White House in Full Flight

The White House is drowning. Here's a rundown:

• Conservatives are pissed about the Miers nomination. They see themselves as part of a 30-year long intellectual effort, and what Bush has done is appoint The Church Lady, ready to do her Superiority Dance on the bench. [WaPost] "Is she the most qualified person? Clearly, the answer to that is 'no,' " Trent Lott said on MSNBC's "Hardball," contradicting Bush's assertion. Their point is simple: they expected an conservative intellectual heavyweight equal to balancing the liberal muscle of Bader Ginsburg, and Miers is decidedly not. She is therefore highly vulnerable, if confirmed, to the well-grounded argumentation of Ginsburg, and so could be turned. Natch.
  
• The Senate is defying the White House to veto its defense bill, as Bush said he would, by passing on a 90-9 vote rules setting limits on interrogating detainees. Thanks for the spine, folks. [WaPost] McCain mourns "what we lose when by official policy or by official negligence we allow, confuse or encourage our soldiers to forget . . . that which is our greatest strength: that we are different and better than our enemies."
  
• Now that Judith Miller has testified, Fitzpatrick has said that this wraps up his investigation into the Plame affair, and his charge to investigate expires at the end of the month. He will signal today or tommorrow if he will obtain indictments, by naming targets of the Grandy Jury's investigation, expected to be Scooter Libby and/or Karl Rove. [reuters]
  
• Bush's body-man in the Senate, Bill Frist, is presently under SEC investigation for insider trading, and so is weakened in political standing. This, simultaneous with the loss of long-time Bush ally Tom DeLay in the House, leads to a congress whose reigns in the White House have been practically cut.
  
  Looking like a hard October for the Hizzuzis.