Program! Program! Can't tell the Bush administration scandals apart without a program!!:

Attorneygate update: Alberto Gonzales' e-mails with Karl Rove have now been subpoenaed by Congress. A report came out last week that deposed Western Washington US Attorney John McKay may have been fired in part due to his "excessive" zeal in trying to find the person who assassinated Assistant US Attorney Tom Wales in 2001. Wales was also active in Washington Ceasefire, and apparently therefore finding his murderer was, um, not a priority for the NRAistas in the Bush administration. There's the Bushies for you. Prosecute absurd, trumped-up vote fraud charges = good. Investigate a political assassination = bad.

Meanwhile, the Justice Dept. Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility are investigating if Pat Robertson acolyte and former Gonzales aide Monica Goodling illegally considered political affiliation in reviewing candidates for career assistant prosecutors in the offices of interim or acting US attorneys. Just another day.

Over at the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Patrick Leahy has subpoenaed Rove's e-mails on Valerie Plame. The Department of Justice has until May 15 to comply. Don't hold your breath. Condoleezza Rice already announced last week that she won't comply with Rep. Henry Waxman's House subpoena on its Niger/uranium probe--and, to boot, Rice blocked the committee from interviewing a State Department nuclear analyst who had debunked the uranium claim before Bush's infamous State of the Union 16 words. Meanwhile, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern is charging that the forged memo that "proved" the Saddam/Niger connection leads to the doorstep of Cheney himself--and says he has the evidence to back it up.

Those were the headlines last week. But in the sleazy underbelly of the headlines, there was more:

A report came out that the Veterans' Administration gave huge bonuses, up to a quarter of their annual salaries, to officials who had turned in a budget $1 billion short of what was needed, cutting health care to returning Iraq and Afghanistan vets in the process. Heckuva job, Jim Nicholson; in case you're wondering whether Nicholson, the VA head, is another Bush-style political crony appointed to a position he wasn't familiar with or qualified for, no, he didn't raise Arabian horses in his previous job. He ran the Republican National Committee.

The Department of Commerce's Inspector General, Johnnie Frazier, is now being investigated by three separate agencies, one in Congress and two in the Executive Branch. Among the allegations: that Frazier engaged in questionable travel at taxpayer expense, sometimes over weekends accompanied by his grandchildren to cities where the IG has no offices; that he improperly arranged for a no-bid $150,000 contract to be awarded to a consulting company connected to a retiring employee from his office; and that he spent over $100,000 remodeling a conference room and on an aborted plan to reconfigure work spaces.

We're not done. Julie MacDonald, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, abruptly resigned last Friday, ending her reign of piscine terror a week before a House oversight committee was to hold hearings on accusations she violated the Endangered Species Act, censored science, and mistreated staff of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. A report to Congress said that McDonald broke federal rules and should be punished for leaking information on endangered species plans to industry lobbyists.

And, the Senate Homeland Security Committee announced it will hold hearings on foreign aid after Hurricane Katrina, after it was reported last week that of $854 million in help offered by other countries in the wake of the devastation, only about $44 million---one dollar in 20---went to disaster victims or reconstruction.

Did we mention that Randall Tobias, the Bush appointee overseeing all foreign aid and implementation of AIDS prevention programs--a man who'd been widely criticized for his obsession with abstinence-only programs---got outed as a client of an alleged DC prostitution ring? And that his defense was---this is the head of foreign aid, mind you---that he no longer used that escort service, that he used one with Central American women instead? You can't make this shit up.

And that was one week. Sure is fun watching the wheels come off the Bush administration. Shame about the last six years. --Geov Parrish