Call it a sign of the times.

Here's a moment from this morning's White House press gaggle, after Dana Perino fielded questions about Alberto Gonzales and Paul Wolfowitz:

Q Does the President ever get tired of having to express his full confidence in the people around him these days?

MS. PERINO: When you're President of the United States and you have this many folks that you are employing, it's a pretty small number that he's had to express full confidence in. All of us who serve at the pleasure of the President, if the moment he doesn't have full confidence in you, you no longer work for him. And we all take that very seriously.

"Pretty small number." You gotta love it.

Note: As a bonus, I've included Perino's rambling endorsement of Gonzales below the fold (preview: "He is our number one crime fighter.").

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Earlier this month, a federal appeals court slapped down a prosecution against a Wisconsin state bureaucrat brought by U.S. Attorney for Milwaukee Steve Biskupic. The court took the extraordinary step of reversing the conviction and freeing the bureaucrat, named Georgia Thompson, due to the simple lack of a crime. That's led to a lot of questions about whether the case, which implicated the state's Democratic governor in an election year, was brought due to political pressure.

Today, the court released (pdf) its written opinion on the case. And it wasn't any more sparing than the verbal remarks (e.g. that the evidence was "beyond thin") of the judges when they made the ruling.

The prosecution was based on a reading of the law by which "simple violations of administrative rules [by bureaucrats] would become crimes," the judges wrote. By that interpretation, "it is a federal crime for any official in state or local government to take account of political considerations when deciding how to spend public money" -- a "preposterous" idea, they wrote.

Ultimately, the prosecution drew on "the open-ended quality" of the law to charge that a crime had occurred. And the blame, the judges wrote, might very well lie with the open-ended quality of the statutes used to charge Thompson:

"This prosecution, which led to the conviction and imprisonment of a civil servant for conduct that, as far as this record shows, was designed to pursue the public interest as the employee understood it, may well induce Congress to take another look at the wisdom of enacting [such vague statutes]."

The laws, they wrote, make it "possible for prosecutors to believe, and public employees to deny, that a crime has occurred, and for both sides to act in good faith...."

In other words, the judges are saying that any reasonable person would have looked at this case and seen that nothing amiss had occurred -- but it was nevertheless legally possible to bring a prosecution. For that, you could blame the law... but you could also question the prosecutor's judgment.

For his part, Biskupic has said that he brought the case "in consultation with the then-Democratic State Attorney General, and the Democratic District Attorney for Dane County" and that the decision to charge Thompson was "based solely on the facts."

The House Judiciary Committee has invited Biskupic to tell his story to Congress.

Update: TPM Reader LA writes:

You might want to note in the Thompson story that the opinion was written by Frank Easterbrook, a law-and-economics-oriented Reagan appointee, and stone genius. When I saw the "preposterous" quote, I figured he had to have written the decision, and I am so glad to be right.

CNN is reporting that Rep. Adam Putnam (R-FL), the Chairman of the Republican Conference and the number three in the House Republican leadership, has said that Gonzales should resign.

CNN quotes him as saying that "[Gonzales] did not distinguish himself in the hearing... there remains a cloud over the Department... I think they would be well served by fresh leadership."

It's time for an update.

Since our last rundown of Republicans who want Gonzales gone, a number of others have made outright calls for his resignation. Still more have stopped just short, though they've made it clear that they hope Gonzales will do everyone a favor and resign.

Gonzales' sole enthusiastic supporters, by our count, are Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and the White House.

The list:

: For an updated version of this list, click here.

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I think that's what you call a tepid endorsement.

With the exception of Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) has been Alberto Gonzales' most vocal supporter on the Senate Judiciary Committee. And he still supports Gonzales, even after yesterday's display.

But his logic for that support has turned nakedly political, with not even a nod to Gonzales' effectiveness as attorney general. During an interview on CNN earlier today, when asked whether Gonzales should stay on, Cornyn replied:

I think he should, because frankly I don’t think the Democrats will be satisfied by the resignation of Al Gonzales. This is, at its base, a political fishing expedition, and they’re not going to be satisfied with just Al Gonzales.

FBI Raids Renzi Family Business, Congressman Leaves Intelligence Panel
"In a second blow to House Republicans this week, the FBI raided a business tied to the family of Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) Thursday afternoon as part of an ongoing investigation into the three-term lawmaker. Details of the raid on Patriot Insurance Agency in Sonoita, Ariz., were not immediately available." (Roll Call)

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There are two different ways to see yesterday's hearing:

1) It was a bloodbath. Four different Republican senators on the judiciary committee severely criticized Gonzales, and one Republican senator even told Alberto Gonzales, right to his face, that he should resign.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) said "Your ability to lead the Department of Justice is in question. I wish that were not so, but I think it certainly is." Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), seeming almost dismissive of Gonzales, said "Sometimes, it just came down to these were not the right people at the right time. If I applied that standard to you, what would you say?" Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) made it clear that he thought Gonzales should resign, but stopped just short of calling for his resignation. And Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), of course, didn't stop short. That's four of the nine Republicans on the panel.

2) Only one Republican senator told Gonzales that he should resign.

Can you guess which one represents the Gonzales worldview? From The Washington Post:

A Justice Department official said last night that Gonzales's aides consider the lone Republican call for his resignation yesterday a "positive barometer."

"While we realize Senate Republicans are not happy, they are willing to stick with the attorney general," said the official, who spoke about members of Congress on the condition of anonymity.

The panel is half full, you could say.

A press release from the White House:

President Bush was pleased with the Attorney General's testimony today. After hours of testimony in which he answered all of the Senators' questions and provided thousands of pages of documents, he again showed that nothing improper occurred. He admitted the matter could have been handled much better, and he apologized for the disruption to the lives of the U.S. Attorneys involved, as well as for the lack of clarity in his initial responses.

The Attorney General has the full confidence of the President, and he appreciates the work he is doing at the Department of Justice to help keep our citizens safe from terrorists, our children safe from predators, our government safe from corruption, and our streets free from gang violence.

And I'm sure Gonzales appreciates the work Bush is doing to keep him safe from unemployment.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) stopped just short of calling for Alberto Gonzales' resignation, saying that "it's for two people to decide": Gonzales and the president.

But that didn't sound like where he was going in his comments. He said there'd been a "loss of credibility" at the department, that "we haven't really gotten answers" from Gonzales. He added that there was unquestionably a morale problem at the department and that the message had been sent that U.S. attorneys around the country "ought to be on guard... for you to have said that this was 'an overblown personnel matter,' that can't be erased."

But he said, "I'm not going to call for your resignation," saying that it's "beyond my purview.... For myself, I want to leave it to you and the president."

There was just one of the most telling exchanges of the whole hearing.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), up for another round of questioning, declined, saying that Alberto Gonzales had failed to meet the burden of proof to explain the basis for the U.S. attorney firings, and to show that they weren't improper. It wasn't worth trying another line of questioning.

Gonzales shot back, saying that he'd explained his own actions, and that the burden of proof was actually on those who had alleged that something improper had happened here, i.e. Sen. Schumer and others.

Schumer replied: "Our standard is not a criminal standard -- it's higher than that." Because Gonzales had fired the U.S. attorneys, Schumer said, the burden is on him to give a full and complete explanation for the firings. He hadn't done that, he said.

As we've noted numerous times, there's been tremendous pressure from Republicans all over the country for prosecutors to bring voter fraud cases. And the Justice Department has responded -- as McClatchy has detailed at length this morning.

But in his testimony today, Gonzales professed that "as someone who grew up in a poor neighborhood," that he was sensitive to the plight of minorities and the poor with respect to the right to vote. And he said that it was important to "send a strong signal" in the department that prosecutors be "sensitive," that he didn't want prosecutions to have a "chilling effect" or "create some sort of cloud" that would discourage minorities from voting.

In fact, he said that the department had guidance about "doing that sort of investigation near an election."

But, as Joe Rich, the former chief of the Civil Rights Division's voting section, has written, that guidance seems not to have made its way to former Justice Department official, Bradley Schlozman:

In March 2006, Bradley Schlozman was appointed interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Mo. Two weeks earlier, the administration was granted the authority to make such indefinite appointments without Senate confirmation. That was too bad: A Senate hearing might have uncovered Schlozman's central role in politicizing the civil rights division during his three-year tenure....

Missouri had one of the closest Senate races in the country last November, and a week before the election, Schlozman brought four voter fraud indictments against members of an organization representing poor and minority people. This blatantly contradicted the department's long-standing policy to wait until after an election to bring such indictments because a federal criminal investigation might affect the outcome of the vote. The timing of the Missouri indictments could not have made the administration's aims more transparent.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) returned to the question of the hour, which is how Alberto Gonzales could sign off on the firings not knowing the reason that the U.S. attorneys were being fired and who specifically had made the decision to add each one to the list. "It would seem to me you'd want to know," Feinstein said.

Gonzales reprised earlier answers, that he'd relied on the judgment of senior leadership in the department, particularly the deputy attorney general. Feinstein countered by saying that when most people hear "senior leadership," they think of men with "grey hair," but that in Gonzales' department these were young, often "very ideological" people.

Gonzales suddenly swerved back to his earlier remarks about Carol Lam, and backpedalled. "I believe based on my review of the documents," he said "that there was an interest in her performance. I don't know if Ms. Lam knew that the Justice Department had those specific concerns."

"I expected that my concerns... would be communicated to Ms. Lam," he said. But, of course, they weren't. Gonzales didn't indicate if he ever actually told anyone to talk to her.

Alberto Gonzales, following the lead of Kyle Sampson, has drawn a well defined line at what would be an "improper" reason to fire a U.S. attorney: the motive of affecting a particular criminal case.

As Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) pointed out, that's a "very low bar." What Gonzales is describing is what would constitute possible criminal obstruction of justice. Gonzales admitted as much, saying that in considering what would be improper, he'd thought, "what is the legal standard?"

Pressing on, Whitehouse tried to get Gonzales to understand that it would also be improper to fire a U.S. attorney for a generally political reason -- that attempting to discourage U.S. attorneys who might follow in Carol Lam's path, for instance, would be improper. Gonzales didn't seem to grasp the idea.

Unlike Kyle Sampson, Alberto Gonzales would do all it over again.

At least, that’s what he maintained under questioning by Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD). “I’ve thought about this a lot,” Gonzales said, adding that based on what he knows today, he has no information that the firings were “in fact based on improper motives.”

During his questioning, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) told Alberto Gonzales that he should resign.

There "has to be consequences" for the management and leadership failure under Gonzales' watch. It's "generous to say that there were misstatements" by Gonzales and others, Coburn said. "I believe that you ought to suffer the consequences," he said, adding that Gonzales ought to be judged by the same standards with which he judged the U.S. attorneys.

"The best way to put this behind us is your resignation."

Sen Chuck Grassley (R-IA) began the afternoon questioning by asking simply why there have been so many inconsistencies in Gonzales’ statements.

Gonzales said that when he gave the March 13th press conference, he hadn’t gone back and looked at the documents or his calendar, and that “in hindsight,” his statements were too broad. He rushed to go public, he said, because he felt “a tremendous need to come out quickly and defend the department.” I “should be more careful,” Gonzales said.

This would seem to vindicate Sen. Specter’s earlier line of questioning (or berating), when Gonzales said that he’d been prepared for that March 13th press conference.

From the AP:

Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif., has decided to temporarily give up his seat on the House Appropriations Committee after FBI agents searched his house as part of a congressional influence-peddling investigation.

Doolittle's decision, to be announced Thursday, was confirmed by a Republican congressional staffer who spoke on condition of anonymity because the news was not yet public.

That would be the same appropriations seat which he used to help steer $37 million to Brent Wilkes (who's accused of bribing Duke Cunningham), and another $400,000 to Jack Abramoff's client, the government of the Marianas Islands.

Update: More from Roll Call:

While Doolittle is expected to voluntarily take himself off the panel while the investigation continues, knowledgeable House sources said that Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and members of the Republican Steering Committee -- which determines committee assignments -- were prepared to remove him from his post if he would not do so himself.

Due to votes on the Senate floor, the Gonzales hearing won't resume until 2:30.

Under questioning from Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Gonzales cautioned against criticizing the good employees of the Justice Department: "when there are attacks against the department, you're attacking the career professionals."

Sen. Durbin blew up, comparing it to those who say that criticizing the president is equivalent to criticizing the troops.

Gonzales finally backed off, and both Durbin and Gonzales agreed that Gonzales was the one on the line. "Attack me," Gonzales said. I don't think he needs to ask twice.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) gave Gonzales an unexpected battering.

I believe you “made up reasons” for the firings, Graham said, and that “some of it [the reasons] sounds good, some of it doesn’t.” Graham said he thought that there had been personality conflicts with many of the fired prosecutors, and that’s why they were actually fired.

“I respectfully disagree,” Gonzales said.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Alberto Gonzales went back and forth in the most heated exchange of the hearing so far.

Schumer began on the question of whether U.S. Attorney for San Diego Carol Lam had been told that there was a problem with her immigration enforcement numbers. That supposedly was the main reason for her firing.

Gonzales hedged the question, saying that Lam must have known that there was “interest” in and “concern” with her immigration performance. Members of Congress, Gonzales said, had complained about Lam’s performance. Gonzales allowed that she “may not have been told that if there is no change in policy, there will be a change,” but seemed to think that was an unimportant distinction.

Schumer pressed, citing the testimony of both Carol Lam and Kyle Sampson that Lam had never been told that she should change her office’s approach to immigration enforcement. And he took issue with the idea that the department would let members of Congress be representatives of the Justice Department.

The second half of Schumer’s testimony was even more contentious.

Gonzales’ former chief of staff Kyle Sampson testified last month that Gonzales did not reject the idea of circumventing the Senate until after Gonzales spoke with Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) about Tim Griffin in mid-December. Sampson said that he’d discussed the idea with Gonzales before, that Gonzales didn’t seem to like the idea (not clear how he got that impression), but that Gonzales didn’t reject it outright.

But in his testimony today, Gonzales has said that he rejected the plan and never considered it. Despite that, Sampson consistently pushed that plan – first in an email in September, and then in a detailed email to the White House in December. Schumer was incredulous at Gonzales’ explanation that he’d rejected the plan all along. If Gonzales really had rejected the idea, than that means that Sampson was advocating the plan behind Gonzales’ back. Who’s running the Justice Department? Schumer wanted to know.

Under questioning from Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT) Gonzales said that he couldn’t remember when he made the decision to go through with the firing plan. He recalls making the decision, he says, but can’t recall when. Just another day in the life of an attorney general, apparently.

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) had the best line of questioning of the day so far.

Under persistent questioning, Gonzales admitted that he did not know the reasons that the U.S. attorneys were on the list. Gonzales could only say that he relied on the judgment of the department’s senior leadership – he added that he had not been surprised to see five of the names on the list (he didn’t say which two surprised him).

When Feingold pressed about Gonzales’ assertion that the U.S. attorneys had “lost his confidence” in a USA Today op-ed, Gonzales said, “I regret the use of those words.”

And Feingold pressed on Gonzales’ statement that he had “no basis” on which to say to that there had not been improper reasons behind the firings. How could he know that? Gonzales answered “I know the basis on which I made my decision.”

Alberto Gonzales, during questioning by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) said that he’d never intended to install Tim Griffin as U.S. Attorney for Little Rock using the Patriot Act provision -- a plan that Kyle Sampson had advocated. Doing that was a “dumb idea,” Gonzales said. And he says that when Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) told him that he would not support Griffin’s nomination in December, he offered to have Pryor suggest replacements. That’ll be news to Pryor, who’s said that Gonzales appeared to be following Kyle Sampson’s plan to string him along, to run out the clock, when they spoke. Pryor has said publicly, repeatedly, that Gonzales lied to him.

Later in the hearing, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) pressed Gonzales on this in a brutal line of questioning. We'll have that up soon.

Under questioning from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Gonzales admitted that he made the decision to fire the U.S. attorneys without looking at their performance.

Under questioning from Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS), Alberto Gonzales gave a rundown of the supposed performance reasons behind the firing of each prosecutor. In most cases, his answers lined up with prior explanations from Justice Department officials, particularly answers given by William Moschella when he testified last month.

But there was one notable admission. Gonzales said that Bud Cummins was asked to step down just because the department wanted to "put a qualified individual in his place." In other words, there was not a performance reason for his firing. Gonzales said that he'd failed to indicate that in his January testimony before the Senate because he was "confused," since Cummins had first been asked to resign in June, not December.

Apparently Gonzales was still confused in February, though, because he was upset about Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty's testimony that there had been no performance reasons behind Cummins' firing.

There was a revealing moment during the questioning by Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA). When pressed on the process of removing the U.S. attorneys and what Gonzales knew about it, Gonzales replied that since the judiciary committees had been interviewing all of Gonzales' aides, that investigators now know more about the firings that Gonzales does.

Kennedy also pressed on whether Gonzales had ever done an evaluation about whether the firings would affect certain ongoing prosecutions. Gonzales replied no, because the assistant U.S. attorneys in the offices are really the ones who handle the cases -- the U.S. attorneys are important, he allowed, but "this institution is built to sustain change." It doesn't matter all that much, who's in charge, apparently.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) also pulled no punches in his questioning.

He began by battering Gonzales with questions about how he could make false statements about his involvement in the process if he was properly prepared for the January Senate hearing and his March 13th press conference. Gonzales kept insisting that he'd been prepared, Specter demanded to know how he could have made such statements if he'd actually been properly prepared, and they went back and forth like that for a little bit.

And later in Specter's questioning, he asked how Gonzales could say that he wasn't involved in the process of eliminating certain U.S. attorneys if he'd sat in on a meeting last year when DoJ officials discussed the possible removal of Carol Lam. Gonzales responded by drawing an artful distinction between that meeting, which was in the course of his normal duties as attorney general, and the review process of U.S. attorneys. That conversation, Gonzales said, was "outside of the review process."

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) was fast out of the gate, jumping right in with questions about the firing of David Iglesias.

Despite Gonzales' foggy recollections, some significant details emerged.

Gonzales could not recall details about his conversation with Karl Rove about voter fraud, although he testified that he did have such a conversation. He said that it covered three jurisdictions -- New Mexico, Milwaukee and Philadelphia. He could not recall when or where or how it had occurred, only that it was in the fall of 2006.

He pinpointed the date of his conversation with President Bush about those same three jurisdictions as happening on October 11.

He also revealed that, when he spoke with Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) in the fall of 2005 about David Iglesias, that Domenici said that Iglesias "was in over his head." Domenici was concerned that Iglesias didn't have personnel for public corruption cases. Domenici never requested that Iglesias be removed, Gonzales said -- he just questioned whether Iglesias was capable.

When pressed by Leahy, Gonzales could not say precisely why Iglesias was fired, nor when Iglesias' name appeared on the list.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) is a key figure for Alberto Gonzales, since he's yet to call for his resignation, though seems close to doing so.

In his opening statement, Specter made it clear that Gonzales has a high hill to climb -- he has the "burden of proof," Specter said, then proceeding to run through some of the key contradictions between Gonzales' statements and testimony given by his former aides under oath.

Note: No, there's nothing wrong with your screen. It appears Specter has some sort of eye infection. Get well, senator!

Well, we're about to get started here. For those at home, the hearing will be broadcast on C-Span 3 and will be streaming on the Senate Judiciary Committee's website.

We'll be updating regularly with posts and clips on the testimony throughout the day.

RNC and Waxman Battle Over Right to Emails
"In a new letter to the Republican National Committee, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman writes that the RNC has provided only minimal information regarding White House officials’ use of RNC e-mail accounts. Waxman reveals that the RNC’s response thus far has been to propose that any Congressional requests for emails be filtered through eight search terms, such as ‘political briefing,’ ‘Hatch Act,’ and ‘2008.’” (Think Progress) Meanwhile, the RNC maintains that they want to work with Congress, but refuse to make available their entire database. "We are drawing a line in the sand on this," said a party executive. "For the first time, we are saying that we are not going to put up with this." (USNews)

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Finally, the time has come.

Alberto Gonzales will sit down before the Senate Judiciary Committee at 9:30 this morning. What to expect?

Well, from Gonzales, some notions of regret (though not about the firings themselves) and many failures to recollect details of conversations (coincidentally, the conversations everyone wants to hear about).

The papers this morning give us some indications of where the senators will focus their questioning.

One U.S. attorney in particular will be front and center -- New Mexico's David Iglesias. The New York Times explains why:

That case, perhaps more than any of the other ousters, demonstrates the interaction of the Republican Party, the White House, a prominent Republican senator and Mr. Gonzales that led up to the firings.

Investigators have already determined that Mr. Gonzales spoke directly three times with Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, about his complaints regarding David C. Iglesias, the state’s former top federal prosecutor.

Administration officials have confirmed that Mr. Gonzales also spoke with President Bush and Karl Rove, the president’s chief political adviser, about the perceived lack of enthusiasm in Mr. Iglesias’s office, among others, for prosecuting voting fraud cases, a top Republican Party priority. And investigators know that Mr. Iglesias’s name was among the last to be added to the ouster list.

The Times adds that committee staffers think that "given the repeated instances in which Mr. Gonzales was directly involved in discussions related to Mr. Iglesias, it might be hard for the attorney general to refuse to testify about these discussions or any follow-up conversations or to deny any recollection of them." Oh, how they underestimate Gonzales.

But not to worry -- Iglesias won't be the sole focus. Senators will have a fine time prodding Gonzales about his numerous contradictions.

As for Gonzales, he will focus "particularly on reassuring Republican lawmakers," senators like Arlen Specter (R-PA) who haven't said yet that he should resign.

Since we're on the subject of the Jack Abramoff investigation...

Conrad Burns, the senator from Montana who narrowly lost re-election last November due in large part to his association with Abramoff, continues to spend big money on his lawyer.

According to his recently filed campaign disclosure report, Burns paid more than $160,000 in legal fees to the law firm Powell Goldstein between January and March of this year. That means Burns' campaign has doled out more than $264,000 since he hired Ralph Caccia of that firm last April.

Burns is one of four lawmakers consistently reported to be in the sights of investigators. The other three are: ex-Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), who's in jail; Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA), whose home was searched by the FBI last week, and ex-Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX).

Burns went to work as a lobbyist earlier this year.

Breaking, from Roll Call:

The FBI has raided the Northern Virginia home of Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.), according to Congressional sources. No details are publicly available yet about the circumstances of the raid, but Doolittle and his wife, Julie, have been under federal investigation for their ties to the scandal surrounding imprisoned former lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

More soon, I'm sure.

Update: Remember that a former key aide to Doolittle, Kevin Ring, who'd worked with Abramoff, resigned suddenly from his job late last week. As I wrote before, that's a clear sign that Ring may be preparing to plead guilty and implicate Doolittle.

Update: According to The Hill, the FBI searched the home last Friday -- the same day that Ring resigned.

As if the politicitization of the Justice Department wasn't plain enough already...

The Bush administration's purge of the Civil Rights Division has been well documented -- how career attorneys and analysts have been driven out and replaced with hard-line conservatives with little civil rights experience.

But it's not just in the Civil Rights Division that hiring practices have changed. According to a group of anonymous Justice Department employees who've penned a letter to the House and Senate judiciary committees, all possible entry-level hires at the Justice Department are now being screened by the deputy attorney general's office. And they seem to be looking for something in particular. (Update: You can read the letter here (pdf). It was obtained by John Bresnahan of The Politico.)

According to their letter, here's what happened when some of those employees sat down with Michael Elston, chief of staff to DAG Paul McNulty (both of them key figures in the U.S. attorney purge). They wanted to know why Elston's office had struck a number of promising applicants from the list of interviewees. From The Politico:

...Elston "was offensive to the point of (being) insulting."...

"Claiming that the entire group had not 'done their jobs' in reviewing applicants, (Elston) said that he had a 'screening panel' to go over the list and research these candidates on the Internet; he refused to give the names of those on his 'panel,'" the career employees wrote. "Mr. (Elston) said that people were struck from the list for three reasons: grades, spelling errors on applications and inappropriate information about them on the Internet."

So, in their own words, the career employees did some checking of their own. They reportedly detected a "common denominator" for "most of those" struck from the interview list: They had "interned for a Hill Democrat, clerked for a Democratic judge, worked for a 'liberal cause' or otherwise appeared to have 'liberal' leanings. Summa cum laude graduates at both Yale and Harvard were rejected for interviews."

Meanwhile, Regent University grads have no problem getting their foot in the DoJ's door.

Update: House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) reacts:

"I take any accusations of undue politicization of career staff seriously. We have already identified concerns in Department's Civil Rights Division. These new accusations are clearly something we will want to consider as well."

Apparently the Senate is an irony-free zone, because once again, a senator has placed a secret hold on legislation that increases government transparency.

In this case, the bill that's been blocked would require Senate candidates to file their campaign finance reports electronically. Right now, they only file paper versions, which are much more difficult to search through. House candidates file electronically.

When Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) moved to approve the bill by unanimous consent yesterday, "a Republican Senator anonymously objected, stalling the bill indefinitely," according to Roll Call (sub. req.).

The good people at the Sunlight Foundation are working to find out who the culprit is. You can lend them a hand by giving your senator a call.

Yesterday, I noted that the Republican National Committee had a choice: turn over Karl Rove's and others' emails to Congress or give them first to the White House for the White House to determine what should be turned over.

The RNC's choice won't shock anyone. From The Washington Post:

"Recognizing the unique and significant nature of the potential privilege issue raised by the committee's requests, the RNC has agreed to the White House's reasonable request," Robert K. Kelner, an RNC lawyer, wrote to Conyers. Conyers responded that the action was "a clear attempt on the administration's part to delay this process."

The House Judicary Committee was set to vote today on whether to confer immunity on Monica Goodling, the former Justice Department liaison to the White House. At the request of Republicans on the panel, the vote has been delayed for one week.

The statement from Chairman John Conyers (D-MI):

"At the request of our Ranking Minority Member, Lamar Smith, I have announced a one-week delay in the Committee vote to apply for immunity for Monica Goodling. It is my hope that a short delay, agreed to in the spirit of bipartisan cooperation, will enable the Minority to join us in taking this critical step in our efforts to uncover the truth about why the U.S. Attorneys were terminated and what it means for the integrity of federal law enforcement. I continue to believe that Ms. Goodling would be a key witness in our investigation."

Senate Ethics Confirms Domenici Probe Over US Attorney Firing
"The Senate, thanks to a resolution it just adopted, has confirmed that Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) is the subject of "preliminary inquiry" over his involvement in the firing of former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias. The Senate just adopted a resolution (S. Res. 153) stating that "for matters before the Select Committee on Ethics involving the preliminary inquiry arising in connection with alleged communications by persons within the committee's jurisdiction with and concerning David C. Iglesias, then United States Attorney for the District of New Mexico, and the subsequent action by the committee with respect to that matter, if any, the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Salazar) shall be replaced by the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Brown)." (The Politico)

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There's no better example of the painstaking review process that went into the Justice Department's selection of U.S. attorneys to be fired: In the case of Nevada's Daniel Bogden, it was a 90 second meeting that made the difference.

It's never been clear why Bogden's name was added -- and apparently it wasn't even clear to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, who wrote in an email on December 5th, two days before the firings, that he was "skittish about Bogden." Bogden had been with the Justice Department for more than 16 years, McNulty wrote. What was he going to do now? "I'll admit have not looked at his district's performance," he added.

Here's what happened next, according to leaked details from Kyle Sampson's private testimony to Congress. From The Las Vegas Review-Journal:

A former high level department executive has told congressional investigators that a Justice Department team held a last-minute discussion after McNulty said in an e-mail on Dec. 5 that he was "skittish" about firing Bogden.

McNulty; his chief of staff, [Michael] Elston; Monica Goodling, a senior counsel to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; and possibly one other official gathered in the office of Kyle Sampson, Gonzales' chief of staff.

McNulty said he was concerned about Bogden, 50, getting a job outside government after 16 years at Justice and being able to care for his family.

When it was pointed out that Bogden was not married, McNulty withdrew his concern and the conversation ended after about 90 seconds, according to the account gathered by investigators. Bogden was dismissed on Dec. 7.

Sampson couldn't say who had put Bogden on the list (even though he was the "keeper of the list") or why. He'd never looked at Bogden's performance, and neither did Alberto Gonzales. The only thing he can remember is that there was "a general feeling among senior staffers at the Justice Department that a 'stronger leader' could be put in Nevada." So he was fired. And then the Justice Department told Congress that he'd been fired for "performance" reasons.

All that remained, apparently, was to find out what those were.

Update: The Las Vegas Sun has a more detailed rundown of Sampson's testimony.

The White House and Democrats in Congress are both pushing for emails kept by the Republican National Committee, and the RNC is caught in the middle.

The House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), wants to get its hands on those RNC-issued email accounts used by Karl Rove and other White House personnel. Congressional investigators want to know about Rove's and his deputy's involvement in the U.S. attorney firings. But the White House insists that it review the emails first, before handing anything over to Democrats. Last week, Conyers warned the RNC not to do that, saying that it would be "an unjustified delay" and "potentially... an obstruction of our investigation."

And today, in a letter to the RNC, the White House made their position clear: you have to give them to us first. There "exists a clear and indisputable Executive Branch interest" in the emails on the RNC-issued accounts, wrote Emmet Flood, Special Counsel to the President.

Conyers isn't buying it:

"The White House's position to clear all RNC emails before they can respond to our request is extreme and unnecessary. This is a clear attempt, on the Administration's part, to delay this process and keep the wheels of Justice turning slowly."

What happens next? I don't know.

Over the past six years, the Bush administration has aggressively reshaped the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. Many career analysts and attorneys have either been transferred or driven out; their replacements are long on conservative credentials and short on civil rights experience.

Here's an inside account of what it's like inside from Toby Moore, a redistricting expert with the division's voting section until the spring of 2006. Like many of his colleagues, he left due to the hostile atmosphere in the section, where he says there was a pattern of selective intimidation towards career staff.

According to Moore, his supervisor and the political appointees in the section consistently criticized his work because it didn't jibe with their pre-drawn conclusions. That was bad enough, he said, but the real trouble came after he and three colleagues recommended opposing a Georgia voter I.D. law pushed by Republicans. After the recommendation, which clashed with the views of Moore's superiors, they reprimanded him for not adequately analyzing the evidence and accused him of mistreating his Republican colleague, with whom he'd had frequent disagreements. But it got worse. Moore said that his Republican superiors even monitored his emails, eventually filing a complaint against him with the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility for allegedly disclosing privileged information in one email (he was cleared of wrongdoing). Fed up, and worried that it was too dangerous to his professional future to remain there, he left.

Moore said that his experience was similar to others in the section who'd disagreed with conservative attorneys working at the Justice Department. Over the following year, all three of Moore's colleagues who'd joined him in opposing the law either left or were transferred out of the section. The senior member of the team, Robert Berman, the deputy chief of the section and a 28-year veteran of the Civil Rights Division, was transferred to the Office of Professional Development -- what Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) has called "a dead-end job."

The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility opened and conducted an investigation into the section's handling of the Georgia I.D. law. Joe Rich, the former chief of the voting section, told me that he was interviewed by investigators in 2006. It's not clear, however, what the outcome of the investigation was.

"Mr. Moore's allegations about political interference in the Civil Rights Division surrounding the Georgia memo, are very much in line with what we are learning daily about this Justice Department," Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) told TPMmuckraker. Nadler is the chairman of a House Judiciary subcommittee that held a hearing on the voting section last month. "A clear picture is developing of a department culture that seems to encourage politically-motivated, improper and lawless activity."

The voting section is tasked under the Voting Rights Act with reviewing new legislation in certain regions in order to prevent regulations that might lead to discrimination against minority voters. When Moore and his colleagues examined the Georgia voter-identification law, they found a lot to worry about. Their bosses weren't interested.

"They weren’t really interested in investigating Georgia's submission," Moore, who has a Ph.D. in geography and had been with the section since 2000, told me. "They were mainly interested in assembling evidence to support pre-clearance. Any attempt to bring up counter-evidence to suggest a discriminatory impact was ignored or critiqued. We were told it was our own bias.... Any evidence in support was embraced uncritically."

The problems with Georgia's new law were legion, as outlined in the "Recommendation Memorandum" that Moore and his colleagues compiled.

To start with, jurisdictions covered by the Voting Rights Act (mostly in southern states) are required to show that law changes will not have a discriminatory impact on minority voters. In the case of Georgia, the law change would have revised an earlier voter-I.D. law that allowed a variety of forms of identification (such as a utility bill); the new law restricted acceptable forms to photo I.D. But the law's advocates could provide no evidence that African Americans would not be disproportionately affected by the bill. In fact, the law had been pushed largely on the basis of assertions contained in Stealing Elections, a book by conservative journalist John Fund and what was called "anecdotal evidence."

Other evidence pointed even more strongly to nefarious motives behind the legislation. According to the Recommendation Memorandum, Georgia state Rep. Sue Burmeister, the sponsor of the bill, told section staff that "if there are fewer black voters because of this bill, it will only be because there is less opportunity for fraud," and that "when black voters in her black precincts are not paid to vote, they do not go to the polls."

For that and a host of other reasons, Moore and three of his colleagues recommended against clearing the bill. A single member on their review team, a young Republican lawyer, supported clearance. Yet Moore's team was nevertheless overruled and the bill was cleared. In a telling sequel to these events at the Justice Department, a federal appeals court judge later barred implementation of the law, comparing it to a Jim Crow-era poll tax.

Things went downhill from there.

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From Ken Silverstein over at Harper's:

I recently received an advance copy of Seth Hettena's Feasting on the Spoils: The Life and Times of Randy “Duke” Cunningham, History's Most Corrupt Congressman, which will be published this July and which I highly recommend. In addition to being a terrific piece of political reporting, the book is filled with juicy details concerning the seamier side of the Cunningham affair, otherwise known as “Hookergate.”

I was particularly interested in stories Hettena unearthed about Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, whom former CIA director Porter Goss had named as executive director, the agency's number-three official. Foggo resigned last year not long after FBI agents raided his home and office. The Feds suspected that Foggo, who was later indicted, had funneled CIA contracts to his long-time friend Brent Wilkes, the defense contractor who is accused of bribing Cunningham with money and prostitutes.

Some of the more sensational stories in Hettena's book—and he has on-the-record sources—got me thinking. First, didn't Foggo's frequent indiscretions (for example, flashing his agency ID to jump the line at a strip club) raise red flags about his character? Second, wasn't Foggo's outlandish sexual behavior—like, say, publicly performing oral sex on a hooker (hired by Wilkes) at his own bachelor party—just the sort of thing that makes intelligence officials potentially vulnerable to blackmail by a hostile spy service? Third, might it be possible to cynically point to such revelations and use them as a hook for a blog item that combines sex and espionage?

The answers, you won't be surprised to find out, are yes, yes, and yes.

That's a rather sudden development.

The House Judiciary Committee will meet tomorrow morning in order to vote on whether to offer former Justice Department official Monica Goodling immunity to prosecution. Goodling had indicated that she would plead the Fifth rather than testify.

Says Chairman John Conyers (D-MI):

"As the White House Liaison in the Department while the US Attorney firings were planned and carried out, Ms. Goodling clearly has much to contribute to the Committee's understanding of the surrounding circumstances... I am hopeful we can approve immunity so that we can schedule her to testify as soon as possible and begin to clear up the many inconsistencies and gaps surrounding this matter."

The varying stories about why the U.S. attorneys were fired have finally reached such a state of complexity that soon I will be forced to resort to equations.

The Justice Department has consistently said that while seven of the U.S. attorneys were fired for "performance" reasons, one was not: Little Rock's Bud Cummins. Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty told the Senate Judiciary Committee in early February that Cummins was removed for no other reason than to install Tim Griffin, Karl Rove's former aide, in his place.

But apparently it's more complicated than that. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has said that Kyle Sampson told congressional investigators that Cummins was fired for performance reasons. Sampson apparently couldn't describe just what those pressing problems were -- only that Cummins "hadn't distinguished himself" in his position.

Remember that Alberto Gonzales was also under the impression that [that the story was] Cummins was fired for performance reasons -- and he was reportedly upset by McNulty's testimony because of that.

So how to account between the discrepancy between McNulty's testimony and Sampson's and Gonzales' version?

Words fail. From U.S. News:

Other knowledgeable sources say Sampson's testimony was not as clear cut as Schumer indicated. According to their version, while Sampson indicated there had been some performance issues with Cummins that placed him on the potential firing list well before Griffin had entered the picture, Sampson's explanations about the Cummins firing were complex enough that different people could interpret the reasons for the firings differently.

Got that?

Detainee Denies Ties to Al-Qaida
"A Palestinian terror suspect once described by President Bush as a trusted deputy of Osama bin Laden told a military hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, last month that he wasn't a member of al-Qaida, had met bin Laden only once and that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were a violation of Islamic law. The detainee, Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, but better known as Abu Zubaydah, also claimed that he was tortured during the more than three years he was held in secret CIA detention before he was turned over to U.S. military authorities and flown to the Guantanamo Bay prison for suspected terrorists last September." (McClatchy Newspapers)

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I tell you, it's hard work remembering what Alberto Gonzales remembers and doesn't remember.

In October of last year, President Bush had a conversation with Gonzales about U.S. attorneys. According to the White House's public statements, the conversation was a broad one, about voter fraud in three districts. Gonzales has said publicly that he doesn't remember such a conversation taking place.

But that's not what Kyle Sampson told congressional investigators this past weekend. According to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Sampson said that in early March of this year, Gonzales told him about a conversation he'd had in October with Bush that was specifically about U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias. Remember that the White House was getting heavy pressure from Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) and other New Mexico Republicans to can Iglesias.

So in early March, Gonzales told Sampson privately about this conversation (this was, by the way, before the White House had publicly disclosed that there had been any conversations between Bush and Gonzales about U.S. attorneys). But on March 26, Gonzales told NBC and the world that he didn't remember having any such conversation.

But the Justice Department has an explanation! Spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said that Gonzales really didn't remember having such a conversation, and that when he'd told Sampson about it in early March, it was "based on what others had told him, not his own memory."

That doesn't quite solve it, though.

First, if Schumer's relation of Sampson's testimony is accurate, it seems clear that Sampson had not been under the impression that Gonzales himself didn't remember the conversation when they spoke about it in early March.

But second, who were the "others" who told Gonzales this? The White House has a different version of the conversation -- that it was broader, about three districts (New Mexico, Milwaukee, Philadelphia) where voter fraud wasn't being aggressively pursued. Sampson's version, which has the conversation focusing on Iglesias, implicates Bush much more directly in his removal. So who did Gonzales get this version from? Does he remember that?

Last week, the House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed a number of Justice Department documents -- but particularly those that identified other U.S. attorneys who had been on the administration's list to be purged but weren't.

The Justice Department had signaled that it would not comply, and now it seems like that's indeed what will happen. The deadline to turn over the documents was 2 PM today, and it was radio silence from the DoJ.

So chairman John Conyers (D-MI) is considering his options:

While we understand that the Department considers this effort a priority and we plan to continue working with them, we will review all available legal options to secure compliance with the subpoena.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) announced from the Senate floor that the hearing has been postponed until Thursday due to the Virginia Tech shootings today.

From ABC News:

Ignoring calls for his ouster over the firing of several U.S. attorneys, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is set to testify before Congress tomorrow. It's a move experts say could rescue his political career, or cost him his job -- even send him to jail.

"It's suicidal," said Stanley Brand, one of the top ethics defense lawyers in Washington, D.C. Given the conflicting stories from Gonzales, his aides and top Justice Department officials about why eight U.S. attorneys were fired, and to what extent Gonzales was involved in the process, the attorney general puts himself in criminal jeopardy by testifying under oath, Brand said....

"I've seen it before. People get indicted for false statements and perjury and obstruction of justice," Brand told ABC News. Brand recently represented ex-Interior Department official Stephen Griles, who pleaded guilty to lying to Congress in connection with the Jack Abramoff scandal.

What's so dangerous about simply telling the truth? Isn't it true that, like the old adage, the truth shall set you free?

"Not in my world," Brand retorted.

It's a bad, bad sign when a subject of the Jack Abramoff investigation suddenly and without explanation resigns from his job. And that's what Kevin Ring did Friday, according to The Politico.

Ring, who worked as a lobbyist with Abramoff from 2000 until Abramoff was forced to close up shop in 2004, has come up again and again over the course of the Abramoff investigation. But he had a singular and important role in Abramoff's organization -- he was Abramoff's access to Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA), for whom Ring had been a senior staffer. Whenever Abramoff wanted Doolittle's help with anything -- and that happened often --, Ring was the man.

But Abramoff, being Abramoff, didn't expect help for nothing. And so it was Ring who served as the intermediary when Abramoff hired Doolittle's wife for consulting work, an arrangement that lasted for approximately two years. The payments suspiciously align with actions Doolittle took on behalf of Abramoff's clients.

Doolittle has been in investigators' sights since 2005. But it looks like they're finally closing in -- because if anyone could deliver Doolittle, it would be Ring.

As The Politico notes, Ring seems poised to follow the path of other aides who've pled guilty in the Abramoff scandal -- pleading guilty to lesser charges in return for delivering their former bosses to investigators. Ex-Rep. Bob Ney's (R-OH) former chief of staff Neil Volz, who also worked with Ring with Abramoff and then later at Barnes & Thornburg, resigned abruptly from that firm in January last year. He pled guilty to corruption charges in May, agreeing to cooperate and implicating Ney.

The Albuquerque Journal reported yesterday that President Bush and Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) had a phone conversation about U.S. Attorney David Iglesias sometime after the election last year, but before he was fired. The White House has yet to directly respond to that. Today we found out why.

White House spokesperson Dana Perino said today that she hadn't asked Bush whether there had been such a conversation. "I haven't asked him," she said, but continued to say that she didn't "think" such a conversation had occurred, because she'd never heard anything about it. When pressed again, she said, "I'm not going to rule it out."

Transcript below...

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From Time:

In what could prove an embarrassing new setback for embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on the eve of his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, a group of influential conservatives and longtime Bush supporters has written a letter to the White House to call for his resignation....

Alluding to ongoing scandal, it notes: "He has engendered the suspicion that partisan politics trumps evenhanded law enforcement in the Department of Justice."...

Signatories to the letter include Bruce Fein, a former senior official in the Reagan Justice Department, who has worked frequently with current Administration and the Republican National Committee to promote Bush's court nominees; David Keene, chairman of the influential American Conservative Union, one of the nation's oldest and largest grassroots conservative groups, Richard Viguerie, a well-known GOP direct mail expert and fundraiser, Bob Barr, the former Republican congressman from Georgia and free speech advocate, as well as John Whitehead, head of the Rutherford Institute, a conservative non-forit active in fighting for what it calls religious freedoms.

So says The Wall Street Journal: "With Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on the ropes over the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, his deputy, Paul J. McNulty, is quietly testing the waters for a new job."

It's not the first time that McNulty has been rumored to be on the way out. The Politico's Mike Allen reported last month that McNulty would be getting the hatchet. That, of course, didn't happen.

This time it's McNulty's choice, his friends say -- but it has nothing to do with his giving false statements to Congress (for which he's blamed Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling), or the fact that he was at the center of the U.S. attorney purge. No. He just wants to cash in:

Even before the controversy erupted, Mr. McNulty, 49 years old, had been making plans to join the private sector after 24 years in government, which included a term as U.S. attorney in Virginia's Eastern District, people familiar with his plans said. Knowing he would like to take a higher-paying job, partly to cover tuition for his four college-age children, well before the end of the administration, his friends recently have sent out feelers on his behalf for possible corporate and law-firm jobs, the people said.

Let's take a look at one of the key lines of questioning that Alberto Gonzales is sure to face during his hearing tomorrow -- a line of questioning made all the more damaging by the revelation in today's papers of a senior Justice Department official's testimony.

Michael Battle, until recently the director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys which is the liaison between the U.S. attorneys and main Justice, told congressional investigators earlier this month that he was not aware of any "performance issues" for "several" of the prosecutors. The first he heard of any problems was when the order came down to fire them.

Let's look at how this reflects on Gonzales.

Let us assume, as Gonzales wants us to assume, that he had nothing to do with the nitty-gritty aspects of the firings. He got the process rolling (placing it in the hands of the 30-something staffer who'd prosecuted a single case in his life), flitted in and out for the occasional and brief conversation with Kyle Sampson about how it was going, and then signed off on the list. Why they were fired? That was a niggling detail best left to subordinates. The big picture was that there were performance related reasons for the firings.

And Gonzales held on to that storyline, even when the very people tasked with managing U.S. attorneys abandoned it.

On February 6th, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He said that seven of the eight fired U.S. attorneys had been terminated for "performance related" reasons -- but one of them, U.S. Attorney for Little Rock Bud Cummins, had not. Cummins had been asked to step aside for no other reason than to install Tim Griffin, Karl Rove's former aide.

Now, McNulty's testimony -- with regard to Cummins, at least -- was accurate. But it veered from the story.

And Gonzales was angry, or "extremely upset," according to a February 7th email from his spokesman, Brian Roehrkasse: "The AG is extremely upset with the stories on the US Attys this morning. He also thought some of the DAG's statements were inaccurate."

When this email was released along with thousands of others last month, Roehrkasse explained just what Gonzales had been so upset about -- because he believed that "Bud Cummins' removal involved performance considerations and it was that aspect of the DAG's testimony that the Attorney General was questioning."

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Wolfowitz Dictated Girlfriend's Pay Deal
"World Bank President Paul D. Wolfowitz personally dictated the terms under which the bank gave what it called his "domestic partner" substantial pay raises and promotions in exchange for temporarily leaving her job there during his tenure, according to documents released by the bank's executive board yesterday. The board issued a statement saying it will 'move expeditiously to reach a conclusion on possible actions to take,' amid rising speculation over whether the embattled Wolfowitz will resign or be asked to step down." (Washington Post)

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The Justice Department has released Alberto Gonzales' written statement for Tuesday's hearing, which was provided today to the Senate Judiciary Committee. We've posted the entire section concerning the U.S. attorneys below.

The statement is long on promises and short on specifics, and Gonzales' narrative for how the firings occurred is a very simple one: he tasked Kyle Sampson with it, had a handful of conversations about it over the course of two years, and then eventually signed off on the firings.

Nevertheless, there are a couple of noteworthy passages.

First, Gonzales says again that (as far as he knows, at least) none of the U.S. attorneys were fired for "improper" reasons -- which would be "in order to impede or speed along particular criminal investigations for illegitimate reasons." But he says that "it is clear to me that I should have done more personally to ensure that the review process was more rigorous." That's an admission that's sure to open him up to some battering from senators on the panel.

Second, he again says that he "misspoke" at a press conference on March 13th when he said "I was not involved in any discussions about what was going on.” That statement, he says, "was too broad." He regrets the confusion, he says.

The entire thing is below....

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The firing of U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias continues to smoke.

There's a lot that's new in this piece today in The Albuquerque Journal:

Former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias was fired after Sen. Pete Domenici, who had been unhappy with Iglesias for some time, made a personal appeal to the White House, the Journal has learned.

Domenici had complained about Iglesias before, at one point going to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales before taking his request to the president as a last resort.

The senior senator from New Mexico had listened to criticism of Iglesias going back to 2003 from sources ranging from law enforcement officials to Republican Party activists.

Domenici, who submitted Iglesias' name for the job and guided him through the confirmation process in 2001, had tried at various times to get more white-collar crime help for the U.S. Attorney's Office— even if Iglesias didn't want it.

At one point, the six-term Republican senator tried to get Iglesias moved to a Justice Department post in Washington, D.C., but Iglesias told Justice officials he wasn't interested.

In the spring of 2006, Domenici told Gonzales he wanted Iglesias out.

Gonzales refused. He told Domenici he would fire Iglesias only on orders from the president.

At some point after the election last Nov. 6, Domenici called Bush's senior political adviser, Karl Rove, and told him he wanted Iglesias out and asked Rove to take his request directly to the president.

Domenici and Bush subsequently had a telephone conversation about the issue.

The conversation between Bush and Domenici occurred sometime after the election but before the firings of Iglesias and six other U.S. attorneys were announced on Dec. 7.

Iglesias' name first showed up on a Nov. 15 list of federal prosecutors who would be asked to resign. It was not on a similar list prepared in October.

The Journal confirmed the sequence of events through a variety of sources familiar with the firing of Iglesias, including sources close to Domenici. The senator's office declined comment.

A couple things. The Journal story refers to Domenici's concern over Iglesias' performance prosecuting "white-collar crime." Was Domenici overwrought about corporate malfeasance? No -- it's a way of referring to public corruption cases, specifically two high-profile corruption cases Iglesias handled against New Mexico Democrats.

After Iglesias didn't jump fast enough with regard to the first case, an investigation into the Democratic state treasurer that dated back to 2005, Domenici's patience was apparently far too thin for the slow pace of the second investigation -- a kickback probe into New Mexico Democrat Manny Aragon.

The timeline couldn't be more damning. Sen. Domenici made the now infamous phone call to Iglesias on October 27. According to Iglesias' version of the conversation, Domenici asked him if an indictment would be filed against Aragon "before November?" When Iglesias said no, Domenici replied, "I'm very sorry to hear that," and then hung up.

According to the Journal story, Domenici made his move to get Iglesias fired -- a call to Karl Rove -- as soon as the election was over just a few weeks later.

Now, there's another level to this. According to earlier statements from the White House and Kyle Sampson's testimony, Bush and Rove had already complained to Gonzales about Iglesias when Domenici called in November. Those complaints had to do with Iglesias' insufficiently aggressive pursuit of (Democratic) voter fraud, and they were made -- by President Bush and Karl Rove -- in mid-October.

So we have two different streams of complaints from the White House -- the first in October about voter fraud and then another in November, stemming from Domenici's concern at Iglesias' failure to move certain cases. Of course, both of them at their base were about Iglesias' failure to prosecute enough Democrats.