Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

Late on Friday, two Democratic senators on the Judiciary Committee announced that they intend to vote to confirm Michael Mukasey, Bush's nominee to replace Alberto Gonzales as attorney general of the United States.

Mukasey has indicated that while he finds the Bush administration's use of waterboarding on suspects to be personally repugnant, he will not object to its use when he becomes the nation's top law enforcement officer.

The Judiciary Committee's vote on Mukasey is scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2007.

If you find the use of torture by the United States to be abhorrent, please call these two Democratic senators on Monday to urge them to vote against torture --- and vote against Mukasey.

UPDATE FROM BRAD: Feinstein op/eds her reasons for giving Mukasey her vote in the LATimes today. She believes he's "the best nominee we are going to get from this administration", and says she "hopes" for the best, believing that Congress can race to have legislation passed outlawing waterboarding by the CIA (and have it signed by Bush) before Mukasey can rule it to be legal as the previous AG did. She also, apparently, is ignoring the fact that Mukasey is in favor of disenfranchising Photo ID laws, as we reported here last week. What must this woman be thinking?! Is this her first day on Planet Bush?!

The phone numbers for the offices of Feinstein and Schumer in D.C. and in-state follow below...Call them...

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review

On his radio gabfest yesterday, CNN's resident rightwing crackpot Glenn Beck implied that because residents of Malibu "hate America," they were therefore unluckily suffering the loss of their homes to wildfires:

Leaving aside the fact that there isn't a "forest" within miles of Malibu, just seconds before that outrageous, though half-baked, assertion, Beck made a statement that contradicted what he was about to say:

He then contradicted himself in the same sentence a second time, saying he was not referring to Democrats but to nefarious people (liberals? terrorists?) who pretend to be Democrats:

Huh?...

Guest Blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review

During the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing today:

If the head of our military in Iraq doesn't know if the war there is making us safer, who does?

Guest Blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review

After months of hype, General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker testified before the House Armed Services Committee yesterday about the status of George W. Bush's war in Iraq. Although neither of Bush's men uttered the exact phrase, the essence of their testimony could be summed up in three little words: "Stay the course."

Republicans --- especially the half-dozen or so GOP senators facing election in unsafe seats next year --- will take comfort in Petreaus's promise to recommend ending the surge by next summer. But even if Petreaus recommends reducing deployments to pre-surge levels, and if Bush agrees to it, the only surprise will be that the surge strategy itself was not a false cover for a permanent troop build-up. (And that remains to be seen.)

The stark reality is that Bush's current Iraq policy draws heavily from the playbook of his predecessor from Texas, Lyndon Johnson. The Vietnam War decimated LBJ's presidency, forcing him to leave office with no resolution in sight. Just as LBJ left the mess he created for Nixon and Ford to clean up, now Bush intends to leave his war in Iraq to his successor. As Ken Pollack at Brookings put it: "Bush has found his exit strategy."

Nothing matters --- not the safety of the troops, the lives and well-being of Iraqis, the viability of the U.S. military, or, certainly, the anti-Iraq war sentiments of a majority of Americans --- none of it matters in the face of Bush's urgent desire to rewrite his epitaph so that it won't say the war he started based on deception, divisiveness, and rank ineptitude was lost on his watch.

This strategy is as flawed as it is cynical. Look again at Johnson. Handing Vietnam to Nixon did nothing to improve his legacy. What saved Johnson's reputation was the fact he signed the Civil Rights Act, plus his stoic leadership in the wake of the Kennedy assassination.

Bush has no accomplishments --- nothing --- to weigh against this disastrous war. And the fact that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of U.S. troops and innocent Iraqis will die for the impossible goal of salvaging his place in history just compounds his disgrace.

UPDATE FROM BRAD: The good Pokey Anderson sends us this toon, which meshes neatly with Jon's commentary above...

Plus...Liberal, terrorist-loving, America-hating, cut-and-run, surrenderer George Will says "the surge has failed"...

Guest-blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review

U.S. Attorney Gen. Alberto Gonzales has resigned.

Word of the resignation, which was submitted to George W. Bush last Friday has been leaked to the press, apparently by officials at Bush's vacation home in Texas:

In a series of congressional hearings earlier this year, Gonzales appeared to have perjured himself on multiple occasions. His dissembling and supposedly poor memory about his own actions related to the firing of nine U.S. attorneys and on other matters outraged members of Congress in both parties, some of whom were reportedly considering a move to impeach him this fall.

During a press conference earlier this month, Bush dismissed the idea of firing Gonzales, charging that Congress had found no wrong-doing. "Why would I hold someone accountable whose done nothing wrong?" Bush asked in response to a reporter's question.

Speaking of impeachment, early speculation suggests Bush might nominate DHS Sec. Michael Chertoff, a former judge, as Gonzales's replacement. Chertoff first achieved national notoriety by appearing on cable shows as a virulent anti-Clinton, pro-impeachment talking head in the 1990s. His chief qualification to be attorney general is his status as one of a very few loyal Bush cronies who has won Senate approval in the recent past and therefore could win approval now.

Another name in the mix earlier this year was that of former Bush solicitor general Ted Olson. Olson has even closer ties to the right-wing conspiracies a decade ago. A longtime friend of Clinton prosecutor Ken Starr, Olson served as the de facto chief operating officer of the Arkansas Project, a smear campaign against the Clintons that was funded by Pittsburgh millionaire Richard Melon Scaiffe and was operated out of the offices of the American Spectator magazine. Olson also successfully argued Bush v. Gore at the Supreme Court, for which he was rewarded with the post of solicitor general.

UPDATE: Joe Scarborough, former Republican Congressman turned MSNBC commentator, said of Gonzales moments ago on the cable news channel that Gonzales "has done a terrible job. His position was based on loyalty, not on competence."

"The question is," Scarborough said, "will this president have the courage to appoint someone [to replace him] based on integrity and competence, rather than loyalty."

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review

When you hear the sound bites from George W. Bush's speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars today in which he compares his botched war in Iraq to the Vietnam war, think about what he was doing while thousands of U.S. soldiers were wounded and killed in the mud of Southeast Asia.

As is well known, rather than serving in Vietnam, George W. Bush spent the war years in a cushy assignment to the "Champagne Unit" of the Texas Air National Guard. There are witnesses from that era who say Bush's main preoccupations then were doing drugs, chasing women and driving drunk. There are also rumors he seriously damaged a fighter jet while taxiing it on a runway.

Conversely, no witnesses have ever been found who can verify that he completed his service with honor --- and there is circumstantial evidence that he did not. Around the time he was in the TNG, the Pentagon began requiring drug testing of all military pilots. The record indicates that Bush never submitted to a physical after the drug testing was required — and thus was never honorably discharged.

Today, in what may be his most astoundingly outrageous speech to date, Bush had the temerity to lecture the American people about lessons the country should have learned from Vietnam:

And:

Just when you think there is nowhere lower Bush can go to try to fool people into supporting his illegal and misbegotten war, he finds a way to make us even more disgusted with him, the people who work for him and their rank incompetence --- as well as with our leaders who insist on allowing him to remain in office.

Update: Flip-flop alert: In 2004, Bush bristled at comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam: "I think the analogy is false. I also happen to think that analogy sends the wrong message to our troops, and sends the wrong message to the enemy."

Update 2: The complete text of Bush's speech is here. The excerpt about Vietnam follows below the fold:

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder of Pensito Review

Buried in a newly published profile in the Wall St. Journal comes word that Karl Rove is resigning as head of the White House political office effective August 31.

Rove says he is giving up his powerful position in order to spend more time with his family:

Rove insists his exit has nothing to do with the multitude of investigations into suspicious Bush administration activities that all seem to lead to his doorstep:

As to the timing of his departure, Rove offers a bit of his signature plausible implausibility. He says his decision now was prompted by a demand from White House chief of staff Josh Bolten that staffers who stay on past the summer break must commit to serving Bush through the end of his term. That may sound reasonable on the surface but in fact the idea that Bolten could tell Rove when to come and go is not credible.

Whatever his excuse, Rove's departure will increase speculation that investigators are closing in him over his role in the illegal firing of U.S. attorneys for political purposes, vote caging schemes by the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign, which he directed, or other as-yet unrevealed activities.

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder of Pensito Review

George W. Bush's poll numbers are mired in the 20s, so he releases the hounds hoping to terrify the populace into rallying to him in fear:

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder of Pensito Review

Bushies are experts at blowing smoke up their base. They're doing it now in full lather because George W. Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence on Monday was such a brazen buyout of a partner in crime that even rank and file Republicans can see it for what it is.

In particular, GOP operatives must raise doubts among what's left of the Bush lovers about Valerie Plame's covert status at the time Cheney's boys outed her. If her status was undercover, the leakers could be accused of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA). The seriousness of this crime may explain why rightwingers have been all over the Internet spreading the thoroughly debunked lie that Wilson was not covert --- and why two of them went on separate cable news shows last week to slip this false statement into the record.

Transcripts follow:

Guest Blogged by Jon Ponder of Pensito Review.

It's hard to imagine a counterpoint to Scooter Libby's criminal case more apt and revealing than the case of Victor Rita, a North Carolina veteran who was convicted by the feds of lying under oath about buying an illegal machine gun.

Both Rita and Libby were convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in federal cases. Both were sentenced to around 30 months in jail. Both sentences were appealed, and Bush officials at the highest levels were involved in the appeals as they played themselves out in the past few months.

In their appeals, both Rita and Libby sought leniency based on their records of public service and current circumstances. Victor Rita served in the Marine Corps for 25 years, including tours of duty in Vietnam and Gulf War I. He is now advanced in age and in failing health. As a result of his crimes, he has reportedly been wiped out financially.

George W. Bush described Scooter Libby's career in public service as "exceptional," but a review of Libby's bio reveals him to be a neocon bureaucrat who held a series of political positions in Republican administrations before moving up to the White House with Cheney and Bush --- where he was either a witness to or a participant in skullduggery and shenanigans the half of which we don't yet know. Libby is in his late 50s, appears to be in good health, and was able to pay his $250,000 fine out of his checking account, probably with the help of a defense fund set up by powerful Republicans friends like Fred Thompson and Mary Matalan.

Earlier this year the appeals by Rita and Libby both took dramatic turns, at which point the similarities between the two cases came to an abrupt end.

Rita's moment came when his appeal was heard before the Supreme Court...