Why didn’t we pursue who worked for him, the contacts they had, and how they got paid? We wallowed in Brokeback Mountain shock and tittilation; if those hookers were female, it would have been a cinch to get investigative reporters to see the necessity of investigating them. Now, they’re damn near untraceable, unless someone wants to get busy with the still-available phone records for Gannon, his credit card processor, his webhost, his phone answering service and who else talked to him — one could even get around the ‘reporter’s privacy’ issue, if one could prove he used a separate line for ‘ho business.

They trashed the place and emptied the safe, but they’re still inside and need to make their getaway.

It seems to me our plan is pretty well spelled out by T. Jefferson and Company………………..

Fitz can read a calendar. And he knows what this bunch did, and what he can prove. Yesterday was Meet The Weasel You’re About to Indict Day.

What impresses me most about Fitz is the silence. Prosecutors (Nifong!) take note—this is a superb tactic. You gain the trust of the judge, you “out” the defense as the spinners, and you frighten the hell out of everyone, including potential witnesses. It’s just plain brilliant, and best of all, it goes by the letter of the law. Hey, how ’bout that!

Note that Ken Starr was not smart enough to know this.

First and worst, for the repubs, will be that, unlike Ford’s pardon of Nixon, which came when Watergate was practically done, the pardon will have to come in mid-and-worsening shitmire.

FirstAnus will be pardoning, as the wheels are unspinnably coming off in Iraq…with a very good chance that the latent civil war will have moved front and center.

By then, we may be holding on to the flaming bag of shit that bushCo has ignited, all by our lonesomes, with the brits et al, having said adios.

(Three Italian troops and a Roumanian killed today, in a road bombing. I don’t think Prodi will feel constrained by Berlusconi’s promise to keep their troops there until the end of 2006.)

Rove may only be available for consultation on an ex-officio basis, and with a bit of luck, and some diligent fishing, or Fitzing, it’s not impossible that junior, himself, may be needing a pardon.

The Ford pardon may have cost him the election against Carter. There’ll be even less pardon-capital for junior, or his successor, to expend.

The “pardon” theory is contingent on bush being there to pardon. I think the Goldwater-style republican firing squad may go see bush sometime after the mid-terms (before?) and ask him if he wants to do the statesmanlike thing, or if he wants to preside over the death of the republican party.

The Turks just moved 40,000 troops withing sniffing distance of their border with Iraq. That’s a mine canary. The canary is singing:

“The EU carrot has mold all over it and we don’t care; eeyi, eeyi, ohhhh…”

All they have to do, to get the loan of another few billion from bushCo, is rev up their tank engines, and figuratively speaking, Condi will be under Recep Erdogan’s desk faster than you can say “Semen stains on a blue dress”.

So many people have got their hands on bush’s ‘nads, that they’re like a pack of clones of Captain Queeg, in “The Caine Mutiny”, with Humphrey Bogart rolling those balls around in his hand.

…The insurgents, Sistani, Sadr, the Iranians, the Chinese, the american voters….they have to take turns squeezing. :o)

“The President … shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.”

No standards, and only one limitation — no pardons for the impeached.