The MSM is having a field day with Bush's lack of ability to do his job. We'll start the roundup by looking at the U.S. attorney firings: David Iglesias has a scathing op/ed in the New York Times on why he was fired. I imagine somebody could find the reasons for his being fired in the mass of emails the Justice Department released on the subject — if there weren't a significant gap in the emails released. The Washington Post has nevertheless started to piece together what is in those emails into a continuous narrative, which is good. The New York Times points out how all this very likely leaves the realm of the incompetent and enters the realm of the illegal — not a very subtle way to hint at the I word, if you ask me.

The big news on the blogosphere is that the Congressional judiciary committees received over 3000 pages of emails in a document dump from the Justice Department. Why is this big news on the blogosphere? Because the House Judiciary Committee put PDF scans of all those emails online, and TPM Muckraker asked their online community to go through the documents and comment on anything of interest they find. Now, that's some clever leveraging of the netroots.

The U.S. attorney scandal seems to have taken up most of Sunday's news airwaves. Senator Dianne Feinstein revealed evidence that U.S. Attorney Carol Lam had, indeed, been fired for political reasons (a pattern that Jonathan at MyDD traces), Senator Chuck Schumer accused Attorney General Alberto Gonzales of lying under oath, and Senator Patrick Leahy said that he's "sick and tired of getting half-truths" and his committee will be voting to subpoena Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, and deputy White House counsel William K. Kelley on Thursday.

Boy, I bet Alberto Gonzales is pretty thrilled that the MSM has shifted some of their focus to Karl Rove's role in the attorney affair. I doubt the administration is quite as happy about it, though. In light of the emails that emerged connecting Rove to the U.S. attorney firings, the White House is having to backpedal real hard from their earlier attempts to pin the blame on Harriet Miers.

When I look at the Republican presidential candidate pool for '08, I think to myself, "You know, something's missing. Yes, we have a couple of folks going for the 'authentic Conservative' label, we've got a couple of wannabe liberals, and a bit of obligatory scandal fodder here and there, but still, something's missing. They need some flash, some pizazz... boy, running another movie star would really put some pop in that lineup!" My prescience never ceases to amaze me.

In yesterday's Roundup, we noted that Rep. John Davis (R-Houston) filed a bill retracting some of the 2003 cuts to the Children's Health Insurance Program. Rep. Garnet Coleman, who authored and co-sponsored CHIP in 1999, seems to be happy that some of the cuts to CHIP are being rescinded, but reminds us that many of those that are supporting the retractions today are the same people that voted for the cuts in 2003.

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"I dearly love the state of Texas, but I consider that a harmless perversion on my part, and discuss it only with consenting adults."

Molly Ivins, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, March 1, 1992

Molly Ivins passed away today, after battling breast cancer for seven years.

Molly will likely be most remembered for using her biting wit to skewer the status quo of politics, something for which she had a remarkable talent. Personally, I can't help thinking that doesn't do her justice.

I've got to thank Paul Burka for the title of this post. His blog late last night tipped me off to the next Craddick vs. The World faceoff in the Texas House.

Thanks to boadicea of Texas Kaos for finding the online video of the Spanish presentation of the Democratic response to the State of the Union address, presented by Rep. Xavier Becerra, CA-31. Following is a translation of Rep. Becerra's speech.