Gonzo's fall guy Sampson getting every consideration:

Good eye, or good ear, from TPM Reader JB. Apparently, the White House and Alberto Gonzales are so miffed with Kyle Sampson for doing the whole Attorney Purge on his own that they're letting him stay on the job -- from which he supposedly resigned on Monday -- indefinitely as he "goes job hunting."

Does Gonzo's denial still pass the red face test? Did it ever? For the record, the way to properly label someone a fall guy is to throw him out immediately and then, when things quiet down, take care of him/her in a discreet manner.

Former New York police and correction commissioner, Bernie Kerik last month turned down an offer from the feds to plead guilty to federal tax fraud and conspiracy to commit wiretapping in exchange for a sentence of less than two years.

One of Kerik's lawyers, Ken Breen, says Kerik turned down the deal because he did nothing wrong and paid his taxes. Kerik's other lawyer, Joe Tacopina, is currently involved in a murder trial which I suppose accounts for Breen making the public response.

Kerik, you may remember, was nominated for Homeland Security chief at the urging of Rudy Giuliani. Kerik withdrew his nomination after negative details of his personal and professional life came to light. [TalkLeft coverage is accessible here.]

Now what? Reading between the lines, I'd say Kerik will soon be indicted, Rudy's campaign will take another hit due to his close relationship and sponsorship of Bernie, and I can't help but wonder, if the feds think Bernie conspired to wiretap Albert Pirro's boat at the request of former Westchester D.A. Jeannine Pirro, whether she's in trouble too. Background on that is here. She's been lawyered up in that investigation for a while. Did she talk her way out of it, give up Bernie to save herself or is she going to go down too? I may disagree with Jeannine politically and on crime issues, but I really do hope she's in the clear on the wiretapping.

I give it a week. Look what Bush said today:

“I do have confidence in Attorney General Al Gonzales,” Mr. Bush said of his old friend from Texas. But he said the dismissals had been bungled, “and frankly I’m not happy about it.” Mr. Bush, speaking at a news conference in Mérida, Mexico, with President Felipe Calderón of Mexico, said that he was pleased that Mr. Gonzales had acknowledged mistakes surrounding the dismissals, but that “Al’s got work to do up on the Hill,” a reference to the Capitol, where many Democrats and several Republicans have expressed anger and dismay over the firings. . . . [T]he president’s anger was clear. “This issue was mishandled to the point that you’re asking me about it now in Mexico,” Mr. Bush said. The president, who said he had spoken to Mr. Gonzales this morning, is to arrive later this afternoon in Washington, where lawmakers of both parties continued to criticize Mr. Gonzales.

Gonzo has work to do up on the Hill. We all know he can't turn that tide:

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told Bloomberg his confidence in the attorney general had been “shaken” and was “waning,” while Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon said, “I think I share the feeling of many Republican senators of profound disappointment.” And Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, declined to say whether Mr. Gonzales should stay. “That’s the president’s decision,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg News.

He can't fix it. It only gets worse. See you later Al.

Update (TL): Crooks and Liars has the video and transcript of Bush's comments.

At ESPN, Bill Simmons does a March Madness Countdown, ranking in inverse order his choices for the tourney. I liked that approach and decided to adopt it here.

But first, let me tell you who I pick to win it all - the Florida Gators. In large part, because the Florida Gators are my team - grew up in Florida bleeding Orange and Blue (and no I did not attend the university) - I am a blind partisan charter member of the Gator Nation. But I also think there are good reasons for picking the Gators. Andy Katz lays them out:

the Gators have -- when they're playing up to their potential -- the top starting five in the country in juniors Al Horford, Joakim Noah, Corey Brewer and Taurean Green and senior Lee Humphrey. They have the experience of winning a title. They have a coach in Billy Donovan who won a title a year ago and coached for the championship in 2000. But there's more here than the numbers. This selection goes deeper. The reason the Gators will win the title is because of their kinship. Sure, there have been plenty of other tight teams, but in the past 17 years, I don't remember seeing one this enmeshed . . .

Gators win it all again, because they are ALL team. Now for my countdown on the flip.

There are other things going on in the world besides the fired prosecutors. With all the Gonzales news yesterday, I forgot to do the Tuesday open thread. So here it is one day late.

All topics welcome. Keep it civil, and don't forget urls have to be in html format because the long ones skew the site. Use the link button at the top of the comment box or follow the instructions at the bottom of the comment page.

So the March Madness controversy du jour yesterday was the "unfairness" of the play-in game last night between Niagara and Fla. A&M (Niagara won). The argument goes like this - these small school won an automatic bid but are not being treated as if they are in the tourney. There is some merit to this argument I suppose. But the fact is these are teams that history tells us will lose the next round anyway. No 16 seed has ever won a game in the regular tournament. So my sympathy is rather limited here.

The argument continues that the last two at large teams should be in the "play in" game. This year presumably it would be Illinois and Arkansas. That would be fine by me. But then they would whine. Someone always does in these things. More.

Hillary Clinton will be on Good Morning America today, calling for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

"The buck should stop somewhere," Clinton told ABC News senior political correspondent Jake Tapper, "and the attorney general — who still seems to confuse his prior role as the president's personal attorney with his duty to the system of justice and to the entire country — should resign.

She has a petition for you to sign on her website. John Edwards also called for Gonzales' resignation.

More....

I'm not surprised Republicans are not rallying to the defense of Alberto Gonzales. They care more about 2008 than they do about Bush or Gonzales at this point. As Bob Dylan sang, "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."

Sen. Charles Schumer said Tuesday on Hardball that Kyle Sampson is the fall guy, much like Scooter Libby. I think Gonzales may be the fall guy.

Bush is standing by him right now, but how much pressure can he take from those within his party's ranks. Is anyone but Karl Rove not expendable to him? Remember when he named Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court? Bush fought the opposition until it reached a peak. Then, she withdrew her nomination and he accepted it.

Smart money would say the same will happen to Gonzales. Neither Bush nor Gonzales will listen to the Democrats. But if Republicans join the call for his resignation, it may be a done deal. Stay tuned.

The Washington Post has put up the text (all in pdf) of the e-mails exchanges and memos written by Justice Department and White House staff regarding the effort to remove U.S. attorneys.

The documents were obtained by The Washington Post and detail the political considerations and calculations made by key administration personnel:

• Set 1
• Set 2
• Set 3
• Set 4

• Washington Post: The Grand Elusion
• Ruth Marcus: Time to Go, Mr. Gonzales
• N.Y. Times Editorial: Politics, Pure and Cynical
• Legal Analyst Andrew Cohen has the first in a multi-part series in the Washington Post on the case against Alberto Gonzales.

Chris and Matt begin to understand. I had to chuckle a bit at this one, though I totally agree, and did a week ago:

[P]rogressives get whipped into voting for a compromise, and Blue Dogs get to "vote their conscience." Progressives are expected to compromise their beliefs, but then the leadership won't even stand up and fight for a compromise they wrangled out of the progressives. If the leadership is suddenly giving up on whipping votes after spending so long working on whipping votes, it can only mean one of two things. On the one hand, it means that they now have 218 votes, and are letting everyone else go. On the other hand, it means they have given up on trying to reach 218 altogether. . . .

Uh, yeeeepp. That's why I urge the Out of Iraq Caucus to vote NO on this bill.

The NYTimes articulates what we have all known for years - Alberto Gonzales is a corrupt, inept, mendacious lackey. WE said so back in January 2005, when we opposed his confirmation as Attorney General. In any event, the NYTimes has good words on the subject:

We wish we’d been surprised to learn that the White House was deeply involved in the politically motivated firing of eight United States attorneys, but the news had the unmistakable whiff of inevitability. This disaster is just part of the Bush administration’s sordid history of waving the bloody bullhorn of 9/11 for the basest of motives: the perpetuation of power for power’s sake.

Time and again, President Bush and his team have assured Americans that they needed new powers to prevent another attack by an implacable enemy. Time and again, Americans have discovered that these powers were not being used to make them safer, but in the service of Vice President Dick Cheney’s vision of a presidency so powerful that Congress and the courts are irrelevant, or Karl Rove’s fantasy of a permanent Republican majority.

. . . Gonzales, who has shown why he was such an awful choice for this job in the first place, should be called under oath to resolve the contradictions and inconsistencies in his story. Mr. Gonzales is willing to peddle almost any nonsense to the public (witness his astonishingly maladroit use of the Nixonian “mistakes were made” dodge yesterday). But lying to Congress under oath is another matter. . . .

I don't think it quite that different. Indeed what he has done before, enabling torture particularly, seems worse to me. But begone with him. He never should have been in the government in the first place.

The BUCKet (of crap) stops on my assistant said Alberto Gonzales:

Gonzales also accepted the resignation of his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson. The aide, along with then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers, had begun discussing possible firings of U.S. attorneys in early 2005, according to e-mails released Tuesday. . . . "He's a standup guy," [Dan] Bartlett said of Gonzales.

What a remarkable thing to say as Gonzo not only did not stand up, he just dumped it on his former assistant. What a piece of work.

Gonzo should not only resign, he really needs some lessons on being a decent human being. What a lying weasel.