On March 1, 2006, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales signed “a highly confidential order” delegating extraordinary new powers to his then-chief of staff Kyle Sampson, and his then-White House liaison Monica Goodling. The memo, first revealed by Murray Waas in the National Journal, gave Sampson and Goodling power to hire and fire most non-civil-service employees at the Justice Department.

Asked about the order in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee today, former Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, who resigned in May, said that he only became aware of it after it was reported in the press.

“I became familiar when there was a story on the subject in the National Journal,” said McNulty. “In the past month or so.”

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) then asked if he was “surprised” when he “first learned” that his authority to hire and fire within his own office “had been taken away” from him “and given to a couple of inexperienced political appointees.” McNulty said he was “struck” by the move.

MCNULTY: What struck me was the guidance on the control sheet, if you will, that said ‘this is to not be circulated through the office of the Deputy Attorney General.’ And I still don’t know to this day why that was the case.

JOHNSON: Were you disturbed because you were cut out of the loop, as the chairman indicated?

MCNULTY: Well, that definitely was a concern to me when I saw that. And I’ve heard Ms. Goodling’s explanation of it, I didn’t quite understand it. And I’m still not clear as to her position on that subject. What I understood it to be, it looked like it was something that wasn’t going through the Deputy’s office for recommendation to the Attorney General, as most of our documents do. I can’t say much more about it than that.

Watch it:

Despite the evidence that McNulty was purposefully “cut out of the loop,” Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has tried to throw him under the bus, claiming that McNulty had “most of the operational authority and decisions” at the Department of Justice.

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In sworn testimony to Congress in 2006, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said that there had “not been any serious disagreement” over President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program. But today, former Attorney General John Ashcroft — who almost resigned in protest over the program — told a House panel that in reality, the administration was “sharply divided over the legality of President Bush’s most controversial eavesdropping policies.”

appeals to prayer group for President Bush’s homophobic surgeon general nominee James Holsinger:

“Dear Praying Friends,

…[Holsinger] has been harshly condemned by pro-homosexual activists for a 1991 paper he wrote for the Methodist Church describing male gay sex as unnatural and unhealthy. … Holsinger is being subjected to character assassination for doing precisely what a Surgeon General should do, bring health facts to light. Pray that Dr. Holsinger will receive an honest and fair hearing from the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

Yesterday, the Center for American Progress and Free Press jointly released a statistical analysis showing that talk radio in the United States is dominated almost exclusively by conservatives.

Matt Drudge picked up the report, and it’s now being pilloried on the right. First out of the gate was National Review writer and radio host Mark Levin, who conjured a conspiracy theory linking the report on radio regulation to Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY):

The Center for American Progress and Free Press (yeh, right) is a sleazy operation. It was set-up by Bill Clinton’s impeachment chief of staff, John Podesta, and is run by him today. It is no coincidence that Podesta would issue this report now, as its purpose is to help Hillary Clinton by unleashing yet another assault on talk radio. [...]

The Center for American Progress and Free Press is an IRS designated tax-exempt 501 (C)(3) organization, based on its representation to the IRS that it is a non-partisan group operating in the public interest. My guess is that Podesta is in regular communication with the Clinton campaign and he or others may well be coordinating some of their activities on her behalf and on behalf of the Democrat Party.

Levin’s attack falls apart in his first sentence. The “sleazy” Clintonista “Center for American Progress and Free Press” doesn’t exist. There is no such organization.

The Center for American Progress, headed by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, is one group. Free Press is its own, distinct group. The report was a collaboration between these two progressive nonprofit organizations. Perhaps Levin can make clear whether he thinks Free Press is part of the Clinton conspiracy, or was duped into collaborating on the report.

Additionally, CAP does not coordinate with any campaign, and Levin offers no evidence — other than his “guess” — that the report’s “purpose” was to “help Hillary Clinton.” The real purpose of the report was to highlight the imbalance in talk radio and propose remedies.

ThinkProgress also spoke with Josh Silver, executive director of Free Press, who issued this response to Levin:

As executive director of Free Press, I was surprised to learn on the National Review Web site that my organization was part of the Center for American Progress. While we did work with CAP on this study of talk radio programming, as well as issues like Community Internet, a simple Google search would have showed that Free Press is an independent, nonpartisan organization. We don’t take money from any political party or corporation, and we have teamed up on different media policy issues with everyone from MoveOn.org and the Christian Coalition to the ACLU, the Parents Television Council and the American Library Association.

Last I checked, we were even working with The National Review itself on a campaign to stop unfair postal rate hikes that threaten smaller publications and opinion journals. If we can get those rate hikes reversed, hopefully NRO.com will be able to hire more fact-checkers.

“The Bush administration and corporate lobbyists long have sought sweeping ‘tort reform’ to limit lawsuits and massive jury awards — without much success. But in the last year, they quietly have been winning much of what they’ve wanted on a case-by-case basis in the Supreme Court. With a week to go in their term, the justices have handed down a dozen rulings that sharply limit the damages that can be won in lawsuits or make it harder to sue corporations.”

UPDATE: The New York Times reports that Roberts, who pledged to respect precedent during his confirmation hearings, has begun overturning precedents.

President Bush’s approval rating in a new Newsweek poll, a new low. “[A] record 65 percent disapprove, including nearly a third of Republicans.”