I remember an equally or "more transparently false cover story":

It was the reason to go to war in Iraq; that there were weapons of mass destruction. Come on, you believed that?

Had the White House continued to reject document requests, the Miers' hearings would have turned into a feeding frenzy in which Dems and Reps all demanded to know which issues Miers would have to recuse herself from as a Justice, due to her service in the White House that refused to identify what issues she had worked on.

Not only would Miers have sounded silly trying to avoid identifying those issues, she would have looked like a fool trying to explain why she didn't need to recuse herself ('I'm just a lawyer -- and Bush's views aren't mine'). After thoroughly humiliating herself and Bush with this feeble reply, she would have ended up with zero votes.

The document requests were central to her downfall.

The other option. . .is of course that the requested documents really put the white house in a bad light. It is certainly not a stretch to imagine that the legal advice that this administration would seek (on subjects like torture, libel, slander, perjury, conflicts of interest, money laundering, paid pundits, etc.) might not be something they'd want a lot of people to see.

If only we could get Kauthammer to suggest a graceful exit from Iraq.

Interesting that Bush chose to make this announcement on a day when the news might otherwise have been filled with stories about the indictments of Rove, Libby, et al. (Not that he's ever manipulated the news to deflect attention away from a negative story about his administration.)

Kudos to Tim Grieve for reporting on this totally transparent exit strategy on Monday. (I'd send kudos to Charles Krauthammer for laying it all out last week but then I'd have to shoot myself.)

I fear we're all going to look back on this and decide that Harriet Miers would have been infinitely preferable to whoever Bush chooses as her replacement. Here's hoping "adam" is right and Bush's petulant inner child will take over and he'll nominate an unquestionably qualified and well-respected MODERATE instead.

Bush suffers his first major defeat, at the hands of his own party, but we won't hear much of it on the Sunday pundit circus. Tomorrow (maybe even today) Plamegate's first indictments are expected to fall. That will certainly be the top, and probably only, story covered by the punditocracy for the next few days, if not weeks/months.

So, by orchestrating this phony "we need to see personal attorney/client documents", the Republicans threw Bush a lifeline, allowing him to have Miers walk the plank without sinking him even further in the public's mind.

But the brilliance of doing this so stunningly fast, within less than a week of when they came up with the "documents or no nomination" strategy, says to me that this was all planned around the possible indictment drop.

Giving credit where I believe it is due, in the midst of immense legal problems it looks like Karl Rove still spent some time plotting strategy for his protege, pResident Shrub.

Now, if Shrubs up to his rep, he'll have Bush wait until sometime mid of late next week, and then have him drop a controversial, right-wing judge onto the Senate as his new nominee. The resulting battle will help force next week's political TV talk shows to book guests to discuss the new nomination, giving the indictments of Rove, Scooter et al, the more important Bushie offense, less prominence once again!

And it all provides the right-wing radio cabal (Rush, Hannity, Savage etc.) topics they can handle, rather than them having to discuss indictments all week!

Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Talk about making lemonade out of lemons. Rove foregos that old recipe and throws a puffy, sweet camouflaging meringue over the sour stories and gives the sweet-toothed press a slice of pie!

Metaphor intended, by the way.

The guy, Bush, can't even float a strong lie. To blame senators (Democratic, of course), who were doing their freakin' jobs, as the reason for Miers withdrawing her nomination is insulting to the political process and the American people. It's laughable, too, in a ho-ho-ho and pathetic sort of way.

Bush has nothing, man. The guy is a complete toolbox. The whole thing would be really funny if people didn't have to die because of his stupidity and mendacity.

Now that Bush has caved in to the whiny right wing, who will he nominate to the Supreme Court? Roy Moore, Jerry Falwell, Fred Phelps? The possibilities are endless and disgusting.

Though I share the distaste for Harriet Miers with almost everyone in the country. I am horrified to see her withdraw.

Personally, I'm not as concerned as others about her qualifications. She's certainly a smart person and, truthfully, I think it would be kind of cool to have a person not already formed into a judge have her formative experiences in this context. I hate that she's probably a right-wing, anti-choice, religious nut, but she's one that has been uncommitted enough to avoid having a big record of hateful viewpoints. All that is positive to my thinking.

What that means is that liberals like me are not up in arms against this woman. As Bush expected when he started with her, he would be able to avoid a crippling partisan fight with the Democrats.

What he didn't expect is a crippling partisan fight with the right-wing. The fact that he has lost the fight is a terrible omen for our country.

What we have just seen is that the Ayatolahs of the Right are in the driver's seat for the selection of our next Supreme Court justice and just about anything else that Bush does.

Bush says he "reluctantly" accepted her resignation which she offered because her nomination had become a "burden to the White House".

I think it's important to realize that they have shouldered many burdensome appointments. They, for example, went to the wall over Priscilla Owens. She was not popular in the polls and the Democrats brutalized Bush and the Congressional Repubs about it.

The difference this time is that it's the Far Right that is complaining. Bush figured that he could thumb his nose at America's Ayatolahs by choosing someone that wasn't a die-hard right-wing scumbag with a proven track record of contempt for freedom and a determination to turn America into a religious dictatorship. He was wrong. They obviously made him an offer he couldn't refuse. I wonder what it was.

Regardless, he has tossed his old friend Harriet out the window to show his loyalty. I'm guessing that our economy, culture, environment and civil rights are soon to follow now that he has made his obeisance.

They have made him their bitch and he's shown it in public. They can use him any way they like and that's very bad for the rest of us.

(http://justkidding.com/info.php?storyID=2363)