The Dish

You mean this little cutie? An animal rights activist shows why some animal rights activists have a bad name. Memo to Stephen Colbert’s booker: get this guy on the air. (Photo: Getty Images.)

Sorry, Fred, but a replacement for Alberto Gonzales is already being sought out, according to Mike Allen. McNulty is a dead hack walking:

"Democrats smell blood in the water, and (Gonzales’) resignation won’t stop them," said a well-connected Republican Senate aide. "And on our side, no one’s going to defend him. All we can do is warn Democrats against overreaching."

Fred appears to have lost it completely:

There’s a crisis, but not the one Schumer talked about. It’s a crisis of presidential leadership. Bush excels as leader of his country. He is unrelenting in pursuing the war on Islamic terrorists, and he performed admirably on his recent tour of Latin America. But he’s also responsible for leading – and defending – his administration and the Republican party. He’s failing in both of these duties.

The political firing of a select group of U.S. attorneys is, acording to Barnes, is an "entirely bogus" scandal.

You know you want to know.

Bud Cummins, one of the fired U.S. attorneys, explains why he thinks the attorney general is a liar:

What I don’t know is exactly how much truth he knows about the lies that he has continued to — perpetuate. He’s apparently surrounded himself with a — a lot of little political mischief-makers who probably had no business in these important positions at the Department to begin with. And I think the problem now is — it’s hard for me to hold the President of the United States responsible, for instance, for this because it looks to me like all the people that he’s getting direct advice from and he’s relying on to tell him about what happened here, are the very people who are trying to keep themselves outta trouble for their role in it.

Sounds like so much else in this administration. Laziness at the top, paranoia and politics (Rove/Cheney) one level away, and incompetence or frustration everywhere else. Decent, competent Republicans don’t have a chance with this crew, as so many have sadly found out.

I’ve been conned again by the Bush administration. One reason I was skeptical of the surge was its very low troop levels. I couldn’t see how a mere 17,500 new troops would change the dynamic in any meaningful way. And it hasn’t. Yes, we’ve seen some calm in Baghdad, as Shiite militias lie low, but we’ve also seen stepped up Sunni violence in Baghdad’s periphery. Now, in response to "whack-a-mole," it appears that Petraeus wants another full brigade. When you add that to the extra 4,600 announced March 10, the surge is now just shy of 30,000 more troops. Rich Lowry claims vindication. Huh? The only vindication is that Lowry believed that Bush was lying back in January, and Lowry, it appears, was right. Why did Bush "low-ball," i.e. deceive us about the numbers? My best bet is that he thought if he actually told people we’d be sending 30,000 more troops (and maybe more), Americans would balk. I would have been more impressed, of course, and more inclined to support it. But this is beside the point. The point is:  why is it beyond this president to tell the truth to the American people in wartime?

Some weird love-child of Google Earth and Technorati. (Hat tip: CT.)

Michael Totten reports on the difference between now and the recent past:

A man named Hamid picked up me and Patrick just beyond the passport control booth. He was kindly sent by a friend on the Council of Ministers. "Here is your car," he said as he led us to his vehicle out in the parking lot.  As he drove us into the city I felt none of the fear and apprehension I experienced the first time I came here. Instead I saw considerable signs of progress. The first time I drove from the airport into Erbil I felt that I had arrived in a dodgy and ramshackle backwater. This time I felt – properly, I must say – that I had arrived in the capital of a serious and rising new power in the Middle East.

Nation-building is a hard and violent slog in the center and south of Iraq, and it might not ever work out. But in Kurdistan, in the north, it already is a reality. Massive new construction projects are literally everywhere. Most of those that had started when I arrived for the first time are finished, and ambitious new projects are well underway.

This we need to protect. As a priority.

(Photo: Michael Totten.)

And you thought I was tough on Mickey Kaus?

The Onion explains.