U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary

As Chuck Schumer predicted , today is proving to be a big one for the investigation into the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, as the former chief-of-staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testifies to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The former top aide, Kyle Sampson told the committee that Gonzales offered inaccurate testimony to Congress when he claimed not to have had a role in the discussion about firing the attorneys. He also said Gonzales was wrong when he said that inaccurate testimony offered by other senior Justice Department officials was a result of them not being sufficiently briefed about the terminations.

''I shared information with anyone who wanted it,'' Sampson said. When Schumer pushed Sampson as to whether that rendered Gonzales' statement false, Sampson said, ''I don't think it's accurate if the statement implies that I intended to mislead the Congress.''

In an interview on with the Observer on Tuesday, Schumer dismissed Sampson as a "longtime Republican Apparatchik."  read more »

Yesterday, I spent some time with Chuck Schumer down in his Washington office, and he predicted that while Alberto Gonzales will probably be forced to resign, the residue of the U.S. attorneys scandal will have some impact on the 2008 elections.

He's in for a busy week, as key witnesses testify before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Schumer predicted that Gonzales' former chief of staff will be a slippery witness and dismissed as "ridiculous" the terms the White House offered for a Rove and Miers testifying.

Sources in Schumer's office told me that subpoenas for the high level White House aides have already been authorized, though whether they will actually be issued is another story.

I also caught up with Bill Richardson during his busy trip to New York this week, and got an unexpectedly frank assessment of where he and his campaign are in relation to the Big Three.

--Jason Horowitz

Russ Feingold, heading into the Gore-space on Hillary's left, is also making his way onto her New York turf this Sunday with an address on the Patriot Act.

According to the release, the address will be at "Cardoza Law School."  read more »

By which the Judiciary Committee member presumably means Cardozo, which is named after a guy who was, after all, a justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Senator Charles Schumer may not have stopped the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, bu  read more »

Jim Jeffords' little stroll across partisan lines to independent status has got the Senate's knicker  read more »