Hot Dish

US Attorney Fireings

From Christy Harden Smith

"If the Bush Administration did nothing wrong, why are they so afraid to allow Karl Rove and his political cronies to publicly proclaim their innocence to all the world? If there was no politics and political hackery involved, why hide behind no transcript and no "on the record" and no public accountability? Why this tap dance if there was no attempt to pervert the rule of law with political hatchet machinations?"

From Paul Kiel

"It's almost too perfect. The only U.S. attorney fired by the administration in December who undeniably had performance issues was begrudingly added to the list at the last minute -- and only then because of a federal judge's threat that he would go to Congress with complaints about the prosecutor's performance."

"Unlike seven other fired federal prosecutors who may have run afoul of the
administration for political reasons, San Francisco U.S. Atty. Kevin Ryan was a
team player for Bush and had influential Republican support. A friend of the
president even went to bat for Ryan after his firing."

Global Warming

From Digby:

" I am not a scientist and I don't pretend to understand all the details of the global warming debate. But compared to the ignoramus Fox All-Stars I'm Carl Sagan."" I think my favorite thing about the know-nothing wingnut argument is that Al Gore is said to be all hysterical on this silly little problem by the same people who are screeching like howler monkeys that the oceans don't protect us anymore and "they're" comin' to kill us in our beds! The fact that ridding ourselves of our dependence on oil might mitigate both of these problems escapes their notice. But then, they are incredibly stupid."

Congressional Oversight

From Glenn Greenwald:

"Of course, this sudden discovery of the need for oversight was prompted only by highly public revelations of abuse. And the reason why all of this happened -- and this is but a tiny fraction of the lawbreaking and abuse going on -- is because Congressional Republicans spent the last six years purposely allowing the Executive branch to accumulate unlimited amounts of unchecked power, while they blocked every attempt (most of which were lame and half-hearted) by Congressional Democrats to exert oversight over how these powers were used."