An overwhelming majority (83%) of people who voted in our most recent poll answered "yes" to the question, "Will Bush Pardon Libby?" We didn't ask whether a pardon was merited, so we must take the result not as a moral finding but as a piece of impartial analysis. (Hey, we can hope!) There are plenty of people on the right who think Libby should be pardoned but won't be, just as there are plenty on the left who say he will be pardoned but should go to jail.

We'll post another poll soon — so scroll down the page and cast your vote the next time you visit the Pundits Blog.

The coverage on cable news has been sensational for a scandal that doesn’t exist. “Karl Rove at the heart of expanding U.S. Attorney Scandal,” screamed a headline just moments ago. I’m loath to write about this again this week, but things have really gotten out of hand on the air, the newspapers and the Internet.

Let me state this as clearly as I can: U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president and are appointed to a four-year term. At any point and for any reason during the term of the U.S. attorney, the president of the United States can decide that the pleasure has ended and set the individual free. Read more...

First. I spent a number of years of my life working on the Intelligence Identities Protection Act with its original sponsor, then-Sen. Lloyd Bentsen.

Second. It should now be clear even to the most rabid partisan apologist for Bush administration wrongdoing that Valerie Plame was a covert operative, that her identity and status were classified, and that she had performed abroad within the last five years.

Third. I know and admire Valerie Plame and consider her an American hero, an American patriot, and an invaluable national resource in defeating global terrorism who has been compromised by shameless and despicable acts, by partisans and ideologues.

The president of the United States owes Valerie Plame and every covert officer a profound apology.

The president of the United States owes the vice president and Karl Rove an aggressive, severe, and public reprimand, at a minimum. Read more...

Read it here first: The Albertogate scandal has morphed into his years as White House counsel, which will lead to revelations about torture and eavesdropping and e-mails that will be the equivalent of the Nixon White House tapes.

What exactly was the White House counsel role before, during and after Abu Ghraib?

Were there e-mails or executive orders on torture, eavesdropping, the CIA leak case and other matters?

Contemporaries of Nixon wondered why he would tape unethical and illegal actions and then not burn the tapes. E-mails cannot be burned — they are forever. Look for e-mails to be leaked, subpoenaed and ultimately be the subject of a court decision reminiscent of the Supreme Court’s Nixon Tapes decision. Read more...

Well, D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) and her cohorts are at it once again, trying to rewrite our Constitution by sending a bill to the floor of the House, which if passed would grant the District of Columbia its first full-fledged seat. The entire House of Representatives will vote next week on this legislation and the Democratic leadership vows to use its majority status to ensure that it passes. There is no doubt in my mind that they will succeed in passing the legislation in the House, only for it to be sent for a full Senate vote, where it will fall flat on its face. The Democrats' victory in the House will be symbolic at best. Many legal scholars as well as members of the Senate vehemently oppose the bill on constitutional grounds.

The Constitution clearly states that House members shall come from states. When last I checked, D.C. was still a “Federal Enclave” and not a “State.” The justification against statehood for the District is explained by our nation's fourth president, James Madison, in the Federalist Papers, a group of essays written in the late 1700s that immediately became the single most important interpretation of the Constitution, and remains so among contemporary jurists and scholars. In Federalist No. 43, it is noted that the federal government needs to ensure a level of stability in order to perform those duties that could not be guaranteed by reliance upon any state. The necessity of this provision is borne out by the riots outside the Pennsylvania hall that Congress met in before the District was established. The District was established for the very purpose of ensuring that Congress could not be held hostage by the impositions of any state ever again. Any organization such as Congress has a reasonable expectation that it controls the rules governing how it conducts its business. Read more...

Not long ago, as part of a piece I was writing on the rules of crisis management in the context of a high-profile legal controversy, I was lucky enough to talk on the phone to  former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese. I asked him who was responsible for the decision to send Ronald Reagan into the White House press room to admit to the Iran-Contra scandal.

"It was President Reagan," Meese said.

"Say again?" I sputtered, thinking I must have misheard. The immediate suspect in that scandal, involving secret sales of arms to Iran and the diversion of proceeds to the "contras," right-wing rebels trying to overthrow the left-wing government of Nicaragua, would inevitably be President Reagan himself.

"Yes," continued General Meese, "President Reagan's first reaction when he heard the bad news was, 'We've got to get this out. I'm walking down the hall [to the press room to] do it myself.' " Read more...

There is a competition brewing in Washington. Who is more dysfunctional? The Bush White House or the Democrat-dominated Congress?

Close call. With the latest imbroglio surrounding the bungled firing of the eight U.S. attorneys, you would think the White House would have won these sweepstakes in a laugher, but think again. The Democrats in either body are screwing up by the numbers and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better.

In the Senate, a majority rejected the Democrats’ war resolution. On the most important issue facing the nation, the Democrats couldn’t get their own act together to pass their thoughts on the war. On top of a dramatic, yet insane, move by the Senate majority leader to bring the Senate back into session on a Saturday to vote on cloture on a similar resolution several weeks ago, you have to wonder if
anyone can count votes over there. Read more...

Yesterday, one Republican quote stood out to me amidst the vast coverage of firings of the U.S. attorneys. It isn’t a senator but because of who it is, I now detect a clear path from Karl Rove to the imminent resignation of Alberto Gonzales. At Rove’s direction, President Bush will have to throw his attorney general under the proverbial bus.

Clearly somebody has to go, and who among us thinks it will be Rove? Gonzales is having a memory problem and some of the 21 Republican senators up for reelection are finding his lack of accountability unsuitable for the chief law enforcement job.

Rove is trotting out the usual means to deflect the glare, criticizing the “super-heated rhetoric” coming from Capitol Hill. Sure, the vultures are circling; can you blame Chuck Schumer for thinking this is a scandal?

Today’s Washington Post reports that Rove inquired in early 2005 about the idea of firing all 93 attorneys, but get this: “Officials said yesterday Rove was opposed to that idea but wanted to know whether Justice planned to carry it out.” Really. So Rove was engaged but opposed. Gonzales reportedly can’t remember discussing this idea in that same time frame with the now-fired Kyle Sampson. That defense won’t save him. Has he also forgotten what happened to Scooter?

Looks like a head is set to roll, and my money is on Al.

As she scrounges for enough votes to pass the supplemental funding for the Iraq war, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) found this week that to wrangle a consensus from moderates and liberals on Iraq, she must wrestle with Iran.

To get the centrists aboard, language requiring the president to seek congressional authorization to strike Iran was removed. Taking it out upset liberals like Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) who fear "there are still a lot of folks in the administration who think we can win this war by widening it to Iran." So privately Pelosi promised him and other defense appropriators in a meeting Tuesday that the Iran language would come back another time, in another form.

Other liberals, Jewish voters, wanted it out and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) had pushed for leaders to drop it. Once it was out, Pelosi spoke before the AIPAC committee Tuesday and when she criticized the Iraq war she was booed. This caused grumbling from her allies, who felt the reception was ungrateful and unfair. Read more...