Stop Hitting Yourself, Mr. President.

As I said the other day, the White House should've quit while they were behind.

I watched most of Tony Snow's press briefing on Wednesday when I was off... what a trainwreck. For a bunch of guys supposedly gearing up for a 'fight', these guys look nervous as hell. I don't think he answered a single question directly.

But Lane Hudson at Huffington Post caught a very important tidbit that even went over my head. The President's argument against allowing Rove and Miers to testify in public under oath and/or with a transcript is that it will be easier for them to lie this way 'executive privilege' requires him to protect the integrity of private counsel he received from his top aides (Glenn Greenwald's brilliant smackdown of this dodge even forced Snow to try and explain away his past opposition to it). But when asked during yesterday's briefing whether the President was involved any of the discussions over whether to fire certain Attorneys, Snow insisted 'no'. But then, asked a CNN reporter, if the President wasn't involved in these discussions, and therefore didn't seek counsel on it from Rove or Miers, how can he claim 'executive privilege' to forbid their testimony? "That's an intriguing question," Snow responded, before slinking away from the subject.

Translation: 'Oops! Caught us!' (though I imagine their answer will be on broader grounds)

Salon's Joan Walsh has one theory on why Snow was so slippery and evasive yesterday... Snow remembers how the White House hung Scott McClellan out to dry right after the Plame leak in 2003 when was sent out to tell the press corp that neither Karl Rove or Scooter Libby were involved in any way with the leak. That turned out to be a-- you guessed it-- lie.

I should also add a reminder that that case ended with the conviction of a senior administration for what? Lying to federal officials and obstructing justice. And Karl Rove (the Kevin Bacon of Republican scandals, apparently) just barely escaped indictment for the same crimes, and was only spared by Patrick Fitzgerald when he went back and agreed to 'amend' his previous testimony. Yea, gosh, I don't know why Democrats don't trust him.

Meanwhile, back on the actual substance of this scandal, new revelations continue to reiterate that this was all about, as Andrew Sullivan said last week, "trying to rig the justice system to perpetuate Republican control of the House and Senate". Or, more to the point as Josh Marshall notes, "The president fired US Attorneys to stymie investigations of Republicans and punish US Attorneys who didn't harass Democrats with bogus voter fraud prosecutions."... It obviously wasn't for poor performance, as USA Today reminds us that three of the eight removed "ranked in the top 10 for prosecutions and convictions by the nation's 93 U.S. attorneys." And the White House and Justice Department still haven't provided a real answer on the missing emails.

On that note, finally, all the lies and misdirection and obfuscation just serve to reiterate that the critics are right on this one. The President's failed to prove otherwise, as even the National Review notes. The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum sums up the reality that has ensured that the President has already lost this battle-

They've now had nearly two months to come up with a simple, clear, understandable explanation for why they chose those eight to fire but not the others. So what is it? And why has it taken such an interminable amount of internal chaos to come up with something?

People aren't stupid. If there were a simple, innocent explanation we would have heard it in January. The fact that the president of the United States held a press conference eight weeks after this issue first hit the media and still didn't have a plausible story to tell suggests pretty strongly that there is no plausible story to tell.

Sure there is... the story is that Democrats are being too partisan. Didn't you get the memo?