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.

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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.

Talk about what is on your mind.

And don't forget the diaries. They are located just below the Recent Comments Table to the right.

Right now the recommended diaries include some great ones, including this one from scribe, Rove is toast.

And a reminder, Gwen Ifill on Meet the Press is must see TV.

One of the best excerpts on the flip.

If you get a chance, watch Meet The Press and watch Gwen Ifill shame the white men around the table on the Imus issue. She was brilliant.

Eugene Robinson was also good. And the general discussion, which included John Harwood and David Brooks, who was surprisingly interesting and intelligent though wrong on some things, was excellent.

The tension was palpable. And that is good. It should be. Here's the link.

Let me add, kudos to Tim Russert for putting the panel together. Good for him. He knew he would take his lumps. Well done Russert.

Update: nolo brings us some excerpts from Think Progress:

[RUSSERT:] And yet, you write this: “Why do my journalistic colleagues appear on Mr. Imus’ show? That’s for them to defend and others to argue about. I certainly don’t know any black journalists who will.”
IFILL: You know, it’s interesting to me. This has been an interesting week. The people who have spoken, the people who issued statements and the people who haven’t. There has been radio silence from a lot of people who have done this program who could have spoken up and said, I find this offensive or I didn’t know. These people didn’t speak up. Tim, we didn’t hear from you. David, we didn’t hear from you. What was missing in this debate was someone saying, you know, I understand that this is offensive. . . . The offense, the slur that Imus directed at me happened more than 10 years ago. I would like to think that 10 years from now, that Asia [her duaghter] isn’t going to be deciding that she wants to get recruited for the college basketball team or be a tennis pro or go to medical school and that she is still vulnerable to those kinds of casual slurs and insults that I got 10 years ago, and that people will say, I didn’t know, or people will say, I wasn’t listening. A lot of people did know and a lot of people were listening and they just decided it was okay. . . .

This is nice, but frankly, Ifill's appearance was much much better than this. Watch the whole thing when you can. I'll post it just as soon as I can.

Today MLB celebrates the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's breaking of the color barrier:

On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson played in his first major league game and suceeded in breaking the color barrier that divided baseball. Over the course of Jackie Robinson's rookie year, he endured racist taunts from both fans and opposing players. On his first trip to Cincinnati, the fans cursed, taunted, threw bottles, and hurled racist epithets at Robinson. The scene became so raucous and dangerous that Brooklyn manager Burt Shotton briefly considered pulling Robinson from the game.

Today, Cinncinati outfielder Ken Griffey, Jr. will be wearing Jackie Robinson's number 42 in tribute to the man who blazed the trail. He has been joined by many other MLB stars and the entire Dodgers team will wear 42 today.

An admirable gesture from Griffey and MLB. Today is a day to remember Jackie Robinson.

Hey, don't miss this one. It's brilliant.

Lawyers for two men charged with illegally ejecting two people from a speech by President Bush in 2005 are arguing that the president’s staff can lawfully remove anyone who expresses points of view different from his.

Those who wonder how an absolute power to squelch dissent squares with the First Amendment are forgetting that while our unitary president makes our laws (remember signing statements?), no laws actually apply to him. Anyone daring to disagree with the president is dispatched with the bum's rush. Free speech? The unitary president doesn't want to be troubled with nonunitary opinions.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' Sunday WaPo piece just confirms that he should never have been nominated, confirmed or allowed to remain as the nation's chief law enforcement. Forget his mendacity. Forget his outrageous opinions. Consider only his gross incompetence. What kind of Attorney General would defend his running of the Justice Departmenr saying this:

During those conversations, to my knowledge, I did not make decisions about who should or should not be asked to resign.

The man running the Justice Department did not decide who would or would not be fired is his defense.

That would be a firing offense imo even if the firings were perfectly kosher. How could that be acceptable?

There was so little evidence linking Jimmy Lee Page to a 1987 double homicide in Texas that jurors shook Page's hand and congratulated him after he was acquitted. Despite the acquittal, Page went back to prison. He was on parole for an unrelated homicide, and parole officials, unconstrained by the need for proof beyond a reasonable doubt, decided on the basis of a police detective's testimony that Page was guilty. His parole was revoked and he's been in prison ever since.

Seems unfair that a single governmental employee can negate the judgment of a unanimous jury, doesn't it? It is, but it happens all the time.

Last year, 91 Texas parolees were returned to prison after being charged with a new crime, even though the charges against them were later dropped or they were acquitted in court.

We all wondered how Frank Rich would try and dance away from his enabling history regarding Don Imus. And predictably, he calls everyone a hypocrite, pulling out the Al Sharpton card. But Rich gets one thing right, he is a hypocrite:

Among the hypocrites surrounding Imus, I’ll include myself. I’ve been a guest on his show many times since he first invited me in the early 1990s, when I was a theater critic. I’ve almost always considered him among the smarter and more authentic conversationalists I’ve encountered as an interviewee. As a book author, I could always use the publicity. Of course I was aware of many of his obnoxious comments about minority groups, including my own, Jews. Sometimes he aimed invective at me personally. I wasn’t seriously bothered by much of it, even when it was unfunny or made me wince, because I saw him as equally offensive to everyone. The show’s crudest interludes struck me as burlesque.

We never heard that from Frank Rich before. NOW he is brave with his opinions about Imus. Shame on you Frank Rich. Take your lumps and stop trying to drag everyone else down with you. And to call this a free speech issue is a joke. We're supposed to worry about the freedom to tell racist and sexist jokes? What a crap column from Frank Rich.

While I agree with Matt Yglesias that demands regarding a "no residual force in Iraq" pledge are not meaningful or even smart, I actually question the entire premise of the discussion.

What matters now, what everyone needs to ask of their representatives, of the Presidential candidates, of the blogs, of the activists, is 'what is your plan for ending the Iraq Debacle?' I get rather impatient with these discussions about residual forces and whatnot. These are fine questions, for the debates and the primaries and for down the road.

The REAL question now is 'what is your plan for getting us out of Iraq?' President Bush is not talking about residual forces - he is sending in MORE troops. We need to stop this Debacle. Right now, Reid-Feingold is the only viable proposal, and no it does not have to become law to end the Debacle.

So my main questions now for all pols, activists, etc. is, and will remain for the time being, "do you support Reid-Feingold? If not, why not?"

I'm headed to the airport now to visit a client in jail in Nebraska tomorrow and Monday. In case it gets quiet around here, please use this as an open thread.

I'll be back late Monday night, but will be checking in from time to time.

When we last checked in with marijuana activist Ed Rosenthal (background here), a federal judge had thrown out added money laundering and tax charges against him finding them based on prosecutorial vindictiveness. That left the Government with a few cultivation charges, on which he had already served his sentence.

Yesterday at a hearing, the Government announced it would stick with the case and re-try Ed even though he couldn't be sent to jail.

The Judge demanded to know who made this decision. It was newly appointed U.S. Attorney Scott Schools. I guess he's one of those U.S. Attorneys who just follow Administration marching orders.

Digby weighs in on this incredible waste of prosecutorial resources.