Circling The Drain

The White House is on its own:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' allies on Capitol Hill grew scarce Tuesday as he left it largely to aides to carry out President Bush's order to straighten out the story behind the firing of eight federal prosecutors.

Senate Republicans exiting their weekly policy lunch no longer bothered to defend Gonzales' response to lawmakers' questions about the firings. At most, they mustered an appeal to withhold judgment until the attorney general testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on April 17.

If George wants to hitch his entire administration to Gonzo then I won't stand in the way.

On a related issue, the Senate setting a deadline for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, clammyc writes:

The republicans could have made a huge deal about this. Hell, they make a huge deal about everything – even when they were able to do everything without any consequences or anyone else even knowing. They could have fought this bill and stomped up and down and tried to make the Democrats blink. They could have made a big stink about “not wanting to tell the terrorists when they can come out and kill again”.

But they didn’t.

They hung Bush – “dear leader” - their leader out to dry. Twisting in the wind. Basically, by not giving him cover here, the message is, in no uncertain terms, “you can’t keep fucking us over like this anymore. If you want your funding, then you gotta figure a way out.”

The problem is that George and Dick have no intention of figuring a way out. Indeed, they may very well conclude that their only way of retaining power is to start another, bigger war - Iran. They're certainly rattling the sabres loudly enough. And if this does happen - next month? - then we'll all be going down with them.

May you live in interesting times, goes the saying.

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