The Carpetbagger Report

I’ve been curious how conservatives would respond to this week’s Media Matters report about the conservative tilt of the Sunday-morning talk-shows. To quickly review, MM examined the guests of the Sunday shows — Meet the Press, ABC’s This Week, CBS’ Face the Nation, and Fox Broadcasting Co.’s Fox News Sunday — and found that they […]

Believe me, I had no intention of writing about this for the third consecutive day, but the right’s use of Clinton to downplay the prosecutor purge scandal has adapted. Some are still foolishly complaining about Clinton having hired new U.S. Attorneys upon taking office, but the more sophisticated far-right Bush supporters have decided to narrow […]

I think it’s fair to say that Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is livid over the prosecutor purge scandal. Democrats are now demanding additional documents, as well as testimony under oath from three top current and former White House officials: Mr. Rove; Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel; […]

I’ve never been altogether sold on the Watergate-era argument about the cover-up being worse than the crime — most of the time, the crime itself seems pretty bad — but it does speak to a certain political reality: screwing up seems easier to forgive than lying about screwing up. With this in mind, the WaPo […]

Today’s edition of quick hits. * Despite some GOP objections, the House passed three bills to expand public access to government records, as part of Sunshine Week. As the AP noted, the measures “would force government to be more responsive to Freedom of Information Act requests, make contributions to presidential libraries public and overturn a […]

“When it’s possible the law was broken, admitting mistakes, but not doing anything about it, does not cut it,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said today. “Simply apologizing and firing a fall guy is not enough. We need a full accounting from the White House as to what went on here, the resignation of the Attorney […]

At this point, I’m afraid that veteran CIA officer Tyler Drumheller’s revelations about pre-war intelligence just aren’t surprising anymore. That said, I’d argue that his perspective never really generated the attention it deserved the first it came to the public’s attention. Drumheller should be a household name — it’s his perspective that utterly and completely […]

Now that [tag]Senate[/tag] [tag]Republicans[/tag] have decided to end their obstructionist tactics and allow debate on the war in [tag]Iraq[/tag], it’s probably a good time to consider the options available to Congress right now, as far as the [tag]war[/tag] is concerned. Walter Dellinger and Christopher Schroeder, each of whom served as head of the Justice Department’s […]

In 2001, then-Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-Ill.) had the opportunity to recommend a U.S. Attorney for the Chicago area. As TP noted, Karl Rove apparently urged him to “choose a U.S. Attorney who he believed would be lenient in probing state corruption.” According to Fitzgerald, who was determined to bring in a prosecutor from outside the […]

The president picked a good time to leave the country. Just as the political world was erupting in a series of White House-related scandals — Walter Reed, FBI surveillance, Libby case, and this week, the prosecutor purge — Bush was in South America. Lucky him. The president returns to the States today and, fortunately, he’s […]