"I meant to do it, but oops! I forgot."

Good memory!

Rep Darrell Issa was in charge of swiftboating Carol Lam on these fake immigration concerns, just as Issa was the bankroll behind getting rid of Governor Gray Davis in California.

Somebody get Issa under oath.

Kyle Sampson is a physical, emotional, and intellectual clone of a Rove figure. I am continually struck with how smart, devious, bland, puffy, and amoral he appears. This is the pup who is talked about as Rove's successor. Sampson knows nothing that is gained from life experience - he is a human machine with vast computing powers. But he seems to have no 'rudder'. It is chilling to watch him speak about the attorney firings.

Maybe if he'd kept a proper file, like a competent executive, he would have remembered to call her. It's easy to lose track of important tasks if you just toss lists into a folder in your bottom drawer.

He must have lost the piece of paper with "To Do: Call Carol Lam to woodshed her on immigration. Make sure to record it for use later as a pretext when we sack her."

The previous comment highlights how any performance evaluation system works in a multi-location operation whether McDonald's or DOJ district attorney offices. Two of the Senators on the Judiciary Committee are already intimately familiar with the DOJ system because of their own work and have briefed others on the Committee as to just how irregular the whole Gonzales/Rove/Sampson procedure was.

I suspect that deeper more detailed analysis of the list of eight versus the formal evaluation system would further undermine Gonzales in any pretense that he was managing DOJ and not just working as Rove's tool.

Consider this: Sampson, McNulty and Moschella give long pious speeches about how important it is that DAG's follow White House priorities, but they give no feedback to Senate approved appointees short of dismissal. To me this looks like gross incompetence and fostering partisan prosecutions at the same time. The "performance evaluation system" at DOJ under Gonzales is just a "quaint" relic of former times. All personnel decisions are made independent of the system for strictly partisan reasons -- hence no documentation.

A follow up question for Senator Feinstein's staff: were ANY of the DA's confronted with feedback that they were not following Department priorities?

I watched the Watergate Hearings in their entirety and loved them as political theater. This is shaping up as being just as delicious. I can't wait for Bush's "I am not a crook!" moment. What will it be?

Security code: shame. This is just too obvious. It is a damn shame these guys are still breathing.