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.

From Politico:

Republican officials operating at the behest of the White House have begun seeking a possible successor to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, whose support among GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill has collapsed, according to party sources familiar with the discussions.

As Craig Crawford said on Olberman, this is akin to getting the paint out for changing the name on the parking space.

The end is nigh.

And if you want to picket, you want to protest, you want to disrupt my life - better my life [in my spacious DC office] is disrupted than the lives of these men and women in uniform [fighting and dying in Iraq].

-Senator Barbara Mikulski (thanks Barb)

Booman is misled by the repeating of false GOP talking points from Senator Mikulski on the Iraq defunding debate and now uses the Beltway position to articulate his views. I stand with Russ Feingold:

Keeping our brave troops in Iraq indefinitely is having a devastating impact on our national security and military readiness.

That's why I have consistently advocated that we set a timetable to redeploy our troops from Iraq. But the president refuses to set a timetable, even though the American people soundly rejected his Iraq policy in November. Instead, the president has announced he wants to send approximately 20,000 more troops.

. . . We can't afford to wait any longer. Congress must use its main power - the power of the purse - to put an end to our involvement in the war in Iraq. . . . As the president made clear Wednesday night, he has no intention of redeploying our troops from Iraq. Congress cannot continue to accept this.

. . . Some [like Dem Sen. Mikulski and Booman] will claim that cutting off funding for the war would endanger our brave troops on the ground. Not true. The safety of our service men and women in Iraq is paramount, and we can and should end funding for the war without putting our troops in further danger.

Congress will continue to give our troops the resources and support they need, but by, for example, specifying a time after which funding for the war would end, it can give the president the time needed to redeploy troops safely from Iraq.

Joe Lieberman desperately grasps for attention and relevance. After urging Dem primary voters to not vote against him just on "one issue," after insisting on his Dem bona fides, after promising that he would caucus with Dems in his independent run, Joe now says he might switch to the GOP.

Why does he do this? Because he is no longer a Faux Dem, he is just Joe Lieberman, Bush and Cheney's best friend, not a very interesting profile. Not much of an attention grabber.

A reminder, on all my Iraq defunding posts, indeed all my posts, I speak ONLY for me

One of the most maddening things about the reaction of Move On and much of the Netroots to the disastrous House bill on Iraq funding is the newfound belief that it is now their role to be the "pragmatic conciliators" who need to cut deals.

What delusion. What hubris. A dkos commenter, Eugene, captures what is wrong with this mindset:

You say, at one point:

Just the numbers aren't on the side of those who wish to end the war.

That's your problem right there. You see that as a conclusion instead of as a starting point. You see it as an answer, not a question.

That the votes aren't there right now is not relevant to the conversation. What matters is how we get those votes. How do we twist arms to make these "Democrats" who have sabotaged even a proviso to stop an attack on Iran come around and change their minds?

I speak only for me of course

From Greg Sargent:

MoveOn's Washington director, Tom Matzzie just confirmed to me that despite earlier concerns that the House Dem leadership's Iraq plan wasn't tough enough, the organization yesterday started polling its members and has decided to back the legislation . . . "We asked all 3.2 million of our members to weigh in, and 80 percent back the plan," Matzzie says, adding that he didn't have exact numbers on how many members had voted. "Our view is, this is a choice between Republicans who want endless war and Democrats who want a safe, responsible end to the war."

Well, this is just stuff and nonsense. The House bill will not end the war in September 2008 as proclaimed. That simply is false. What it does do is fund the war until that date when the Congress will vote more money, as any sane person realizes they will, 2 months before an election.

Glenn Greenwald eviscerates a typical nonsense column by Michael Barone, resident GOP shill at US News & World report. Glenn is his usual trenchant self and I recommend you read his post in its entirety, but I want to focus on something different. Barone writes:

In their assessment of what is going on in the world, they seem to start off with a default assumption that we are in the wrong. . . . If something bad happens, the default assumption is that it's their fault. They always blame America -- or the parts of America they don't like -- first.

I am not sure who "they" are, but if Barone is speaking about people like me, I have certainly blamed Bush and the Republicans First since they launched the most disastrous set of policies this country has ever encountered from its leaders. We blame Bush and the Republicans for the Iraq Debacle and all the debacles, scandals, corruption and abuse of the Constitution that have occurred because it is THEIR FAULT! IT was and is THEIR policies. It was and is their scandals. It was and is THEIR abuses. Who should we blame for that? As usual, Barone is of the no accountability school . Any decent Republican shill would be.