The New York Times reports on a meeting in Chicago hosted by Patrick Fitzgerald:

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales endured blunt criticism Tuesday from federal prosecutors who questioned the firings of eight United States attorneys, complained that the dismissals had undermined morale and expressed broader grievances about his leadership…

Several of the prosecutors said the dismissals caused them to wonder about their own standing and distracted their employees, according to one person familiar with the discussions. Others asked Mr. Gonzales about the removal of Daniel C. Bogden, the former United States attorney in Nevada, a respected career prosecutor whose ouster has never been fully explained by the Justice Department. …

Mr. Gonzales attended the Chicago meeting after abruptly cutting short a news conference in which he was asked about the dismissals and his own status. He reacted unemotionally to the criticism in the private session, responding that he had not previously heard of their specific complaints…

UPDATE: Josh Marshall has highlights from a GQ interview with purged New Mexico attorney David Iglesias, and Digby has details on a new attack ad on Iglesias airing on New Mexico radio.

At tonight’s Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner, Karl Rove said he likes to “tear the tops off of small animals” in his spare time, then rapped about it as “MC Rove.” Watch it:

At the same event, President Bush said of the U.S. Attorney scandal: “You know you’ve botched it when people sympathize with lawyers.” Watch the video.

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At the New Leadership on Health Care presidential forum this weekend, ThinkProgress asked Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) what his most urgent priorities would be if he were elected President.

“I think we’ve got to wind down the war in Iraq,” Obama said. “I think we’ve got to deal with creating a universal health care system. We’ve got to make sure we’ve got an education system that is actually making our children competitive as we go forward.” And he added we need to “deal with an energy situation where we are sending $800 million/day to some of the most hostile nations on earth and melting the polar ice caps in the process.”

“Those would be areas where I think any president — but certainly an Obama administration — would be focused on,” he said. Watch it:

We also asked Obama to share his views on the interplay between faith and politics. “It’s important the political process accommodates issues of faith, as long as we’re respectful of separation of church and state [and] as long as we enter into a faith debate with some humility and sense of tolerance for people who have a different notion of faith,” Obama responded.

Transcript: Read more

President Bush today renewed his threat to veto legislation that sets a time line for withdrawal from Iraq. In a press conference, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) responded:

Calm down with the threats. There is a new Congress in town. We respect your constitutional role; we want you to respect ours. This war must end. The American people have lost faith in the President’s conduct of the war. Let’s see how we can work together. This war is diminishing the strength of our military, not honoring our commitment to our veterans, and not holding the Iraqi government accountable.

President Bush now wants the debate to be about whether Congress will “fund the troops.” But both Senate and House bills provide the funds he requested. The real debate is whether Congress must endorse a war without end, and that is not an option.

appears to “clearly show that [Gonzales' ex-chief of staff Kyle] Sampson attempted to mislead Congress by proxy — that is to say, he gave false information to DOJ officials who were preparing to provide information to Congress.” That’s illegal. But Sampson says it isn’t true, and he’s testifying under oath tomorrow.

UPDATE: TPMMuckraker and Tim Grieve have more.

UPDATE II: ABC has a copy of Sampson’s opening statement tomorrow. He denies responsibility for not telling Justice Dept. officials about White House involvement in the scandal, and says others in the Department knew as much as he did.

He maintains that the decision by the Administration to ask for their resignations is a “benign rather than sinister story.” …

When controversy erupted and Congress began to ask questions about the US Attorneys Sampson admits the Department’s response was mishandled through an “unfortunate combination of poor judgments, poor word choices, and poor communication.” He offers an apology to the US Attorneys for what became a “ugly, undignified spectacle.”

He says that he resigned for mistakes made “honestly and in good faith”. He writes, “I failed to organize a more effective response to questions about the replacement process, but I never sought to conceal or withhold any material fact about the matter from anyone.”

He writes that while “others in the Department knew what I knew about the origins and timing of this enterprise” that none of them spoke up on those subjects while preparing Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty.

complaining about her immigration prosecutions may have violated ethics rules, CREW says.

The Washington Post’s Jim Hoagland reports that the Saudis recently rejected an offer to attend a White House state dinner with President Bush. Prince Bandar, “the Saudi national security adviser, flew to Washington last week to explain to Bush that April 17 posed a scheduling problem. ‘It is not convenient’ was the way it was put, says one official.”

UPDATE: One day later: “The king of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah, condemned the presence of American forces in Iraq as an ‘illegitimate foreign occupation‘ in a speech today, and said the withholding of aid to Palestinians should end.”