Yeah, I was relying on memory and mistakenly referred to Griffin as the DC USA. I researched this several weeks ago posted several comments on it on DKos, but I'm on a slow connection this week and didn't feel like digging it up.

But my overall points still stand, I believe. Once this provision is repealed--and the votes are more than there--congress will have the legal power to remove USA's named under this repealed provision. No impeachment necessary. The repeal will be retroactive. Then, after a mandated certain period of time has passed, the district court judge gets to name the replacement. Not as dramatic as impeachment (nor as difficult), but it gets the job done which is fine by me. I'm not looking for legal and media pyrotechnics. I just want to take down these criminals by any lawful means necessary. If it comes down to the modern political equivalent of taking down Al Capone on tax fraud, so be it.

Assuming that I'm understanding how this works correctly, I have little doubt that congress will do this fairly soon--Leahy is out for blood and will not hesitate to employ any and every tool at his disposal to make sure that justice is carried out, including this one. And what a tool it is, or could be. The Repubs would of course scream bloody murder, the Dems is framin' us! But aside from their nutjob idiot base, who would take them seriously at this point? I'm convinced that Dems are right now preparing the legal and political coals over which they will roast the administration.

And for those who think that they don't have the guts or that it's too transparent, just wait and see. I think we're in for some pretty incredible (and satisfying) surprises over the next few months--perhaps even sooner--as the Dems finally open up the throttle and pull out all the stops. We're approaching a tipping point in which the illusion that Bush can get away with nearly anything will finally be shattered, never to be mended. Remember, few expected Nixon to fall so spectacularly--and he was a far smarter and more popular president.

Bush is fried weasel on burnt toast. Pity for him that he doesn't know it.

Let's see if the Democrats have the balls to go against their elaborate apparatus. I'm not as optimistic as you are.

While long one of the loudest (and sadly all too often most valid) complaints from the left, I find this to be an increasingly shrill and invalid one because Democrats have been and are going after the right. They're still very much in the early stages of this--they've only been in power for 3 months, after all, a significant portion of which was taken up by recesses and other unavoidable and/or equally important matters such as the 100 hour agenda--and they have made some mistakes and fallen short in some ways. But on the whole I'm quite impressed and encouraged by what I've seen so far, and what appears to be their intent in this matter for the duration of Bush's term.

E.g. more ovesight hearings in the first 100 days than in the entire previous 6 years--and genuine oversight hearings, not Pat Roberts or Arlen Specter CYA bullshit, let alone Jim Sensenbrenner cutting off Dems' mikes when they're in the middle of asking tough questions. Subpeonas authorized and now being issued for testimony and evidence. Calling top-level administration officials and fired USA's before congress to testify under oath. Pelosi condescendingly telling Bush to STFU and Reid blithely mocking his monarchist pretensions. These are not the actions and words of a meek opposition simply going through the motions of pretending to do the job that they were elected to do.

Clearly, it's way too soon to know just how far they'll go, how aggressively they'll continue to pursue this, and how successful they'll be. But it's just as too soon to declare this to just be a sham or inadequate, and implicitely predict that it will amount to nothing. Yes, I agree, Watergate was not resolved adequately. Iran-Contra even less so. And like a termite infestation that isn't properly dealt with the first couple of times around, to a large extent we owe the odious Bush II years to this failure to deal with these past GOP scandals.

Dems have of course had their own scandals--so please all you knee-jerk "But Clinton did it too!" trolls spare me the irrelevant counter examples of Rostenkowski, Jefferson or Daley, because their corruption, unlike the GOP's, was not on an organized national political level, and I challenge anyone to prove me wrong (Tammany was too long ago to be relevant, and if you subscribe to conspiracy theories about how Clinton presided over a vast criminal administration, e.g. Travelgate, etc, then you're clearly too deranged and/or dishonest to be capable of engaging in a substantive discussion and I will simply ignore you). But what I've seen so far of the Democrats' oversight efforts impresses me, stumbles and all, and I am cautiously optimistic about how far they'll be willing to take this.

On a cynical level, they realize that they've been handed a golden opportunity to do their political opponents great damage, and it's hard for me to believe that they'll look this gift horse in the mouth. But on a more principled level, I am persuaded that there are also enough decent, tough, honest Dems who are absolutely determing to go after them to the fullest extent--and they happen to be the ones chairing all those committees.

One can view this from a Cassandra perspective. But I'm looking at it from the point of view of a more recent cynic, Mark Twain. To paraphrase: Reports of their death are greatly exaggerated.