No Pardon Anytime Soon

Stewart then rolled video from Wednesday's briefing, at which a reporter asked Snow: "At the beginning of this story, the President, you, Dan Bartlett, others said on camera that politics was not involved, this was performance-based, but --"

Snow's reply: "No, that is something -- we have never said that."

Stewart's audience jeered.

"Oh," Stewart concluded, "you will reconcile that by -- LYING!"

Griffin Watch

One of the fired U.S. attorneys -- Bud Cummins of Little Rock -- was removed to make room for Karl Rove protege Tim Griffin. Griffin, who recently stepped down, gave a talk at the University of Arkansas' Clinton School of Public Service yesterday.

After ruing his decision to enter public service, he briefly addressed allegations that he was involved in "caging" during the 2004 election.

As Dahlia Lithwick recently explained in Slate: "Vote caging is an illegal trick to suppress minority voters (who tend to vote Democrat) by getting them knocked off the voter rolls if they fail to answer registered mail sent to homes they aren't living at (because they are, say, at college or at war). The Republican National Committee reportedly stopped the practice following a consent decree in a 1986 case."

As John Lyon writes for the Arkansas News Bureau, writer Greg Palast has claimed Griffin, former research director for the Republican National Committee, was involved in such a scheme.

Jan Cottingham writes for ArkansasBusiness.com: "Former U.S. Attorney Tim Griffin said Thursday that allegations that he had participated in voter suppression 'are completely and absolutely false,' . . .

"'This is all made up of whole cloth,' he said. 'I didn't cage votes.'"

Here is video of a part of Griffin's denial.

But how, then, to explain these e-mails mistakenly sent to (and then archived by) the spoof Georgewbush.org site? The e-mails quite clearly show Griffin thanking another operative -- "thank you, perfect," he writes -- for sending him spreadsheets called Caging.xls and Caging-1.xls, both of which seem to contain lists of voters in Jacksonville whose mail was returned.