or so say the usual suspects.

Atrios has been all over this and there is no need to rehash the obvious.

I mean how many times will the Beltway Gasbags trot this bromide out?

The question that remains for the autumn is what the Republicans will do. Their congressional members voted almost unanimously to give the president financing long enough to sustain the current offensive. . . . But just below the surface, the GOP ground is beginning to shift. . . . Mitch McConnell, the supremely realistic Senate Republican leader, told reporters that "the handwriting is on the wall that we are going in a different direction in the fall, and I expect the president to lead it."

The problem is the President says he has changed course:

Last November, the American people said they were frustrated and wanted a change in our strategy in Iraq . . . . I listened. Today, General David Petraeus is carrying out a strategy that is dramatically different from our previous course.

One more time Charlie Brown?

Jason Leopold interviews fired New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias. You can read and watch here.

He fingers Harriet Miers and Karl Rove or others in the West Wing of the White House as being responsible for the firing list.

He advocates James Comey or someone like him to replace Alberto Gonzales.

He explains his role in the Office of Special Counsel investigation. They have subpoena power. He did not approach them, they approached him.

They were mostly interested in Hatch Act issues. He says Pat Rogers pressured him to file "bogus" voter fraud cases.

There's no smoking gun but he believes one exists:

More...

In some states, employees have only 180 days after a discriminatory act (a termination based on race, for instance) to file a claim under Title VII. In the rest of the states, employees have only 300 days. Those ridiculously short deadlines became even more burdensome after the Supreme Court decided this week to reject the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission's long-standing belief that claims based on discriminatory pay arise with each discriminatory paycheck. According to the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision, the discrimination occurs when the level of pay is first set, not when each subsequent check is received.

As the NY Times editorializes today, the majority "forced an unreasonable reading on the law, and tossed aside longstanding precedents to rule in favor of an Alabama employer that had underpaid a female employee for years." The decision makes it almost impossible to bring a disparate pay claim, since employees rarely know what other employees are making at the time their pay is set.

Congress should amend Title VII, both by making clear that discrimination in pay is a continuing act, and by lengthening the period for filing all discrimination cases.

Only in America, folks. Like Cookie Jill at Skippy, I'm at a loss for words:

Previously, a soldier who lost a limb almost automatically received a quick discharge, a disability check and an appointment with the Veterans Administration.

But since the start of the Iraq war, the military has begun holding on to amputees, treating them in rehab programs like the one here at Fort Sam Houston and promising to help them return to active duty if that is what they want.

"The mindset of our Army has changed, to the extent that we realize the importance of all our soldiers and what they can contribute to our Army. Someone who loses a limb is still a very valuable asset," said Lt. Col. Kevin Arata, a spokesman for the Army's Human Resources Command at the Pentagon.

They aren't just returning to desk jobs.

More...

Think Progress reports that Karl Rove's buddy Tim Griffin, at the heart of the U.S. Attorney firing scandal, has resigned as acting U.S. Attorney for Arkansas.

There's great speculation he will join Fred Thompson's presidential campaign.

This isn't a big surprise. He announced in February he wouldn't accept the permanent U.S. Attorney position. One of the reasons was Sen. Mark Pryor's opposition to him.

Raw Story has Sen. Mark Pryor's statement on Griffin's resignation.

Everyone is abuzz today with news that Law & Order star Fred Thompson has jumped into the Republican presidential race.

I'd rather talk about Rudy. David Boaz in the New York Daily News tells Libertarians to beware of him. Finally, someone in big media talks about his abysmal record as U.S. Attorney in New York.

As a U.S. attorney in the 1980s, Giuliani conducted what University of Chicago Law Prof. Daniel Fischel called a "reign of terror" against Wall Street. He pioneered the use of the midday, televised "perp walk" for white-collar defendants who posed no threat to the community - precisely the sort of power play for which conservatives reviled former state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. And Giuliani's use of federal racketeering statutes was so disturbing that the Justice Department changed its guidelines on the law.

Moving on to the present:

CNN is reporting a Saudi detainee has committed suicide. Some information is available here.

In other Gitmo news, 15 American lawyers are in Yemen.

Fifteen American lawyers have come to Yemen in order to reveal the truth about the situation of Yemeni detainees at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, they said this week at a press conference in Sana’a. They claim that the U.S. government was lying when it said that Yemen has refused to accept its detainees back into the country. “The main purpose of our visit is to expose the lie that the Yemeni government does not want its citizens back,” said Tina Foster, the executive director of the International Justice Network.

A few more details. The New York Times also reports, with some reactions from Guantanamo lawyers.

The jury returned a guilty verdict against marijuana activist Ed Rosenthal today -- he won't serve any jail time though. Background here.

Bob Stein, who saw many a scoundrel in his long distinguished career as a magazine editor, revels in the outing of Lou Dobbs:

Finally, finally the MSM, and the New York Times at that, has done for the CNN anchor what this blog has been apoplectically attempting to do for more than six months.

Starting with dismantling the leprosy hoax, David Leonhardt goes on to a litany of Dobbs’ offenses against journalistic truth that led to my naming him “the world’s worst journalist” earlier this month. Leonhardt’s conclusion:

“The most common complaint about him, at least from other journalists, is that his program combines factual reporting with editorializing. But I think this misses the point. Americans, as a rule, are smart enough to handle a program that mixes opinion and facts. The problem with Mr. Dobbs is that he mixes opinion and untruths. He is the heir to the nativist tradition that has long used fiction and conspiracy theories as a weapon against the Irish, the Italians, the Chinese, the Jews and, now, the Mexicans.”

Read the whole post and the whole article. A timely takedown.

Things are heating up in the Scooter Libby sentencing. The Judge today ordered "that the media and, to the extent they have position on the issue, the parties shall submit to the Court by 5:00 p.m. on May 30, 2007, their legal views regarding what right, if any, the media has to access the sentencing letters prior to the June 5, 2007 imposition of the defendant's sentence."

Jane Hamsher and Marcy Wheeler, as credentialed bloggers for Firedoglake and Daily Kos, have submitted their letter. More from Jane here and Marcy here.

My view on the letters is here.

The Judge also ordered Team Libby reply to the government's sentencing memoranda (here and here, pdf) by 5:00 p.m. on May 31, 2007.

Update: Here is Team Libby's response.

Rep. George Miller (D-CA) released this statement:

Rep. George Miller (D-CA), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, today said that the 5-4 Supreme Court decision in the Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber case, in which discriminated workers have only a narrow time-frame to file a complaint in the face of ongoing discrimination, was wrong and Congress should work to clarify the Civil Rights Act. “The Supreme Court’s ruling makes it more difficult for workers to stand up for their basic civil rights in the workplace. A worker undergoing sex, race, or other discrimination in pay is discriminated against with each and every discriminatory paycheck, not just when the company set the worker’s pay. Yet, according to the Supreme Court, if a worker does not file within 180 days of the employer’s decision to set her pay unlawfully, she has to live with that discrimination paycheck after paycheck. This ruling will force Congress to clarify the law’s intention that the ongoing effects of discriminatory decisions are just as unacceptable as the decisions themselves.”

Hillary Clinton is asking for help choosing her campaign song. The finalists are here. I voted for "Ain't No Stopping Us Now."

Too many of the choices are love songs, which I don't think really apply. Plus, if they're going to go down that road, maybe they should have included the Chiffons' One Fine Day. Or Bruce Springsteen's "Tougher Than the Rest." I like Cher's version.

Go on over and vote.