 pages of documents surrounding the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. The House committee says it is trying to post some of the documents on its Web site. We will advise on lead prospects.”

Late Update: New PDFs are coming fast and furious at the House Judiciary Committee website. When I looked a few minutes ago only one document was up. Now there are seven.

Well, the documents have been dumped. 3,000 of them. And we want your help going through them and finding the key information. Over at TPMmuckraker we’ve set up this post and discussion thread where readers are poring over the documents and reporting back what they find. If you want to help us find the dirt in the dump click here to find out how to help us.

Today’s Must Read: the morning papers mine the Justice Department’s document dump.