Maureen Dowd’s clever editing magically transforms Gore into Pompous Bore.

Sen. Schumer (D-NY): Canned prosecutors say they want to talk.

Was it Heather Wilson (R-NM) who helped get US Attorney David Iglesias fired?

As we first reported earlier this afternoon, Rep. Steve Pearce, the other Republican member of Congress from New Mexico, denies he called Iglesias to nudge him to drop an indictment on a state Democrat just in time for the November election.

We called Wilson for comment at the same time. And we haven’t gotten a response. Now we learn that the Post hasn’t gotten their calls to Wilson returned either.

Now, yesterday when we reported that Iglesias had emailed a friend telling him that his firing was a “political fragging”, we picked that story up from the blog of Joe Monahan, a New Mexico politics insider.

A short time ago TPM Reader BL sent us a link to this post on Monahan’s blog from December 20th. It’s about Iglesias’s ouster, but before the fired US Attorney issue caught on nationally. And it includes this passage …

There was another angle that surfaced too. That one had ABQ GOP Congresswoman Heather Wilson egging on Justice to axe Iglesias. Was she unhappy with the Vigil prosecution that played a role in her campaign? Was she displeased that the U.S. attorney failed to come with indictments in the investigation of the construction of two Bernalillo county courthouses in time for her to use in her difficult re-election battle with Democrat Patsy Madrid? Those were the questions being posed in light of her rumored involvement in the Iglesias matter, coming as it did from reliable legal sources.

So it seems like Wilson’s meddling in this matter was at least being traded as scuttlebutt well before Iglesias made his accusations. She doesn’t seem inclined to deny was one of the two callers. And she was involved in a super tight race last Fall against Democrat Patricia Madrid.

I pretty much guarantee that Iglesias’s explosive claims are the story in all New Mexico politics today. We first called Wilson’s office just before 2 PM and we’ve placed repeated calls since then. The Post apparently get an answer either. And a staffer in Wilson’s DC office just told us that Wilson’s spokesperson, Bryce Dustman, is in the office today.

So if Dustman can deny that Wilson was one of the two members of Congress who called him, we’re all ears and we’re waiting by the phone.

It’s truly TPM entering Nirvana: Doug Feith sets up his own website to clear his good name! (via WashingtonWire)

Late Update: It seems some awful, awful person has now created a parody version of Doug’s site.

House committee schedules vote on whether to subpoena ousted U.S. attorneys.

The Politico takes a beating from CJR Daily‘s Paul McLeary over the Dan Gerstein flap:

There comes a time in the life of most every publication when it runs into some ethical quandary concerning the affiliations of one of its contributors. More often than not, the trouble could have been avoided by a couple of words in the author’s bio, or a line or two in the article itself disclosing whatever ties the author has to a person or group that smacks of impropriety…

While [Gerstein’s] right that his piece barely mentions Lieberman (he refers to the Lieberman-Lamont Senate race twice in order to show how nasty liberal bloggers are), he’s sidestepping a crucial point — that he’s still on Lieberman’s payroll, and that the liberal blogosphere ain’t anywhere near through bashing his boss.

And that, friends, is one important reason why we have bio lines, to announce such connections.

We’re not saying that Gerstein is hiding his affiliation with Lieberman — he is quoted as working for him in the other Politico story, but from a journalistic standpoint, his continuing relationship with Lieberman, and all the history with liberal bloggers that that relationship entails, does in fact taint his piece.

While Gerstein claims innocence, it’s important to remember that he’s a political operative, and thus he works under a very different set of rules than a journalist. His goal is to push the interests of his clients, period. It’s the editors of the Politico who should have known better.

The rest is here.

Golden oldies … (Jay Carney, Jan. 17th 2007)

Running Massacre?

That’s how Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo describes a story that his blog and its offshoot, TPMMuckraker.com, have played a laudable role in uncovering: the resignations of more than a dozen United States Attorneys across the country, and their replacement, under an obscure provision in the reauthorization of the Patriot Act, by “interim” candidates hand-picked by the attorney general without the consent of the Senate or any constraint on the duration of their service.

It’s all very suspicious-sounding. The provision smacks of a power-grab, an attempt to put a leash on federal prosecutors in the name of efficiency. It looks even worse when it turns out one of the “interim” US attorneys appointed by Alberto Gonzales is Tim Griffin, a veteran GOP operative who worked in Karl Rove’s shop at the White House and as director of research (i.e., chief dirt digger) at the Republican National Committee. Not only that, but Griffin was appointed to be the USA in his home state of Arkansas, which can only mean he’s being sent by Rove, armed with subpoena power, to dig up fresh dirt on the Clintons in time for the 2008 presidential campaign cycle.

Of course! It all makes perfect conspiratorial sense!

Except for one thing: in this case some liberals are seeing broad partisan conspiracies where none likely exist.

The silence is starting to get a tad deafening. Fired US Attorney says two members of Congress contacted and nudge him on getting a Democrat indicted before election day. Everyone seems to be denying it was them. Except for two folks. No one seems to be able to get a call returned from Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) or Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM).

Here’s the Post‘s succinct, if vaguely oblique, summary of the relevant reporting …

Spokesmen for Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.) and the state’s two Democratic lawmakers, Sen. Jeff Bingaman and Rep. Tom Udall, said the lawmakers and their staffs had no contact with Iglesias about the case. The offices of New Mexico’s two other Republican lawmakers, Sen. Pete V. Domenici and Rep. Heather A. Wilson, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Heather? Pete?

A few more nuggets from the Post piece on the Iglesias charges.

In his interview with the Post Iglesias speculates on the probable chain of events that got him fired …

“I didn’t give them what they wanted. That was probably a political problem that caused them to go to the White House or whomever and complain that I wasn’t a team player.”

If you’re a nervous member of Congress in a tight election and you’re pissed you can’t get any action out of Iglesias, you probably don’t call the DOJ. You call the White House, specifically the political office. So who at the White House got called? And what did they do?

There’s another interesting tidbit down at the bottom of the article — a few brief comments from former Deputy AG James Comey. Remember, when the Plame case started to heat up in late 2003 and Attorney General Ashcroft had to recuse himself from participation in the case, it was Comey, the Deputy AG, who appointed a prosecutor he knew would get to the bottom of the mess, Patrick Fitzgerald. Here’s Comey …

Former deputy attorney general James B. Comey this week praised Iglesias as “a fired-up guy.”

“David Iglesias was one of our finest and someone I had a lot of confidence in as deputy attorney general,” said Comey, now general counsel for Lockheed Martin.

But Roehrkasse said Justice “had a lengthy record from which to evaluate his performance as a manager, and we made our decision not to further extend his service based on performance-related concerns.”

Who do you believe?

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. has died at the age of 89.

According to the Times obituary, he had a heart attack at a restaurant in Manhattan and died at New York Downtown Hospital.

Because of my background I think of him primarily as an historian, though his influence is at least as much as an intellectual on the stage of politics stretching over more than half a century. My favorite of his books — I think his first — is The Age of Jackson. In some ways it’s a very dated book, but also a timeless one. In its own broad and expansive narrative fashion it is as good a book as any you’ll read about the period. I recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about America.

Then there’s The Vital Center, the touchstone of Cold War Liberalism and liberal anti-Communism, published only three or maybe four years Age of Jackson, though now saddled with a title that, as a catchphrase, has been cheapened out of all recognition.

Three years ago, at an awards ceremony, I saw my chance, buckled up my courage, and introduced myself in one of those awkward ‘I’m introducing myself because I want to be able to remember that I met you’ moments and had the unexpected gratification of learning that he’d heard of me. Here’s a post I wrote later that day recounting my not-so-successful attempt to explain to this octogenarian what a ‘blog’ was with very few common points of reference.

If you’re not familiar with Schlesinger or know him only as a name, take the time to read the Times obit. This is one of those passings that, in a small but deep way, marks the passing of an era.