If there are to be investigations...

* jane:

"The fact that Cheney’s own handwriting is all over a copy of Joe Wilson’s NYT op ed is exceptionally damning. It includes the statement "Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?" But Cheney already knew back in June that the CIA was saying that Wilson’s wife may have had a role in sending him, it wasn’t news to him when this article came out on July 6. These were marching orders, not a question. "

* billmon:

"The GOP political apparatus (which means the conservative ratfuckers, like Rove, who crawled out of the College Republican clubs of the 1970s) is completely geared to running against things, as opposed to running on the party's own policies and track record. If you had their party and their record, you know you'd do the same.
But having control of all three branches -- with a opposition party that's virtually invisible -- has clearly caused a major malfunction in the Rovian attack machine. Right now it's spinning around like a heat-seeking weapons system without anything to lock on to."

* billmon:

"If there are to be investigations, I'd much rather they were done by the Justice Department and/or by special prosecutors like Patrick Fitzgerald -- serious professionals who know precisely what they're doing and have the power to seek grand jury indictments, not just hog the microphone at a congressional subcommittee hearing. Having lived through the Iran-contra scandal, and seen how the joint investigation ultimately made it easier, not harder, for the likes of Ollie North and Elliot Abrams to avoid serious jail time, I guess I'm just prejudiced that way.

Legally as well as politically, it seems to me the best time to go after the regime elements will be when they are former regime elements -- when they no longer have control of the imperial executive branch and thus are relatively weak and leaderless. As I told a friend of mine recently, I want to see the neocons so busy conferencing with their lawyers that they won't be able to create trouble for a good long time to come. But that means winning the White House in 2008, not Congress in 2006."

* billmon:

"Of course, this potentially sets the scene for the next loop in the downward spiral towards a full-fledged police state. If and when the next terrorist attack comes, the natural response of the national security bureaucracy (and its legal camp followers) will be to insist the tragedy never would have happened if it had been given access to all the data it wanted, all the money it needed, and all the investigative powers it demanded. It’ll be the fighting-with-one-hand-tied-behind-our-back argument, re-imported from Iraq. And who’s going to say no when another major American landmark is a smoldering ruin?"

compare and contrast with larisa's latest at huffpo