LA Times: "Lawyers for two lobbyists accused of conspiring to obtain secret defense information said Friday that they intended to prove that senior administration officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, provided the lobbyists with some of the sensitive information."

David Corn: "I spotted this interesting tidbit at the end of Sunday's Washington Post piece on the arrest:
    The White House also has recently barraged the agency with questions about the political affiliations of some of its senior intelligence officers, according to intelligence officials. Seems to me this deserves more than a sentence. Is there now a partisan loyalty oath at the CIA? McCarthyites snooping about among the spies? If I could order up a Post investigation, I would say dig deeper here."

Digby: "I was musing yesterday about the habitual misjudgment on the part of the Bush administration and why it all felt so familiar to me. The unique combination of hubris, emotionalism, and confident assumptions that through little effort the US would "win" by dint of its superiority in both goodness and courage. And that's when it came to me where I'd heard it before..."

Jonathan Singer: "America cannot afford to continue the policy of the Bush administration and its Republican allies in Congress by forgetting Russia, allowing the former superpower to dominate its smaller neighbors and interfere in the Middle East on behalf of Iran, Hamas and others -- and it's right time a leading Democrat said as much."

Steve Clemons: "...Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda were always the ball George W. Bush, the Congress, and the Pentagon should have had their eye on ... By failing to compete against bin Laden who is trying to appeal to the grievances many Muslims hold -- particularly over the Palestinian/Israeli divide -- we have allowed bin Laden to claim "legitimacy" in the eyes of many in the global audience he is performing for."

Patrick Murphy: "President Bush listened to Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld instead of military leadership in executing a plan that took ten years to develop. The rush to war in Iraq without a plan to win the peace was irresponsible, and now our servicemen and women are paying the price."