In The News

Taylor Marsh has an update on Elizabeth Edwards' condition. I think the short version is "not good, but not dire".

Over at TPM Muckraker, Paul Kiel has an article he titles Today's Must Read. He's referring to an article in the Los Angeles Times about Kevin Ryan, one of the eight U.S. Attorneys fired last December. He writes:

It's almost too perfect. The only U.S. attorney fired by the administration in December who undeniably had performance issues was begrudingly added to the list at the last minute -- and only then because of a federal judge's threat that he would go to Congress with complaints about the prosecutor's performance.

Today's Must Read

From what we've entered into the Gonzopedia thus far about Kevin Ryan, it's pretty clear that he had a tin ear for politics, given that he was a Bush Loyalist:

The Los Angeles Times tells the story of San Francisco's Kevin Ryan today, who, as the scandal over the firings began to simmer early this year, telephoned the Justice Department to assure them that he's still a "company man."

Today's Must Read

Kiel also cites a USA Today article from last week's USA Today, in which Ryan was mentioned as being the only one of the eight prosecutors David Comey, who was the Deputy Attorney General through 2005, was also ready to fire for incompetence. This seems to be a sharp contrast with Kyle Sampson, who was the AG's chief of staff last year.

In principle, the former Justice official says, Comey was not opposed to removing incompetent people.

However, Comey's definition of incompetence turned out to be quite different from Sampson's and had nothing to do with politics, says the former official. And the only one of the fired group Comey had identified as weak was Kevin Ryan, the U.S. attorney in San Francisco. But Sampson put Ryan on his list of top prosecutors.

Ashcroft Aide Sought to ID Weak U.S. Attorneys

Lynn Allen at Evergreen Politics has written an article on the coming Constitutional crisis. Another must read, I'd say. For my part, I was sure this was coming, but I figured it should have been over Iraq. But, as we said in the Nixon years, whatever works.

UPDATE: Corrected Kyle Sampson's role in the DoJ. I'd erroneously identified him as the Deputy AG.