Next...!

As Digby says:

And it's getting worse. I would suggest that everyone keep at least one eye on the next brewing legal scandal. It's looking more and more obvious like the Bush administration fired all those US Attorneys because they were investigating Republicans or allegedly dragging their feet in investigating Democrats. In Washington state the federal prosecutor was pressured to investigate "voter fraud" where there was none.

With the vice president's office being completely discredited today and using the justice department for political purposes, we are now officially in Nixon territory.

Talking Points Memo has a rundown and video of the hearings this morning and they are explosive. The meltdown continues.

As Digby alludes, TPM & The Muckraker own the U.S. Attorneys story the same way FDL owned the Libby/Plame story. Here are a couple of good quotes from Josh Marshall today:

The short and sweet version is that [Rep. "Doc"] Hastings' [R-WA] office first denied that Ed Cassidy, Hastings' former chief of staff had made the nudge call. Later Hastings released a statement insisting that Cassidy's call and conversation with US Attorney McKay "were entirely appropriate."

I guess that means he did call, right?

[...]

Someone send us a database programmer so we can keep track of all the sub-scandals coming out of this US Attorneys mess.

And this:

So now the six of the former US Attorneys have come to Capitol Hill to provide testimony. Two of the six have alleged clear instances in which members of Congress or their aides tried to pressure them into either pursuing or hastening corruption investigations against Democrats. A shadow hangs over the circumstances of the firings of the remaining four -- particularly that of former San Diego US Attorney Carol Lam who was in the course of pursuing one of the biggest corruption investigations in US history when the ax fell.

If this were a preliminary hearing or a grand jury and we were trying to ascertain whether probable cause existed to move on to a full investigation I don't think there's any question that the burden would have been met in today's hearings.

In this case, that means a full investigation. The prosecutors themselves can only speculate -- based on various pieces of evidence -- about why they were fired. The people who know are in the Justice Department and in the White House. Most awkwardly, for a congressional investigation, they're in Congress itself.

It's time to call up the people who really know, put them under oath and find out what happened.