This is a great piece at FDL on the the reaction to the US Attorney firings as expressed at a symposium on the subject in New York:

Sitting on the bench was a panel of experts discussing the "Hiring, Retention, and Firing of United States Attorneys". It was hard to say who was more outraged by the current rape of the Department of Justice, the massacre of United States Attorneys or the the obliteration of the concept of the rule of law and impartial administration of justice: the republicans on the panel or the democrats.
This is NOT a partisan issue any more. Republicans who respect the law and revere the honor and traditions of the Department of Justice are just as horrified as anyone who regularly swims here in the Lake. So, I thought I would give you some idea of the thoughts and opinions (publicly expressed–The Law Journal even had a reporter there–so I'm not telling tales out of school) of people of far greater stature and experience than I on the havoc that has been wrought by this administration.

Read the whole thing. A fantastic piece.

Okay, so what now on Iraq funding and ending the war? I think everyone finally gets that the Spending Power, and specifically the NOT Spending power is the only potential check on Bush on Iraq now. There will be no veto proof majorities for deauthorization, timelines, etc. Steve Soto wrote:

Both Harry Reid and Steny Hoyer stated the obvious today: that the Democrats don't have a veto-proof majority in either house. Yeah, so? You knew this back in February, as did most everyone else. It was your job and everyone else in the Democratic leadership to fashion a strategy that made the GOP pay a price for rubber-stamping Bush's surge while still pushing your agenda. And you and your Beltway consultants failed. So stop your whining and get back to the drawing board.

I take Soto's point that everyone knew this but I disagree with the idea of just extracting a political price from Republicans on it. Most importantly, because ending the Iraq Debacle is the most important issue we have. And I do not believe the next President, GOP or Dem, will quickly walk away from it. But secondly, because it is very difficult to extract political advantage without actually trying to change the policy.

My day will be filled writing motions and visiting clients in jail. The particular jail I'm visiting, 45 minutes from Denver, is new and built like an underground city with a futuristic look that makes me think of StarTrek -- and the Wizard of Oz,because while the guards can see you, you can't see them located high above you and behind blacked out windows. It's like talking to a ghost. The jail is so far underground that my cingular wireless device on my laptop, which has a built in sim card like my cell phone, doesn't even show service. Thus, no internet access. Also, while there are electrical plugs in the walls of the visiting rooms, they aren't activated so battery power runs low quickly.

Clients wear different colored jumpsuits depending on their security level, which doesn't seem to have much to do with the crime they are charged with. One client charged with a very serious offense wears orange and is in lockdown 23 hours a day. Another client, a female charged with not so serious an offense, wears red and is considered the greatest security risk. When she meets with me, they lock the door behind us so she can't escape. She spends 24 hours a day alone in her cell except for some time in an exercise pen which she spends with a guard. It's all so dehumanizing, especially for these pre-trial detainees who haven't yet been convicted of anything. Because the cases are complex federal cases that will take a year to get to trial, they will endure these conditions the entire time.

What all this means is I'll be hard-pressed to follow the news today and it's a perfect time for an open thread.

Today is the day Monica Goodling testifies with immunity before the House Judiciary Committee on the U.S. Attorney firings.

Will she provide further ammunition for those hoping for an Alberto Gonzales' resignation? Or will she plead love of country?

I think it's the latter and she'll be defensive about the firing plan, trying to cast it in the best possible light.

The problem is, there may be no more light at the end of this tunnel.

In the latest attempt to justify the Iraq War, President Bush is now saying there is credible evidence that in 2005 Osama bin Laden tried to create terror cells in Iraq that focused on the U.S. as the target.

Citing newly declassified intelligence, Fran Townsend, President George W. Bush's adviser for homeland security, said the information backs the administration's assertion that U.S. troops must stay in Iraq for now to prevent it from becoming a ''terrorist sanctuary.''

Mindful of its trouble selling its war strategy to the American public, the White House is trying to put the spotlight on bin Laden's connections to Zarqawi, the head of Iraq's al Qaeda wing who was killed in a U.S. air strike in June 2006.

Of course, this has nothing to do with 2003 when the U.S. invaded Iraq. And it smacks of Bush trying to distract attention from the civil war going on in Iraq which also does not directly affect the U.S.

If Osama is still that key an influence, why aren't more resources being devoted to finding him?

On this bleak day, I want to remind folks in the Netroots of one of the main rallying cries that has been at the center of that movement:

What I want to know is what in the world so many Democrats are doing supporting the President's unilateral intervention in Iraq?

. . . I don't think we can win the White House if we vote for the President's unilateral attack on Iraq in Washington and then come to California and say we are against the war.

. . . I have never lost an election, but my career has never been about winning elections. My career -- and this campaign -- is about changing the Democratic Party.

Here's what the best of progressive DC has to offer about today's deal:

[H]ere are two reasons why this [Bush] "victory" won't exactly ring down though the ages. First, this development is completely unsurprising, since everyone has known for some time that there was nothing else the Democrats could do. Back in January, it was clear that, whatever the Democrats decided to do with their new congressional majorities, there was one thing they could not accomplish: stop funding for troops already in the field.

That was clear was it? So where was Tomasky to tell us this when everyone was cheering the House Supplemental? Where was Tomasky when Harold Meyerson was telling us all how great the House Supplemental was? Nice 20/20 hindsight there Mike.

Tomasky also lives in a world where he thinks this is true:

In March of this year, I had many a battle with Netroots leaders on the Iraq Supplemental. Today, I think any fair person would say that I was right and they were wrong.

But the Netroots leaders won't admit their mistakes or even try to learn from their mistakes. Here is an example of the disingenuous rationalizing we are sure to see from them:

There was a bomb threat at Jerry Falwell's funeral. Interesting that the threat was by a student at his own university.

The student, 19-year-old Mark D. Uhl of Amissville, Va., reportedly told authorities that he was making the bombs to stop protesters from disrupting the funeral service. The devices were made of a combination of gasoline and detergent, a law enforcement official told ABC News' Pierre Thomas.

Indications are others were involved. None of the Republican candidates for President attended.

From Greg Sargent:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi will present a plan to House Democrats for a war funding bill that won't include a timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq but will feature benchmarks with consequences, according to Democratic leadership aides...

The Warner Deal. I told . . . Sorry.

Now for the good news. Harry Reid said:

We now have the timeline that the Republicans have set, and that’s this September. And that’s the very least, and then as I’ve indicated –the Defense authorization– we’re going to start right where we’ve left off with this bill, continuing our push to change direction in the War on Iraq."

I explained in March that the House Iraq Supplemental was a terrible strategy for ending the war. There is one way to do this - NOT funding the war on a date certain and announcing that as far ahead as possible. The Reid-Feingold-Dodd framework. Can we now work on the one actual way to end the Debacle now? Leader Reid? Speaker Pelosi? Let's get to work.

Senator Feingold writes:

This situation is a collapse for Democrats. . . . {N]ow, as Congress gets ready to send the President a bill that does nothing to get our troops out of Iraq, we are just folding our cards. As one person commented under Greg Sargent’s great post at TPM cafe, "Send the Congressional Dems over to my place for some poker - I could use a windfall right now." This is no time to back down. . . .

Senator Dodd is the only Presidential candidate in the Senate who is not lying down on this:

I'm disappointed that there is no firm deadline in this version of the bill, because I believe that's the only way to responsibly bring this war to an end. I will fight for, and hope that the bill that emerges from conference has, a firm deadline to redeploy our troops.

It won't have a firm deadline of course. But now is the time to redouble our efforts for the only way to end the Iraq Debacle, the Reid-Feingold-Dodd framework of setting a date certain for not funding the Debacle.

Andrei Lugovoy, former KGB agent and bodyguard has been charged in the U.K. with the poisoning death of Alexander V. Litvinenko. A third man present at the November 1, 2006 meeting after which Litvinenko fell ill and died, former Russian soldier Dmitri V. Kovtun, was not charged.

Larisa has been following the case from the beginning:

As I have said before, only the hit-man (and maybe some of his team) will get charged and the FSB and Putin won't be touched.

To really understand the questions and issues left unresolved by this "lone shooter" patsy, read through my posts on this case and one of the articles I wrote on it HERE.