Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan names names in a caustic passage from a forthcoming memoir that accuses President Bush, Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney of being "involved" in his giving the press false information about the CIA leak case.

McClellan’s publisher released three paragraphs from the book “WHAT HAPPENED: Inside the Bush White House and What’s Wrong With Washington.”

[skipping to the juicy bits]

“I had unknowingly passed along false information,” McClellan wrote.

“And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself."

Fmr aide McCellan feels like he got a raw deal. With his new publisher and these firebombs I'm sure he'll get a different deal. Book comes out April 21st.

--timball

McClellan points finger at Bush, Rove - Mike Allen and Michael Calderone - Politico.com

Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) plans to resign his seat by year's end, a senior Republican official told Politico.

The announcement took Capitol Hill by surprise because Lott, the former majority leader, seemed to be relishing his job as minority whip, the second-ranking GOP leadership job. He had regained a post in leadership after he resigned following racially insensitive remarks at a birthday party for the late Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.).

Something doesn't smell right. Sen Lott (R-MS) was *ultra* unhappy when he got ousted from the senate leadership and took him four years to get back to where he was in 2002. Not just that but he *JUST* got re-elected in '06. There's some idle speculation about he fact that if he retires *this* year he can start lobbying the senate members in one year instead of two, but that's no reason to leave the senate early. Especially after 34 years of service.

Anyways Gov Barbour (R) gets to appoint someone to fill out the seat till '08 and then there's a runoff for a seat that ends on 2012.

UPDATE: From an old new yorker article I read in a dentist's office:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/05/12/030512fa_fact_lemann?currentPage=4

I asked Rove if it was true that he had engineered the demise of Trent Lott, of Mississippi, as Senate Majority Leader, and Lott’s replacement by the more Bush-friendly Bill Frist, of Tennessee—it would be hard to find anyone in Washington who believed he hadn’t. (In 1990, Lott publicly criticized President George H. W. Bush for raising taxes, and the Bushes have long memories.) “No,” Rove said, flatly. Then he mentioned, in what I thought was a less than entirely sombre tone, that on the day the Lott affair reached its dramatic peak, when Lott was scheduled to appear on Black Entertainment Television to defend himself, Rove had got a call from his friend Bill Frist: “Monday morning, Frist calls me and says, ‘You know, on Friday we’re supposed to take our boys and go hunting in South Texas together—you think we ought to go?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, let me think about it. Can I call you tomorrow?’ And the next day”—after Lott’s performance on BET, which came across as abjectly liberal, and failed to save him—“I call Frist and say, ‘I don’t think it’s going to be good for you or for me to be seen in South Texas, hunting with our boys.’ I think the world of Bill, but I don’t take credit.” That certainly settles that!

--timball

Top official: Lott to resign - Politico.com

Welcome to the State Department's first-ever blog, Dipnote. As a communicator for the Department, I have the opportunity to do my fair share of talking on a daily basis. With the launch of Dipnote, we are hoping to start a dialogue with the public. More than ever, world events affect our daily lives--what we see and hear, what we do, and how we work. I hope Dipnote will provide you with a window into the work of the people responsible for our foreign policy, and will give you a chance to be active participants in a community focused on some of the great issues of our world today.

With Dipnote we are going to take you behind the scenes at the State Department and bring you closer to the personalities of the Department. We are going to try and break through some of the jargon and talk about how we operate around the world.

We invite you to participate in this community, and I am looking forward to stepping away from my podium every now and then into the blogosphere. Let the conversation begin.

PS - We're new at this. It looks like we broke our own rule and used State jargon in our blog title. "Dipnote" refers to a diplomatic note. It is one of the many ways in which governments formally communicate with each other.

The dictionary definition of a diplomatic note is: "A formal communication between an ambassador and a minister (usually the foreign minister) of this host government or another ambassador."

It's officially then end of the blogs. The faceless nameless Dept of State has decided to have a blog... In true USDoS fashion it's color scheme is grey on black.

--timball

US Department of State Blog

BOISE — Idaho Republican Sen. Larry Craig will announce Saturday he will resign from the Senate amid a furor over his arrest and guilty plea in a police sex sting in an airport men’s room, Republican officials said today, according to The Associated Press. The Idaho Statesman independently confirmed the report.

Craig's office declined to confirm or deny a resignation.

Craig's communications director Dan Whiting told the Idaho Statesman, "I won't say either way."

It's official a public servant for 27yrs is now resigning because of his "wide-stance".

--timball

UPDATED 4:48 p.m. -- Craig to announce resignation on Saturday | News Updates | Idaho Statesman

In Friday's Washington Post Dan Eggen and I examine two expanding fronts of the Justice Department's internal investigation into Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and his top subordinates.

Justice's Inspector General and its Office of Professional Responsibility acknowledged they are examining Gonzales's recent congressional testimony for potential lies or false statements under oath, but in addition we unearthed a key document that serves as a mini-road map for a different portion of the now sprawling probe. This part of the investigation is examining whether Gonzales's top aides improperly and possibly illegally used political considerations in the hiring process at the Justice Department.

A cover letter [PDF] and 12-page questionnaire [PDF] sent out by IG-OPR investigators went to hundreds of people who were interviewed by four top aides to Gonzales over a 40-month period, from Jan. 1, 2004 through this past April. That's a much longer timeframe than was previously known to be under inquiry by Justice's investigators, who began this spring by examining the propriety of the firing of nine U.S. attorneys last year and now have a multi-faceted probe on their hands.

...

• The investigators are particularly focused on whether Goodling and other Justice officials were using personal political questions when making hiring decisions. Investigators want to know if interviewees were asked:

- to name "your favorite president, legislator, public figure, or Supreme Court justice"
- "what kind of conservative you were (law and order; social; fiscal)"
- what was "your position on the war on terror"

a) Your mother
b) N/A
c) not to land in gitmo

--timball

Document Shows Widening Probe Into DOJ Hiring - Capitol Briefing

Virginia Sen. John W. Warner, one of Washington's most influential voices on defense policy, whose political plans could have a significant impact on the partisan makeup of a narrowly divided Senate, announced today that he will not seek a sixth term.

Warner, 80, announced his decision at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where he received his law degree in 1953. His retirement is unwelcome news for his fellow Republicans, who hope to take control of the Senate next year. Democrats hold a 51 to 49 lead.

So Senator Warner goes. Which is weird cause I can't imagine a senate w/o him (I just turned 30, he's been in the Senate 5 terms). On so many issues he's been a hawk but his resent demand that 5k troops come home by december was a huge blow to stay-the-course-ers.

At 80 yrs young he's still got that vinegar and spit (along w/ a work ethic not seen in some younger senators) that VA voters love, but now he's forced a time for change. Open seat fun run!

--timball

Va. Senator Warner Will Not Seek Sixth Term

Snow, 52, a former journalist and Fox News talk show host, has signaled in recent weeks that he probably would not finish the remainder of the Bush presidency, primarily because of financial concerns. He was leaving, he said today, "because I ran out of money."

Snow, the father of three children, earns $168,000 a year as the White House spokesman but made considerably more as an anchor for "Fox News Sunday" and a political analyst for the Fox News Channel, which he joined in 1996. He also hosted "The Tony Snow Show" on Fox News Radio.

How do you make $170k/yr and go broke? ... Ah yes. Subprime.

--timball

White House Press Secretary Snow Resigns - washingtonpost.com

Mr. Gonzales, who had rebuffed calls for his resignation for months, submitted it to President Bush by telephone on Friday, a senior administration official said. There had been rumblings over the weekend that Mr. Gonzales’s departure was imminent, although the White House sought to quell the rumors.

OMFG! He PHONED IT IN! Oh hollywood you've made us all stupidier.

--timball

Embattled Attorney General Resigns - New York Times

WASHINGTON - Karl Rove, President Bush's close friend and chief political strategist, plans to leave the White House at the end of August, joining a lengthening line of senior officials heading for the exits in the final 1 1/2 years of the administration.

On board with Bush since the beginning of his political career in Texas, Rove was nicknamed "the architect" and "boy genius" by the president for designing the strategy that twice won him the White House. Critics call Rove "Bush's brain."

The DCoS is finally leaving the WH, maybe after he leaves he could finally testify before of Congress... But that's probably been the plan all along. Get all the ducks in row and leave scott free. I guess the next shoe to drop will be AG "Judge" Gonzales.

Here's a link to the original WSJ article

--timball

Karl Rove to resign at end of August - Yahoo! News

"I write at the direction of the President to advise and inform you that the President has decided to assert executive privilege and therefore the White House will not be making any production in response to these subpoenas for documents,"

oversight is overrated

--timball

Bush Won't Supply Subpoenaed Documents - washingtonpost.com