The Seattle Times reports tonight that a chairman of the Washington state Republican Party with ties to Karl Rove pressured U.S. Attorney John McKay to launch a criminal probe during the hotly contested 2004 governor’s race, which had been certified in favor of the Democratic candidate. The ex-chairman, Chris Vance, “said that he was in contact with the White House’s political office at the time.”

Vance said then-U.S. Attorney John McKay made it clear he would not discuss whether his office was investigating allegations of voter fraud in the election. He said McKay cut off the conversation.

“I thought it was part of my job, to be a conduit,” Vance, who now operates a consulting business, said in a telephone interview. “We had a Republican secretary of state, a Republican prosecutor in King County and a Republican U.S. attorney, and no one was doing anything.“

Vance’s revelation may be new evidence of a wider level of involvement by Karl Rove in the U.S. Attorney purge. Vance and Rove reportedly worked closely on state politics. The Republican gubernatorial candidate in 2004, Dino Rossi, was the candidate “Vance and Rove wanted,” the Seattle Times noted in 2005. Rove and Vance also reportedly worked to get Rep. Jennifer Dunn (R-WA) to launch a Senate bid.

McKay is a Republican and was appointed by President Bush. The alleged voter fraud he was being pressured to probe had already been investigated by prosecutors in his office and the FBI, who “never found any evidence of criminal conduct.” Nevertheless, he was pressured both by a GOP official and Rep. Doc Hastings’s (R-WA) office to convene a federal grand jury.

In emails released today, we learned that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ chief of staff Kyle Sampson wrote then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers in Sept. 2006 and identified McKay as one of five U.S. attorneys “we should now consider pushing out.” That same month, Miers called McKay directly interviewed McKay for a federal judgeship position and asked him to explain why he had “mishandled” the governor’s race. By December, McKay had been fired and denied the federal judgeship. Shortly afterwards, a Gonzales aide called McKay to offer him a deal: “you stay silent and the attorney general won’t say anything bad about you.”

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) has joined former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) in calling for Alberto Gonzales to step down.

UPDATE: Dan Froomkin weighs in:

No one would deny that one of the duties of the president of the United States is to place people of his choosing in key positions throughout the executive branch, including in key law-enforcement positions. [...]

But in law-enforcement jobs — such as the attorney general, the director of the FBI, and the country’s 93 U.S. attorneys — overtly partisan behavior is a more troubling problem. While the men and women in those positions serve at the pleasure of the president, it is also a critically important part of their job to remain independent.

That’s because it’s flatly un-American for the law to be used as a political weapon. It erodes public confidence in the justice system, and offends the American commitment to fairness. It’s the sort of thing that, quite properly, can lead to impeachment.

Why on earth would Alberto Gonzalez literally use the phrase “mistakes were made” with reference to sacking US Attorneys unwilling to play partisan politics with the law — is he trying to look guilty? Bitter, maybe, that he didn’t get that SCOTUS seat he thought he was in for?

In other unwise statements news, I haven’t gotten to this part of my review copy of Bob Shrum’s memoir yet, but even the chapter near the beginning about when Shrum was on the college debate team kind of makes him seem loathesome. And this is to say nothing of the man’s weird hatred of Jimmy Carter.

Media Matters reports that — of the sources cited in today’s NYT article on An Inconvenient Truth — at least four have records of misinformation on the issue. “Though three of these were identified as skeptics or as having expressed skepticism, in all four cases, their past statements or studies questioning global warming theory have been debunked or discredited by the scientific community — which [the author] did not report.” RealClimate and Grist offer thorough debunkings.

Emails released today show that Karl Rove’s deputy Scott Jennings was involved in the effort to purge Arkansas U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins in favor of Rove “protege” Tim Griffin, despite claims from the Justice Department to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) last month that Rove had “no role” in Griffin’s appointment.

“Tim said he got a call from Bud offering this idea,” Jennings wrote to Alberto Gonzales’ chief of staff Kyle Sampson in late August, “that Tim come on board as a special [assistant U.S. attorney] while Bud finalizes his private sector plans. That would alleviate pressure/implication that Tim forced Bud out. Any thoughts on that?”

“I think it’s a great idea,” Sampson responded.

The Justice Department made Griffin a special assistant USA in Arkansas the next month. Finally, in December, Griffin was made the U.S. attorney.

“Even among some Senate Judiciary Republicans, backing for Gonzales was tepid,” CQ reports:

“Appearances are troubling. This has not been handled well,” said John Cornyn, R-Texas. “But in Texas we believe in having a fair trial and then the hanging.”

Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions said he has had “a great relationship with the attorney general. But he’ll have to answer for this just like he does on other matters before us.”

Even more cryptic was Tom Coburn, R-Okla., when asked if he supports the attorney general. “I think we’ve got to have one.” This one? he was asked. “I didn’t answer that.”

An all-time low number of Americans who believe things are going well in Iraq. CNN: “For the first time since the Iraq war began, less than half of Americans believe the United States can win in Iraq, a CNN poll said Tuesday. Just 46 percent think the United States will win.”