Come this Sunday, Tony Soprano will be gone. Whether or not rival mob boss Phil Leotardo bumps off Tony in the final episode, the HBO series will be over. But Tony's spirit will live on...in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Let's review the recent news about Cheney. First, we learned he is keeping secret the logs recording who has visited his office. These records have been public until Cheney changed the rules last year. He wants meeting at his office to be covert. And today we learned that in 2004 Cheney pressured top officials of the Justice Department to approve a warrantless wiretapping program that could target American citizens. The problem was that Justice officials had concluded the program was illegal. (This is the dispute that led to the bizarre scene of then-White House chief of staff Andrew Card and then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales rushing to the hospital room where then-Attorney General John Ashcroft lay gravely ill and trying to force Ashcroft to reauthorize the program. Ashcroft said no.) Later, Cheney's office engaged in payback by blocking the promotion of one of the Justice officials who had raised concerns about the wiretapping program. And, of course, there's Scooter Libby. Cheney's former top aide was sentenced to 30 months in prison and slapped with a $250,000 fine because he lied to federal investigators to cover up his--and perhaps Cheney's--role in the CIA leak case.

Secrecy, revenge, criminal behavior--it's not HBO, it's the Bush-Cheney White House.

THE FAT MAN SINGS. How will The Sopranos end? Once upon a time, I thought the natural finale for the show would be for Dr. Melfi to kill Tony. Get it, therapy is lethal. And two seasons or so back, there was that stretch of tension--near-violent tension--between the conflicted shrink and her mob patient. But the penultimate episode seemed to resolve their on-again/off-again relationship. So here's my best guess of the moment: Paulie Walnuts murders Tony Soprano.

First, you have to ask, can executive producer David Chase resist the temptation to kill off one of the most interesting and well-developed television characters in years? Then again, Chase prides himself on not doing the predictable. Since it would be unpredictable for most producers to snuff out their lead character, we can expect Chase to do just that. But because that's what we expect, he might chose to do the opposite. But if we think he's so unpredictable he would do the predictable, then....In any event, if you select the Tony-dies option, the question is who pulls the trigger? A Leotardo henchman? Not much drama there. Paulie is the last member of Tony's main crew still alive. He was always the most weasely of the bunch. And Phil deliberately told his lieutenants not to kill him. Trying to outguess Chase is a mug's game, but I'm speculating (at least today) that the final words will be something like this, "Sorry, Skip. Good-byes are a bitch."

WHEN WILL LYING START TO COUNT IN '08 RACE? Paul Begala had a good gotcha after Tuesday night's GOP presidential race. He writes:

In a 2000 debate, Al Gore said that during wildfires in Texas he'd met with the director of FEMA. In fact, Vice President Gore had met with the deputy director of FEMA. Although I had been at the meeting as well, I didn't remember it either. But the press, spoon-fed by the Republican smear machine, used the misstatement to damn Gore as a "serial exaggerator."

So I expected the 600 journalists covering the GOP debate at St. Anselm's College to spank Mitt Romney when, in answering the first question of the night -- knowing what you know now, would you have invaded Iraq? -- Romney said that if "Saddam Hussein had opened up his country to IAEA inspectors, and they'd come in and they'd found that there were no weapons of mass destruction...we wouldn't be in the conflict we're in."

As Begala notes, Saddam had allowed WMD inspectors into Iraq in the fall of 2002, and these inspectors had not found anything prior to the invasion (though they said they needed more time to conclude that Iraq was WMD-free). The inspectors had to leave because of George W. Bush's invasion. Romney may have caught a break from the media because at this stage he's merely one of ten GOP contenders and not yet the nominee. But perhaps a questioner at a future debate will remember to ask Romney about this major-league whopper.

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE KIDS. There's been much tittering about the scores of letters sent to federal district court Judge Reggie Walton by friends of Scooter Libby who asked for leniency in Libby's sentencing. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Kissinger, Bolton, Perle, Matalin, Carville, Wieseltier, and many Washington notables did what they could. (See Rick Perlstein's take-out here.) The notes generally fell into one of two categories. Libby deserved a break either because (a) he had saved the United States from terrorists countless times or (b) Libby really, really is a good dad who loves his kids and even other kids. Some letters said both.

One of Libby's most ardent champions has been GOP lawyer Victoria Toensing, who has repeatedly made statements about the case (and about me) that are not only untrue but silly. (See here.) So I was mildly surprised when I read the testimonial letter she and her husband, Joe DiGenova, sent to Walton. It took the family-man route:

One incident stood out to us that we want to share with the Court. On a particularly rough trial day, Victoria approached Scooter at a break and invited him and Harriet [Grant, his wife] to come over for dinner as a social break from the pressure. One could tell by looking at Scooter's expression that he would have loved to do so. Yet, he immediately replied, "No, Harriet and I need to be with the kids. It's important we spend time with them now." We were so touched that in the midst of his ordeal, his priority was his family.

This priority reflects a man of deep commitment to those dependent upon him and to a set of values worthy of recognition by the Court. We respectfully urge the Court to impose a sentence of probation on this honorable and caring man whose history of valued public service is equally worthy of consideration.

I am sympathetic to the pain the Libby family has endured due to his actions and convictions. He has young kids; his wife once worked for the Democrats in the U.S. Senate. It's not easy to sit in a courtroom for months and watch someone else be judged, convicted, and sentenced to jail--even if he or she is guilty as charged. It's rewarding to see the system work as it should. But if you don't feel a twinge of sadness, check your soul.

That said, the Toensing testimonial is rather weak beer. Because Libby--who was facing the prospect of being forcibly separated from his kids for several years--preferred to see his kids rather than dine with Toensing and her husband, he deserved special consideration from Walton? Most non-sociopathic criminal suspects would make the same choice. Declining the dinner invitation from Toensing signified nothing special about Libby. What's striking is not Libby's desire to spend time with his kids but that Toensing couldn't come up with a better argument.

Posted by David Corn at June 7, 2007 11:42 AM