Another Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy employee has pleaded guilty to tax evasion as part of the Jack Abramoff corruption scandal.

Environmental and energy policy news site Greenwire has the story (sub required):

Jared Carpenter, CREA's vice president since 2000, admitted July 6 he failed to pay taxes for three years on about $238,000 worth of salary between 2001 and 2003 -- when the group was funded primarily by Abramoff's Indian tribal clients.

Last month, CREA co-founder Italia Federici pleaded guilty to a similar tax evasion count and for lying to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee about her role as an intermediary between Abramoff and former Interior Deputy Secretary J. Steven Griles (Greenwire, June 8).

Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee John Conyers (D-MI) warned Harriet Miers' attorney today that the former White House counsel will risk contempt proceedings unless she complies with a committee-issued subpoena for testimony.

Miers was supposed to testify before a Judiciary subcommittee yesterday on the US attorney firings, but she did not appear after a White House attorney instructed her to stay home. The White House claims that executive privilege cloaks Miers from testifying.

Chair of the sub-committee, Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA) disagreed with that assertion, and ruled yesterday that the executive privilege claim wasn't properly asserted anyway.

Read more »

Yesterday's White House "benchmark" report on Iraq noted some backsliding on Iraqi troop readiness, in particular on the important question of whether Iraqi troops can operate independently.

At his press briefing this afternoon, the outgoing chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Marine General Peter Pace, conceded the point, and clarified that the number of Iraqi Army battalions operating independently has declined from ten in January to six today. But he also cautioned against reading too much into the drop-off:

Let's concede Pace's point that as "units operate in the field" they incur casualties and equipment damage that impact readiness. That's military reality. But the broader question is why there aren't offsetting increases for those declines based upon improved capabilities among other battalions as they progress from being "in the lead" of operations to outright independence. Pace concedes the issue when he talks about wanting to see battalions progress through the overall readiness assessments. That, however, should probably make Pace more concerned about the backsliding than he emphasized this afternoon.

The Republican National Committee has been slapped with a subpoena from a House Judiciary subcommittee demanding e-mail messages that could shed some light on Karl Rove's involvement in the firing of nine US attorneys.

The subpoena is online here. The RNC's custodian of records has until Tuesday at 10 a.m. to give the subcommittee the e-mails it wants.

The House Judiciary Committee was more friendly with the RNC in April when it sent a letter asking for the e-mails. The White House jumped in and told the RNC not to hand them over until all the messages had been reviewed, citing an "executive branch interest."

Ever since a March report by the Justice Department's inspector general highlighted mistakes made by the FBI in obtaining e-mail and financial records without a court order -- through what's known as a National Security Letter -- Bureau and DOJ officials have pledged to establish institutional safeguards against further abuse.

Today Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller announced that attorneys will form an oversight office within DOJ's National Security Division to examine "all aspects of the FBI's national security program for compliance with laws, regulations, and guidelines," according to Assistant Attorney General Kenneth L. Wainstein. Additionally, FBI will create an integrity and compliance office for internal policing over all FBI activities, which a DOJ announcement terms a "substantial innovation."

Time and further scrutiny will tell how exactly this will all work -- to say nothing of how well -- but Wainstein termed the move "historic." One question: will there be an office in place to ensure that Gonzales reads reports he receives about FBI abuse?

Additionally, in a letter to Vice President Dick Cheney and congressional leaders, Mueller and Gonzales noted that the FBI has just completed a "historical audit of the FBI's use of NSLs in all 56 field offices." The two say that it largely confirms the inspector generals' findings. We'll bring you the report as soon as we have it.

In his first public remarks since President Bush commuted Scooter Libby's prison term, Judge Reggie Walton said he was "perplexed" by the president's belief that Walton's sentence was "excessive."

Walton, a Bush appointee to the D.C. district court, wrote yesterday in a court filing that while he doesn't question Bush's constitutional authority to commute prison sentences, Libby's 30-month sentence was "consistent with the bottom end of the applicable sentencing range as properly calculated under the United States Sentencing Guidelines." Underscoring his displeasure with the commutation -- which calls his professionalism into question -- Walton referenced Alberto Gonzales's June 1 statement that sentencing guidelines should be considered "a minimum for judges, not merely a suggestion." By ordering the commutation, Walton wrote, Bush has "has effectively rewritten the statutory scheme" for sentencing "on an ad hoc basis." Perhaps appropriately for a Bush appointee, Walton is basically explaining that judicial restraint compelled him to follow the sentencing guidelines -- and that 30 months in jail is rather merciful, considering what the guidelines require.

Libby will have to report to the federal Probation Office with "all requisite haste." If he doesn't, he might actually spend a night in jail.

You can read Walton's statement here.

According to a U.S. Army investigation, the Iraqi Police assisted a brazen January assault on U.S. troops in the southern city of Karbala -- an attack that a U.S. military spokesman tied to Iranian operatives earlier this month.

USA Today obtained a copy of the Army's February 27 report. The report found that the Karbala policemen exploited "a level of trust" that U.S. commanders placed with them to provide security for a provincial headquarters where a contingent of soldiers were stationed. In the assault, one of the most sophisticated on U.S. troops to date, gunmen passed themselves off as part of a U.S. security team and entered the compound past police checkpoints, eventually killing five soldiers.

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Sharpen those number 2 pencils, Alaska lawmakers. In a move to combat the corruption scandals that launched the FBI's probe into the state's politics, a new state law requires legislators to undergo ethics training.

Gov. Sarah Palin signed the law earlier this week, right after former state Rep. Tom Anderson (R) was found guilty of seven counts of extortion, bribery, conspiracy and money laundering. Anderson was accused of taking bribes from the private prison industry in exchange for pushing for facilities across the state.

The legislature hopes the new law will help clean up its image.

House Bill 109 tightens up the definition of bribery, requires legislators to make financial disclosures when leaving office, puts new disclosure requirements on consulting fees and meals purchased by lobbyists for lawmakers and makes numerous other clarifications in laws applying to both the executive and legislative branches.

Unless Congress treads lightly on delicate private equity and buyout firms like The Blackstone Group, we could see an end to entrepreneurship as we know it, the Bush administration warned this week. But under current tax law it could take Blackstone a mere 15 years to get back all the taxes it paid -- plus pocketing an extra $200 million -- on the $4.75 billion it made from going public on June 22.

Call it triumph of the good will.

According to a story in New York Times, Blackstone will pay a tax bill of $553 million on its earnings from a going public, a nice deal in itself, but over time will get back $750 million.

Here's how Blackstone pulled off the feat:

Blackstone’s tax maneuver hinges on its use of good will, an accounting term for the value of the intangible assets, like a well-known brand name, that are built up by a company over time. That value is part of the reason a company is worth more than the sum of its physical parts, like buildings and equipment.

Individuals who create good will cannot deduct it. But when good will is sold the new owners can because its value is assumed to erode. The Blackstone partners sold the good will from their left pocket to their right.

In simplest terms, the Blackstone partners paid a 15 percent capital gains rate on the shares they sold last month in the initial stock offering to outside investors (those shares represented a stake in the Blackstone management company, not its funds).

Blackstone then arranged to get deductions for itself for the $3.7 billion worth of good will at a 35 percent rate. This is a twist on the “buy low, sell high” stock market adage; in this case it would be “tax low, deduct high.”

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Senator David Vitter has given a whole new meaning to roll call. Deborah Jean Palfrey (aka DC Madam) placed five phone calls to Vitter while he was a House member from 1999 to 2001, including two during roll call votes in the House that Vitter was present for, according to Palfrey’s phone records and congressional records. Meanwhile, another name has appeared on the list that keeps on giving; this time it is conservative pundit and strategist Jack Burkman. (Boston Globe, Think Progress)

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent was convicted of accepting a $20,000 bribe and sentenced to three years in prison yesterday. Santiago Efrain Valle offered to drop charges for a Mexican national who was in an ICE detention facility in exchange for the bribe, although Valle denies this and plans to appeal. (Boston Globe)

The intrigue into the BAE-Saudi fraud scandal deepens. Weeks before the investigation was called off, the London ambassador to Riyadh informed the British government that continuing the investigation would cripple their diplomatic cooperation on counter terrorism. (Thomson Financial)

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Back in the heady days of spring, it was a full-time job just keeping up with the bogus justifications for the U.S. attorney firings that were pouring out of the Justice Department.

But as Sara Taylor, Karl Rove's former aide, showed yesterday during her testimony, the tide's not over yet. A key part of Taylor's testimony was about her old friend Tim Griffin, another former Rove aide who became the U.S. attorney for Little Rock.

Griffin was only appointed, she said, because U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins had said he wanted to retire from the spot. He'd been quoted in the press to that effect, she explained. According to Taylor, Cummins wasn't really forced out -- as Cummins says he was and, well, as senior Justice Department officials have testified.

Cummins explained to Salon what that "press account" was Taylor kept referring to in her testimony:

Sometime in 2005, Cummins did tell a reporter for the Arkansas Times, a local newsweekly, that he was not likely to stay through the entirety of Bush's second term. [He subsequently reconsidered.]...

"If they're suggesting that, A) they monitor our free weekly tabloid in Arkansas to keep tabs on what their U.S. attorneys' plans are, and B) that they held on to that clipping for a year and a half and remembered it in June of 2006 without even picking up the phone and talking to me, it's kind of silly."

According to practically every available intelligence report, the summer of 2007 is eerily similar to the summer of 2001: numerous, compounding threats, without specificity, emanating from a souped-up al-Qaeda with save haven in South Asia.

In the summer of 2001, with voluminous intelligence chatter indicating an al-Qaeda attack on the U.S. somewhere, White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke and CIA Director George Tenet had their "hair on fire," in the memorable words of the 9/11 Commission, trying to raise the issue with a preoccupied Bush administration. Now, with a new intelligence report circulating, titled "Al-Qaida Better Positioned to Strike the West," Clarke writes for ABC News that it's feeling a lot like summer 2001: al-Qaeda, seeking European Muslims for use as jihadist operatives, is planning something, though it's not clear what or where. Clarke calls this "a disturbance in the Force." What to do? Clarke on his 2001 actions:

I ordered counterterrorism units to cancel leaves and directed FAA, FBI and other domestic agencies to send out warnings.

Overseas, we urged DOD to put its bases on high Defense Condition status and to move ships from vulnerable harbors in the Middle East. State Department embassies were directed to go on heightened security status.

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Here's our highlight reel of this morning's House Judiciary Committee hearing featuring Harriet Miers' very empty chair:

Subcommittee chairwoman Linda Sanchez (D-CA) ruled Miers' decision to abide by the White House's claim of executive privilege as invalid -- and was subsequently backed up by a party-line vote on the committee. That's the first step towards finding Miers in contempt -- the next would be a full vote in the committee.

To Democrats, the issue was simple. Miers was legally obligated to show up, and she didn't. As Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) put it, "Are Congressional subpoenas to be honored or are they optional?"

The Republicans on the committee responded with their usual accusations of Democratic overreaching and claims that the U.S. attorney firings investigation had uncovered no evidence of wrongdoing by the administration. But ranking member Chris Cannon (R-UT) also offered a more nuanced argument against proceeding with contempt proceedings -- without "evidence of criminality" on the part of the White House (he cited the example of Nixon), the House would likely lose the battle in court. And such a loss, he feared, would hurt the House's ability to investigate the White House in the future.

Rep. Conyers (D-MI) didn't think it was so complicated: "If we do not enforce this subpoena, no one will ever have to come before the House Judiciary Committee again."

Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL), who made it clear during the hearing that he's a big fan of executive privilege, interrupted to say that this was a unique circumstance, and that it's "not every day" that a witness produces a letter from the White House saying that he/she can't testify. "I don't think it's ever happened before," he said.

To which Conyers replied dryly, "It happened yesterday in the Senate Judiciary Committee."

Read more »

As expected, the House Judiciary Committee voted today to authorize subpoenas for those White House emails on Republican National Committee email accounts relevant to the U.S. attorney firings.

It's up to Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) to pull the trigger, however, and actually vote to issue the subpoena.

Harriet Miers, as expected, defied a Congressional subpoena and did not show for her hearing before the House Judiciary Committee this morning.

In response, subcommittee chairwoman Linda Sanchez (D-CA) ruled that the White House's claim of executive privilege was invalid. We'll have more soon.

Sanchez's opening statement is below.

Read more »

Well, at least it wasn't during Lent. From The Times-Picayune:

A phone number for Sen. David Vitter, R-La., appears at least five times in the billing records of what federal authorities say was a Washington call-girl operation, the first just four months after he was sworn in to the U.S. House in 1999 and the last on Mardi Gras of 2001.

Under pressure earlier this week, Vitter acknowledged committing a "very serious sin" and that his number showed up in the records of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who has come to be known as the "Washington, D.C. Madam." An attorney for Palfrey earlier said that Vitter's number was found once in the records, but a search of the documents by The Times-Picayune turned up four more calls to a number once registered to Vitter. The attorney said that clients also used phones in hotel rooms, so that not all the numbers can be traced to individual callers.

The records show that Vitter number was called by Palfrey's service beginning Oct. 12, 1999 and ending Feb. 27, 2001, which was Mardi Gras. Palfrey has said she was running an escort service that her employees were instructed not to engage in sex acts. But federal prosecutors say she was running a prostitution ring that netted more than $2 million in assets.

Records show that the return calls to Vitter's number generally lasted a minute or two and were placed in the evening. The phone number had a Washington, D.C., exchange. Vitter keeps an apartment in Washington where he stays while Congress is in session.

The Justice Department released a broad legal opinion on the issue of the White House ignoring Congressional subpoenas for information on fired U.S. attorneys. Guess which side Attorney General supports. (LA Times)

CIA Director Michael Hayden reported to the Iraq Study Group last November that the Iraqi government inability to govern seemed “irreversible,” which set the tone for the group’s eventual recommendations for Iraq. (Washington Post)

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency responsible for ensuring the safe distribution of nuclear material in the United States, gave a company radioactive material after a short, cursory review of the company’s background. Which is unfortunate, because the company was actually a dummy operation run by the Government Accountability Office; apparently, the GAO is less than pleased to discover how easy it is to obtain enough radioactive material to make a dirty bomb. (Reuters)

Former Surgeon General Richard Carmona refused to name individuals who instructed him to privilege politics over science, but the hunt is on to uncover the culprit. Vegas odds point to Dr. Cristina Beato, Carmona’s former boss and now the deputy director of the Pan American Health Organization. (NY Times)

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Harriet Miers had some backup.

The Los Angeles Times points out something that we didn't stress yesterday about Miers' refusal to appear at the House Judiciary Committee hearing today even though under subpoena. And that's that Miers and the White House are relying on a new opinion by the Justice Department, dated July 10th, that argued that "the President and his immediate advisers are absolutely immune from testimonial compulsion by a Congressional committee." The opinion was described in White House counsel Fred Fielding's letter to Miers' attorney.

Update: You can read the opinion here.

The opinion, as paraphrased by Fielding, says it's not even close:

"...this constitutional immunity exists to protect the institution of the Presidency and, as the Department's opinion illustrates, this position has been shared by numerous Administrations, Republican and Democratic, for more than 60 years."

The Times of course rolls out a couple legal experts to say that the Department is, to put it mildly, overstating the case.

But there's a likely practical effect to the opinion, as the Times points out: it does more than just provide Miers and the White House some cover, it "raises questions about whether the Justice Department would prosecute senior administration officials if Congress voted to hold them in contempt for not cooperating with the investigation."

If Congress were to vote Miers in contempt of Congress, the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. would be charged with enforcing it -- something less likely to happen if his Department has taken such a view.

Now, there are other ways for Congress to pursue their citation of contempt if the U.S. attorney refused to enforce it, and as I reported earlier this week, it seems likely that somehow, some way, the whole mess will land in court. And if it gets there, the Department's extraordinarily expansive view of privilege will finally be put to the test.

Meanwhile, it's all made Chairman John Conyers' (D-MI) decision about whether to move for a contempt citation much easier.

You don't hear many Democrats calling on Bush to grant Scooter Libby a full pardon. But today at the House Judiciary Committee's hearing on the president's commutation power, Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL) made an interesting case for it.

Davis' rationale? Since the commutation allows Libby continued appeals to contest his conviction, he would assert his Fifth Amendment rights in the event that Congress calls him to testify about the Plame leak.

"If a pardon had been granted this committee could have immunized him and brought him here," Davis said.

In this video, Davis runs his point by sentencing expert Prof. Douglas A. Berman of the Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law.

During a press conference this afternoon, Hustler publisher Larry Flynt released the phone record that led to Sen. David Vitter's (R-LA) admission that he'd been a customer of Pamela Martin & Associates, the escort service run by Deborah Jeane Palfrey, otherwise known as the D.C. Madam.

Flynt's investigator, Dan Moldea, matched the D.C. number -- which appeared February 27, 2001 for a 1.2 minute conversation on Palfrey's records -- to Vitter last Friday. Hustler called Vitter's office for comment on Monday afternoon; Vitter then released his statement to the AP admitting to using the service Monday night. Vitter was a member of the House at the time.

During his conference, Flynt said that he'd outed Vitter -- and would be outing others, because of his hypocrisy; or as he put it: "I'm not exposing anyone's sex life, I'm only exposing hypocrisy."

Flynt took out a full-page ad in The Washington Post in June, offering $1 million for "documented evidence of illicit sexual or intimate relations with a Congressperson, Senator or other prominent officeholder." He said that Hustler had a number of investigations still going as a result, and that he'd be releasing the data "as we have it."

Update: See the update on this here.

Despite knowing that alternatives existed for providing vehicular armor kits to the Army and Marine Corps, Pentagon procurement officials awarded over $2 billion in "sole-source" contracts to two big defense companies that had difficulty delivering the armor on time, according to a June 27 Defense Department Inspector General report. At the time the contracts were awarded to Force Protection and Armor Holdings, senior officials argued for competitive bidding.

Says the report:

Force Protection, Inc., did not perform as a responsible contractor and repeatedly failed to meet contractual delivery schedules for getting vehicles to the theater. In addition, (U.S. Army Tank-Automotive Command) Life Cycle Management Command and Marine Corps Systems Command decisions to award commercial contracts to Force Protection, Inc., may have limited the Government's ability to ensure it paid fair and reasonable prices for the contracts.

As for Armor Holdings -- which, by the way, is being purchased by the much-investigated BAE Systems -- one subsidiary, Simula Aerospace and Defense Group, delivered to TACOM armor kits with "missing and unusable components" and missed several shipment deadlines, resulting in "increasing risk to the lives of soldiers." According to the IG report, Simula didn't qualify under the Federal Acquisition Regulation as a "responsible prospective contractor," but it got its contracts anyway.

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The Republican lawyer who gave traction to former Gov. Don Siegelman's (D-AL) claims that his prosecution was politically motivated is standing by the affidavit she signed in May. She also raises new allegations of questionable -- and possibly illegal -- political machinations in Alabama.

The key points in Dana Jill Simpson's sworn statement have not been explicitly disproven, though they've been artfully denied by some. Not only has Simpson faced criticism in the Alabama press, but she's been attacked by some of the GOP operatives whom she accused of discussing ginning up a criminal investigation of Siegelman to get him to concede the 2002 election. Simpson hit back today at her detractors in a public statement available here. Siegelman was convicted of bribery in June 2006 and sentenced to seven years in prison.

In addition to standing her ground on her sworn statement, Simpson outlines an experience -- entirely separate from the 2002 talks about investigating Siegelman -- that prompted her to go to the Alabama bar to discuss ethical implications of what she knew about Republican tactics in the state:

A former lawyer came to see me and said he was sent by Governor Bob Riley and Gerald Dial. This man asked me to do things that I worried were illegal and certainly unethical in the Senate election contest against Democratic Senator Lowell Barron, Senator Zeb Little, Senator Roger Bedford and Senator Hank Sanders. I did not want to get mixed up in these things and told him I was not interested in any involvement.

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"Bud is lazy – which is why we got rid of him in the first place."

That's what Sara Taylor, Karl Rove's senior aide, wrote to Kyle Sampson in February of this year. During the hearing this morning, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) wanted to know: who was "we"?* Who'd decided that U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins was lazy? And who decided on that basis to "get rid of him?" It certainly doesn't sound from the email that this was the Justice Department's decision.

A few answers, several digressions, and many minutes later, Taylor finally refused to answer the question and invoked executive privilege to protect internal White House deliberations.

Sen. Whitehouse responded that it was a prime example of the "ludicrous and extreme" assertion of privilege by the administration that Taylor couldn't testify about an email that the committee already had.

It's case in point for why Democrats want to hear more from Taylor and others to find out whether the White House was behind the firings.

*Note: "We," Taylor said, was "the administration" -- of which both Justice Department appointees and White House officials are a part.

Taylor apologized earlier in the hearing for calling Cummins lazy.

On the same day President Bush commuted Scooter Libby's prison sentence, Vietnam veteran Victor Rita reported for the start of his 33-month term.

The two cases are strikingly similar: both defendants were convicted of perjury and obstruction, both had a history of public service and both were sentenced to similar prison terms. Rita appealed his sentence to the Supreme Court, where he lost. Libby, of course, didn't spend a day behind bars.

Rita's attorney, Tom Cochran, a public defender from North Carolina, testified before a House Judiciary Committee hearing today on the president's commutation power. Here, he lays out the similarities between his client's case and Libby's:

Later in the hearing Cochran explained that his complaint is not that Bush commuted Libby's sentence.

"It's an issue of fairness," he said.

Harriet Miers' attorney has told the House Judiciary Committee that she will not appear for her scheduled hearing tomorrow -- taking a much different tack from that taken by Sara Taylor today.

In his letter to the committee sent last night, Miers' attorney George Manning referred back to his letter sent Monday, in which he said that "Ms. Miers has no choice other than to comply with direction given her by Counsel to the president."

As Marty Lederman lays out here, the president's assertion of executive privilege is not legally binding -- but the committee's subpoena is. Miers could defy the president's direction (such as it is), or take the approach Taylor chose and refuse to answer certain questions.

Chairman Conyers responded in a letter to Manning:

"A congressional subpoena, such as the one issued to Ms. Miers, carries with it two obligations: the obligation to appear, and the obligation to testify and/or produce documents. Even if a witness intends to assert privilege in response to a subpoena, that intention to assert privilege does not obviate the obligation to appear....

A refusal to appear before the Subcommittee tomorrow could subject Ms. Miers to contempt proceedings, including but not limited to proceedings under 2 U.S.C. § 194 and under the inherent contempt authority of the House of Representatives.

We are prepared at the hearing tomorrow to consider and rule on any specific assertions of privilege in response to specific questions. We strongly urge you to reconsider, and to advise your client to appear before the Subcommittee tomorrow pursuant to her legal obligations.

The committee will meet tomorrow morning, regardless of whether Miers shows.

The family that's investigated together, stays together.

Sen. Ted Stevens' (R-AK) said his fellow senators have stood by him now that he faces federal scrutiny for his involvement with oil field services company Veco Corp.

During an interview with reporters last week in Alaska, a local public radio station grabbed audio of Stevens saying:

There is sort of a cloud out there, but it's not harmed my role as a senator for Alaska, if anything, it's is a strange thing, it's enhanced it because senators read papers too, and it's sort of a family, the senate family comes around when someone's got a problem. And they've all encouraged me: "Don't get excited about this because so many people have been through it in their own states and it's not an easy thing."

Too bad Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) wasn't around to provide a shoulder to cry on.

The audio is online here.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a former U.S. attorney himself, pursued the most grueling, unrelenting and outright damning line of questioning of the day.

Whitehouse wanted an answer to a simple question. The topic was those by-now famous briefings that Karl Rove and his aides (Taylor included) gave at a number of agencies throughout the federal government. The slides from one of those briefings, given at the General Services Administration, showed that Rove's aides had briefed officials there on which Republican Congressional candidates were in danger.

Whitehouse wanted to know: during those briefings that Taylor gave, did she mention the "names of particular candidates?"

It took about three minutes for a rambling, stuttering Taylor to admit it. Taylor didn't want to. She talked about how the briefings were "informative," how they were meant to "thank employees," how they were meant to impart some knowledge about the "political landscape." Finally, she admitted, "It's hard to give the landscape without talking about the people who were the stars in the show."

But she wanted to make clear: “The purpose of those briefings was to inform people, it was not to direct people.” That, of course, is the narrow distinction on which Rove has relied.

"I took an oath the president, and I take that oath very seriously," Sara Taylor said in answer to a question early in the hearing.

And right after a break, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) asked her if she was sure about that. "Did you mean, perhaps, you took an oath to the Constitution?" Leahy asked. It was a telling exchange.

"I know that the president refers to the government being his government -- it's not," Leahy reminded her.

A couple revealing moments from the hearing:

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) asked Taylor whether any other administrations had fired 10% of the U.S. attorneys in the middle of a term. The answer is no. But Taylor wasn't sure -- maybe Clinton or Reagan had done it in a "more artful" way?

Later, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) wanted to know whether Taylor had ever gotten specific complaints from Republicans around the country about certain U.S. attorneys. Taylor said she couldn't remember, because she'd gotten so many complaints about so many things. In fact, Taylor said, “I can’t remember what I had for breakfast last week.”

The former U.S. Attorney for Little Rock Bud Cummins was going to step down, and Karl Rove's former aide Timothy Griffin was just the logical one to replace him -- that's the story Sara Taylor told today, under questioning from Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA).

You can see her lay it out here:

It all sounds so harmless. But there's a number of problems with that. First, if Bud Cummins had long planned to step down, no one told him that. Taylor cited press accounts that Cummins was looking to retire as U.S. attorney, but Cummins had not informed his superiors at the Justice Department that he was leaving and had not requested to be replaced. And when Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee last February, he said that Cummins had been fired in order for Griffin to take his place.

Taylor couldn't account for that discrepancy, only saying that everything would gone better (it was "awkwardly handled") if there had been "better communication."

But there's another problem with that, which Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) pointed out in her questioning.

Taylor had written in an email to Kyle Sampson after the firings that Cummins was "lazy," which was "why we got rid of him in the first place."

Taylor apologized to Feinstein for that "unnecessary comment" and said that she'd "heard that," but that it was not a fair comment.

Karl Rove and his aides at the White House have regularly used email accounts provided by the Republican National Committee to send and receive emails that should have been sent and received on the official White House system under the Presidential Records Act. When Sen. Leahy asked Taylor about this, she said that the email system had been created in order to avoid violations of the Hatch Act, which prohibits the use of government resources for political means.

That's true, of course, except that Rove and his aides seem to have used the RNC emails for just about everything, regardless of whether it was a political matter. When Leahy pressed Taylor as to why she'd emailed Justice Department aide Kyle Sampson about the replacement of U.S. attorneys using her RNC account, Taylor answered that she'd done it as "someone trying to be efficient with their time." If so, Rove's shop must have been very efficient.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) wanted to know: Since the 2004 election, had Sara Taylor spoken with the president about replacing U.S. attorneys?

Taylor declined to answer, citing the president's invocation of privilege. Leahy replied that he wasn't after the content of the discussion, just whether it occurred. Taylor declined again.

It's just a sample of the testimony as it's progressed this morning, where Taylor has actually answered a number of questions that would seem to be covered by privilege, but not others. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) later remarked that Taylor's willingness to answer certain questions had "weakened" the White House's claim of privilege.

Update: Later in the hearing, Taylor answered the question -- it was no.

That's from Sen. Chuck Schumer's (D-NY) opening statement at the hearing, as he made a point of saying that the Senate Judiciary Committee's fight is not with Sara Taylor, but "with the White House," which, he said, had issued a "gag order" in the form of an assertion of executive privilege.

Ranking Member Arlen Specter (R-PA) said that he hoped that the committee would not seek to cite Taylor with contempt for refusing to answer questions that the president claimed was protected by privilege.

Sara Taylor, until recently Karl Rove's former aide at the White House, will begin her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in a matter of minutes.

You can see Taylor's opening statement here. In it, she says that she intends "to follow the President's instruction" and not testify about conversations she had at the White House about the U.S. attorney firings. However, there may still be certain questions she can answer:

"While I may be unable to answer certain questions today, I will answer those questions if the courts rule that this committee's need for the information outweighs the president's assertion of executive privilege...

I look forward to answering those questions not covered by the President's assertion of executive privilege."

We'll bring you updates as the hearing (which will probably be relatively short) continues.

Update: For those wanting to watch, the hearing is on C-Span3 and streaming from the committee's website.

The FBI is looking to clean up its act after repeated allegations that the agency abused its newfound Patriot Act powers. Instead of the agency illegally holding information about American citizens, the FBI wants to pay private firms to hold it for them. Additionally, the FBI is now using its data-mining software to sort through records on identity theft, real estate transactions, car accidents, etc. to profile Americans as potential terrorists. Sen. Leahy has already expressed that such a database is “ripe for abuse”. (ABC’s The Blotter, USA TODAY)

Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) is keeping his options open. A spokesman for Calvert said the lawmaker will not rule out selling his illegally procured land back to the company that originally sold him the land. A grand jury concluded that water and sewer company Jurupa Community Services District violated California law when it sold four acres of public land to Calvert and investment partners before offering it first to public agencies. (The Hill)

Louisiana senator and marriage advocate David Vitter (R) has been keeping a low profile since yesterday’s announcement that he was once a patron of the D.C. Madam. But now the “Canal Street Madam” is rising to defend him, claiming that the Senator occasioned her New Orleans brothel and was nothing but a gentleman. (The Hill, Times-Picayune)

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Admit it: when George W. Bush is gone, you're going to miss him. Who else would politicize the surgeon general's office? Who else would embed junk science into a mostly ceremonial post? And who else could turn a congressional hearing into strengthening that sinecure into an exploration of political corruption?

Yesterday, Richard H. Carmona, U.S. surgeon general from 2002 to 2006, testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform about the Bush-inflicted horrors he experienced during his tenure. Some of Carmona's experience will be familiar to administration-watchers, like a dismissal of global warming as "a liberal cause" by senior officials. Health and Human Services cronies struck references to stem-cell research from his speeches while instructing him to mention President Bush three times on every page. Come election time, the nation's doctor was to prescribe voting for the GOP ticket.

Other aspects are more inventive, even for President Bush. Consider the case of the Special Olympics:

And administration officials even discouraged him from attending the Special Olympics because, he said, of that charitable organization’s longtime ties to a “prominent family” that he refused to name.

“I was specifically told by a senior person, ‘Why would you want to help those people?’ ” Dr. Carmona said.

The Special Olympics is one of the nation’s premier charitable organizations to benefit disabled people, and the Kennedys have long been deeply involved in it.

When asked after the hearing if that “prominent family” was the Kennedys, Dr. Carmona responded, “You said it. I didn’t.”

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If at first Rahm doesn't succeed, try, try again in the Senate.

This afternoon, a Senate appropriations panel chaired by Dick Durbin (D-IL) stripped $4.8 million out of Vice President Cheney's budget for not complying with security rules for classified information. The move -- on a day consumed by Iraq -- came two weeks after a previous effort in the House by Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) failed. It's unclear if the move will survive a full Appropriations Committee vote, but if Cheney wants his money back, all he needs to do is allow the National Archives' Information Security Oversight Office to perform a few unobtrusive inspections. Don't hold your breath, though.

It gets thornier.

Tomorrow, the House Judiciary Committee will vote to authorize subpoenas against the Republican National Committee for emails relevant to the U.S. attorney firings. The RNC, you'll remember, provides email to a number of White House aides, including Karl Rove and his staff.

Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) requested the emails back in April, and yesterday, he got his final answer from the RNC, via the White House: no. In a letter to the RNC's counsel, White House special counsel Emmet Flood wrote that the RNC emails, since they involved White House officials, were covered by the president's assertion of executive privilege last week. The RNC has said that it will abide by the White House's direction. You can see Flood's letter to the RNC here.

The committee's subpoena, if issued later, would add yet another dimension to the fight over documents and testimony and yet another test, if the battle goes to court, of the president's claim of privilege.

Note: House oversight committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) has also been conducting an investigation of the White House's off-the-record email system.

Former White House counsel Harriet Miers will comply with the president's assertion of executive privilege, her lawyer wrote the House Judiciary Committee yesterday. Nevertheless, Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and subcomittee Chairwoman Linda Sanchez (D-CA) have asked Miers to appear anyway.

The committee subpoenaed Miers last month, ordering her to appear this Thursday. In a letter to Conyers yesterday, Miers' lawyer George Manning wrote that Miers is "subject to conflicting commands, with Congress demanding the production of information that the Counsel to the President has informed her she is prohibited from disclosing." He went on, overstating the president's power to stop Miers from testifying:

Ms. Miers is, of course, respectful of her obligations to respond appropriately to the subpoena issued and served upon her. In these circumstances, however, as I am sure you know, Ms. Miers has no choice other than to comply with direction given her by Counsel to the president in his letters mentioned above. This is particularly so because, as the members of the Committee are aware, the assertion of the privilege in this circumstance is supported by the thorough and reasoned opinion of the Solicitor General of the United States....

Accordingly, and will all due respect, I must inform you that in light of the President's assertion of Executive Privilege, Ms. Miers cannot provide the documents and testimony that the Committee seeks.

As I reported yesterday, Miers does in fact have a choice. She could choose to defy the president's direction, though the move would certainly send the battle to court. You can read Manning's letter here.

Conyers was straightforward in his reply, saying that he was just writing to confirm that Miers would be appearing Thursday:
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