georgia10:
"And the Republican sex-for-favors scandal grows ... the latest on the prostitution ring alleged in the Cunningham/Wade/Wilkes case ... we learn more about Shirlington Limousine and Transportation Inc., the limo company that Mitchell Wade says was in on the scheme to pick up prostitutes and Cunningham and drive them to 'hospitality suites' ..."

Laura Rozen:
"A question on the limo service retained by Brent Wilkes getting a $21.2 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security last year, despite the fact that its owner apparently has a 62-page rap sheet ... this DHS contract makes one wonder: who on the Homeland Security committee might have steered business to Shirlington? Anyone at the poker parties?"

Gardiner Harris (NY Times):
"Dr. Lester M. Crawford, the former commissioner of food and drugs, is under criminal investigation by a federal grand jury over accusations of financial improprieties and false statements to Congress, his lawyer said Friday."

Jeff Leeds (NY Times):
"Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk-radio host, was charged yesterday with prescription drug fraud and turned himself in to Florida authorities ..."

David Lieb (Associated Press):
"Federal investigators have begun interviewing former state contractors about the way vehicle license offices have been managed under (Missouri Republican) Gov. Matt Blunt's administration ..."

Digby:
"If anyone has fantasies of what it would be like to see George W. Bush on the witness stand in his own trial, check out his good friend Kenny Boy's performance ... Two peas in a pod, Lay and Bush. Arrogant losers who drove their organizations into the ground."

Senator Robert Byrd:
"(The Senate) retains all of its original powers, including ... serving as a court of impeachment--you better believe it, Mr. President. The Senate can send you home. You better believe that ... If the House impeaches you, the Senate will try you."

David Shuster:
"WHILE HIS SUPPORTERS CONTINUE TO PUT ON A GOOD FACE, SOURCES CLOSE TO KARL ROVE SAY THE PRESIDENTIAL ADVISOR IS NOW MORE WORRIED, NOT LESS, THAT HE IS GOING TO GET INDICTED."

Kevin Drum:
"... more on the delaying game being played by Senate Intelligence Committee chair Pat Roberts ... Roberts quietly allowed a key deadline for his committee's investigation into intelligence manipulation to slip weeks ago ... Now that the subject of the committee is possible misconduct by President Bush, Roberts obviously has no intention of ever allowing anything to see the light of day."

Steve Clemons:
"Oil barons are inappropriately lining their coffers with mountains of dollars from American citizens ...  If there is blame to be assigned for today's situation, it rests with Cheney and the utter failure of the Bush energy policy that was crafted cooperatively with a secret oil and energy industry cabal -- whose proceedings of key meetings Cheney will not disclose."

Justin Rood:
"More details this morning about the Brent Wilkes-Mitch Wade hooker ring ... Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, now the executive director of the CIA, liked to come to those "parties." The same ones now-CIA Director Porter Goss may have attended ..."

Eddie Vedder:
It's just not the time to be cryptic ... our tax dollars for this (Iraq) war are being funneled through huge corporations -- one of which Dick Cheney used to be head of (Halliburton) -- and there's an even greater disparity between rich or poor in this country. It offends me on a really deep level.

Josh Marshall:
"Would the president look better after a new look at the Iraq intel bamboozlement that wasn't controlled by Sen. Roberts? How about an investigation into the executive branch side of the Abramoff scandal? What about a look into the Plame affair? What about the folks in Rumsfeld's office who knew about Duke's corruption but looked the other way ? ... the Bush administration has built up a very big backlog of bad acts ... the White House can't afford to lose either house of Congress."

BooMan:
"Looking at the substance of what Rove is saying, he still appears to be screwed ... I can't see anyway that Rove can escape perjury charges. Maybe he can avoid obstruction charges and maybe there is some way that his testimony makes sense as a legal defense. But I'm not seeing it."

Josh Marshall:
"How it really works?  Karl Rove calls President Bush in for a meeting."

Scot J. Paltrow:
"Federal prosecutors are investigating whether two contractors implicated in the bribery of former Rep. Randall "Duke" Cunningham supplied him with prostitutes and free use of a limousine and hotel suites, pursuing evidence that could broaden their long-running inquiry ...  investigators are focusing on whether any other members of Congress, or their staffs, may also have used the same free services ..."

Steve Clemons (to Porter Goss):
"You are completely out of line and have forgotten what your oath to this nation was all about  ... Your harrassment of former CIA staff is unacceptable and your attempts to stifle the civil society of this country is antithetical to what democracy is about."

John Nichols:
"In Pennsylvania, state Sen. Jim Ferlo, D-Pittsburgh, has launched a public campaign urging his constituents to sign petitions calling for Congress to launch an impeachment inquiry. Ferlo, a former Pittsburgh City Council president, says it's entirely appropriate for state officials and citizens to add their voices to the impeachment debate."

Steve Clemons:
"Karl Rove is back before the Valerie Plame case grand jury this morning -- being reported everywhere.  What would a Rove indictment be worth in terms of Bush approval rating points -- now at 32%."

Kevin Drum:
"We keep hearing that the intelligence committees in Congress are a rare example of sober, bipartisan consensus, but Roberts apparently subscribes to Grover Norquist's definition of bipartisanship: it's date rape. It looks like Roberts is still bound and determined to loyally do whatever it takes to cover up the Bush administration's prewar manipulations."

Matthew Yglesias:
"The GOP, as we all know, is desperately afraid of the possibility that the 2006 midterms will put Democrats in a position to hold some hearings ... The wildly underexplored subject of what's been going on with the money being spent in Iraq strikes me as something that should be a prime candidate."

Digby:
"I agree with Matt that the Democrats need to be smart about how they go about investigating the Bush administration and should concentrate on the key areas that best illustrate their massive failure. I also agree that war profiteering is an overlooked subject that focuses on the corrupt crony capitalism that has fueled this administration from day one."

Robert J. Samuelson:
"The administration's central problem is its policies, not the people executing the policies ... If you're driving in the wrong direction, or not driving at all, changing chauffeurs doesn't help."

Darren M. Allen:
"At least a dozen legislators are calling for the impeachment of President Bush, making Vermont the second Legislature in the country to take up the issue."

Neil Young: "Let's Impeach the President. ... the song pretty much follows the title, just with a bunch of reasons.  It's a long song."

Larry Johnson: "What we are witnessing is a political purge of the CIA. The Bush Administration is working to expel and isolate any intelligence officer who does not toe the line and profess allegiance to George. It is no longer about protecting and defending the Constitution. No. It is about protecting the indefensible reputation of George Bush."

Josh Marshall: "And even with the rising chorus of retired generals calling for Rumsfeld's ouster, isn't this just displacement? Don Rumsfeld works for the president. This is the president's administration in more than just the obvious, literal sense. These are his policies. It's his denial, his indifference to the failure of his policies and the incompetence of his subordinates. "

Digby: "The US government has lost all moral authority and no longer even theoretically adheres to a consistent set of principles. It indefinitely imprisons citizens and non-citizens alike as non-combatants, some of them innocent, saying the "battlefield" comprises the whole planet, including Smalltown USA. ... The taxpayers of this country are paying for human trafficking. The administration created a series of secret prisons for the sole purpose of circumventing American laws. The government advances theories of executive authority that kings and dictators could appreciate."

Steve Clemons:"According to some inside the intel arena, Valerie Wilson's work had a lot to do with monitoring Iran's nuclear weapons appetite and capabilities and possibly helped feed Iran nuclear technology junk that could distract and complicate Iran's weapons program efforts ... I'm not going to say anything more here than say that Wilson was "possibly" doing this.  But if this account of Plame-Wilson's activities is true, those who exposed Valerie Plame Wilson helped undermine American national security in much more major ways that haven't yet been disclosed.  Where are the polygraph tests for your staff, Mr. President?"

David Swanson:
"Joining Illinois, California has become the second state in which a proposal to impeach President Bush has been introduced in the state legislature. And this one includes Cheney as well."

Arthur Schlessinger, Jr.: "There stretch ahead for Bush a thousand days of his own. He might use them to start the third Bush war: the Afghan war (justified), the Iraq war (based on fantasy, deception and self-deception), the Iran war (also fantasy, deception and self-deception). There is no more dangerous thing for a democracy than a foreign policy based on presidential preventive war."

Josh Marshall: "Drumheller's account is pretty probative evidence on the question of whether the White House politicized and cherry-picked the Iraq intelligence ... It's devastating evidence against their credibility on a slew of levels ... What Drumheller has to say adds quite a lot to our knowledge of what happened in the lead up to war. But what it shows even more clearly is that none of this stuff has yet been investigated by anyone whose principal goal is not covering for the White House."

EJ Dionne: "The administration's one and only domestic priority in 2006 is hanging on to control of Congress ... the danger of a Democratic takeover of at least one house of Congress looms large and would carry huge penalties for Bush. The administration fears "investigations of everything" by congressional committees ..."

Glen Bolduc: "The resolution charges the administration with misleading the public and violating the Federal Torture Act. It accuses the president and vice president of invading privacy and jeopardizing constitutional rights ... By a 28-7 vote, the Kennebec committee became the first county committee in Maine to pass such a resolution ... State Democratic parties, including those in New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin, voted in February to urge Congress to impeach Bush. A Zogby International poll showed 51 percent of respondents agreed that Bush should be impeached if he lied about Iraq, a far greater percentage than believed President Bill Clinton should be impeached during the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal."

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."