It was a mixed week for the Avenging Angel, punisher of conservative miscreants. Two evil doers of the right, Lester Crawford and Rush Limbaugh, found themselves in trouble this week for doing bad things with prescription pills. Sadly, only one faces the prospect of true justice.

Dr. Crawford, the former head of the Bush FDA, faces a criminal inquiry for financial misdeeds and lying to Congress. Last fall, Crawford, a vet by training and a friend of big Pharma, reneged on a pledge by HHS chief Mike Leavitt to finally allow the Plan B pill to be sold over the counter. Then, the "Morning After" FDA commissioner mysteriously terminated himself after only two months on the job. Now we know why. For Crawford, the Angel chuckles, the bitter pill of jail time could be just what the doctor ordered.

But Limbaugh, the original blowhard of right-wing radio showed us all once again why he may be the luckiest man in America. Nailed on charges involving prescription pain killers that would have landed most people in jail, Limbaugh on Friday got a sweetheart deal on one count of doctor shopping. Rush faces only 18 months of treatment and supervision, rather than the more fitting punishment of years as a jail house love slave.

As widely predicted, President Bush on Wednesday officially named Fox News regular Tony Snow White House press secretary to replace the departing Scott McClellan. Putting a card-carrying member of his conservative amen corner in front of the press may signal Bush's willingness to circle the wagons at the White House or to play to his base.

As for the Dana Milbank of the Washington Post got it about right in his analysis on Countdown with Keith Olbermann last week:

"I'm not sure it would necessarily be bad for the White House, but it does raise some questions. We first have to ask if Tony's going to get back pay, and we then have to ask, is this just the beginning of a trend? Does Sean Hannity replace Rumsfeld at the Pentagon? Does Bill O'Reilly get the FBI?"

For more background on the selection of Tony Snow, ThinkProgress is probably the definitive resource for Snow's past criticism of President Bush and some of his more extreme statements on issues of the day.

Jerry Falwell, with whom McCain recently mended fences, came out against the pro-choice, pro-gay rights hero of September 11. Appearing on CNN's Late Edition, Falwell made it clear he and his followers could not back Giuliani:

"But, of course, we have, as conservative Christians who take the Bible seriously, we have probably irreconcilable differences on life and family and that kind of thing. I'll never speak an ill word about him because he means so much to America. But, yes, you're right. I couldn't support him for president."

Rudy's problems with the religious right go well beyond policy differences. To them, Giuliani the tough on crime, rock of 9/11 also embodies a permissive, tolerant lifestyle liberalism they simply cannot countenance. In 2008, the American Taliban and other supposed "values voters" won't forget that Mayor Giuliani briefly lived with gay friends after the dissolution of his marriage or that he agreed to appear in drag on TV's "Queer as Folk" to raise money for 9/11 families.

Joseph Farrah of the extremist WorldNetDaily no doubt summed up the views of many on the radical right when it comes to Giuliani:

"Is America really ready for a drag-queen president? Will Republicans be fooled again and nominate a candidate who favors unrestricted abortion on demand? Should we expect the Grand Old Party to become the Gay Old Party in 2008 and put its stamp of approval on a guy 100 percent committed to the homosexual activist agenda?"

Despite the obstacles to winning over Christian conservatives, Giuliani appears to be trying nonetheless. Newsweek's Howard Fineman described Rudy's recent pilgrimage to the Global Pastors Network meeting in Florida, "He wowed them with his energy and his revival-style witness to his faith in Jesus." Andrew Sullivan took this as a sure sign that Giuliani is moving forward with a planned 2008 campaign, "If Rudy is talking Jesus, he's going to run."

While the religious right views him with disdain, American voters apparently feel otherwise. Giuliani holds an early, narrow lead over John McCain in the race for the 2008 GOP nomination. Polls also show Rudy defeating any Democratic opponent, including John Kerry, Al Gore, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton.

Luckily for Democrats, Giuliani probably doesn't have a prayer in the Republican primaries.

UPDATE: A new documentary titled "Giuliani Time" offers a harsh look at Rudy's tenure while mayor of New York. Regardless, his troubles won't be on display on the silver screen, but south of the Mason-Dixon line.

With gasoline prices skyrocketing around the country, a spate of opinion polls show that President Bush is running on empty with the American people. The new CNN/Gallup/USA Today survey puts Bush's approval rating at a dismal 32%. Perhaps even more glaring, a staggering 69% of respondents claimed that gas prices constituted a financial hardship.

But if Bush is being punished for high energy costs, he has only himself to blame. This May 7, 2001 response by then press secretary Ari Fleischer captures the malign neglect that is the Bush energy policy:

Q: Is one of the problems with this, and the entire energy field, American lifestyles? Does the President believe that, given the amount of energy Americans consume per capita, how much it exceeds any other citizen in any other country in the world, does the President believe we need to correct our lifestyles to address the energy problem?

MR. FLEISCHER: That's a big no. The President believes that it's an American way of life, and that it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one. And we have a bounty of resources in this country. What we need to do is make certain that we're able to get those resources in an efficient way, in a way that also emphasizes protecting the environment and conservation, into the hands of consumers so they can make the choices that they want to make as they live their lives day to day.

Fast-forward five years to Iraq in flames, escalating tensions with Iran, unrest in Nigeria, feuding with Venezuela, exploding Chinese and Indian energy consumption, and nothing has changed. Nothing, perhaps, except for a massive package of $14.5 billion in tax breaks for the energy industry.

President Bush and his Republican allies in Congress are now paying the price for the "let the burn candles" approach they debuted during the 2001 Enron-manufactured crisis in California. Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, terrified of punishment at the ballot box in November, laughably called for an investigation into price gauging. Perhaps more comical, President Bush, currently in California pitching a warmed over version of his hydrogen fuel initiative, has announced White House support for a price gauging probe.

Time will tell whether the Bush probe is too little, too late for an administration now running on vapors.

As surely as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, James Baker III reliably appears whenever George W. Bush finds himself in trouble. As the New York Times reports, the growing Iraq quagmire is no exception. Baker, the Secretary of State under the President's father, will lead a congressionally mandated team to generate new ideas for salvaging the American adventure in Iraq and with it, extricate George W. Bush from another fine mess.

Baker has long functioned as Bush family consigliere, helping young George take of care of family business, whether financial or political. In the 1980's, Baker and other Bush family friends helped fund Dubya's string of publicly failed but privately profitable energy ventures, including Bush Exploration, Harken and the legendary Arbusto. When Bush ran afoul of the SEC in 1991 over his $848,000 Harken insider trading windfall, it was the firm of Baker Botts which came to his rescue. Conveniently for the future president, the key personnel at the SEC during his 1991 case, chairman Richard Breen and general counsel James Doty, were long-time Bush family friends and business associates from the Baker's law firm.

Baker, of course, was the ultimate fixer for George W. Bush in 2000. Baker headed up the Bush effort during the Florida recount. Ultimately, Baker was successful in ensuring Bush's 5-4 coronation by the United States Supreme Court. Sounding like Michael Corleone speaking of "taking care of all family business," Baker on December 12, 2000 calmly celebrated the Court's decision in Bush v. Gore, noting that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were "very pleased and gratified" with the result.

Baker's new role with the so-called Iraq Study Group is not his first effort to help save President Bush from himself in Iraq. It's also not the first to stir controversy. In December 2003, Baker led the U.S. effort to arrange forgiveness of Iraqi debt, a campaign less successful among the Arab states than with the Europeans who sat out the fight. One reason why Baker's effort, called "a noble mission" by President Bush, may have foundered in the Middle East was his apparent conflict of interest as a bag man for the Carlyle Group. As The Nation detailed in November 2004, Baker shared a $180 million equity stake in the Carlyle Group (which includes former President George H.W. Bush) and stood to benefit from side deals on Iraqi debt with the government of Kuwait.

None of this is to suggest that James A. Baker III is in any way in hot water over his Iraq Study Group role. After all, the bi-partisan group, which includes 9/11 Commissioner Lee Hamilton, former Defense Secretary William Perry, Sandra Day O'Connor, Rudolph Guiliani and Vernon Jordan, was mandated by Congress. Short of another gaffe like his infamous "f**k the Jews" comment, Bush's Mr. Fix It will stay off the radar, his reputation magically intact.

Not unlike his boss.

McClellan's sublime ignorance, awkward dissembling and limitless ability to take a punch made him the perfect mouthpiece for the scandal-ridden Bush White House. His rumored replacements, including Fox News anchor Tony Snow and one-time Iraq coalition provisional authority shill Dan Senor, simply don't offer President Bush McClellan's pin-cushion utility.

In tribute to his dismal service to the American people, here is a sampling of the Scott McClellan Hall of Shame:

Last week, Massachusetts Governor and 2008 GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney signed legislation mandating that all residents of the Commonwealth acquire health insurance. But while many analysts are lauding the Romney blueprint, a new American Medical Association report on the entrenchment of health insurance monopolies shows one of the many pitfalls of the Massachusetts model.

On its face, the Massachusetts law seems like an innovative approach to providing health care coverage for all. Akin to auto insurance, all residents must acquire coverage, either through their employer, in the private market, or at lower-income levels, through state-subsidized programs. Residents must further show proof of coverage with their state income tax returns, or face fines. To pay for it, the state will redirect the $1 billion it spends annually on emergency treatment for the uninsured towards subsidized programs from a range of insurers.

Which brings us to the AMA report and the cloud it casts over the much-hyped Massachusetts model. In most states, the AMA concludes, the idea of choice among competing insurance providers is a myth. The study showed that in each of 43 states, a small group of insurers exerts such market dominance as to merit the Justice Department "highly concentrated" market methodology for assessing potential anti-trust action. In 166 of 294 metropolitan areas surveyed, a single insurer controls over half the preferred provider network and HMO underwriting. In North Dakota, for example, Blue Shield owns 90% of the market. It's no wonder that Jim Rohack, an AMA trustee, concluded "This problem is widespread across the country, and it needs to be looked at."

The 2006 Pulitzer Prize awards were announced today in New York. If there is one common attribute many of the winners share, it is holding up a mirror to the scandals and corruption of the Bush administration and his Republican Party.

The Pultzter Board recognized coverage of a broad range of Republican fraud, deceit and skullduggery, including the NSA domestic spying program, the CIA's secret prisons and the Jack Abramoff scandal, just to name a few. For example, Susan Schmidt, James V. Grimaldi and R. Jeffrey Smith of the Washington Post received the Pulitzer for Investigative Reporting for their work on the Abramoff affair. The Post's Dana Priest got the nod for Beat Reporting with her coverage of the secret CIA "black prisons." The New York Times' James Risen and Eric Lichtblau were awarded for their stories on President Bush's illegal domestic surveillance program.

The Pulitzers also recognized GOP malfeasance in the states. The Toledo Blade was a finalist for its coverage of Bush Pioneer Tom Noe and his Ohio "Coingate" scandal. While the Blade came up short, a National Reporting award went to the San Diego Tribune for its coverage of bribe-taking Banana Republican ex-Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham.

But the Pulitzer Board saved special attention for coverage of Hurricane Katrina and how in its aftermath the Bush administration turned a natural disaster into a national disgrace. The New Orleans Times-Picayune and the Biloxi Sun Herald each were awarded the Public Service prize for Katrina coverage. The Times-Picayune also picked up the prize for its breaking news coverage of Katrina, while the Dallas Morning News was awarded for its Breaking News Photography.

Living through the years of the Bush administration and the Republican majority has been traumatic for Americans and people around the world. But for the journalists who cover the wrongdoing of the President and his GOP allies, it has been very rewarding indeed.

For extensive coverage of the gamut of Bush/GOP scandals, see the Perrspectives Document Library.

UPDATE: Predictably, the conservative blogosphere has unleashed its wrath on the Pulitzers. Powerline rages about the "treasonous contribution" of the New York Times in bringing President Bush's illegal domestic spying program to light. Meanwhile, Japanese internment advocate Michelle Malkin generally vents.

On this Saturday before Easter, one resurrection that looks increasingly unlikely is that of Katherine Harris. In a new poll from Ramsussen, the Florida Congresswoman and doyenne of electoral deceit finds herself trailing incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson by a staggering 30% in their Senate race.

As Democrats sit in their pews this Easter, they will no doubt be praying for Katherine Harris to keep her pledge and stay in the race. Unlike Jesus, she is being crucified for her own sins.

As the firestorm between the growing ranks of retired generals and the White House over Donald Rumsfeld continues to heat up, the Republican leadership in Congress remains largely - and predictably - silent.

As I wrote back in December 2004, the Republican Party and its amen corner have decided that its 1993 "Les Aspin Standard" does not apply to Defense Secretary Rumseld and the Bush administration. That is, decisions that needlessly cost American lives in battle cost defense secretaries their jobs, but apparently only if Bill Clinton is president.

From my 2004 piece:

John McCain, who sold his soul to George Bush in order to boost his own 2008 presidential bid, has in essence called for Rumsfeld's ouster. Asked about his confidence in the secretary's leadership, McCain snapped:

"I said no. My answer is still no. No confidence. I have strenuously argued for larger troop numbers in Iraq...There are very strong differences of opinion between myself and Secretary Rumsfeld on that issue."

Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel added his voice to the chorus of reason, noting:

"That soldier and those men and women [in uniform] deserved a far better answer from their secretary of defense than a flippant comment. I wonder what the parents of the men and women over there, sons and daughters who are fighting, I do not think that they appreciated that answer."

There should, of course, be no doubt about the need Rumsfeld's departure. His arrogant, flippant responses to the troops ("you go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time") are just the tip of the iceberg. His Pentagon mangled the Iraq reconstruction, turning its back on the State Department (which happened to have the only plan in town) and turning instead to Ahmed Chalabi. The Abu Ghraib scandal and Rumsfeld's complicity in setting interrogation practices stained America around the world. Worse still, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz refused Army requests for more troops prior to the Iraq invasion, ridiculing as "far off the mark" General Eric Shinseki's February 2003 Congressional testimony about the occupation's need for "several hundreds of thousands" of troops.

18 months and 1,200 American dead later, troops still lack body armor and hardened vehicles, units are being rotated back to Iraq, and stop-loss orders and the call-up of retired servicemen show an American military stretched beyond the breaking point. Flawed strategy, a lack of planning and a refusal to provide needed equipment to save the lives of U.S. troops on the ground should be more than sufficient for Rumsfeld's resignation or sacking.

In 1993, of course, it took much less for Republicans to drive out the Secretary of Defense. Bill Clinton's Secretary of Defense Les Aspin assumed ownership of George H.W. Bush's December 1992 Somalia intervention . But it was Aspin who came under withering assault for the disasterous Black Hawk Down episode in Mogadishu, Somalia in October 1993 that left 18 Rangers dead and 84 wounded. That September, Aspin turned down General Thomas Montgomery's request for armored reinforcements to protect U.S. troops from growing attacks by the forces of Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid. (Note that Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell reportedly also refused to provide additional AC-130 gunships.)

Aspin's refusal to provide the armor led to an all-out GOP assault. New York Senator Alphonse D'Amato led the way, stating that, "he should be fired now, he should resign now, and if he doesn't resign, then the president should remove him." Congressional Republicans called for Aspin's resignation, and Newt Gingrich called for hearings to determine if field commanders are given "the support they need."

Events moved rapidly from there. On October 7, 1993, President Clinton called for a U.S. withdrawal by March 31, 1994. In December, Les Aspin resigned. A year and a half later, Les Aspin died from a stroke.

Which brings us back to 2004. Donald Rumsfeld obviously fails the Aspin Test. Where is Alphonse D'Amato when you need him?

In 1994, the GOP rode the Contract with America and its call for term limits to an overwhelming victory in the midterm elections. Newt Gingrich, the architect of the '94 Republican Revolution, saw the term limits pledge as an essential ingredient to retaking the House. But in 1991, Gingrich called terms limits "a terrible idea." To no one's surprise, many of his Republican colleagues who took the pledge now agree with him.

As CQPolitics reports, Tennessee Representative Zach Wamp and Arizona's Jeff Flake are among 8 House Republicans breaking their three-terms-and-out oath. The others include Barbara Cubin of Wyoming, Phil English of Pennsylvania, Timothy V. Johnson of Illinois, Ric Keller of Florida, Frank A. LoBiondo of New Jersey and Mark Souder of Indiana. As the story noted, apparently no penalty applies for breach of Contract with America: "All are seeking re-election; all are solid favorites to win."

Arizona's Jeff Flake is an excellent example of the cynicism and hypocrisy of the one-time GOP commitment to term limits. A rising star in party, Flake now says of his campaign 2000 pledge, "It was a mistake to limit my own terms." With the GOP now solidly in control of the House, Flake claims that the party's term limits movement "just petered out." Flake's assessment that his pledge was "a big mistake" no doubt disappointed his supporters at U.S. Terms Limits, who crowed in 2000 that "Arizona's first district now clearly has a great term limits tradition."

Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison is another member of the '94 Republican class who casually decided to break her two-term pledge. Last summer, Hutchison announced she would run for a third Senate term rather than challenge Republican incumbent Rick Perry in the race for Governor. But on election night in 1994, Hutchison made a commitment to term limits:

"I've always said that I would serve no more than two full terms. This may be my last term, or I could run for one more. But no more after that. I firmly believe in term limitations and I plan to adhere to that."

As it turns out, not so much. According to USA Today, Senator Hutchison now says "she still supports term limits but would not bind herself unless senators from other states also left after two terms."

One Republican who may eventually have paid a price for violating his term limits pledge was Washington's George Nethercutt. In 1994, Nethercutt led the wave of GOP term limiters, sweeping out 30 year Democratic veteran Tom Foley. But by 1999, Nethercutt unsurprisingly had a change of heart. But Nethercutt and other Republican "term limit traitors" suffered no payback, at least not until 2004. His comeuppance came in a 55%-43% loss in a Senate race against Democrat Patty Murray. While President Bush in 2004 called Nethercutt a "decent man who not only talks the talk, but he walks the walk", the voters of Washington state clearly thought otherwise.

Fast forward to 2006 and Republican opportunists like Tennessee's Zach Wamp are calling their term limit pledges "a mistake." His opponent in the 3rd district, Democrat Terry Stulce, says he plans to "help Zach keep his word on at least one promise he made in 1994." If history is any judge, it is Stulce's prospects that seem limited.

The tumultuous events of the past week have led to a complete shake-up of the Top 10 GOP Sound Bites. Rumored plans for military strikes against Iran, revelations regarding President Bush's authorization to leak classified national security information to target political foes and the resignation of Tom Delay have combined to send some newcomers up the rankings and drop some old favorites off the charts.

Rocketing to number one is the thrash metal "Wild Speculation (Fantasy Land)" by George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. Coming in a close second is the poetic and heartfelt ballad by Scott McClellan and President Bush, "(Leaking Is In) The Public Interest." Holding its ground at #3 is "Ongoing Investigation" from the White House platinum release, "PlameGame", while the previous #1, "Terrorist Surveillance Program" dropped to fourth.

Falling off the charts this week are some Republican oldie but goodies. After 200 weeks on the Bushboard Top 10, Condi Rice's 2002 chart-topper "Smoking Gun, Mushroom Cloud" fell out of the rankings. And for the first time since 2000, George Bush's poignant NCLB ballad, "Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations" didn't crack the Top 10.

To view an archive of previous Top 10 GOP Sound Bites lists, visit the Perrspectives Image Gallery.

It was revealed that Blackwell, a central villain in voter suppression by the GOP during the 2004 election, bought stock in electronic voting machine vendor and GOP cash cow Diebold. Meanwhile, the man he's trying to displace, Robert Taft, may be disbarred for ethics violations involving CoinGate's Tom Noe.

And Ohioans thought the Cuyahoga River was dirty.

On May 29, 2003, President Bush proudly trumpeted the supposed discovery of mobile bio-weapons labs in Iraq, declaring, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction." As the Washington Post is now reporting, the President's claim was not only untrue, but the administration knew it was false at the time Bush uttered it.

The Post piece is yet another devastating blow to the White House campaign to retroactively justify the invasion of Iraq. By May 27th, 2003, a team of nine American and British experts unanimously reported that the much-hyped Iraqi trailers had "no connection to anything biological" and were the biggest sand toilets in the world." The team members, all employees working for defense contractors or the Energy Department's national labs, began their work on May 25th, 2003. According to one team member, they concluded "within the first four hours, it was clear to everyone that these were not biological labs." Two days later, they sent their formal, classified report ("Final Technical Engineering Exploitation Report on Iraqi Suspected Biological Weapons-Associated Trailers") to Washington.

Which is where it remains. The Bush administration shelved the report of the "Jefferson Project," as it was called, and continued its claims throughout the summer of 2003. On May 28th, one day after the technical team delivered its unanimous report, the CIA and DIA jointly issued a report ("Iraqi Mobile Biological Warfare Agent Production Plants") ignoring their findings and stating their confidence that the trailers were used for "mobile biological weapons production." By June, Secretary of State Powell, who had vigorously made the case for the existence of the mobile bio-weapons labs during his February 2003 presentation to the United Nations Security Council, declared the American "confidence level is increasing." In September, Vice President Cheney declared the Iraqi trailers "mobile biological facilities" capable of producing smallpox and anthrax.

As it turns out, not so much. By October 2003, Iraq Survey Group head David Kay, who had not seen the classified report, reported to Congress that the ISG found no banned weapons in Iraq and could not verify the potential bio-warfare uses of the trailers. The final Duelfer Report from the Iraq Survey Group in October 2004 concluded definitively that the trailers were not in fact rolling bio-weapons labs:

ISG thoroughly examined two trailers captured in 2003, suspected of being mobile BW agent production units, and investigated the associated evidence. ISG judges that its Iraqi makers almost certainly designed and built the equipment exclusively for the generation of hydrogen. It is impractical to use the equipment for the production and weaponization of BW agent. ISG judges that it cannot therefore be part of any BW program.

The Bush administration, of course, already knew that. In fact, the White House knew it days before President Bush proclaimed in May 2003, "we have found the weapons of mass destruction."

For a complete archive of documents related to Iraq pre-war intelligence and weapons fo mass destruction, including the Iraq Survey Group, the Silberman-Robb Commission Report and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report, visit the Perrspectives Iraq WMD and Intelligence Resource Center.

As the scandal grows surrounding President Bush's leak of classified national security information to discredit administration critics, you can track all of the latest news, legal filings, statues, timelines and other key documents. Just visit:

The Perrspectives PlameGate Scandal Resource Center.

With the revelations regarding President Bush's authorization to leak classified national security information and the resignation of Tom Delay, it's been a busy time in the liberal blogosphere. Increasingly, Perrspectives content is part of the coverage.

Over at Air America Radio, the Randi Rhodes Show used the occasion of the Delay announcement to run in full my September piece about rampant GOP corruption, "Banana Republicans." The following day, her show also featured a link to the Perrspectives Plame/CIA Leak Scandal Center among its "TreasonGate Resources."

Last week also featured my interview with Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos and Jerome Armstrong of My DD, authors of the book Crashing the Gate. That conversation and book review, available both on Perrspectives and at BlueOregon, is also highlighted on the Crashing the Gate web site.

For more about Perrspectives in the news and in the blogs, visit the "In the News" section of the site.

That President Bush authorized Scooter Libby to selectively leak portions of the highly classified October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate as part of a coordinated assault on Joseph Wilson and other debunkers of pre-war Iraq WMD claims should come as a surprise to no one. What is surprising is that at least one Republican has the courage and the honesty to acknowledge the hypocrisy and shamelessness of a President now revealed as "leaker-in-chief."

Representative Ray Lahood, an Illinois Republican and staunch Bush ally, declared that the White House has to come clean. "This is a very significant disclosure. This is big," Lahood said. "They're going to have to comment on it. They owe all of us an explanation, all of us who trust him, and they owe the American people an explanation."

Don't expect an acceptable explanation from President Bush anytime soon. Bush, after all, had been vocal about his desire to find and punish leakers. After the New York Times revealed the illegal NSA domestic wiretapping program, Bush on December 19, 2005 went on the offensive, "it is a shameful act by somebody who has got secrets of the United States government and feels like they need to disclose them publicly."

Shameful, that is, unless you're attacking a critic of the administration like Joe Wilson. In the fall of 2003, President Bus mouthed all the usual platitudes about "my displeasure with leaks" regarding the disclosure of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame. But on October 7, 2003 Bush was in retrospect understandably coy about what he knew and when he knew it:

Earlier this week, I had chance to catch up with Jerome and Markos in advance of their upcoming Portland trip. We discussed their book, the state of the Democratic Party and the power of what Armstrong calls the "netroots" to transform progressive politics. Our chat, like Crashing the Gate itself, was wide-ranging and no holds barred.

First a little background about the book. Crashing the Gate (CTG) is fundamentally about winning elections. To the surprise of many, the book is not primarily about ideology and the Democratic "brand" or about technology and blogging. (In a nod to his one-time Dean campaign colleague Joe Trippi, Jerome noted the book is not "the revolution will not be blogged.") And while Armstrong and Zuniga offer a blistering critique of the Bush administration and the ruling Republican majority, they aim most of their fire at a Democratic Party establishment they see as out of touch, behind the times, and most of all, losing elections.

The Galveston County Daily News is reporting that Tom Delay will resign his seat this spring or summer. Coming just days after the guilty plea of his former aide Tony Rudy in the Abramoff affair, Delay has apparently decided not only to drop out of his reelection race, but to resign altogether.

Delay cited troubling poll numbers as driving his decision. More likely, the collective weight of the Abramoff, Buckham, and TRMPAC scandals brought the Hammer down, so to speak. Always comfortable traveling the low road, Delay blamed his one-time aides for his downfall, "I regret having people on my staff who I trusted who have disappointed me."

Just one week after Delay's celebrated performance at the "War on Christians" conference, the charter member of the American Taliban has apparently suffered some divine retribution of his own.

For more background on the Delay scandals, see Perrspectives' Delay/Abramoff Scandal Center.

Visiting England this week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice delivered a new twis on that staple of Bush administration communications, the faux apology. Speaking to an audience of British foreign policy wonks, Rice offered a seeming mea culpa for the situation in Iraq, "I know we've made tactical errors, thousands of them I'm sure."

Any notion that Rice was breaking with the Bush doctrine of infallibility was extinguished with her very next sentence. "But when you look back in history," Rice said. What will be judged is, did you make the right strategic decisions." Saddam Hussein, she insisted, "wasn't going anywhere without military intervention. You were not going to have a different Middle East with Saddam Hussein at the center of it." The Bush administration had learned from its tactical missteps. To do otherwise, Rice argued (in an unfortunate choice of words on the one year anniversary of the death of Terri Schiavo), would be "brain-dead."

So on this April Fools' Day, we're reminded of that hallmark of the Bush presidency: never admit error. We can only imagine what a Bush statement of apology might look like. For one take, from April Fools' Day 2005, see: "Bush Signs Act of Contrition."