Another CIA Leak Probe?

Professor Bainbridge , who listened in on an Ed Gillespie strategy call, :

"The Democrats' new line is not that Alito had a legal obligation to recuse himself, but that he broke a promise to the Senate to do so (see, e.g., this blog post). The White House did not offer an effective response to that charge on this call. They need a better set of talking points. What did Alito promise and did he keep that promise? Because what they said didn't cut it for me."

Pundits are falling everywhere at the LAT in the post-Kinsley era: "In a major shake-up of its editorial pages, the Los Angeles Times announced Thursday that it was discontinuing one of its most liberal columnists as well as its conservative editorial cartoonist. Editorial Page Editor Andrs Martinez said that Robert Scheer, a Times reporter for 17 years before he began writing a column on the Op-Ed pages in 1993, will be dropped. Cartoonist Michael Ramirez, The Times' cartoonist since 1997, will leave the paper at the end of the year and will not be replaced."

The new lineup includes . . . Jonah Goldberg.

InstaPundit kicks up a fuss after Bush's Friday speech on prewar intelligence:

"The White House needs to go on the offensive here in a big way -- and Bush needs to be very plain that this is all about Democratic politicans pandering to the antiwar base, that it's deeply dishonest, and that it hurts our troops abroad. And yes, he should question their patriotism. Because they're acting unpatriotically."

That's usually broad-brush for Glenn, and he gets an earful:

"Well, the hate mail has poured in after my earlier post on Bush's speech. For the record, though, I didn't say that anyone who opposes the war is unpatriotic. (In fact, only antiwar people seem to keep raising this strawman). But the Democratic politicans who are pushing the 'Bush Lied' meme are, I think, playing politics with the war in a way that is, in fact, unpatriotic. Having voted for the war, they now want to cozy up to the increasingly powerful MoveOn crowd, which is immensely antiwar. The 'Bush Lied' meme is their way of getting cover. This move also suggests that their earlier support for the war may itself have been more opportunistic than sincere, which I suppose is another variety of unpatriotism."

The Agonist isn't buying: "The president . . . is a liar. The Democrats did not have the same intelligence as the White House did.

"And that's all any Democrat has to say. Don't try to explain it. Don't let the Republicans misdirect you into the details or distract you in any way. Just keep hammering the same line over and over and over because the public already knows it's true: The president is misleading the American people. The Democrats did not have the same intelligence as the White House did.

"Rinse and repeat all the way to 2006."