That EVERY SINGLE PERSON in the DOJ was out of the loop on this decision, and doesn't know who was in the loop? Did anyone actually go to work in the morning? Did anyone read an e-mail or answer the phone? These people ought to be fired simply because they're absolutely uninformed.

Or they're lying. In which case, they should be fired, then prosecuted.

A loop implies a process of some sort, involving more than one person. It could be that there was simply ONE PERSON who laid out the US Attorneys to fire and hire, all by himself.

Now, who could that single person be? Who, who, WHO? I feel like the Church Lady -- "Could it be...SATAN?"

Nope, I'll nominate Karl Rove, the amazing invisible man who leaves no fingerprints on anything he touches, and leaves no e-mail trail behind him (even though he reportedly sent tens of thousands of e-mails each year).

Others will probably point the finger at (or give the finger to) Darth Cheney; they may be right. With the unfolding secrecy revelations surrounding the Vice President's office, it's hard to remove him from the list of prime suspects!

Back in the day when I read The Family Circus, they had a character called Ida Know. Whenever a parent found something bad that had happened in the house--a broken lamp, eaten cookies, spilled milk, soaking-wet floor in the bathroom, what-have-you--they would ask the kids who did it. "Ida know," the kids would always say, as the ghostly figure of Ida Know drifted by the scene of the crime.

Well, it's clear: Ida Know has been running the Department of Justice. Ida Know is responsible for the hiring and firing of the U.S. Attorneys. Whose fault is everything that's gone wrong at the D.O.J. under the Bush Administration? Ida Know. Of course.

... soon enough we'll be hearing that those attorneys fired themselves.

None of these people will ever admit to anything. They know they won't go to jail if they play dumb. Even if convicted of something, they'll be pardoned.

The one thing they won't do is turn on their colleagues. How long do you think you would live if you pissed off Dick Cheney and/or the Bushes? A few too many people turned up as "suicides" after pissing these people off. And nobody would believe your survivors if they claimed you'd been murdered by Bush/Cheney people, because we all know there's no such thing as a conspiracy in America. Why the very idea of conspiracies is JUST INSANE. You'll get people like Chris Matthews and Vince Bugliosi and Joseph DeGenova screaming at the top of their lungs about what a nutbar you are if you believe in conspiracies.

With this much denial going around, I think we have to step back and ask some more basic questions:

• Were the attorneys actually fired?
• Did the attorneys ever actually work for the DOJ?
• Does anyone work at the DOJ? If so, would they remember it?
• Is there really a DOJ at all? How can we be sure?

Maybe this is where we should be sniffing, all bloodhound-like...

So Cannon thinks it is OK to fire US attourneys for political reasons but it is not OK for the house to investigate the firings for political reasonings. Just another example of the self-serving reasoning ability of Republican's.

he's lying!!!

I often shout this when listening to Condi, Bartlett, Cheney, Snow, etc etc, --- fill in the blank. They are LYING. Perhaps in some cases they have managed to convince themselves that they are not actually LYING, but this is another one of their grand delusions. If you can make people believe it, it is not a lie.

OMG! who the hell WAS in the loop over there???

Subpoena Rove or give it up. These Democrat Senators are like Judge Ito. Like to hear themselves pontificate. They think they are making a point exposing these Bushie liars in public but nothing is gained from grilling lap dogs. Nope. You have got to go to the big Pen and put the Rove dog on the stand. Then you can watch him lie and get nowhere. I think the GOP is right on this one. It's headed nowhere fast and is becoming a side show no one is paying any attention to. Yea-boo to the ball-less Dems, once again earning their low approval ratings.

No, everyone. You've got it all wrong. Liberal media please note.

The real scandal is how all those US attorneys were actually undercover Democrats who conspired to embarass the Republicans by havng a secret pact to resign at just the right moment. That's why there's no loop. The Rethugs are telling the truth, as they always do, because their true-red, white, and blue, American, Puritan, WASP rectitude requires it of them.

I'm sure we'll hear O'Reilly, Limbaugh, and Hannity spouting it within a week.

With this much denial going around, I think we have to step back and ask some more basic questions:

Were the attorneys actually fired?

Did the attorneys ever actually work for the DOJ?

Does anyone work at the DOJ? If so, would they remember it?

Is there really a DOJ at all? How can we be sure?

Maybe this is where we should be sniffing, all bloodhound-like...

-- kenwaz

Thank you for a great morning belly-laugh.

Stevio has hit it right on the head again. We need to get Rove out front. And the dems have no stones, low approval ratings and they still don't seem to get it. It's probably because they (Repubs & Dems)are all eating out of the same trough.

The storyline so far from the AG is that he relied upon the recommendations of others, primarily those of his Deputy, as opposed to DOJ employees doubling as Rove's political operatives. McNulty is speaking up to dispute the record of testimony. This is the way evidence is gathered, laboriously, one piece at a time.

The "fired" attorneys should all just start going back to their jobs, since no one ever fired them.

If challenged, they should ask on whose authority they were fired. If there's no answer, they can obviously go back to work. If there is an answer, go to that person and ask if he/she takes responsibility for the firing. Keep doing this until the buck stops somewhere or they have their jobs back.

Having someone along to film all of this would be handy but probably not feasible.