From Slate’s “All Roads Lead To Rove“:

And even while the fired attorneys were themselves testifying to Congress last spring, e-mails were flying back and forth between the White House and the Justice Department about how to spin earlier lies. “How do I answer whether we think it was inappropriate for lawmakers to call U.S. Attorneys?” a panicky Dana Perino wrote to Deputy White House Counsel Bill Kelley as Iglesias was testifying. (Um, do you mean “illegal,” Dana?)

“Can’t we just say that we’ll leave it to Congress to examine these questions?” shot back Kelley.

“I could try,” said Perino. But then Bud Cummins, the fired U.S. attorney from Arkansas, was already testifying about an e-mail he’d written about a call from Chief of Staff and Counselor to the Deputy Attorney General Mike Elston, threatening to talk trash about the U.S. attorneys if they spoke out. “What about this Bud Cummins e-mail?” wrote Perino. “This is bad.”

“Very bad,” chimed in Tasia Scolinos, the DoJ spokeswoman, who promptly went to working spinning Elston’s threats as “a collegial conversation” twisted by “former disgruntled employees.”

The US Attorney scandal is not dead. Per Iglesias; “former bosses may shred the e-mails, sack the bumblers, obstruct Congress and-quoting Sampson again-try to gum this scandal to death, the truth will come out, eventually.” David Iglesias’ IN JUSTICE is available at Amazon.com

Dana Perino White House press briefing for October 4, 2007: Torture Edition!

As David Kurts points out over at TPM, “Dana Perino bobs, dodges, and weaves” her way through the press briefing, which mainly covered the NYT report on the collusion of the Alberto Gonzales Justice Department with the White House and Office of Vice President to legally sanction torture. Can you say OBFUSCATION?