Thursday and things are hoppin'.

Red text is the "real" story buried in the news.
Blue text is my own commentary.
Violet text is the blog quote of the day.

NEWS CONCERNING "THE BUSH WARS" IS CONSPICUOUSLY ABSENT FROM TODAY'S REGULAR HEADLINES...

DOJ SCANDAL OPENS UP LIKE A LOTUS
The Justice Department considered dismissing many more U.S. attorneys than officials have previously acknowledged, with at least 26 prosecutors suggested for termination between February 2005 and December 2006, according to sources familiar with documents withheld from the public. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales testified last week that the effort was limited to eight U.S. attorneys fired since last June, and other administration officials have said that only a few others were suggested for removal. In fact, D. Kyle Sampson, then Gonzales's chief of staff, considered more than two dozen U.S. attorneys for termination, according to lists compiled by him and his colleagues, the sources said. They amounted to more than a quarter of the nation's 93 U.S. attorneys. Thirteen of those known to have been targeted are still in their posts... ...The number of names on the lists demonstrates the breadth of the search for prosecutors to dismiss. The names also hint at a casual process in which the people who were most consistently considered for replacement were not always those ultimately told to leave. (so, lets look at the dockets of those who weren't fired and see if there's a "Biskupic pattern" in their districts...i.e., did they pursue any questionable, conspicuous pre-election indictments against Democrats?)
http://letters.washingtonpost.com/W4RH02F319057E0C6446D31C6CEE10

In February 2006, the Senate Judiciary Committee was inquiring into the warrantless wiretapping program whose existence had been revealed just two months before. Sketchy details had also begun to emerge of the March 2004 hospital room ambush, in which Mr. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, and then-White House chief of staff Andrew H. Card Jr. tried to browbeat the gravely ill Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, who had temporarily yielded his office to his deputy, into approving the warrantless surveillance program. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who was then chairing the Judiciary Committee, got Mr. Gonzales to agree to have Mr. Ashcroft testify. But when Mr. Specter followed up with a letter asking as well that the department approve the appearance of former deputy attorney general James B. Comey, Mr. Gonzales balked. If called to testify, Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Comey wouldn't be allowed to reveal "confidential Executive Branch information," ... ... If you were Mr. Gonzales, you'd certainly want to make sure they stayed quiet. Consider: Mr. Gonzales, as the president's lawyer, went to the hospital room of a man so ill he had temporarily relinquished his authority. There, Mr. Gonzales tried to persuade Mr. Ashcroft to override the views of the attorney general's own legal counsel. When the attorney general refused, Mr. Gonzales apparently took part in a plan to go forward with a program that the Justice Department had refused to certify as legal... ...What was the administration doing, and what was it willing to continue to do, that its lawyers concluded was without a legal basis? (SPYING ON THE DEMOCRATS, MAYBE??? REMEMBER, THIS WAS MARCH OF 2004.) Without an answer to that fundamental question, the coverup will have succeeded.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/16/AR2007051602489.html?referrer=email

PROBING ROVE;
The Case of the Mysterious Disappearing Emails...
The Justice Department told Congress yesterday that a search of e-mails sent over 2 1/2 years turned up a single message in which the department's senior officials communicated with White House adviser Karl Rove about the dismissals of nine U.S. attorneys last year. In a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), a senior Justice official said the department scoured (there's an ambiguous word, I BET they scoured their computers, as in "cleaned thoroughly") its computers in response to a subpoena and found just the single e-mail chain written earlier this year. It already had been released publicly. The possibility that Rove had a role in the removal of the U.S. attorneys has become a central issue in Congress's investigation. (...does anyone doubt this is obvious proof of Rove's latest anti-truth syndrome, habitual deletion disorder...) Also yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee announced that it would hear testimony Wednesday from Monica M. Goodling, a former top aide to Gonzales. Goodling, who is the subject of an internal Justice investigation into whether she considered political affiliation in the hiring of some career prosecutors, has been granted limited immunity from prosecution in exchange for her testimony.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/16/AR2007051602443.html?tid=informbox


WOLFOWITZ PREPARES TO DEPART WORLDBANK IN GALPAL SCANDAL
Bank's International Board unwilling to exonorate after meeting and hearing all evidence of deception and manipulation...
Seeking to break the logjam, the Bush administration pressed a compromise: The board could issue a statement that Wolfowitz had erred in handling the raise for his longtime companion, Shaha Riza, but apportion some of the blame to a bank committee that Wolfowitz believes gave him murky ethics advice. Wolfowitz would then resign, said senior bank and administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the talks. The board rejected that formulation, however, insisting that Wolfowitz face consequences for a committee's findings that he broke ethics rules and undermined the reputation of the bank, the officials said. Some board members feared that Wolfowitz might accept a statement exonerating him, then stay in the job, (looks like they have come to know Wolfie quite well) the White House aide said. Several board members were opposed to any deal, officials said, asserting it would compromise their integrity: It would seem to vindicate criticisms from the Bush administration and Wolfowitz that their investigation has been less than fair. While the board might have once been friendly to a negotiated outcome along the lines the Bush administration proposed, that window closed with the completion of the investigation by the board committee last week, senior officials said. The final report accused Wolfowitz of breaching ethics rules and undermining the reputation of the bank by directing bank staff to give Riza a substantial raise.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/16/AR2007051601287.html?referrer=email