The Washington Post adds some detail today about the connections between Republican Congressman Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff, the K Street kingpin who is reportedly in the final stages of negotiating a plea bargain with federal prosecutors.

Amid threats of political retaliation from vice president Dick Cheney, Republican senators Chuck Hagel, Arlen Specter and Olympia Snowe joined Senate Democrats in calling for investigations into the illegal electronic surveillance authorized by president Bush. Hagel, Snowe and Democrats Ron Wyden, Carl Levin and Dianne Feinstein all signed a letter requesting Senate intelligence committee hearings on the surveillance, while Specter, who chairs the Senate judiciary committee, reiterated his promise to hold hearings on the matter next month. Senate majority leader Bill Frist remained noncommittal pending his efforts to scuttle the hearings.

Gerald Ford famously remarked that an impeachable offense is “whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.” But even so relativistic a body as the Republican House should be able to see that this president, this administration, meets any standard for impeachment from any moment in history. They’re criminals. They’re scum. They should be in jail. The president and vice president should be impeached first and then jailed. They should be crushed so thoroughly that no one will ever again attempt to cheat and cheapen this country as they have done.

‘Twas the night before Christmas
and all through the house
every creature’d been tortured
including the mouse.

You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. Washington Post blogger (and doesn’t that sound odd) Jeff Morley posted an item on Wednesday about the shuttering of the State Department’s international media survey site, concluding with the suggestion that “U.S. officials still want to know what the world thinks of the United States. They just no longer care to share that information with the rest of the government or the American public.”

I’m going to do something out of character and offer up some good news. There have been a number of post-mortems on New York City politics which paint a very bleak picture for the Democratic Party. After all, the Republicans have managed to win 4 consecutive Mayor’s races - two of them by crushing landslides. […]

There have been some interesting recent developments in the CIA’s Italian kidnapping caper. The case came to light last June, when an Italian judge issued arrest warrants for 13 CIA agents for nabbing Egyptian Muslim cleric Hassan Nasr (aka ‘Abu Omar’) off a street in Milan on February 17, 2003, and shipping him, via an American airbase in Germany, to Egypt, where he was allegedly tortured. Egypt wanted Nasr, 42, because of his involvement in Jemaah Islamiah, an organization dedicated to establishing an Islamic government in Egypt. During a crackdown on Jemaah Islamiah in the early 1990s, Nasr fled Egypt and eventually received asylum in Italy in 1997.

National Journal columnist Charlie Cook is concerned that what he describes as a “crippled duck” president and a weakened Republican majority in Congress will create a leadership vacuum in the country. He asks what what will happen “if the world’s only true superpower drifts somewhat aimlessly for next three years or so, with no person or party in true control.” One possible answer is “nothing,” which could very well be a dramatic improvement over the last five years.

We can’t always give scandal, torture, theft and rock and roll the attention they deserve, so we accumulate short takes on the subjects at our sibling site, the Bad Crow blog. Here’s what’s been happening over there of late.

Reporting for Government Executive magazine, Jason Vest — Digby’s nominee for Judy Miller’s job at the New York Times — suggests that the bribery and corruption investigation that nailed Republican representative Duke “I’m on the side of the angels here” Cunningham may reach into the CIA as well.