Josh Marshall's vlog on tomorrow's Alberto Gonzales hearing asks the question "what would you ask Alberto Gonzales?"

Having seen Gonzales too many times before, I know that he can't and won't answer anything, so to me the first question to ask yourself is what are you trying to accomplish? To me this is more of a public relations event than anything else. So what is the goal? Expose Gonzo? He'll do that himself. Expose Rove? Gonzo can't and won't. He'll pretend he does not remember or was not involved. Expose Bush? Same answer.

Here's what I would do. First, make the Senators divvy up the topics. And try, if possible to give them yes or no questions to answer. In this case, that should be easy.

Documents and the testimony of Kyle Sampson allow for the questions to write themselves. For example, show Gonzales an e-mail that discusses the White House's role in making the fired USAs list. Read it. Ask Gonzo if it is true that, for example, "Harriet Miers said . . ." Is it true that "[what Kyle Sampson testified]"

And so on. I would not look to Gonzales to provide anything except obvious obfuscation but let the questions and the documents be the testimony.

What do you folks think?

Via Digby:

[Former University of Florida football coach and current South Carolina coach] Spurrier brought up the [Confederate] flag issue Friday while accepting a leadership award from City Year at the service group’s Ripples of Hope banquet at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center.

. . . “It would make us a more progressive, better state, I think, if the flag was removed. But I’m not going to go on any big campaign to have it removed. That’s not my position,” Spurrier said in an interview with The State. “But if anyone were to ask me, that would certainly be my position. And I think everyone in there, it was their position, too.”

Spurrier said it was “embarrassing” last year when someone waved a Confederate battle flag behind the set of ESPN’s “GameDay” before the Gamecocks’ home game against Tennessee.

Good for the former Heisman winner and legandary Ole Ball Coach. But the "best" was yet to come.

Fred Hiatt wrote:

Fortunately some of the coolest heads in this discussion belong to Senate Democrats such as Barack Obama (Ill.) and Carl M. Levin (Mich.), the chairman of the Armed Services Committee. Both have suggested that if Mr. Bush vetoes a bill containing a withdrawal mandate, as he has promised to do, Congress should nevertheless approve the war funding.

Fred Hiatt is not exactly fact based but Obama's muddled answers on the question lend themselves to just such distortions. But there is an easy way for Obama to settle the question - endorse Reid-Feingold.

Show Fred Hiatt, and the rest of us where you stand on the issue Senator Obama. You might want to ask for a retraction as well Senator.

Senator Levin, on the other hand, has nothing to complain about.

Via Greg Sargent, Senate Majority Leader Reid says:

Asked by a reporter if Congress would be making some kind of offer to Bush in the quest for a compromise, Reid said: "The offer is that the President sign our bill."

Great! But Senator Levin already is plannning the fifth best plan or something.

I guess Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) is not one of those Democrats Krugman claims is being influenced by the base:

Levin said Democrats remain committed to sending Bush a compromise package with the withdrawal language intact, to express the strong concerns among Democrats and some Republicans that the Iraq war is exacting too high a cost for the country to continue.

That language is likely to track closely with the Senate approach, which sets a goal instead of a hard date. "We're going to send him, first of all, hopefully, a very strong bill which would say that we're going to begin to reduce troops in four months as a way of telling the Iraqi leadership that the open-ended commitment is over," Levin said.

"If we don't have the votes to override, and it appears that we don't -- but we never know until that vote is taken -- we will then hopefully send him something strong in the area of benchmarks as the second-best way of putting pressure on the president to put pressure on the Iraqis."

And if the second best way fails then the thrid best way and so on.

This is a joke. There is one way - Reid Feingold. And it does not have to pass.

mcjoan highlights Paul Krugman's kudos to the Democratic base for pulling the Democratic Party to majority positions on Iraq and other issues:

Normally, politicians face a difficult tradeoff between taking positions that satisfy their party’s base and appealing to the broader public.... But a funny thing has happened on the Democratic side: the party’s base seems to be more in touch with the mood of the country than many of the party’s leaders. And the result is peculiar: on key issues, reluctant Democratic politicians are being dragged by their base into taking highly popular positions. Iraq is the most dramatic example.... It took an angry base to push the Democrats into taking a tough line in the midterm election. And it took further prodding from that base — which was infuriated when Barack Obama seemed to say that he would support a funding bill without a timeline — to push them into confronting Mr. Bush over war funding. (Mr. Obama says that he didn’t mean to suggest that the president be given "carte blanche.")

Certainly on 2006 that was true. But, is the Party listening to the "base" now on Iraq? What is the base saying? Are the Netroots clamoring for Reid-Feingold? Is the Party flocking to it?

I think Krugman is more accurate in this:

The only risk the party now faces is excessive caution on the part of its politicians. Or, to coin a phrase, the only thing Democrats have to fear is fear itself.

I think the base should think about that and consider whether it is pushing our politicians hard enough on Iraq and Reid-Feingold. I don't think we are

Last week I gave my analysis of the wrongfully convicted Georgia Thompson and what may have motivated Wisconsin U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic.

Adam Cohen writes about the case in the New York Times today, raising new questions about Mr. Biskupic's handling of the case.

One of the biggest weaknesses in the case against Ms. Thompson was that to commit the crime she was charged with she had to have tried to gain personally from the contract, and there’s no credible evidence that she did. So Mr. Biskupic made the creative argument that she gained by obtaining “political advantage for her superiors” and that in pleasing them she “enhanced job security for herself.” Those motivations, of course, may well describe why Mr. Biskupic prosecuted Ms. Thompson.

Should Mr. Biskupic resign? Can the citizens of Wisconsin have confidence in his ability to impartially judge the facts and make appropriate decisions about who to prosecute after the Georgia Thompson debacle?

Former Time reporter Matthew Cooper has been busy with a new venture called Portfolio. Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz has seen a copy of Cooper's first article for the new publication and it has some revelations about PlameGate:

Now it can be told: Matt Cooper thought that Time magazine's strategy in the Valerie Plame leak investigation was "insane." He was unhappy when his lawyer wanted to simultaneously represent I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the man whose identity Cooper was risking jail to protect. And Judith Miller got on his nerves.

More...

This week, Tony finds art imitating life at the Cleaver premiere; in prison, Johnny Sack copes with more bad news. Watch Episode 79: "Stage 5" Sunday at 9PM.

Geraldo Rivera has a cameo.

Update: What a great episode. If you missed it, watch the rerun later this week.

The three innocent Duke Lacrosse players and North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper appeared on "60 Minutes" tonight. Coper explained how the many stories of the accuser in the Duke lacrosse players alleged sex assault case fell apart.

DA Mike Nifong's actions were so inexcusable. As for his apology the day after the players' exoneration, it's too little too late.

As player Dave Evans said, "Rape will always be associated with my name." He'll always be known as one of the charged players.

At least, thanks to Roy Cooper, it will be followed by "he was innocent."

Now its time for Nifong to take his lumps -- either in the disciplinary hearings or in civil lawsuits by the players or both.

Christy at Firedoglake notes that the Department of Justice has released AG Gonzales' opening statement for Tuesday's Judiciary Committee hearing on the U.S. Attorney fireings. C-Span has it in full here.  (PDF)&nbsp.

He says he has nothing to hide and nothing improper occurred. Some quotes:

I know that I did not, and would not, ask for a resignation of any individual in order to interfere with or influence a particular prosecution for partisan political gain.

I also have no basis to believe that anyone involved in this process sought the removal of a U.S. Attorney for an improper reason. Based upon the record as I know it, it is unfair and unfounded for anyone to conclude that any U.S. Attorney was removed for an improper reason.

More

I find this hard to believe but let's make this a baseline position:

[Senator Arlen] Specter [R-PA] said he and the Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, had reached agreement on Friday with the White House counsel, Fred F. Fielding, on naming an outside expert to help search for the missing e-mails. “He thought it was a good idea,” Mr. Specter said on “This Week” on ABC. “He said they have nothing to hide.”

Great. An outside expert will likely recover the missing e-mails and find out how, when and who deleted those e-mails.

That will probably tell the why too. I bet the White House reneges on the deal.