Senators Durbin and Specter were on Meet the Press yesterday to talk about the purge scandal and, to his credit, Tim Russert hammered home the newest revelations and put the big picture into context. Durbin was spot on as well.

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RUSSERT: If the attorney general is saying that these attorney—U.S. attorneys lost his confidence because of their performance-related reasons, then he obviously reviewed the cases, reviewed their situations, reviewed their work records and came out with this reason for their dismissal. That means he was intimately involved.

Specter's role in this scandal has flown under the radar and it's this area where Timmeh missed a crucial opportunity to put him in the hot seat. It was a staffer of Specter's that slipped the controversial provision into the Patriot Act that the White House was planning on taking advantage of. Senator Specter has a long history of being a gutless worm and should be exposed as such. His middle-of-the-road, "benefit of the doubt" attitude has abetted this administration's myriad crimes for far too long. I don't expect him to be a shrill partisan, but Gonzales and the White House have given us no reason to believe anything they say and should be treated with a great deal of skepticism.