Gonzo's Exit Handcuffs White House

Scooter Libby? Alberto Gonzales? The entire CIA? Speculation swirls

(NEWSER) - President Bush has shown no inclination to go on a Clinton-esque pardon binge, but that won't stop Josh Gerstein of Politico from speculating. Here are the potential pardon/commutation prospects, and the odds:

• All CIA and military interrogators: Bush could make a big splash with a blanket pardon to anyone who may or may not have tortured suspects in the war on terror. But it’d be legally tricky and enrage many. Odds: 4 to 1

Role in Plamegate was enough to can him, ex-Bushie says

(NEWSER) - President Bush should have fired aide Karl Rove over the Plamegate affair, Scott McClellan said today. Publicizing his Washington tell-all book, McClellan also blasted Rove and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney's ex-chief of staff, for denying they had leaked CIA agent Valerie Plame's name, the AP reports. "We had higher standards at the White House." More»

Slate runs down the Bush team's most dubious legal claims

(NEWSER) - In her second annual roundup of the Bush administration's most egregious legal arguments, Dahlia Lithwick of Slate offers her top 10 doozies:

1. The United States does not torture
2. State-secrets privilege used to shield almost anything.
3. Almost anything Alberto Gonzales said.
4. The nine US attorneys were fired for cause.
5. Anyone who talks to the president is barred from congressional testimony by executive privilege.

Press secretary says Bush gave him false information

(NEWSER) - Bush's ex-press secretary says he falsely exonerated Scooter Libby and Karl Rove in the outing of a CIA agent in 2003 because the president told him to, Salon reports. A leaked excerpt of Scott McClellan’s upcoming memoir says that his misinformation came from "the president himself" when McClellan claimed the two men were innocent of outing Valerie Plame. More»

Says her smearing was practice for Kerry's; CIA redacted pages of book

(NEWSER) - Famously outed spy Valerie Plame hits back at the Bush administration in Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House, the AP reports. The book blasts the administration's "arrogance and intolerance," and calls the smear campaign against her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a dress rehearsal for Karl Rove's swiftboating of John Kerry. More»