More and more it would appear that this investigation is headed towards the office of the Vice President. From Newsweek, according to newly released portions of a judge's opinion Fitzgerald felt he could not charge former VP Chief of Staff "Scooter" Libby with violating a 1982 law banning the outing of a covert CIA agent, because he lacked sufficient evidence to prove that Libby was aware of Valerie Plame's covert status when he talked about her three times with New York Times reporter Judith Miller. This contradicts claims by the White House and White House apologists who have long held that Plame was not covert at the time of her outing. The new papers show Libby testified he was told about Plame by Cheney "in an off sort of curiosity sort of fashion" in mid-June - before he talked about her with Miller and Time magazine's Matt Cooper. See for yourself here.

More analysis of the eight newly unredacted pages here from emptywheel over at the Next Hurrah. See for yourself here.

Late last week we learned that Fitzgerald ran into a bit of a "snag", shall we say, when attempting to locate some emails for certain time periods in 2003 from both the Executive Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President as they were, for some reason yet to be explained, not "preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system." Odd, no? See for yourself here.

More bad news for the White House on the warrantless domestic spying front, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee Arlen Specter, on today's Meet the Press, said that the administration's legal argument is "very strained and unrealistic" elaborating further that "the issue was never raised with the Congress. And there is a specific statute on the books, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which says flatly that you can't undertake that kind of surveillance without a court order." Despite what other Senators might be saying, specifically the Chairman of other committees, Specter's opinion is really the one that matters right now and the White House knows it, which is likely why we heard from Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Pat Roberts just a couple of days ago. That's called misdirection, kids. See the Video for yourself here.

More from ABC News. See for yourself here.

From Newsweek, according to administration and Capitol Hill officials, in a closed-door Senate intelligence committee meeting last week, Steven Bradbury, acting head of the department's Office of Legal Counsel, told California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, when asked about the extent of presidential powers to fight al Qaeda, that he believed that the president could indeed order the killing of a suspected al Qaeda operative on US soil. Particularly discomforting considering that it was also the opinion of this administration that a US citizen could be labeled as an enemy combatant. So, if this administration were to get its way with the Patriot Act II, which according to section 501 would expand the definition of "enemy combatant" to all American citizens who "may" have violated any provision of Section 802 of the first Patriot Act, it would be reasonable to conclude (though I hope this a huge stretch on my part) that the president could in fact by-pass the courts, as he has no apparent misgivings about doing, and order the killing of a US citizen. Under past presidents I'd be hesitant to go quite this far, but this president has a history of pushing things to the very limits of acceptability, legality, and constitutionality. No super-secret program involving black helicopters and men in black, folks. Ma'an do I miss my wacko conspiracy theories. See for yourself here.

(UPDATE: Jeralyn from TalkLeft has more on the subject, this regarding a similar stance taken by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) on the president's authority to execute someone on US soil without so much as a Miranda warning, let alone the rest of the burdensome process, say like a trial or better yet indictment. See for yourself here.)

From RawStory, "moderate Senators on both sides of the aisle are quietly considering a range of options that would attempt at the very least to delineate the President's authority, if not roll it back." This "range of options" is said to include a constitutional amendment. Note to the fundies from the right, THIS WOULD BE WHAT CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS ARE FOR! See for yourself here.