Facing a growing staff revolt, Bush’s scandal-plagued head of the Office of Special Counsel (the one who tried to bamboozle investigators by taking his hard drive to Rent-A-Geek) plans a pricey staff retreat.

“We’re trying to deal with this by decapitation,” one official in the office told TPM. “The big question is: Why isn’t the White House letting him go?”

From the WSJ:

The agreement would also pave the way for companies such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. to shed the nearly 40 lawsuits they face for allegedly participating in a prior version of the NSA program, which have cast a shadow over their reputation on Wall Street and Main Street. To win immunity, they would have to pass review from a U.S. District Court.

It faces hurdles to becoming law, namely whether it will have enough support from other lawmakers in both parties in the House. Telecommunications companies, which have lobbied lawmakers aggressively in recent weeks, support the compromise as does the White House.

Critical to sealing the deal was a compromise that would grant conditional immunity to telecommunications companies for assistance they provided from September 2001 through January 2007. If the companies can show a federal district court judge “substantial evidence” they received a written request from the attorney general or head of an intelligence agency stating the president authorized the surveillance and determined it to be lawful, the cases against them will be dismissed.

I feel it behooves me to note that Office of Special Counsel Boss Scott Bloch, whom TPMmuckraker.com reports this morning is about to be sown into a burlap sack and tossed into the Potomac by his staff (some hyperbole, not much), is the very same Scott Bloch who has been caught importuning employees to go under cover in the comment sections of critical articles and blog posts and offer boffo praise of his meritorious service.

So someone might want to be watching to see if anyone shows up in the comments section praising Bloch for eradicating all corruption from the federal government, singlehandedly saving the lives of nine whistleblowers and bravely standing up to the slings and arrows of a lying press corps.

All Hail Scott Bloch! We who are about to sockpuppet, Salute You!

Who really thinks that the White House and the telecoms would go along with this so-called “conditional immunity” that congressional Democrats have agreed to if they didn’t think they could satisfy the condition?

All they must do is provide a federal district court judge with “substantial evidence” they received a written request from the attorney general or head of an intelligence agency stating the president authorized the surveillance and determined it to be lawful, the Wall Street Journal reports.

How much clearer could they telegraph that such written requests exist?

Late Update: Or as Laura Rozen puts it:

Doesn’t that actually endorse and extend to private actors the Nixonian view that if the president says it’s legal, it’s legal, regardless of what the law says and the Constitution says? Wouldn’t that set an awful precedent that an administration could get private actors to do whatever they wanted including breaking the law?

Later Update: Paul Kiel reminds me that the Senate intel committee already knows what those written requests say:

Earlier this year, the Senate intelligence committee declared in a report that lawmakers and staff had examined the classified written communications between the executive branch and the telecoms who’d participated in the program. And all those letters “stated that the activities had been authorized by the President” and all said that the program was lawful.

Obama angers some in the netroots by cutting a radio ad for telecom-immunity-loving, Iraq-War-supporting Blue Dog Democratic Rep. John Barrow, who is facing a progressive primary challenger in Georgia.

Someone help me here. McCain is grandstanding on public financing when he is, as we speak, breaking the law by continuing to spend unlimited primary campaign money after opting in to public financing for the primary phase of the campaign?

And then greenlighting the outside 527s to go after Obama only days ago?

Something doesn’t compute.

This is up on the Yahoo News site at the moment, a story about Obama opting out of public financing:

But check out the photo used to illustrate the piece:

There is no mention of bin Laden anywhere in the story.

As of a couple weeks ago, Barack Obama is the leader of the Democratic party. By definition and in fact.

What does he think about the FISA deal? As far as I know he has not weighed in publicly over the question. And I’m hearing that the sachems on Capitol Hill are in the dark as well.

When does he show his cards?

Straight from the “Intern’s Survival Guide”, we’ve assembled bios and photos of Rep. Don Young’s lobbyist “A-Team”.

The national polls haven’t been great for John McCain of late. But the state by states are worse. We run through the latest numbers in episode one of our weekly 2008 General Election Roundup …

High-res version at Veracifier.com.