****UPDATE ****Bush gives Gonzales support ******Strong Support *******Good for you Mr. President!

You know it’s like deja-vu. In the lastest “breaking” story of what the MSM is trying to make a scandal out of thin air. Ready? Then grab your seat:

“U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald was ranked among prosecutors who had “not distinguished themselves” on a Justice Department chart sent to the White House in March 2005, when he was in the midst of leading the CIA leak investigation that resulted in the perjury conviction of a vice presidential aide, administration officials said yesterday.

The ranking placed Fitzgerald below “strong U.S. Attorneys . . . who exhibited loyalty” to the administration but above “weak U.S. Attorneys who . . . chafed against Administration initiatives, etc.,” according to Justice documents.

The chart was the first step in an effort to identify U.S. attorneys who should be removed. Two prosecutors who received the same ranking as Fitzgerald were later fired, documents show.

Fitzgerald’s ranking adds another dimension to the prosecutor firings, which began as a White House proposal to remove all 93 U.S. attorneys after the 2004 elections and evolved into the coordinated dismissal of eight last year, a move that has infuriated lawmakers and led to calls for Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to resign.”

Unbelievable. A “chart”. Let’s review people, you have been lied to by the media on a lot of this so clarifications are in order.

First, there is nothing illegal, unethical, stupid, moronic, sinister or whatever adjective you want to assign to the DOJ identifying US attorneys who are not loyal to the agenda of the DOJ or even that of the White House. If so you could have tried and hung the last five presidents.

Not only do US attorneys work at the pleasure of the president and thus be fired for any reason, they are selected first and foremost based on how they will support the administration’s and thus the DOJ’s agenda.

Is that clear enough.

Through all this – 3000 documents and all – there hasn’t been any evidence that the administration was trying to pull a fast one, and indeed, they truly do not owe an apology or even an explanation to congress over this. The president . In fact there is a real question of whether they have the autority to have this witch-hunt in the first place.

Again, time to stop this nonsense in it’s tracks and conservatives who have essentially “GDS” or Gonzales Derangement Syndrome, need to knock off the “Oooh, Ahhh” with ever bogus revelation that occurs.

If you have any questions to how this thing has turned into another circus of induendo and check the bushes (literally) madness, take a look at the leftist TPM, who calls – get this – for moonbat nutroots to comb the files:

“Josh and I were just discussing how in the world we are ever going to make our way through 3,000 pages when it hit us: we don’t have to. Our readers can help.

So here’s what we’re going to do. This comment thread will be our HQ for sorting through tonight’s document dump.

And to make it efficient and comprehensible, we’ll have a system. As you can see on the House Judiciary Committee’s website, they’ve begun reproducing 50-page pdfs of the documents with a simple numbering system, 3-19-2007 DOJ-Released Documents 1-1, then 1-2, then 1-3, etc. So pick a pdf, any pdf and give it a look. If you find something interesting (or damning), then tell us about it in the comment thread below.

Please begin your comment with the pdf number and please provide the page number of the pdf.

So, for instance, a comment might read:

1-3
Hey, there’s an email here on page 27 from Kyle Sampson where he says, “I’m thinking that we should make up bogus justifications for the firing of all eight U.S. attorneys in order to cover up our true, political motivations. Judge says it’s a great idea, so does Karl. What do you think, Mr. President?”

If you want to be a trailblazer and read through a virgin pdf, then you should be able to see which pdfs haven’t been looked at by scrolling through the comment thread. Have at it!”

Yeah, have at it.

Tom Delay is right:

“This is just a taste of what’s goingt to be like for the next two years.”

“And the Bush amdinistration sort of showed their weakenss when they got rid of Don Rumseld, … This is a made up scandal. There is no evidence of wrongdoing whatsoever. … They ought to be fighting back.”

And we are taking notes and names on those who don’t fight from this moment on.

UPDATE: Dan Riehl – “It’s times like these“