ashcroft: 911commission's "worst witness"

* tpmm:

"Yet another casualty in the Jack Abramoff scandal: Karl Rove's personal aide Susan Ralston has resigned over her ties to Abramoff
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The White House announced an internal ethics investigation of Ralston after a Congressional report released last week showed extensive contacts between Ralston and Abramoff's lobbying team. Among other things, the report showed that Ralston had accepted thousands of dollars in gifts from Abramoff without compensating him."

remember when Grover distanced himself from her.

* TP:

"Former Attorney General John Ashcroft this week became the first Cabinet-level Bush official to attack the 9/11 Commission, writing in his newly-released memoirs that it “seemed obsessed with trying to lay the blame for the terrorist attacks at the feet of the Bush administration, while virtually absolving the previous administration of responsibility.” Given his record on 9/11, Ashcroft is the last one who should be lobbing attacks on others.
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Ashcroft’s credibility surrounding the events of 9/11 has been repeatedly called into question. Previously, the former Acting Director of the FBI, Thomas Pickard, testified to the 9/11 Commission that Ashcroft explicitly told him prior to 9/11 that he “didn’t want to hear about” domestic terrorism threats anymore. Ashcroft denied ever having said that.

Now, criticism is being leveled against Ashcroft from a former Republican member of the 9/11 Commission, Slade Gorton. Gorton said that Ashcroft “may very well have been the worst witness we interviewed” because he was “very unresponsive and unhelpful.”"

* talkleft:

"The president's brazen use of a signing statement to resist cronyism was quickly challenged by, of all things, a Republican. "

* slacktivist:

"Gen. Pace either gets sexually thrilled at the idea of waterboarding, or else he is a deluded fool further removed from reality than Walter Mitty or Elwood C. Dobbs.

Bush and Rumsfeld have both displayed occasional flashes of raw anger when defending their prerogative to order torture, glimpses of the snarling faces of the sadistic pervert. But then each has also maintained the fantastic claim that the interrogation tactics they are defending -- things like waterboarding or the "no-touch" torture tactics learned from the North Koreans -- must never be called "torture." So perhaps Rumsfeld and Bush are delusional fools rather than perverts.

But those are the only options."