On "Face the Nation," Dick Cheney explained that Republicans "win elections when we have good solid conservative principles to run upon." So what happened to all the "good solid conservative principles" in 2006 and 2008? Did the candidates forget they existed? Has the supply of good solid conservative principles, seemingly so rich during the Reagan years, been dwindling? Did conservative politicians use up the last of their principles during the first half of the decade?

Dick Cheney is not the ideal spokesman for principles, conservative or otherwise. As practiced by Cheney, good solid conservative principles eroded our civil rights and our middle class, caused the needless deaths of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians, destroyed our economy, divided our people, and violated our laws. It's surprising that the Republican leadership hasn't invited its least popular leader to a quail hunt for a little chat about retirement.

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Maybe President Obama's "post-partisan unity schtick" is paying off, or maybe growing numbers of Republican legislators have come realize that they will remain an endangered species if they reflexively oppose every bill that Democrats support. Maybe there's no real difference between the schtick and political reality. Theorize as you will, growing numbers of House Republicans are finding reasons to support legislation that their party leaders oppose.

Thirty-eight House Republicans voted for a broad public lands bill that set aside millions of acres, 70 supported a national service bill and 70 supported new Food and Drug Administration curbs on tobacco. In recent days, 105 of the 178 House Republicans backed the credit card bill, and 117 the financial fraud bill. The mortgage legislation drew 60 Republican votes despite opposition by the top three Republican leaders and the senior Republican on the banking committee, who said it would make it more difficult for qualified homebuyers to get loans.

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In early March, Karl Rove reached an agreement with the House Judiciary Committee to answer deposition questions concerning the firing of U.S. Attorneys. When will that happen? Rove's lawyer anticipates that the deposition will take place next month.

Robert Luskin told TPMmuckraker that the Obama White House has been painstakingly sorting through the documents related to the firings, and is providing them to Rove and to the House Judiciary committee simultaneously.

As Jeralyn observed in her discussion of Rove's agreement to be deposed, the documents are likely to be more valuable than Rove's testimony. For those of you who are looking for a new drinking game, downing a shot every time Rove can't remember a key fact should lead to quick intoxication.

Update: Not so fast. Sen. Patrick Leahy is objecting.

The Democrats today handed Sen. Arlen Specter the chairmanship of the judicairy Committee's Crime and Drugs subcommittee.

The Crime and Drugs panel is Judiciary's busiest subcommittee, responsible for oversight of the Justice Department, federal prosecutors, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and drug control policy.

Dick Durbin, who currently holds the position, with switch to being Chair of the Human Rights subcommittee. To accomplish the deal, the Dems restored the human rights subcommittee, which was dissolved in January.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is hugely powerful when it comes to crime bills and judges.

Today, the scope of the Judiciary Committee’s jurisdiction has broadened to include terrorism, human rights, immigration law, intellectual property rights, antitrust law, and Internet privacy. The Committee is also tasked with considering the President's nominees for federal judgeships, including Supreme Court justices. One of the most important functions of the Committee is to provide oversight of the Department of Justice, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Jeff Sessions is a disaster for anyone hoping for justice refrom. He's a huge drug warrior, proponent of mandatory minimums. He's also a fierce opponent of immigration reform and any kind of path to citizenship for the undocumented. [More...]

Atrios writes:

The absurdity is obvious. Dirty f---ing hippies like me were horrified at the illegal warrantless wiretapping program and general expansion of the surveillance state in part because of the potential for political abuse . . . Jane Harman and her pal Joe Klein heaped scorn on dirty f---ing hippies for such crazy views. Harman gets caught up . . . though the release of the details of it might be evidence of the kind of political abuse possible in any surveillance program. Suddenly Harman is a staunch defender the right of People Like Jane Harman to not be wiretapped.

I return to my first principle of politics - pols are pols and do what they do. When primaried by Winograd in 2006, Harman became an opponent of warrantless wiretapping. Now, for more political reasons, she is an even more vehement opponent of it. Our reaction should not be to just have fun at Harman's expense - but to USE HARMAN - to forward OUR policy goals. I do not see what is so hard to understand about this.< UPDATE - Glenn Greenwald gets the absurd, but seems unwilling to try the useful.

Speaking for me only

Josh Marshall writes:

Make Him Work For It

I'm generally of the opinion that it's great to have anyone as a Democrat who will caucus with the party and support its candidates. . . .This has mainly informed my opinion about Arlen Specter . . . I guess my thought on this [is] it'd be nice to see him have to make some case to the Democrats in his state that he's worthy of their nomination . . .

My thought on this is EVERY POL should have to make the case that they should be the Democratic standardbearer for the post they seek - from Obama on down. Pols are not your friend. They are not the star players for your favorite sports team. They do what they do. They use you and we should use them -- to promote the issues you care about. I have always believed this. And I owe this thought to Markos Moulitsas, who first put it in my head. I wish he would return to his roots (Netroots pun intended) on this. To my mind, his work from 2002 on regarding that subject was his most important. I hope he returns to it.

Speaking for me only

Maureen Dowd recounts (apparently Cenk reported)

Condi Rice, who plans to go back to being a professor of political science at Stanford, got grilled by a student at a reception at a dorm there on Monday. . . . The student pressed [Rice] about whether waterboarding was torture.

“By definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Conventions Against Torture,” Ms. Rice said, almost quoting Nixon’s logic: “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

The entire video, from Reyna Garcia, is worth watching.

Speaking of Joe the Plumber ... the conservative faithful continue to manufacture evidence to support a charge once aggressively advanced by the McCain campaign: that liberal Democrats and NBC News have an elitist's disdain for ordinary people like Joe.

Next to pictures of Joe the P, Miss California, and a couple of teabaggers, Fox Nation yesterday asked the front page question: "Why Does NBC News Attack Average Americans?" The question linked to a short post that links to a muddled Newsbusters rant -- parsed nicely by News Hounds -- accusing David Schuster of advancing an "attack campaign" against Carrie Prejean, the "average American" who recently expressed her support of "opposite marriage" to Miss USA judges and a broadcast audience.

John Hawkins at Pajamas Media similarly complains of the "intrusive, public scrutiny" given to Joe the Plumber, "a private citizen who merely asked an inconvenient question to Barack Obama." Ordinary Joe and Average Carrie: icons of the real America who are unfairly attacked by liberals. Come again? [more ...]

Maybe the economy would benefit from a few more national holidays. Nobody frets when the economy is slow-moving on a holiday. Nobody worries that most workers are unproductive on a holiday. The stock market isn't open and therefore doesn't go down on holidays. Holidays are a time for the economy to take a deep breath and for the employed and unemployed alike to relax. Making Election Day a holiday would have the added benefit of increasing voter participation. Everyone wins with a bunch of new holidays. (Feel free to suggest your own new holiday in the comments.)

A proposed holiday that will find no support here is advocated by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, an organization "open to all male descendants of any veteran who served honorably in the Confederate armed forces." The Sons' mission is to vindicate the cause for which Confederate soldiers fought. The Sons "preserv[e] the history and legacy of these heroes, so future generations can understand the motives that animated the Southern Cause." The organization's website offers no obvious definition of the "Southern Cause," much less an explanation of the motives that animated it. [More ...]

Sarah Palin's winks and delegates' chants of "drill baby drill" were about all the McCain campaign could muster to excite voters. Today the Republican vision of oil rigs drilling offshore, in the Alaskan wilderness, in national parks, and maybe even in your backyard seems a bit myopic.

The number of rigs actively exploring for oil and natural gas in the United States fell by 10 this week to 945, down nearly half from a year ago. ... A year ago, the rig count stood at 1,839. The U.S. count is down 53 percent since the end of August as weak energy demand has hampered oilfield activity.

It may be time for the GOP's overpriced go-to-guy, Joe the Plumber, to come up with a catchy phrase to replace "drill, baby, drill." What will it be? "God, baby, God"?

A new poll by ABC-Washington Post finds increased support for: legalizing marijuana, same-sex marriage and a path to citizenship for the undocumented.

The poll data is here.

What it means, according to WaPo:

Republicans may not be able to rely on social issues as they try to rebound against a popular president and increasingly dominant Democratic Party.