“You’re going to be up against people who have an opinion, a modem, and a bathrobe. All of my life, developing credentials to cover my field of work, and now I’m up against a guy named Vinny in an efficiency apartment in the Bronx who hasn’t left the efficiency apartment in two years.”

UPDATE: More Williams: “If we’re all watching cats flushing toilets, what aren’t we reading? What great writer are we missing? What great story are we ignoring? This is societal, it’s cultural, I can’t change it. We should maybe pause to think about it. Because like everybody else, I can burn an hour on YouTube or Perez Hilton without breaking a sweat. And what have I just not paid attention to that 10 years ago I would’ve just consumed?”

TPM Muckraker highlights a portion from this letter today from Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) to Alberto Gonzales:

Mr. Kelner’s briefing raised particular concems about Karl Rove, who according to press reports used his RNC accountfor 95% of his communications. According to Mr. Kelner, although the hold started in August 2004, the RNC does not have any e-mails prior to 2005 for Mr. Rove. Mr. Kelner did not give any explanation for the e-mails missing from Mr. Rove’s account, but he did acknowledge that one possible explanation is that Mr. Rove personally deleted his e-mails from the RNC server.

the AP reports.

UPDATE: “CBS brought the tumultuous weeklong crisis over racially insensitive remarks by the radio host Don Imus to an end late this afternoon when it canceled the ‘Imus in the Morning’ program, effective immediately. The move came one day after MSNBC, which has simulcast Mr. Imus’s radio program for the past 10 years, removed the show from the cable network’s morning lineup. The two moves together mean that Mr. Imus, who has been broadcasting his program for more than 30 years, no longer has a home on either national radio or television.”

UPDATE II: CBS’s statement.

On March 26, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) wrote a letter to White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten demanding “all contracts, subcontracts, and task orders between MZM, Inc. … and the Executive Office of the President.”

As ThinkProgress has reported, there is good reason to believe fired U.S. attorney Carol Lam was targeting the White House’s connections to MZM contractor Mitchell Wade, who pled guilty to paying more than $1 million in bribes to former Rep. Duke Cunningham. Despite no record of having ever received a federal contract, Wade’s firm received a $140,000 contract in 2002 to provide a system to screen the President’s mail.

In his letter, Waxman requested that the White House provide documents relating to the White House-MZM contracts as soon as possible, but in no case later than Friday, April 6. But the North County Times reports Waxman has yet to receive the information he requested.

“The White House response is clearly not adequate at this point,” Waxman said in a written response to questions from the North County Times.

On Friday, the White House gave its initial response to Waxman’s March request, with President Bush’s special counsel Emmet T. Flood saying there would be a delay.

“Once we are able to fully evaluate the scope and implications of the letter’s requests, we will soon provide your committee with an appropriate response,” Flood wrote.

Asked about the committee request Wednesday, White House spokeswoman Jeanie Mamo would only say, “We have advised members of Congress that we are looking into this matter.”

[...]

On Tuesday, Waxman wrote the White House, saying in no uncertain terms that he expects some answers.

“Mr. Flood did not provide any of the information or documents the Committee requested,” he wrote in the letter.

Waxman said he is willing to grant an extension, but that “any extension should be accompanied by a firm and expeditious schedule for production.” He noted that on Jan. 23, his committee asked DHS to provide it with documents on the Department’s $30 billion contract with Boeing to design and build a comprehensive border security plan. Fifteen days later, he received 1,800 pages in documents in response to the request. By contrast, Waxman noted, “The [MZM] contract is small and complying with the request should not be complicated.”

have turned down the position of war “czar,” according to CBS’s David Martin. He adds that the search for a war coordinator “is a confession that in the fifth year of the war in Iraq, the Bush administration still has not figured out how to harness all the agencies of the U.S. government into a unified war effort.”

In this afternoon’s press briefing, the White House press corps confronted spokeswoman Dana Perino about her previous misstatements regarding the White House’s use of RNC email accounts. On March 27, Perino claimed that there were only a “handful” of staffers with such accounts. Today, Perino claimed that her earlier statement was made despite her ignorance of what was actually going on. “Well, I didn’t know how many there were,” Perino said. “I grant you, it’s a very large handful.”

CNN’s White House correspondent Ed Henry then pressed her on why she had earlier stated that RNC emails had been archived for a very long time when the White House now claims that those emails have been lost. On March 27, Perino said RNC archiving was “something that was in place” for years. Today, she backed off that statement and said, “We have developed a better understanding of how the RNC archived or did not archive certain e-mails.” She refused to further elaborate.

Watch it:

Perino defended herself, arguing, “When I said a ‘handful,’ I was asked based on something that I didn’t know.” Apparently, Perino believes if you don’t know the truth, you’re allowed to make up whatever you want.

Transcript: Read more

From a press conference with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) earlier this afternoon:

QUESTION: (OFF-MIC) expecting more documents.

SCHUMER: Today.

QUESTION: Do you know how many (OFF-MIC)

SCHUMER: There’s supposed to be about a thousand pages of documents. It’s supposed to come about 4 or 5 o’clock. We know nothing about what’s in them.

QUESTION: Do you know whether they cover any of your redacted…

SCHUMER: We do not. We do not. We know nothing about what’s in them. We just know it’s a lot, and it’s coming in the late afternoon.

UPDATE: “A very senior source who has seen the latest batch of documents to be delivered to the Senate says Sen. Chuck Schumer is wrong in estimating that the Department of Justice will dump about 1,000 pages related to the U.S. attorney firings sometime between 4 and 5 p.m. EDT. As the afternoon drags on, it is looking more likely that the dump will slip to either very late Thursday or Friday.”