No biggie, the "Pardon Party" Bush is going to throw in early January just has a larger guest list, that's all.

And yet this isn't on CNN's website and it's buried on MSNBC's. I know that the bailout is the big story of the morning, but still I'd think that this would be right up there. . .

Rep. Heather Wilson

Good. Maybe this will get her off TV. She seems to be one of the media's go-to congress people these days.

A nice development, but about a year too late to make much difference with regard to Shrub-Cheney, and I don't know how it will do much for the current election. It might help in New Mexico, but that's just 5 electoral votes.

Beyond another ding to the Republican brand, McCain is immune on this one. He called for Gonzales to resign as early as April, 2007.

An insider appoints an investigator to investigate insiders. Sounds like what Palin is doing currently in AK and what the president has done time and time again.

I bet he'll find no crime worth prosecuting.

I am somewhere between amused and horrified that, on a day where the Fed is pumping the largest amount of money in history into the U.S. banking system to stave off systemic collapse, you are blogging about the U.S Attorney scandal that has zero chance of ever going anywhere. Un-fucking-real.

Conservative Deflator, I'm glad you're amused. True, there are bigger fish to fry TODAY, but crime in the highest offices of the land is nothing to ignore no matter when it is finally acknowledged.

Having said that, executive priviledge will be claimed, yet again, and conservatives everywhere will mock liberals and moderates who just want a clean government.

The Conservative Deflator.
Shut up, what would you like to see ? Another non-economist comment on a bill that we haven't seen ?

I am tired of it, not because it not important, because a bunch of idiots that have no idea what they are talking about know, for a fact, we should do this or that. I have a minor in economics and frankly, no one knows the basics, some say there isn't even a crisis, while others say the plans is BS. The fact that this happening months before an election isn't really giving me confidence that our politicians are doing the right thing.

I am pleased Steve isn't blogging about something he isn't familiar with. It would be a waster of our time.

There's a good reason this is being announced today: to fly under the radar. Thanks to Steve that strategy hasn't fully worked.

Expand the investigation to include all of these:

Fredrick Black (Guam) – Abramoff
Noel Hillman (DC) – Abramoff
Carol Lam (CA) – Duke Cunningham
Paul Charlton (AZ) – Renzi/Kolbe
David Iglesias (CO) – sealed indictments against Dems
John McKay (WA)– Gregoire election
Bud Cummings (AR) – Blunt
Tim Griffin (AR) - Caging
Margaret Chiara (MI) – Rachael Brand
Daniel Bogden (NV) – Gibbons
Tom Hefflefinger (MN) – Indian voter ID
Rachael Paulose (MN) – Replaced Hefflefinger
Todd Graves (MO) ACORN
Bradley Schlozman (MO) ACORN
Leura Canary (AL) – Siegleman
Steven Biskupic (WI) – Thompson
Mary Beth Buchanan (PA) - Wecht
Michael J. Garcia (NY) Spitzer
Debra Wong Yang (CA) – Jerry Lewis
Greg White (OH) Noe, Onunwor
Karl “Kasey� Warner (WV) – Bill Charnock
Tom Colantuono (NH) – phone jamming scheme
Bill Mercer (MT) – Conrad Burns
Matt Whitaker (IA) Matt McCoy

Heffelfinger, Chiara, Bogden, Charton, Iglesias, McKay – Indians

All were either involved in the replacement of a US Attorney (either replaced or were replaced) who was involved in a prosecution closely associated with elections. Note that all are either from swing states, or they involve high profile cases.

I agree that these crimes should be prosecuted but what has been the record of Congressional Democrats so far?? They are fucking cowards. Until they find some fucking balls, of course conservatives will mock us!

All were either involved in the replacement of a US Attorney (either replaced or were replaced) who was involved in a prosecution closely associated with elections. Note that all are either from swing states, or they involve high profile cases.

In the tried-but-failed column, you can put Karl Rove and Dennis Hastert's promise to get Patrick Fitzgerald fired from Antoin Rezko's case. I'm guessing that Fitzgerald is probably not the only one who escaped by the skin of his teeth and the ones who did are probably not much happier than the ones who got fired.

I won't comment on Wilson, as I haven't paid much attention to her. But as a native New Mexican who lived out of state but moved back in 2004, I can say that it's a real shame that Domenici is implicated in this. In know that a lot of commenters see the entire GOP as hopelessly tainted, but I think there's a big difference between DeLay and Bush and their contemporaries and the old guard, and most especially Domenici.

Dominici was always moderate, for a Republican, and, as the Chair of the Budget Committee, he was the Voice of Reason during the Regan Era, opposing Stockman and the ideological tax cutters. True, his record has not been so great during Bush's term, for some reason failing to be courageous against someone worse than Reagan and with much less popularity. I can only guess that he was greatly influenced, as many have been, by 9/11.

Even so, he really has never truly been one of the Bad Guys. And somehow I expect that Congressmen have always and will always complain to the Executive Branch about officials they don't like—it's the Executive Branch's willingness to take improper action itself which is the real crime. As much as I dislike many of the GOP Congressmen involved in this scandal, I really feel that it's the Justice Dept. and the Bush Administration who deserve to be punished.