Gonzales hearings now under way on C-SPAN 3 TV and C-SPAN Radio. Also available live on the Internet through Yahoo!

WASHINGTON - His job in jeopardy, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Thursday no impropriety was involved in the dismissal of eight federal prosecutors and the decision was “justified and should stand.”

Appearing before a plainly skeptical Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales conceded that “reasonable people might disagree” with the decision. He said the process by which the U.S. attorneys were dismissed was “nowhere near as rigorous or structured as it should have been.”

Offering an apology to the eight and their families, he also said he had “never sought to mislead or deceive the Congress or the American people” on that or any other matter.

Gonzales began his turn as a witness after Sen. Patrick Leahy , the committee’s chairman, delivered a tongue-lashing in the opening moments of the widely anticipated hearing.

Ruben Navarrette, member of the editorial board of The San Diego Union-Tribune and a nationally syndicated columnist, asks: Will Gonzales get a fair hearing?

SAN DIEGO, California (CNN) — Details, details. The critics of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales are absolutely sure of his guilt in the matter of the fired U.S. attorneys. They’re just not sure what he’s guilty of.
[...]

That won’t satisfy the critics. Nothing will, absent Gonzales’ head. To get it, they keep changing their line of attack.

First, the critics said that Gonzales didn’t understand the difference between being the president’s personal lawyer and being attorney general. Then, they said he had orchestrated a purge of dissidents to further political goals. Then, they said he lied to Congress. Then, they said he lied to the media. Then, they said he had been a bad manager. Then, they said he bungled the explanation of what happened and created the appearance of a scandal where there may not have been one in the first place.

For some conservatives, principle lost out to practicality. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich recently said the firings had wrecked Gonzales’ credibility and that the administration would be better served by “a new team at the Justice Department.”

Perfect. Liberals have spent more than a month slinging mud at Gonzales, and now weak-kneed conservatives are giving in and saying that maybe the attorney general should go because: “Look, he’s covered in mud!”

As it happens, some of that mud has come from the get-Gonzales faction of the Fourth Estate.
[...]

I’ve said all along that Gonzales deserves a fair hearing. Thursday, he’ll get the hearing. But, so far, no sign of the fairness.

“Slinging mud” refers to someone / some group tossing lies at an individual in an attempt to discredit that individual. Whatever sticks, they’re obviously guilty of. (Think Swift Boat Veterans For Truth)

Mr. Navarrette, please pull your lips from the kool-aid and your head from the GOP butt. No mud has been slung here. Gonzales was already covered in a thick layer of it way before any mention of a trial. The intention of this trial is to peel back that mud to get to the truth. That’s what trials are for. If you truly feel Alberto should be considered “innocent until proven guilty”, could you please point me to the editorial you wrote years ago lambasting the GOP for their Bill Clinton witch hunt? You did write one up, didn’t you?

Note to CNN: Just because someone has the ability to string two words together with a certain amount of elegance does not automatically make this person a good read.

A U.S. report links the first decline in breast cancer cases in 25 years to the sharp drop in hormone use by menopausal women.

An analysis published in The New England Journal of Medicine says about 16,000 fewer cases of breast cancer are being diagnosed each year because of the drop in hormone use after 2002, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

There were nearly 10 percent fewer breast cancer cases diagnosed in 2003 and 2004 than expected, The New York Times said. It was the first substantial drop in breast cancer incidence in more than a quarter-century.

“An awful lot of breast cancer was caused by doctors’ prescriptions,” Larry Norton of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York told the Post. Some researchers, however, are questioning the findings. “Even if there was a cause-and-effect, you wouldn’t expect it to show up for five or 10 years,” Hugh S. Taylor of Yale University told the Post.

story from “Earth Times“

Tomorrow is the big day, and I’ll be on the road all day. Hopefully they’ll replay his testimony on C-Span.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales goes in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee today as the most embattled high-ranking member of a presidential administration to appear before an oversight panel in decades. That Gonzales has clung to his position in the face of an overwhelming tide of revelations about his own misdeeds and the “take-the-fifth” actions of his lieutenants is a testament not to tenacity but to the closeness of his relationship with his enabling protector, President Bush, and the refusal of the current administration to entertain even baseline standards of accountability.

By any reasonable measure of propriety and practical politics, Gonzales looks to be on the way out. A ranking Republican member of the Judiciary Committee, Utah’s Orrin Hatch, is already angling for the attorney general’s job and it is difficult to imagine that Hatch will not have it in due course.

That said, the Gonzales testimony is important. Even in full spin mode — and, make no mistake, the attorney general will appear with more lines memorized that a Shakespearean actor — what transpires on Capitol Hill today could go a long way toward defining the future not just of the inquiry into the firings of U.S. Attorneys but of the Bush administration.

To that end, here are ten sets of questions that ought to be asked and answered by Gonzales:

Continue reading at the Nation

We all know it’s going to be a tough battle, but we really have to get to work and support all our Democratic members of Congress and call them to let them know we do not want them to back down.

Find your State’s Representatives here: U.S House of Representatives

Find Your State’s Senators here: United States Senate

Make calls, send written letters and emails with your support to help end this war. Please take a few minutes and get the word to them that we Democrats are behind them 100%!

Meanwhile……

WASHINGTON -
President Bush sparred across the table with Democratic congressional leaders opposed to the
Iraq war on Wednesday in a prelude to a veto showdown over a conflict that has claimed the lives of more than 3,200 U.S. troops.

During an hour long meeting at the White House, the president told lawmakers directly he will not sign any bill that includes a timetable for a troop withdrawal, and they made it clear Congress will send him one anyway.

“We believe he must search his soul, his conscience and find out what is the right thing for the American people,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, told reporters after the session. “I believe signing this bill will do that.”

But Dana Perino, White House spokeswoman, said, “It appears that they are determined to send a bill to the president that he won’t accept. They fundamentally disagree.”

Several officials said the session was polite. But they said it turned pointed when Reid recounted a conversation with generals who likened Iraq to Vietnam and described it as a war in which the president refused to change course despite knowing victory was impossible. Bush bristled at the comparison, according to several officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was private. One quoted him as saying, “I reject” the comparison.

Read More on YAHOO!