What's Everybody Saying?

I've given my fair share of thoughts on the big issues that have come up in the past week or so (Bush's leaks, the WMD trailers lie, and the expected war with Iran), but wanted to highlight some great blogging on those subjects by the big boys of the blogosphere.

First, amid news that Scooter Libby's defense crew has released a statement clarifying his testimony on leaks, specifically insisting that Bush and Cheney didn't authorize the Plame leak (well they also said they didn't know anything about leaks and you are already on trial for lying, so grain of salt and all that), the gang at Firedoglake give this new report a thorough going-over. And they provided further analysis, because that's how they roll.

Moving onto the Trailers of Mass Destruction lie, Digby has an excellent post up chronicling how quickly the White House's story about the trailers began to unravel. And, in the highlight of the post, he calls the media to task for their failures in handling this and so many other stories relating to the Bush administration's shady behavior. He also ties those failures into the media's marginalizing of the importance of the story that the President is planning a preemptive nuclear strike on Iran.

Meanwhile Think Progress notes how the White House, specifically the Vice President, continued to push the lie about the trailers for several months after it had been debunked. On a similar note, Josh Marshall asks a lot of good questions about when Congress became aware of all these facts and what facts were held back from them by the White House and the CIA. And Scott McClellan still refuses to state when the White House became aware of the Pentagon report on the issue.

Finally, getting back to the Iran issue, while the media may be ignoring this HUGE story (hello, crazy President planning another war over here!), the blogs are on it like Rumsfeld on a bad idea. Greg Saunders posts at Tom Tomorrow's blog about how all of this is "echoes of 2002". He wonders what it will take for the Democrats in Congress to put aside their fears of being painted as 'weak' on security and to do the right thing here.

Elsewhere, Glenn Greenwald explores a point I mentioned in my earlier Iran post- namely whether the President believes his much-touted imperial inherent constitutional powers place him above having to bother with congressional approval for any military action with Iran. The scary conclusion is, of course, yes. Finally, Anonymous Liberal wonders if we can get some new chickenhawk pundits since all of the old ones have been thoroughly discredited and embarrased by now.

[PS- And on the right, they're still mad about 'South Park' and immigrants.]