Recently in GOP Culture of Corruption Category

"'I'm not a big fan of the prosecution's charges, but I think he's got some ethical issues that put a cloud over him,' Stibitz said. 'So, I'd probably go with Begich.'" Thank you, Alaska Republicans: Embattled Senator Ted Stevens -- he of the recent indictments -- has managed to win the GOP primary in Alaska, meaning he'll face off against popular Anchorage mayor Mark Begich in November, and -- if the polls bear out -- will likely lose. From what I gather, almost any other Republican candidate could've probably held the seat in this predominantly GOP state, so this is good news for us.

"Perhaps the most puzzling scene in the ad is an altered segment from The 10 Commandments that appears near the end. A Moses-playing Charlton Heston parts the animated waters of the Red Sea, out of which rises the quasi-presidential seal the Obama campaign used for a brief time earlier this summer before being mocked into retiring it. The seal, which features an eagle with wings spread, is not recognizable like the campaign's red-white-and-blue 'O; logo. That confused Democratic consultant Eric Sapp until he went to his Bible and remembered that in the apocalyptic Book of Daniel, the Antichrist is described as rising from the sea as a creature with wings like an eagle."

You're one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan? In TIME, Amy Sullivan parses McCain's recent "The One" ad to discover that it's basically a dog whistle for Left Behind evangelicals, declaring Obama is the Antichrist. "A new TIME poll finds that the most conservative evangelicals are the least enthusiastic about McCain's candidacy. Convincing them that Obama does have two horns and a tail might be the best way of getting them to vote."

Obama is the Antichrist? Has it really come to this? I know the GOP are feeling on the verge of "Left Behind" this November, but that's gotta be just about rock-bottom. It's hard to even imagine an anti-McCain ad that would stoop that low (well, other than that it would probably have to involve the Queen of Diamonds.) And, what with the crazies already percolating, feeding this type of chum to the confused anti-Greg Stillson types out there borders on the criminal.

Come November, these GOP asshats had better lose, and lose big.

"That it was a forgery can no longer be doubted; that it originated with the White House may be harder to prove. Two former CIA officials -- Rob Richer and John Maguire -- have gone on record as saying they were personally charged with carrying out the forgery, but their marching orders, if they existed, came directly from Tenet (who has fiercely denied the story). The closest thing Suskind has to a smoking gun is Richer's memory, five years later, of 'looking down at the creamy White House stationery on which the assignment was written.'"

In his review of Ron Suskind's The Way of the World, Salon's Louis Bayard tells the tale of the Habbush letter, a forgery fabricated by the CIA to tie Iraq to Al Qaeda (and, thus manufacture a casus belli for the War in Iraq.) In other words, George Tenet -- perhaps on higher authority -- signed off on an illegal black op aimed against the American people. If this goes up the food chain -- and, at this point, who'd be surprised if it didn't -- this is definitely an impeachable offense. Where's the outrage?

Update: Politico has more.

"'Thirty-four candidates told investigators that Goodling or one of her deputies raised the topic of abortion in job interviews and 21 said they discussed same-sex marriage, the report said. Another job applicant said he admired Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, only to watch Goodling 'frown' and respond, 'But she's pro-choice.'"

I mean, given all the other crimes and corruption within this sordid administration, why not throw in some good old-fashioned spoilsmanship? Another protracted investigation comes to a head today, as a 140-page internal report breaks down the illegal staffing system in Dubya's Justice Department, as run by GOP apparachik Monica Goodling. [Mukasey reaction.] The report "concluded yesterday that Goodling and others had broken civil service laws, run afoul of department policy and engaged in 'misconduct.''" (As seen at The Oak and The Spencerian.)

The case against him has been building for awhile...and, today, the Hulk tie finally failed him. Longtime GOP Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) -- he of the "Bridge to Nowhere," terrorist wife, cocaine-fighting Eskimos and "series of tubes" -- is indicted with seven counts of making false statements on his financial disclosure forms. "The indictment accuses Stevens, former chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, of concealing payments of more than $250,000 in goods and services he allegedly received from an oil company. The items include home improvements, autos and household items."

Sen. Stevens is up for re-election this year, but given that he was already losing in the polls against the Dem challenger, Mark Begich, it's a good bet his stepping down early will only help the GOP...if they can find someone to take his place in time (and if Stevens plays ball.)

"You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it 'simulates' the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning -- or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure." By way of Dangerous Meta, Hitch gets waterboarded. [Video.]

"Also, in case it’s of interest, I have since woken up trying to push the bedcovers off my face, and if I do anything that makes me short of breath I find myself clawing at the air with a horrible sensation of smothering and claustrophobia...[I]f waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture."

"The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of 'coercive management techniques' for possible use on prisoners, including 'sleep deprivation,' 'prolonged constraint,' and 'exposure.' What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners...The only change made in the chart presented at Guantánamo was to drop its original title: 'Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance.'"

How low have we sunk under Dubya? Apparently, under this administration, we've actually been plagiarizing Maoist torture techniques for use in the Gitmo gulag. "'What makes this document doubly stunning is that these were techniques to get false confessions,' Levin said. 'People say we need intelligence, and we do. But we don't need false intelligence.'"

"I need to know if Stayman is a career or a political appointee...I think we can do something about it, but I'm trying to figure out what is the best way to go about it. I don't want a firing scandal on our hands." An e-mail trail published by the Washington Post illustrates how Casino Jack Abramoff used the Dubya White House to remove his enemies, in this case a State Department aide advocating labor reforms in the Northern Marianas. (" Abramoff's clients wanted to keep paying immigrants less than the federal minimum wage to work in textile factories.")

"The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for a five-member majority clearly impatient that some prisoners have been held for six years without a hearing." In a setback for the Dubya administration and a victory for the American way of life, the Supreme Court grants habeas corpus rights to Guantanamo detainees. (The decision in Boumediene v. Bush is now the fourth time the Court has reaffirmed the rule of law over Dubya's monarchial anti-terror policies.)

In vicious dissent, the conservative bloc: Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, with Scalia in particular scowling and ranting like a Batman villain. "'America is at war with radical Islamists,' he wrote, adding that the decision 'will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.' He went on to say: 'The Nation will live to regret what the court has done today.'" To which I say, "Get over it." I highly doubt we'll regret it as much as your being put on the Court in the first place, Justice Scalia.

"'The president and his advisors undertook a relentless public campaign in the aftermath of the (September 11, 2001) attacks to use the war against al Qaeda as a justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein,' intelligence committee Chairman John Rockefeller said in written commentary on the report. 'Representing to the American people that the two had an operational partnership and posed a single, indistinguishable threat was fundamentally misleading and led the nation to war on false pretenses.'"

In the stating-the-obvious department, the "Phase II" report by the Senate Intelligence Committee -- delayed by the GOP since before the 2004 election -- finds once again that the Dubya administration lied us into war. Y'know, back in the day, this would be considered an impeachable offense.

"'Over that summer of 2002,' he writes, 'top Bush aides had outlined a strategy for carefully orchestrating the coming campaign to aggressively sell the war...In the permanent campaign era, it was all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president's advantage ...What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary.'" The other big political story of my move week: In a new political tell-all, former Dubya Press Secretary Scott McClellan turns on his former White House masters, accusing them of ginning up the case for war and lying outright to him about the Plamegate affair. "'Over time, as you leave the White House and leave the bubble, you're able to take off your partisan hat and take a clear-eyed look at things...I don't know that I can say when I started the book that it would end up where it was, but I felt at the end it had to be as honest and forthright as possible.'"

Welcome to the reality-based community, Scott. In the meantime, the White House is claiming McClellan was motivated by "sour grapes" (whatever that means -- why would he want to keep a gig he seemed to hate?) while other Dubya stalwarts, blindsided by the tome, have also gone on the attack. (But, don't fret -- of all people, McClellan knew what was coming.)

"Thank you all very much. Admiral Kelly, Captain Card, officers and sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln, my fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."

Do you remember the Iraq War of 2003? Remember those heady days of euphoria when it ended two months later, with only 139 American lives lost? Journey back with me -- TIME-LIFE style, if you will -- to the scene of our triumph: "Chris Matthews on MSNBC called Bush a 'hero' and boomed, 'He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics.' PBS' Gwen Ifill said Bush was 'part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan.' On NBC, Brian Williams gushed, 'The pictures were beautiful. It was quite something to see the first-ever American president on a -- on a carrier landing. This must be very meaningful to the United States military.'"

Well, today marks the five-year anniversary of our glorious victory, the day that "splendid little war" came to a close. Among those honoring the day, and the remarkable achievement of our Commander-in-Chief:

"Our previous opinions make clear that customary international law is not federal law and that the president is free to override it at his discretion," said the memo written by John Yoo, who was then deputy assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel." (Nor, apparently, does the Fourth Amendment apply.) An unsettling memorandum by Dubya stooge John Yoo which advocates both dictatorial rule and the legality of torture is released to the public, five years later. "'The whole point of the memo is obviously to nullify every possible legal restraint on the president's wartime authority,' Jaffer said. 'The memo was meant to allow torture, and that's exactly what it did.'"

More than anything, I'm reminded of Lincoln's remarks to the Indiana fourteenth: "'Whenever I hear anyone arguing over slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.'"

And, just in case anyone was under the impression that this sort of thing only happened in the dark days of 2003, witness Attorney General Mukasey last week getting publicly verklempt and making up 9/11 tales as he goes along, all to help preserve the NSA's warrantless wiretaps. At this point, Chuck Schumer has a lot to answer for.

A personal plug: Also out in stores this week, my fourth collaboration with Democratic pundit Bill Press (1, 2, 3): Trainwreck: The End of the Conservative Revolution (and not a moment too soon). If you couldn't guess from the title, it basically argues that, just as the New Deal era lasted from 1932-1968, the Age of Conservatism that began in '64 with Goldwater, hit its stride in the 70's and 80's, and gave us the likes of Reagan, Gingrich, and, of course, Dubya, has now hit the proverbial, inevitable, historical brick wall. So let's survey the wreckage: On one hand, from Katrina to Abramoff and Ed Meese to Alberto Gonzales, right-wing attempts at governance over the past thirty years have usually degenerated into dismal experiments in cronyism and/or incompetence. On the other, conservatism has strayed so far from its ideological roots in the Reagan and particularly Dubya eras that the likes of Robert Taft, Russell Kirk, and William F. Buckley would never even recognize it. (Case in point, the Ron Paul candidacy, wherein a traditional Taft conservative ended up being treated by his esteemed Republican contemporaries in every debate as either a fringe joke or a terrorist-sympathizing dupe.) Either way, the right-wing ascendancy is over, and it's our time again now (and, though it's not reflected in this tome, I think y'all know who I'd prefer to be carrying our progressive standard into battle in 2009 and beyond...)

"President Bush believes that every life is precious, and he spends time every day thinking about those who've lost their lives on the battlefield." And well he should: Following soon after our fifth anniversary in Iraq, a roadside bomb kills four soldiers on Easter Sunday, and the American death toll in Iraq reaches 4000, 3863 of which were killed after Dubya's declaration of "Mission Accomplished" in May 2003.

I said when the death toll hit 2,000 in October 2005 that " [t]wo thousand US men and women have been killed in the line of duty, and this blatantly amateurish administration still has no plan either to win or to disengage from a conflict they orchestrated, other than 'stay the course.'" Two and half years and 2000 lives later, it's sadly still true. Worse still, Dubya's heir apparent, John McCain, now advocates extending this administration's catastrophic incompetence into another presidential term. This is not a good idea.

"This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an Administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years. Our government’s duty is to protect the private information of the American people, not use it for political purposes. This is a serious matter that merits a complete investigation, and we demand to know who looked at Senator Obama’s passport file, for what purpose, and why it took so long for them to reveal this security breach."

Breaking: It seems people at the State Department have been digging around Obama's passport file, resulting in two firings and a disciplining. But who are they, and what were they looking for? I'm not sure a travel record or a lousy passport photo would add up to much in any case.

"'The evidence we have today indicated we have been deceived and betrayed for a number of years by a highly respected and trusted individual,' said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the NRCC chairman." GOP high muckety-muck Christopher Ward allegedly bilks the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) for almost a cool million. (As treasurer of the outfit, he funneled money out of the NRCC into his various secret stashes.) "Ward had served as treasurer for 83 GOP committees this decade. In the past five years, the committees took in more than $400 million in contributions." Just goes to remind ya: We Dems may have our foibles, but when it comes to GOP scandals, it's usually all about the avarice.

It was announced earlier in the week that a new Pentagon study was set to confirm the obvious: "An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network." Big surprise there.

Well, apparently, even the obvious must be suppressed in the Dubya regime. According to ABC News, the report is now being hastily buried. "The report was to be posted on the Joint Forces Command website this afternoon, followed by a background briefing with the authors. No more. The report will be made available only to those who ask for it, and it will be sent via U.S. mail from Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia. It won't be emailed to reporters and it won't be posted online." Instead, it seems, the report will be on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of The Leopard."

Update: ABC News asks for and receives a snail-mailed copy of the report, after which they promptly scan it and post it online as a PDF. Bang-up job suppressing that one, guys.

"The situational forces that were going on in [Abu Ghraib] -- the dehumanization, the lack of personal accountability, the lack of surveillance, the permission to get away with anti-social actions -- it was like the Stanford prison study, but in spades." New scenes of vileness and depravity emerge from Abu Ghraib. NSFW, and, in any case, no way to start your day.

While the NYT's botched bombshell involving Maverick and Iseman has thus far only seemed to help Sen. McCain to make nice with his unreconstructed right flank, the WP posts an A1 follow-up showing how the story may bite McCain yet. To wit, his campaign is completely dominated by lobbyists. "[W]hen McCain huddled with his closest advisers at his rustic Arizona cabin last weekend to map out his presidential campaign, virtually every one was part of the Washington lobbying culture he has long decried."

Meanwhile, concerning the "other" McCain scandal at the moment, the Republican head of the FEC, David Mason, comes down against McCain's attempted gaming of the public financing system, and argues he can't duck out of public financing now. "'This is serious,' agreed Republican election lawyer Jan Baran. Ignoring the matter on the grounds that the FEC lacks a quorum, Baran said, 'is like saying you're going to break into houses because the sheriff is out of town.'"

Update: Newsweek's Mike Isikoff, one of the also-rans for the Iseman scoop, pokes a hole in McCain's denial. Regarding the Paxson letters to the FCC, McCain said yesterday that ""No representative of Paxson or Alcalde & Fay personally asked Senator McCain to send a letter to the FCC." The problem? This contradicts a sworn deposition by McCain taken in 2002, when McCain said: "I was contacted by Mr. Paxson on this issue." D'oh!

Update 2: Now, Paxson says he met with the Senator, despite McCain's statement to the contrary. "Paxson also recalled that his lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, attended the meeting in McCain's office and that Iseman helped arrange the meeting. 'Was Vicki there? Probably,' Paxson said in an interview with The Washington Post today. 'The woman was a professional. She was good. She could get us meetings.'"

Speaking of Arizona Republicans in hot water, Rep. Rick Renzi is indicted on 35 counts of "conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering, extortion and insurance fraud." Kicked off the House Intelligence Committee when news of his shadiness emerged in 2005, Renzi also played a role in the persecuted prosecutors scandal, when it came out that both he and former AG Alberto Gonzales had pressured the US attorney to hold fire on him.

At long last, some movement on the persecuted prosecutors front. As the Republicans walk out in a huff (after disrupting Tom Lantos' memorial service -- classy), the House votes to hold Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten in contempt of Congress. "The citations charge Miers with failing to testify and accuse her and Bolten of refusing Congress' demands for documents related to the 2006-2007 firings."

The Senate bans waterboarding by a vote of 51-45 and, surprisingly enough, straight-talker John McCain votes against the bill. "McCain sided with the Bush administration yesterday on the waterboarding ban passed by the Senate, saying in a statement that the measure goes too far by applying military standards to intelligence agencies. He also said current laws already forbid waterboarding, and he urged the administration to declare it illegal." God forbid we take too strong a stance against torture, eh, Senator? For shame.

"One serious problem the study described was the Bush administration’s assumption that the reconstruction requirements would be minimal. There was also little incentive to challenge that assumption, the report said...Another problem described was a general lack of coordination. 'There was never an attempt to develop a single national plan that integrated humanitarian assistance, reconstruction, governance, infrastructure development and postwar security,' the study said...The poor planning had 'the inadvertent effort of strengthening the insurgency,' as Iraqis experienced a lack of security and essential services and focused on 'negative effects of the U.S. security presence.'"

The NYT reports that the Dubya Pentagon has systematically worked to bury an unclassified 2005 study critical of the Iraq war's conduct by the RAND corporation (the former employer of my ex-wife during my DC days, RAND also receives a memorable shout-out in Dr. Strangelove.) "The report was submitted at a time when the Bush administration was trying to rebut building criticism of the war in Iraq by stressing the progress Mr. Bush said was being made. The approach culminated in his announcement in November 2005 of his “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq.” Update: Slate's Tim Noah wonders: "Isn't this the story line of the Pentagon Papers?"

"I think what I said was that we could not investigate or prosecute somebody for acting in reliance on a Justice Department opinion." The honeymoon is way over. In congressional testimony yesterday, Attorney General and theoretical straight-shooter Michael Mukasey announces he won't look into waterboarding, won't look into the warrantless wiretaps, and won't enforce the persecuted prosecutor contempt citations. His rationale for all this? If the Justice Department says it's ok, it's not illegal. "That would mean that the same department that authorized the program would now consider prosecuting somebody who followed that advice." Sigh...it's enough to make one miss Alberto Gonzales. Ok, not really.

"Hayden said Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Abu Zubayda and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri were waterboarded in 2002 and 2003. Hayden banned the technique in 2006, but National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell told senators during the same hearing Tuesday that waterboarding remains in the CIA arsenal -- so long as it as the specific consent of the president and legal approval of the attorney general."

Not to be lost in the Super Tuesday shuffle (as intended): CIA Director Michael Hayden admits that we've waterboarded at least three high-level detainees. "Human Rights Watch, which has been calling on the government to outlaw waterboarding as a form of illegal torture, called Hayden's testimony 'an explicit admission of criminal activity.'"

"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida...In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."

A new study by the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism counts up the staggering number of falsehoods made by the Bush administration in the lead-up to Iraq. "The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period...Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq's links to al-Qaida, the study found. That was second only to Powell's 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida." (Via Dangerous Meta.)

Republican ex-Congressman and lobbyist Tom Siljander is indicted for money laundering, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy, based on his ties with the allegedly terrorist-connected Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA). "According to the indictment, the money was stolen from the U.S. Agency for International Development, and Siljander lied to federal agents about his role." He is apparently pleading not-guilty. "Siljander, a favorite of religious conservatives, declared war on abortion, pornography, the Equal Rights Amendment and school busing. But he lost his 1986 reelection bid after urging clergy members to support him in order to 'break the back of Satan.'"

"Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These are truly 'high crimes and misdemeanors,' to use the constitutional standard." Not to be lost in the New Hampshire shuffle: Former Senator and presidential candidate George McGovern makes the case anew for Dubya's impeachment.

"There could have been absolutely no doubt in the mind of anyone at the C.I.A. -- or the White House -- of the commission’s interest in any and all information related to Qaeda detainees involved in the 9/11 plot. Yet no one in the administration ever told the commission of the existence of videotapes of detainee interrogations." From a few days ago, 9/11 Commission Chairs Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton angrily accuse the CIA and Dubya White House of stonewalling their investigation. "As a legal matter, it is not up to us to examine the C.I.A.’s failure to disclose the existence of these tapes. That is for others. What we do know is that government officials decided not to inform a lawfully constituted body, created by Congress and the president, to investigate one the greatest tragedies to confront this country. We call that obstruction."

"Following a preliminary inquiry into the destruction by CIA personnel of videotapes of detainee interrogations, the Department's National Security Division has recommended, and I have concluded, that there is a basis for initiating a criminal investigation of this matter." Gee, you think? Attorney General Michael Mukasey announces a federal criminal probe into the matter of the destroyed CIA torture tapes. It will be headed by John H. Durham, currently "the second-in-command at the U.S. attorney's office in Connecticut."

"The grim truth is, not much has changed. The Bush administration continues to limit our basic freedoms, conceal its own worst behavior, and insist that it does all this in order to make us more free." As a follow-up to her 2006 list of civil liberties violations, Slate's Dahlia Lithwick surveys The Bush Administration's Top 10 Stupidest Legal Arguments of 2007.

"'I believe we will keep the White House,' he said twice at a pre-holiday news conference in the White House briefing room. 'I believe ours is the party that understands the nature of the world in which we live and that the government's primary responsibility is to protect the American citizens from harm...I'm confident we can pick up seats in both the Senate and the Congress.'" Hey, Mr. President, how is the weather on Mars? At a news conference today, Dubya predicted a GOP presidential victory and GOP congressional gains come next November. (He also refused to comment on the CIA tapes debacle.) The good news here for the rest of us is that this man has been wrong about pretty much everything for the past seven years. Why stop now?

So much for those early, hopeful signs of independence...Attorney General Michael Mukasey tries to stonewall both a Congressional investigation and a Judicial investigation into the destroyed CIA tapes, arguing it would impede the Justice Department's own inquiry into the matter. "'We are stunned that the Justice Department would move to block our investigation,' Reps. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.) and Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) said in the [responding] statement. 'Parallel investigations occur all of the time, and there is no basis upon which the Attorney General can stand in the way of our work.'"

And, in somewhat related news, conservative judge Royce Lamberth, who earlier butted heads with the administration over FISA, rules that -- despite what Dick Cheney thinks on the matter -- White House visitor logs are public records, meaning visits from "Casino Jack" Abramoff and/or religious conservatives can no longer be kept secret on account of (dubious appeals to) "national security." Looks like it's win-some, lose-some for Dubya's imperial pretensions this week.

Remember the persecuted prosecutors? The Senate Judiciary does, voting 12-7 to hold Karl Rove and Josh Bolten in contempt of Congress. "Two Republicans, Arlen Specter and Charles Grassley, joined the committee Democrats in the contempt vote. Today's action means contempt citations are now pending in both the House and Senate."

"[H]ere's a different thought experiment: How would the national debate over torture have changed if we'd known about the CIA tapes all along? How would our big terror trials and Supreme Court cases have played out? Yes, this is also a speculative enterprise, but it's critical to understanding the extent of the CIA's wrongdoing here." In light of the recent revelation that the CIA destroyed video evidence of their abusive interogation procedures in 2005, well after they'd become relevant both in many different legal cases and in the national discussion about torture, Slate's Emily Bazelon and Dahlia Lithwick survey the wreckage the CIA has made of our legal process. "Video of hours of repetitive torture could have had a similarly significant impact -- the truism about the power of images holds. If we are right about that -- and we think we are -- this evidence that has been destroyed would have fundamentally changed the legal and policy backdrop for the war on terror in ways we've only begun to figure out." If nothing else, an independent counsel should be named immediately. Even given the criminality and contempt for the rule of law we've come to expect from this administration, this sort of thuggish, gangland behavior is shocking news.

"The process 'would last even beyond the two years of supervised release, cost millions of dollars more than the fine he has already paid, and entail many more hundreds of hours preparing for an all-consuming appeal and retrial,' Wells said." Cheney consigliere and convicted felon Scooter Libby files a motion to dismiss his appeal of the Plamegate verdict. Said Libby's lawyer, Theodore Wells: "[T]he burden on Mr. Libby and his young family of continuing to pursue his complete vindication are too great to ask them to bear." (Let's remember: According to Dubya last July, the burden of jail time for perjury was apparently too much to bear as well.)

"Tehran's decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005." Uh, y'know that whole Iran is the new face of evil, imminent-WWIII thing we've been hearing about? Well, never mind. It's time to update those lyrics, Senator McCain: A new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report -- which, it seems, Cheney may have held up for a year -- finds that Iran actually stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003. "Even if Iran were to restart its program now, the country probably could not produce enough highly enriched uranium for a single weapon before the middle of the next decade, the assessment stated. It also expressed doubt about whether Iran 'currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.'"

This happy piece of information obviously puts our Saber-Rattler in Chief in a bit of a bind -- In a news conference this morning, he was reduced to spluttering, "'What's to say they couldn't start another covert nuclear weapons program?'" What indeed...perhaps we should bomb them anyway, is that your point? Well, probably not. Says Slate's Fred Kaplan of the NIE: "If there was ever a possibility that President George W. Bush would drop bombs on Iran, the chances have now shrunk to nearly zero....Skeptics of war have rarely been so legitimized. Vice President Cheney has never been so isolated." Still, just to keep the timeline in perspective, Dubya made that dubious WWIII comment months after being apprised of this information. So, in effect, he was lying to us yet again.

As for the 2008 contenders, the campaigns are all taking the news pretty much in stride, although Chris Dodd got off a pretty good zinger on Clinton: "It's easy to say 'fool me once, shame on George Bush,' but when she's been fooled twice, shame on her."

"In almost every appearance as he campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination, Rudolph W. Giuliani cites a fusillade of statistics and facts to make his arguments about his successes in running New York City and the merits of his views...All of these statements are incomplete, exaggerated or just plain wrong." The vagaries of the simmering "Schtup-gate" (so coined by Salon's Joan Walsh) and Qatargate controversies aside, it seems the Giuliani campaign suffers from an even more basic problem: Its candidate just makes up numbers as he sees fit. "'He’s given us a lot of work up until now,' said Brooks Jackson, the director of Annenberg Political Fact Check, which is part of Factcheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania that has corrected statements by candidates in both parties."

The ranks of Team Dubya dwindle further as chief terrorism adviser Frances Fragos Townsend announces her resignation. "Townsend has been a key player in Bush's circle, earning the president's trust despite initial suspicion among Republicans because of her background in the Clinton Justice Department...As gatekeeper for intelligence wiretap requests [in the Clinton era], her office fought efforts to invoke the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in matters that could result in criminal cases, fearing that prosecutors would use warrants under that law instead of amassing the evidence needed to cross the more difficult threshold for obtaining a criminal wiretap...Townsend later said she fought 'tooth and nail' against information-sharing restrictions."

Having survived his evasions on waterboarding, new Attorney General Michael Mukasey looks to start his tenure in the right direction by reopening the internal investigation into warrantless wiretapping, the same investigation that collapsed in 2006 because Dubya would not grant the department the necessary security clearances. "H. Marshall Jarrett, the OPR's chief counsel, wrote in a letter to several lawmakers yesterday that lawyers in his office 'recently received the necessary security clearances and are now able to proceed with our investigation.'"

"On another tape, Pete Kott, the former Republican speaker of the Alaska House of Representatives, crowed as he described beating back a tax bill opposed by oil companies. 'I had to cheat, steal, beg, borrow and lie,' Kott said. 'Exxon's happy. BP's happy. I'll sell my soul to the devil.'" The WP