there's simply no end to how deep the corruption goes

* josh:

"In short, there's simply no end to how deep the corruption goes."

* this is interesting - via Laura - the egadministration has turned over some documents related to MZM's first $140k c ontract. AP has the 'details' - except there aren't any details. Why didn't they wait till Friday? or the subpoenas?

* twn:

"Zalmay Khalilzad is now officially the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. The transition from John Bolton is complete - and the many people around the country who worked long and hard to oppose him should give themselves a pat on the back today.

Though many will argue that their signatures on the Project for a New American Century declaration suggest that Bolton and Khalilzad are cut from the same cloth, their service in the Bush administration tells a different story.

Plus, in his confirmation hearing last month, Khalilzad said some very un-Bolton-like things. He stated clearly that the U.S. should pay its dues to the U.N. in full and on time, he noted that the U.N. is "the most successful collective security body in history," and he said quite clearly that his success will be determined by his ability to listen to the views of others."

* Clemons:

"Bush Refuses to Budge on Gonzales: Exploiting the Coming Republican Civil War

President Bush doesn't like to lose battles over his political nominees. The White House's tenaciousness on this front was clear in a 21 month long battle and three major drives to get John Bolton confirmed as US Ambassador to the United Nations -- a battle that President Bush and his team finally lost.

As with John Bolton that often had the veneer of being a partisan battle but was really driven by internal Republican differences, the struggle over Alberto Gonzales today is really a function of frustration among Republicans with their leader, George W. Bush.

Bush has reaffirmed his support of Gonzales despite the Attorney General's inadequate testimony that revealed that Gonzales is as incompetent as his Republican credits claims he is. Bush doesn't really care about the details -- much like Gonzales seems to care little about the details of the state attorney firings.

Bush and Gonzales have had the kind of relationship over the years that was based on as few details as possible -- and trusting each other's judgment no matter what the situation, whether the issue be about America's torture policy or on death penalty cases.

People should remind themselves of the nearly criminal disinterest that Gonzales and Bush showed in making sure that innocent people were not wrongly executed when Bush served as Texas's governor and Gonzales was then his legal counsel.

It appears that Bush will not yield in his support of Gonzales, and Gonzales won't leave -- at least not yet.

The key question now is whether jilted Republicans now treated to the same kind of stonewalling and harassment from White House that Democrats have been regularly shown will find other ways to punish Bush -- whether it is on appropriations or other legislation Bush cares about.

Many Senators like to keep their powder dry and to not link one political battle with another. They suggest that they could support President Bush generally but disagree with him strongly on Gonzales.

Well, that's an immature way to play the political game in Washington. Republican Senators and House Members can only win if they identify other pressure points to apply to Bush's. They will need to have a proxy war played out over some unrelated policy battle -- perhaps over trade deals or stem cell research or Iraq war funding -- to give Bush a sense of "cost" for his inappropriate, unquestioning support of the mediocre Alberto Gonzales."

* via kathleen: www.earthportal.org - launching tomorrow. for all you hippy and or science-y types. (it's worth heading over there to see the introductory video and soundtrack - even if you hate mother earth)

* christy:

"It has been quite a day of Congressional activity today — Goodling use immunity vote and subpoena issuance vote both passed in the House Judiciary. A vote for a subpoena for Sara Taylor (Rove's deputy in the WH political office) passed in the Senate judiciary. A vote for subpoenas for the head of the RNC, the RNC e-mails that should have gone through the WH servers, and a vote for a subpoena for Condaleeze Rice all passed in the House Government Oversight Committee, after what seemed like a lifetime of attempts at amendments, stalling, and a whole lot of foot stomping from the GOP side of the aisle. "

* christy:

"Quite a bit of buzz in the air regarding the OSC investigation of Karl Rove's political shop in the WH – some skeptical, some hopeful, some puzzled. Scarecrow had a fantastic background piece on it this morning, and Eli hit this last night as well, nailing the essential question of whitewash or reality. I've been pulling out all the research that I can find on Scott J. Bloch, and being generous in describing it, it is decidedly mixed and, in some places, troubling.

But I keep coming back to this question in my mind, and it is something that has to have occurred to Karl Rove and his personal political minions as well: at what point does Rove's utility as chief political "strategist" (read: expert on screwing political opponents, close to and over the ethics line, on any given day) get outpaced by his even-higher-profile utility to others in the GOP as the chief target of a corruption probe which would then be held up as an example of the GOP's willingness to police their own?

I don't ask this as a theoretical construct, but as a practical question. The headlines of late have been grim on the Republican corruption and lawbreaking front: Abramoff, DeLay, Ney, Safavian, Libby, Cunningham, Doolittle, Wilkes, Lewis…it just goes on and on. Rove's loyalty has been and continues to be, first and foremost, to pushing forward "his" candidates, whatever the cost to anyone else in the party — because Rove's reputation is built on his candidates being the top dogs. And more than anything, he wants to win — whatever it takes to get there. But you do not do this without having it come at the expense of others, and that adds up to a whole lot of resentment building up over the years as you wield your power for your own good. Rove doesn't just do that with Democratic opponents, he has also built quite a reputation for doing it with Republicans that he saw as weak or disobedient.
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Washington in the Bush era has resembled nothing so much as a very tangled web, interwoven with threads of loyalty and personal enrichment and cronyism to a degree that even the most hardened politicos did not think possible. It has been stunning to watch, actually, and even more stunning to think that the "loyal Bushies" have been able to get away with it for this long. But this self-dealing regime rested on the foundation of a complicit, rubber stamping Republican Congress. The 2006 election changed that dynamic, and the fingerpointing game in Washington is a old and very intricate one — and one at which a number of the long-term Washington hands are expert.
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If we have learned nothing the last few years, it ought to have been to never underestimate Rove's ability to throw someone else under the bus to save his own skin. But, with an inner circle growing ever smaller by the day — how many folks are left? "