It is nice to know that the top law officer in America, the one that we trust to enforce the law is a compulsive Liar, and knowingly liked to congress.

From Reuters

Embattled U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales faced a new firestorm on Tuesday sparked by a report he may have misled lawmakers in 2005 about civil liberty violations by the FBI.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, responded by promising that Gonzales would face tough questions about this and other matters at a hearing planned by his panel later this month.

And Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat who chairs a House Judiciary subcommittee, renewed calls for Gonzales to resign and called for the appointment of a special prosecutor to determine if he had misled Congress, “a serious crime.”

But President George W. Bush brushed off the flap about his longtime friend, who earlier served as White House counsel.

“The president has said repeatedly that he has great faith in the attorney general, and that has not changed,” said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel.

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that Gonzales assured Congress in 2005 that the FBI had not abused powers granted under the anti-terror USA Patriot Act despite having received reports of potential violations.

Richard Wolffe and Holly Baile of NewsWeek do a great job at looking at the facts behind the AG scandle and the very odd speech given by the "President" Tuesday.

I really want everyone to go and read the whole thing, but I want to point out this paragraph

Reasonable, right? It almost sounded convincing. But wait! Who was it that had provided those confusing and incomplete explanations in the first place? Hadn't it been … the president and the attorney general? And hadn't previous administrations agreed to let key aides testify before Congress under oath? Meaning, the level of cooperation was perhaps slightly less "extraordinary" than the president presumed. But perhaps the most interesting, um, irony in the president's press conference was his approach to Democrats on Capitol Hill. They'd better not launch off on a partisan fishing expedition, Bush warned. They'd better not "waste time" investigating the firings, or "promote confrontation." There were too many important issues to address. But the firings themselves smack of a partisan fishing expedition in the eyes of the president's critics. After all, one of the criteria in weighing who got canned was whether prosecutors were "loyal Bushies," as Gonzales's former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, wrote in one telling e-mail. And arguably, the firings themselves were what was distracting Congress and the country from more vital matters at hand. In other words, Bush seemed to be saying, it's fine for me to play politics. But it's not OK for the Democrats to do it.

It was not the first time a little inconsistency crept into the White House's efforts to control the damage over the Justice Department firings. In fact, things have been a bit wobbly ever since the story broke.

Oh, and they are right, so far everytime Bush opens his mouth more reasons to dig deeper fall out. He spent 15 mins telling the Dems not to push, or he will turn this into a political thing, yet that is the very reason these AG's were fired.

Also, what of the missing documents George, if we are to trust you, and we do not, nothing happened in the White House from November 15th to December 4th, because all of the documents from that time period are missing. The firings took place on Dec 7th, it sure did get quite in the weeks leading up to this, or, and I think I am right, you "Forgot" to put them in the dump, reason?

This is all real simple, if everything was so above the board, why the secrets? Sunlight is the best way to see the truth, and unless you are a liar, you should not fear the sun. I am sure that nothing would make your case more clear, and show the American people that you did nothing wrong by putting it ALL out there, and allowed those involved to be sworn to tell the truth… But you are not allowing that and begs the question, what do you have to hide?

Who's next in this corrupt Administration? Anyone want to place a bet on how and when Bush pardons him? Does he wait until the end of the nightmare, or does he do it in this Friday's news dump?

From the AP

Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was convicted Tuesday of lying and obstructing a leak investigation that reached into the highest levels of the Bush administration.

Libby is the highest-ranking White House official to be convicted of a felony since the Iran-Contra scandal of the mid-1980s. The case brought new attention to the Bush administration's much-criticized handling of weapons of mass destruction intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war.

The verdict culminated a nearly four-year investigation into how CIA official Valerie Plame's name was leaked to reporters in 2003. The trial revealed how top members of the administration were eager to discredit Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who accused the administration of doctoring prewar intelligence on Iraq.

Libby, who was once Cheney's most trusted adviser and an assistant to President Bush, was expressionless as the jury verdict was announced on the 10th day of deliberations. His wife, Harriet Grant, choked out a sob and sank her head.