From the New York Times:

In his first weeks as defense secretary, Robert M. Gates repeatedly argued that the detention facility at Guant¡namo Bay, Cuba, had become so tainted abroad that legal proceedings at Guant¡namo would be viewed as illegitimate, according to senior administration officials. He told President Bush and others that it should be shut down as quickly as possible. [...]

Mr. Gates’s arguments were rejected after Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and some other government lawyers expressed strong objections to moving detainees to the United States, a stance that was backed by the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, administration officials said.

As Mr. Gates was making his case, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joined him in urging that the detention facility be shut down, administration officials said. But the high-level discussions about closing Guant¡namo came to a halt after Mr. Bush rejected the approach.

We need to shut down Gitmo. Here’s how to do it.

Faced with the likely passage of an Iraq withdrawal bill and the ongoing U.S. attorney purge scandal, the right-wing today is clinging to a silver lining: this afternoon, House conservatives used legislative tactics to delay a vote on legislation that would finally give Washington D.C. residents representation in Congress. (Read Matt Stoller for some background on the importance of this bill.)

Matt Drudge is leading the charge with the banner headline:

The usual suspects are weighing in: Wizbang says it’s “satisfying to watch them in complete disarray.” The Corner calls the delay “pretty embarrassing” for progressives. Michelle Malkin appeared on Fox News to announce, “The wheels have come off.”

But it turns out they spoke too soon. D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton has released a statement saying that she and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) have already found a way to evade the right wing’s legislative block. “We have a quick fix. Republicans have a sure defeat,” she writes.

Read the full statement: Read more

WSJ notes a new scale, created by blogger Lou Grinzo, that measures how delusional or detached from reality a person is. A 100 on the Inhofe Scale, Grinzo says, is commensurate with the sort of willful delusion he says is contained in Inhofe’s “greatest hoax” speech. “Just to be clear, this is a measurement of detachment from widely accepted reality, not a measure of how much the speaker disagrees with me,” Grinzo writes.

UPDATE: Al Gore shares his thoughts on his hearings yesterday on his blog.

UPDATE II: Inhofe even loses National Review’s John Podhoretz.

and would like to attend the presidential forum in person, we have some seats for ThinkProgress readers. RSVP here. If you can’t make it, we’ll bring the forum to your living room.

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow appeared on the morning talk shows on all the major networks and repeated his talking point that Congress “has no oversight responsibility over the White House.” A sampling of his statements:

There’s another principle, which is Congress doesn’t have the legislative — I mean oversight authority over the White House. [CNN, 3/22/07]

First, the White House is under no compulsion to do anything. The legislative branch doesn’t have oversight. [MSNBC, 3/22/07]

Congress doesn’t have any legitimate oversight and responsibilities to the White House. [Fox, 3/22/07]

But back when he was asked whether the conservative-led 109th Congress should be investigating members of the Executive Branch, he was singing a different tune:

QUESTION: What is the president’s opinion of a request by Republican leaders in the House to launch an investigation of Sandy Berger’s involvement in the removal of classified documents from the National Archives?

SNOW: There were questions last week, about investigations involving Republican members. Members of Congress have their own oversight obligations. They may proceed as they wish. They’re a separate and co-equal branch of government and I’m not going to tell them what they can and can’t do. [Briefing, 10/16/06]

Watch a compilation of Snow’s talking point:

More at TPM Muckraker, Crooks & Liars, and the Carpetbagger Report.

We’ve got some big news to announce. This Saturday, several 2008 presidential candidates — Hillary Clinton, Christopher Dodd, John Edwards, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson — will be attending the New Leadership on Health Care presidential forum in Las Vegas.

ThinkProgress will be covering the event live with exclusive streaming video of all the candidates.

Even better, we’ll be hosting what we think is the first-ever interactive candidate response round. As each candidate speaks, ThinkProgress readers will be able to react to their remarks and send in real-time follow-up questions. Did one candidate spark your interest? Did they say something controversial or just get their facts wrong? You’ll be able to ask the candidates follow-up questions as you watch them live. Every candidate will be asked a question from ThinkProgress readers.

So, here’s the deal: when you visit the site on Saturday morning, you’ll see two new features displayed prominently on the main page:

– A live streaming webcast of the presidential forum

– A form that allows you to submit a question to any/all of the candidates

We’ll have more details tomorrow, but we’re really excited about this event. Our health care system is in crisis. It’s the most critical domestic problem facing our country. We hope you’ll join us, and the 2008 presidential candidates, to talk about it on Saturday morning.

UPDATE: In order to watch the web stream on Saturday, you’ll need to download RealPlayer. If you don’t already have it, you can get it for free HERE.

Readers have probably noticed a certain lack of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign around here, but in partnership with Sam Rosenfeld I lay out the case against in its official form in the new issue of The American Prospect:

Liberal Democrats should want a nominee who is, in fact, a liberal. And liberals and moderates alike have should want a nominee who’s seen as a moderate by the median voter. Clinton, however, is a moderate who people think is a liberal. This is a terrible combination of qualities from almost every point of view — except, perhaps, for the faction of her advisers whose views are probably too right-wing to be associated with the Democratic presidential nominee, unless they can latch onto the one candidate both blessed and cursed with an undeserved reputation for liberalism. Well, bully for them. But liberals should open their eyes.

So, yes, I guess I’m off the Christmas card list.