As always, I speak only for me

In an e-mail to its members (except me, I got neither the one to vote on the House bill, or this latest), Move On says:

Some of you have asked whether we support the Lee Amendment, a proposal that would accelerate the end of the war. Of course we do—we'd love for the proposal to bring our troops home sooner, and MoveOn members are pretty clear on that point. We've been fighting for as strong a bill as possible. Right now, the Lee Amendment is not being offered, but if it comes up, we'll definitely encourage Congress to vote for it.

If you support funding the war through September 2008 (which mean funding it past that because only a fool thinks the Congress will cut off funding 2 months befoe an election) you do NOT support the Lee Amendment. This is just nonsense from Move On. The Lee Amendment would be moot if the House funding bill becomes law. Let's hope it does not so Move On can ACTUALLY support the Lee Amendment.

Previously, I noted that the rationale behind the House bill seems to me to be Ending the Iraq Debacle . . . After the 2008 Election. I think this post, along with Move On's ironic ad evidence my point:

In a recent vote, the Republican members of the House Appropriations Committee unanimously opposed requiring that the troops sent to Iraq be properly prepared for their mission and protected with armor. Again.

But does the House proposal "require[] that the troops sent to Iraq be properly prepared . . ."? Uh no, as the SAME blogger aptly pointed out:

At the moment, it appears that the political calculus hinges on what happens with those "teeth." That is, the leadership's math goes like this: they figure they get and keep more Blue Dog votes by removing the ability to enforce the benchmarks than they lose from the Progressive Caucus, who think the president can't be trusted and will game the benchmarks and continue to humiliate and embarrass Congressional Democrats. So as things stand now, the language is out, because by the leadership's count, there were more Blue Dogs at least implicitly threatening to vote against a bill that included it than there were Progressive Caucus members threatening to vote against a bill that excluded it.

The enforcement language is out says this blogger. But we can STILL beat up on Republicans. Dems will end the Iraq Debacle, we are told, but AFTER the 2008 elections.

Bumped -BTD

Who watches the FBI as the FBI watches you? Nobody, as it turns out. Certainly not the Alberto Gonzales Justice Department, where oversight has been out of sight.

As TalkLeft reported earlier this month, the FBI repeatedly used its Patriot Act authority to issue "national security letters" demanding financial, telephone, and internet records (among others), without the bother of a judicially approved warrant, in violation of the agency's own rules. The chief inspector at the Justice Department acknowledged today, in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, that the FBI's failure to set limits on the agency's information gathering authority was "unacceptable and inexcusable."

Democrats said that Fine's findings were an example of how the Justice Department has used broad counterterrorism authorities Congress granted in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks to trample on privacy rights. "This was a serious breach of trust," said Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the Judiciary chairman. "The department had converted this tool into a handy shortcut to illegally gather vast amounts of private information while at the same time significantly underreporting its activities to Congress."

As usual, I speak for me only

Let me first be clear on this - John Murtha is NOT the problem with the House Dems. But his post at Huffington Post is not favorable for the proposed House supplemental funding bill. I think it is actually an indictment:

. . . We must insist that before we send our battle weary warriors back into intense combat, we give them the time they need to rest and reconstitute and the time they deserve to spend with family and loved ones.

During this year, the Bush Administration has requested $1 trillion for the Department of Defense. $9 billion a month is being expended for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan . . . Over 3,200 of our sons and daughters have lost their lives in Iraq and close to 25,000 have been wounded, to include thousands of traumatic brain injuries and hundreds of limb amputations.

. . . Meanwhile in Iraq the situation remains dire. Benchmarks established by this Administration are elusive and routinely ignored.

. . . After four years of incompetence and mismanagement, this Administration must come to the realization that Iraq's civil war can only be solved by the Iraqi people and that stability in Iraq can only be accomplished when U.S. and coalition forces end the occupation and redeploy.

Hard then to justify the House bill's funding of the Iraq Debacle through September 2008 in the face of that Representative Murtha. As you say, Bush routinely ignores benchmarks. He'll certainly ignore the House's.

The Senate has Senate voted to repeal the secret Midnight Patriot Act provision that granted AG power to appoint interim US Atty's without Senate confirmation:

The Senate voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to end the Bush administration's ability to unilaterally fill U.S. attorney vacancies as a backlash to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' firing of eight federal prosecutors.

. . . With a 94-2 vote, the Senate passed a bill that canceled a Justice Department-authored provision in the Patriot Act that had allowed the attorney general to appoint U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation.

. . . Essentially, the Senate returned the law regarding the appointments of U.S. attorneys to where it was before Congress passed the Patriot Act, including the unilateral appointment authority the administration had sought in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks.

More on the bill from Jeralyn.

Baseball fans know that whenever a manager gets a public vote of confidence, a firing is just around the corner. George Bush has a baseball background of course. Indeed, the biggest tragedy of the last 20 years for our nation was when Major League Baseball did not name Bush as Commissioner. Think of the heartache and tragedy we would have avoided the last 6 years.

Well, is this a baseball vote of confidence?

“The president spoke to the attorney general around 7:15 a.m. from the Oval Office,” said Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman. “They had a good conversation about the status of the United States attorney issue. The president also reaffirmed his strong backing and support for the attorney general.” Mr. Bush’s call to Mr. Gonzales, an old friend from Texas, could dampen speculation that the attorney general’s job is at stake, at least in the immediate future.

From Ken Bazinet:

Some top White House officials think Attorney General Alberto Gonzales somehow survives the flap over his firing eight federal prosecutors. Just hours before stacks of Justice Department documents were going to be distributed to reporters, one senior Bushie predicted Gonzo will make it through the ordeal.

This must mean Rove is not involved in deciding on the issue. Because not getting rid of Gonzo would be the absolutely stupidest political move imaginable. While Dems would love the scandal to be big big big no matter what happens to Gonzo, the truth is that absent him, the size of the scandal in PR terms shrinks immeasurably.

Why? Because the big hook here is the lying to Congress. The big hook here is hearings on Gonzo himself, maybe even impeachment hearings on Gonzo.

Take Gonzo out and what you have is the White House being political. That's not against the law.

So please, please, please, BushCo, FIGHT for Gonzo. Go ahead, make the Dems' day.

Remember that obscure provision of the new Patriot Act that gives the Attorney General the right to name new U.S. Attorneys without Senate Confirmation?

Democrats want to repeal the law.

The Senate moved Monday to revoke authority it granted the Bush administration last year to name federal prosecutors, with Democrats accusing the administration of abusing the appointment power at the center of an escalating clash over the ouster of eight United States attorneys.

The move to overturn an obscure provision of the USA Patriot Act that allowed the attorney general to appoint federal prosecutors for an indefinite period without Senate confirmation came amid growing speculation that the controversy over the prosecutors would cost Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales his job.

The difference between former and current law:

More

This latest report is not good news for baby boomers:

• Figure represents 10 percent increase over number five years ago
  • Aging baby boomers will cause Alzheimer's to skyrocket
  • Number of younger sufferers "drastically underreported," doctor says bq..bq

More than 5 million Americans are living with Alzheimer's disease, a 10 percent increase since the last Alzheimer's Association estimate five years ago -- and a count that supports the long-forecast dementia epidemic as the population grays.

Age is the biggest risk factor, and the report to be released Tuesday shows the nation is on track for skyrocketing Alzheimer's once the baby boomers start turning 65 in 2011. Already, one in eight people 65 and older have the mind-destroying illness, and nearly one in two people over 85.

Unless scientists discover a way to delay Alzheimer's brain attack, some 7.7 million people are expected to have the disease by 2030, the report says. By 2050, that toll could reach 16 million.

The LA Times and other news sources have given this list of names circulating around the White House for possible replacements of Alberto Gonzales:

People close to the administration said that any list of possible candidates would include Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff; Larry D. Thompson, the deputy attorney general under John Ashcroft; and Theodore B. Olson, the solicitor general under Ashcroft.

Prediction: It won't be Ted Olson. For the same reasons he will never make it to the Supreme Court. Larry Thompson might not want the job, he's doing great at Pepsico. Even Chertoff must know he hasn't wowed anyone with his tenure at Homeland Security -- think of his Katrina performance. But he was a federal judge and prosecutor before being named to Homeland Security, so he might be easy to convince.

I like Larry Thompson, he's fair and he's been both a defense lawyer and a prosecutor. The criminal defense bar likes him, and that's something when it comes to a prosecutor. I've endorsed him before, and I'd do it again.

But, I wonder, with only 22 months left in his Presidency, will Bush take chance on a non-loyalist Attorney General or someone outside his immediate circle ...or will he find someone from his dad's reign to help bail him out. That's more in keeping with his character and his pattern of appointments. When things get tough, he raids his dad's cabinet.

Conservative publication American Spectator has a new twist on PurgeGate: Alberto Gonzales is being done in by his own employees at the Justice Department.

As another Department of Justice paper dump related to the botched firings of eight U.S. Attorneys takes place on Capitol Hill today, it is becoming increasingly clear that Department of Justice insiders have been using the controversy to perpetrate what some Bush Administration loyalists are calling a "coup." Those activities appear to be occurring in the offices of the Deputy Attorney General and the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys.

Catch this:

The American Spectator has learned that members of McNulty's staff are supporting the possible nomination to one of the vacant U.S. Attorney slots of a former government lawyer who had an affair with a colleague and now resides with not one, but two women in what some in the DAG's office have termed a "tri-sexual" relationship.

"That residential situation would be adjusted if the name was put forward," says someone familiar with the thinking in McNulty's office.

I think Page Six needs to get on this one.

Here are the first 50 pages (pdf) of e-mails released by the Justice Department today pertaining to the firing of U.S. Attorneys.

Seven more batches are available here.

Update: The New York Times provides some preliminary analysis. The Daily Background finds a Randy Cunningham link to Lam's firing.

ABC News on the new documents. See also, ABC News on the Bud Cummins resignation.

TPM Muckraker is seeking reader assistance in pouring over the 3,000 pages of released documents.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald was on the low ranking list, during his tenure over the Plame investigation.

The LA Times reviews the new documents and shows how DOJ tried to limit the fallout.