HEGDISH, PART 2: LIMBAUGH WARNS BUSH NOT TO GIVE LIBERALS THE HEAD OF ALBERTO GONZALES (HE REALLY SAID THAT)

Before we get to the drug-addled radio propagandist, we have a new character, apparently another designated fall-guygal, to throw into the Purge-Gate mix, Sara Taylor. She's a top aide of Rove's and she's just been voted off the island in an attempt to save his fat ass. Facing a subpoena, she was "identified [by Sampson] in yesterday's hearing with a former top Justice Department official as seeking the resignation of a US Attorney in Arkansas." She, along with Scott Jennings, another of Rove's sleazy criminals inside the White House, were the ones who, at Rove's behest, got rid of U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins in Arkansas to place a completely incompetent political operative and Rove crony, Tim Griffin.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that 2 others from Rove's little shoppe of horrors, Peter Wehner (Bush calls his memos Wehner-grams) and Barry Jackson, although they're trying to paint them us unrelated to the Purge-Gate scandals. Just a coinkydink!

Reading the transcript of Limbaugh's show is excruciating since is just lie upon lie upon distortion upon half-truth upon lie. Let me save the rest of you the effort: "I'm at a loss to understand why it is that even some people on our side and the conservative media think throwing Gonzales away is going to stop this. Now, they'll say, 'Well, that's not what we're trying to do. We want competence. We are conservatives, and we have high values, and high standards.' This is a battle going on here. There's an election that's going to hinge on stuff like this, and everybody the administration throws overboard is a tantamount admission to people that pay scant attention to politics there's all kinds of corruption going on in there." So the hell with competence, high standards, a sense of values? Let's just win the election? LOL! What he smoking snorting?

Limbaugh, someone who hates democracy so much that he can't control himself from heaping disdain on it and on the "common folks." He must have had an extra dose of whatever he's on lately today: "USA Today's got a poll: 'Do you think something's wrong about the firing of eight US attorneys?' 72% said yes. 72% of the American people, a bunch of blithering idiots who have no idea what they're talking about, but yet they voted, so these polls matter." He's not alone The Carpetbagger Report calls some more right wing propaganda agents out on the carpet. Mark Levin "goes on to say that questioning Gonzales' fitness for office is 'throwing your own people to the liberal wolves,' 'disloyal,' and 'self-destructive.' He describes conservatives who take this scandal seriously as offering a 'pusillanimous' response." There's no end. Well... today's NY Times editorializes about the end that they see.

If Mr. Sampson was trying to fall on his sword, he had horrible aim. In testimony that got so embarrassing for the White House that the Republicans tried to cut it off, Mr. Sampson simply ended up making it clearer than ever that the eight prosecutors were fired for political reasons.

He provided more evidence, also, that the attorney general and other top Justice Department officials were dishonest in their initial statements about the firings.

Mr. Sampson flatly contradicted the attorney general's claim that he did not participate in the selection of the prosecutors to be fired and never had a conversation about "where things stood." Mr. Sampson testified that Mr. Gonzales was "aware of this process from the beginning," and that the two men regularly discussed where things stood. Mr. Sampson also confirmed that Mr. Gonzales was at the Nov. 27 meeting where the selected prosecutors’ fates were sealed...

The administration insists that purge was not about partisan politics. But Mr. Sampson’s alternative explanation was not very credible-- that the decision about which of these distinguished prosecutors should be fired was left in the hands of someone as young and inept as Mr. Sampson. If this were an aboveboard, professional process, it strains credulity that virtually no documents were produced when decisions were made, and that none of his recommendations to Mr. Gonzales were in writing.

It is no wonder that the White House is trying to stop Congress from questioning Mr. Rove, Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, and other top officials in public, under oath and with a transcript. The more the administration tries to spin the prosecutor purge, the worse it looks.

UPDATE: REPUBLICANS ARE SO CRUDE... ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY ATTACK EACH OTHER

Congressional Republicans have no faith in Bush as a man of his word. (LOL-- about time; join the rest of the human race.) He's asked them to go out and defend serial liar and cover-up artist Abu Gonzales and all they can remember about the last time he bothered them about defending one of his indefensible inner circle-- Donald Rumsfeld-- is that he waited 'til they had all made public spectacles of themselves and then fired Rumfeld, leaving them all looking even more clueless than usual. According to today's SFGate a former Republican aide claims GOP congressmen are responding differently this time: "Don't ask me to put whipped cream on that turd pile." Gonzales is said to be in talks with high-level officials (presumably Rove) about the most graceful-- useful?-- way of committing political hara-kiri.

Meanwhile Bush said today he has "100 percent confidence" in Gonzo, usually a sure sign someone is about to get shit-canned in this Regime. Snarlin' Arlen (R-PA) made a speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association and he made it clear he'll probably urge Gonzales to resign after his April 17 testimony at the Senate Judiciary Committee. "A number of Republicans, as well as all the Democrats, have called for his resignation, and I won't do that until he has a chance to testify. Attorney General Gonzales has his work cut out for him." (Giggles were heard throughout the audience.) Specter went on that he had told Gonzo last week that "you're going to have to explain why you said you weren't involved in discussions [about firing the U.S. attorneys] when the e-mails show you were at [the] meeting where the U.S. attorneys were talked about."