Look out! Here come the latest documents!

i'm kind of amazed - and also quite pleased - that, probably at the urging of fred fielding, they're not stonewalling the release of these documents... the rapidity with which it's happening also tells me that they haven't been carefully scrutinized or, perhaps more accurately, sanitized...

The Justice Department is expected to release more than 400 pages of E-mails and documents by close of business today to comply with a demand from Democrats in Congress over the growing crisis regarding the firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year. The crisis has engulfed the department and threatens to cut short Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's tenure.

"You have no idea," said one Justice official, "how bad it is here."

The fear that virtually any piece of communication will have to be turned over has paralyzed department officials' ability to communicate effectively and respond in unison to the crisis, as has the fact that senior Justice officials themselves say they still don't know the entire story about what happened that led to the crisis. So they are afraid that anything they put down on paper could be viewed as lies or obfuscation, when in fact, the story is changing daily as new documents are found and as the Office of Legal Counsel conducts its own internal probe into the matter.

The paralysis will affect the calculations that Gonzales must make this week as to whether he should stay or go. If Gonzales doesn't resign, there's little doubt that he will get few of his initiatives through for the rest of his tenure and that his people will spend months churning out documents at the behest of angry Democrats who will be investigating virtually anything that moves. But this could also give Gonzales an exit strategy, officials say. He could say that while neither he nor his subordinates did anything wrong, he has decided to resign for the greater good of the department and for justice at large.

whatever calculations gonzales is making about staying or going are irrelevant... the only way he will go is at george's behest, and, at this point, sending alberto packing is the LAST thing george wants to do... gonzales is george's firewall, the only thing standing between him and the criminal, unconstitutional goings-on in the department of justice for six-plus years... i think george ought to lay in a big, big stock of depends...he's gonna need 'em...

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