Thursday Roundup: SHM Seeking Patsy

So apparently yet another investigation has started on whether the Justice Department acted for partisan gain in replacing eight U.S. attorneys without warning. The new investigation is being led by the Justice Department.

Huh?

Well, apparently the investigation is looking into whether Monica Goodling, former liaison to the White House and aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, took political considerations into account in reviewing "applications for entry-level prosecutor positions in some offices headed by interim or acting U.S. attorneys." One can imagine that when she was told by her superiors to review entry-level applications to replace sitting, experienced, qualified attorneys, it was made very clear to her that the replacement of those seasoned, positively reviewed professionals with candidates who were called "loyal Bushies" was to have nothing to do with political gain. Pass the buck, anyone?

It seems that the Bush Administration is, indeed, capable of learning something from Congressional Democrats. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's upcoming visit to Syria will center on issues surrounding the Syria-Iraq border. The Times article is amusing, though likely unintentionally; I couldn't help but characterize their portrayal of BushCo's reversal as that of a petulant 4-year-old: "OK, OK, I'll talk to the Syrians, but NO WAY am I talking to those nasty Iranians!" Then again, picturing the administration as petulant 4-year-olds isn't really new to me.

Lest you forget, tonight is the first Republican candidate debate. I, for one, will be watching. I'll be fascinated to see how they deal with their, um, differences of opinion on Bush's policies. And by that I mean that it made me sad that Mike Gravel didn't engage in fisticuffs last week, and I'm hoping tonight makes up for that.

Someone else I'm sure will be watching carefully: Fred Thompson. After all, he gets a chance to kick back and see which stance plays the best with pundits and voters, so that once he declares, that can conveniently be the position he's held from day 1. Have I mentioned yet that he has more political savvy than anyone that's going to be on that stage tonight? The Democratic primaries will be the ones that determine our next President, but I have the feeling the Republican ones will be worth watching just for the fist fights. (edit: and yes, I turned three times and spit after saying that.)

In state news, the TYC is trying to prevent the public from seeing any details of allegations of sexual abuse of minors. They are basing this new policy on "a new interpretation of the Texas Family Code that mandates privacy for youths." I would tend to think that if a youth makes a public allegation, it would be implicit that they weren't particularly interested in privacy from the public, but hey — I'm no lawyer. Attorney General Greg Abbott is, and he's been asked for a ruling on the information policy by TYC conservator Jay Kimbrough, who says he believes information should be released somehow, "report[ing] the essence without invading someone's privacy." Sen. Juan Hinojosa goes further, saying, "I don't want any reports sanitized except to remove the juvenile's names." And I can't blame him — the last thing the TYC needs is to look like it's involving itself in another coverup.

The Dallas Morning News, in their continued attempts to confuse the editors of The Texas Blue, report on legislation introduced by Democratic Senators Royce West, Eliot Shapleigh, and Judith Zaffirini prohibiting college financial aid employees from accepting perks from lenders. This bill follows the national trend of investigating abuses in the booming student loan industry which have recently come to light, and of which examples have already been seen in Texas. Is anyone else getting the feeling that the DMN and the Washington Post have been taking part in a journalist exchange program recently? On the whole, it seems like someone has been sneaking an article or two a day into those publications that clearly is not like the others.

We like ending these roundups with a more light-hearted, humorous piece; in that vein, W. Gardner Selby over at the Statesman has done a good job of capturing the "cartoonish, cliff-diving quality" of this Texas House session. If describing the hijinx as having a "cliff-diving quality" isn't enough to get you to read the piece, perhaps the fact that he uses the wonderfully onomatopoeic "aiyee" in the article is.