“I think there will be a criminal case that will come out of this,” said fired U.S. attorney John McKay in a meeting with Seattle Times journalists. “This is going to get worse, not better,” he added. McKay also described when he first became concerned that politics were creeping into the Justice Department:

McKay said he began to have concerns about politics entering the Justice Department in early 2005, when Gonzales addressed all of the country’s U.S. attorneys in Scottsdale, Ariz., shortly after he took over as attorney general.

“His first speech to us was a ‘you work for the White House’ speech,” McKay recalled. ” ‘I work for the White House, you work for the White House.’ ”

McKay said he thought at the time, “He couldn’t have meant that speech,” given the traditional independence of U.S. Attorneys. “It turns out he did.”

He looked around the meeting room and caught the eyes of his colleagues, who gave him looks of surprise at Gonzales’ remarks. “We were stunned at what he was saying.”

“Three Iraqi journalists and their driver were killed Wednesday in a drive-by shooting near the northern city of Kirkuk, the second attack against the country’s media in less than a week. … Not including Wednesday’s attack, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has recorded 101 journalists and 38 media support workers killed and 48 journalists abducted since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.”

Emily Bazelon argues for the political relevance of Rudy Giuliani’s famous mistreatment of his second wife. Ross Douthat responds with, among other things, a hypocrisy allegation: “I seem to recall a few conservatives – okay, maybe all of them – making precisely this argument about Bill Clinton without very many liberals joining the chorus, and I’m sure that Bazelon’s discovery of the character issue in Giuliani’s case has nothing to do with his party affiliation.”

But look, here, by the time the extent of Bill Clinton marital issues came to light in 1998, the man had been President of the United States for more than a few years, so it was hardly necessary to go searching around for hints and clues as to whether or not one would approve of his conduct in office. Indeed, my sense is that conservatives mostly regarded Clinton’s misconduct in this regard as a kind of synecdoche (or maybe metonymy — sorry, Mr. Glassman!) for an failed presidency. Most Americans, by contrast, viewed Clinton’s presidency as reasonably successful and his conduct vis-a-vis his wife, children, and Monica Lewinsky therefore not-especially-relevant to their judgments.

Giuliani, by contrast, is trying to run for president on an extremely hazy policy platform, has almost no relevant experience in public office (much less than, say, John Edwards or Barack Obama) since his signature accomplishments on crime are almost totally outside of federal authority, and, indeed, is running a campaign based on entirely on his character attributes.

“Finding fine speaking venues at graduation is never easy for late-second-termers, as President Bush is learning. Whereas he once spoke at Ohio State or the University of Texas, now he’s left with Florida community colleges or small schools in rural areas that are run by former aides.”

But it looks as if it won’t be smooth sailing Friday, even when Bush speaks at Saint Vincent College, a small Benedictine school in Latrobe, Pa., run by Jim Towey, former head of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives. [...]

Thirty current and former faculty members, in an open letter to Bush last week, said “in the spirit of Benedictine hospitality” they would “welcome” him to the campus “as we would any visitor” as 1,600 students graduate. And they said they will “welcome those who protest your visit” and hope the college doesn’t “turn them away” on Friday. [...]

Meanwhile, there are unconfirmed reports that Benedictine nuns from Erie may be going down to Latrobe to take part in some sort of protest.

Bill Donahue takes on Rudy Giuliani:

If helping pregnant women make choices is the supreme issue for Rudy Giuliani, then he should be able to document all the checks he’s written to support Crisis Pregnancy Centers—not just Planned Parenthood. If he can’t, it is logical to conclude that the only real choice he thinks is worthy of his money is the one which results in the death of innocent human beings. And that would make him a fraud.

Rudy v. Donahue is more-or-less the domestic politics equivalent of the Iran-Iraq War as far as I’m concerned; this is some delicious infighting. Not unrelatedly, K-Lo’s onto a key question here: Is Giuliani a Catholic?