MSNBC anchor Chris Janning just said it is for the President to consider the competency of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, not the Congress. It never astounds just how ignorant television newsreaders are. But we should never let this ignorance go unchallenged. The Democratic guest on MSNBC, Debbie Dingell, did a decent job in her appearance but did not take on Janning's flatly false statement. She should have. She could have quoted Republican Senator Charles Grassley:

Prepared Statement of Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa

Senate Committee on the Judiciary

Oversight of the U.S. Department of Justice

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Chairman Leahy, thank you for holding this Justice Department Oversight hearing today. As the new Congress begins its work, there is lots of talk about renewed interest in Congressional oversight because of the new Majority. But, oversight shouldn’t be a partisan issue. Oversight should be about good government, accountability, and transparency — things both parties ought to agree on. I have been a long-time advocate of more vigorous Congressional oversight of the Executive Branch throughout my time in the Senate, regardless of whether the Administration is Republican or Democrat and regardless of whether the Congress is Republican or Democrat.

Whether Grassley fairly describes his efforts or not, is not the point. The point is it is unquestioned by anyone that Congress has a DUTY to oversee the competency of the Justice Department and the Attorney General. It is inexcusable that Chris Janning does not know this but entirely predictable.

Update [2007-4-19 14:48:44 by Big Tent Democrat]: And Grassley leads off the afternoon questioning of Gonzales. Lt's make this the afternoon Open Thread on the Gonzales Hearings.

Update [2007-4-19 16:4:30 by Big Tent Democrat]: I believe that Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) is putting the final nails in Gonzalez' coffin. She has exposed him as an incompetent and and not faithful to the truth. Devastating. At the end of Feinstein's questioning, Senator Leahy asked him if he wanted to answer Sen. Feinstein's last question. Gonzales said no. In fact, one imagines Gonzo was ready to go home and cry. He must know his career will be over soon. This is now a painful exercise.

Greg Sargent pointed us to John Solomon doing his thing, spewing GOP talking points, in a WaPo chat, but he missed the "best" one:

Woonsocket, R.I.: Am I mistaken, or is the White House's claim of an overriding "executive interest" in the RNC e-mails a huge step towards a constitutional crisis? . . .
John Solomon: I think it is too early to say where this will end up. Dan Eggen and I at the Post were the first to notice the RNC email accounts and to write about them. It turns out both Democrats and Republicans since the 1990s have set up separate accounts for their political staffs at the White House to avoid Hatch Act violations. So this issue isn't unique to the Bush administration. . . . If the emails that weren't archived are simply lost, there won't be any constitutional issues. You can't fight over emails that can't be retrieved. For the emails that do exist, or can be retrieved, the White House will have to decide whether to invoke executive privilege or turn them over. That decision will be the tipping point, and we don't know yet how that will shake out. There are also some middle ground solutions that could emerge ... like allowing Congress to read or review the emails in private but not keep copies and make them public.

Wow! So much just, WRONG! Not just wrong, so Roland Hedley, Jr. (See Doonesbury).

The ACLU has launched a campaign to restore habeas corpus. In addition to traditional avenues such as lobbying Congress and arguing before courts, it's trying something new.

....a new online campaign built around the search for "Mr. Habeas Corpus" - unflagging champion of justice and due process of law. He's been looking out for us for years, now he needs us to look out for him.

....On October 17, 2006, he went missing without a trace. Last seen in Washington, D.C., his current whereabouts are unknown. Where is he? We don't know. But we do know Habeas Corpus needs our help. What can you do? Get involved and help us restore Habeas Corpus to his rightful place in our Constitution!

The RSS feed is here. It provides code for a button to put on your own sites and is asking that My Space members make Mr. Habeas their friend.

There's even a TalkLeft page on the site.

Don't miss this amusing comment on Dr. Phil's assertion that video games are responsible for the violence at Virginia Tech.

Too much crime news today, time for a change of topic. Via Rolling Stone, 25 Rock Songs with a Secret. Number One: Louie, Louie.

[hat tip Althouse.]

The Pulitzer Prizes were announced this afternoon and among the winners was the Boston Globe's Charles Savage, for his reproting on President Bush's unprecedented use of signing statements:

The Boston Globe took the prize for national reporting for reports by Charles Savage documenting that President Bush had quietly disregarded more than 750 laws enacted by Congress since he took office. Mr. Savage found that the president attached “signing statements” saying he had the power to set those laws aside when they conflicted with his interpretation of the Constitution and when Congress sought to regulate the military.

Congratulations to Mr. Savage. The other winners on the flip.

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.

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.

[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.

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.

Rocker Patti Smith has a new song about Guantanamo, "Without Chains." She says it will be available soon for download on her website.

"I feel responsible as an American citizen," Smith told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from New York. "It’s a terrible injustice and I think it will be a stain upon us when history examines this period."

Smith’s "Without Chains" focuses on Murat Kurnaz, a German-born Turkish citizen who said he was kept under fluorescent lights for 24 hours at a time and complained of being beaten at the U.S. military detention center in southeast Cuba. Detainees are held there on suspicion of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban, many without the opportunity to face trial.

More like Patti, please.

Remember this?

Citizen Stengel [Managing Editor of Time] claimed that the American people do not want the Democrats to investigate the attorney firings story:

Mr. STENGEL: I am so uninterested in the Democrats wanting Karl Rove, because it is so bad for them. Because it shows business as usual, tit for tat, vengeance. . . . That’s not what voters want to see.

What could Citizen Stengel be thinking now? This is the Managing Editor of Time Magazine. Boy, he is some newshound huh? Here is some not breaking news, much of our Media is a disgrace.

A U.S. attorney in Wisconsin who prosecuted a state Democratic official on corruption charges during last year's heated governor's race was once targeted for firing by the Department of Justice, but given a reprieve for reasons that remain unclear. A federal appeals court last week threw out the conviction of Wisconsin state worker Georgia Thompson, saying the evidence was "beyond thin."