Death by leak. Only a total traitor or someone throwing the Judge overboard would let these explosive words get out:

At a recent "prep" for a prospective Sunday talk-show interview, Gonzales's performance was so poor that top aides scrapped any live appearances. During the March 23 session in the A.G.'s conference room, Gonzales was grilled by a team of top aides and advisers—including former Republican National Committee chair Ed Gillespie and former White House lawyer Tim Flanigan—about what he knew about the plan to fire seven U.S. attorneys last fall. But Gonzales kept contradicting himself and "getting his timeline confused," said one participant who asked not to be identified talking about a private meeting. His advisers finally got "exasperated" with him, the source added. "He's not ready," Tasia Scolinos, Gonzales's public-affairs chief, told the A.G.'s top aides after the session was over, said the source. Asked for comment, Scolinos told NEWSWEEK: "This was the first session of this kind that we'd done."

Holy crap.  Who leaked this?

Or it could be the old Rove game--lower expectations so low that a middling performance buoys the coverage. The problem is that this isn't a debate. News editors will choose which parts of the Gonzales testimony will get on the evening news. And with Bush's popularity levels near historic lows for any president, the money call in news is that scandals sell papers, especially where hated men are at their core. Don't look for the Judge's soon-to-be selfless falling on his sword to abate the pressure.

From My Letters to America

Small Pieces Fly Easier to Heaven

In grammar, the subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a verb mood that exists in many languages. It typically expresses wishes, commands (in subordinate clauses), emotion, possibility, judgement, necessity, and statements that are contrary to fact at present. The details of subjunctive use vary from language to language.

Real Life example from Alberto Gonzales interview with NBC's Pete Williams:

I would never have asked for their resignations to interfere with a public corruption case or in any way to interfere with an ongoing investigation.  I just wouldn't do that.  And if you look carefully at the documentations we've provided to Congress, there's no evidence of that.

That's right--he never says he didn't do it. He says he wouldn't. That's not the same thing.

Extra bonus interesting stuff:

Pete Williams: Mr. Attorney General, what is it that you would like people to know about this controversy?

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales: Let me begin with the attacks on my credibility, which really have pained me and my family.  You know, I have grown up — I grew up with nothing but my integrity.  And someday, when I leave this office, I am confident that I will leave with my integrity.  The United States attorneys that were asked — to resign — were appointed by this president, they serve, like me, at the pleasure of the president.

I asked for their resignation not for improper reasons.  I would never have asked for their resignations to interfere with a public corruption case or in any way to interfere with an ongoing investigation. 

Pete Williams never brought up interference with a public corruption case, motherfucker.

but your eyes say: "folding next Friday night about 4:30 when a deal for testimony is announced." The first crow is for the true believers.  Once set as supporters by his foot-stomping decider talk, they won't convert back unless they physically are in the room when the President admits wrongdoing.

Oh yeah, its called a smoking gun.

Fired San Diego U.S. attorney Carol Lam notified the Justice Department that she intended to execute search warrants on a high-ranking CIA official as part of a corruption probe the day before a Justice Department official sent an e-mail that said Lam needed to be fired, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Sunday.

Feinstein, D-Calif., said the timing of the e-mail suggested that Lam's dismissal may have been connected to the corruption probe.

Now we are talking.  This is the real deal baby.  And just the tip of the iceberg.  Let's put our guesses on the table.  Rove with the all-out program to win the 2006 elections using the U.S. Attorneys in the study with the lead pipe.

In rating the prosecutors, Mr. Sampson factored in whether they “exhibited loyalty to the president and attorney general,”

Yup.

Vice President Cheney in a speech to the CPAC convention yesterday:

"If our coalition withdrew before Iraqis could defend themselves, radical factions would battle for dominance. The violence would likely spread throughout the country and be very difficult to contain. Having tasted victory in Iraq, the (militants) would look for new missions. Many would head for Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban," Cheney said.

He said others would head for capitals across the Middle East and work to undermine moderate governments. "Still others would find their targets and victims in other countries on other continents. Such chaos and mounting danger does not have to occur. It is, however, the enemy's objective," Cheney said.

Now I could be wrong, but it seems to me that what he describes as likely to happen if we leave Iraq, is already happening RIGHT NOW!!! while we're still in Iraq.  I'm sorry but the genie is out of the bottle and things will probably only get worse in the years to come, not better.  I don't know why but somehow we're suppose to keep taking this man seriously?

I'm a great fan of absurd conservative paeans to a golden age of freedom before the liberals and the government made every little thing illegal, something like: "I can remember when it was perfectly fine to drive my pickup down the street without my seat-belt on, drinking a beer, throwing firecrackers out the window while my two year old sat in my lap playing with the steering wheel.  Man, try that now and they'll lock you up and put your kid in foster care."  

We have a real grump deliver stuff to our office, your typical guy who hates the government but of course has relied on a state paycheck the last 30 years, so I hear stuff like this all the time, "Did you hear the kids soccer league made it illegal for one team to win because they say it hurts the other kid's self-esteem?"  Its not just the office crank either, check out this crappy editorial from a paid columnist for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. 

Alas, except for reliance on this "compelling" meta-narrative of how the country's gone to hell, most conservative commentators have a particularly thin skin when it comes to defending themselves against criticism as well as a tendency to cloak themselves in the kind of "victimhood" they accuse ideologues on the left of propagating.  Today's example, Glenn Beck.  I've already established that I think Glenn is an idiot but then Keith Olbermann also said as much in a Rolling Stone interview.  This drew a strong rebuke from Glenn using words like "McCarthyism" and "destroying democracy" and "limiting the marketplace of ideas"....which of course makes me think, "Christ, when did it become illegal for somebody to call somebody else an idiot?"

After a week or two of not being able to get a peep out of the Vice-President on his Asia trip save getting a reply to how his breakfast was a few days ago, the reporters following Mr. Cheney did the only thing they could do: agree to identify him only as a "senior government official" made all the more absurd by the fact that they basically quoted him verbatim.