(This is another pic taken by my spouse the train nut.  It's also what the Wilsons will be doing soon.  Very soon.)

News train!  Chuggity-chugging over hill and plain.
Brings the news to every lug.
Chuggity-chug, chuggity-chug, chuggitty, chuggitty,
chuggitty, chuggittty, chuggitty-chugging along.

There’s a bunch of whining wingnuts begging Bushie for a pardon;
A fake Obama scandal giving Klansmen such a hard-on;
A lively CPAC show for a studly male 'ho.
Get alooooong train! Get along.

Lotta interesting news this week, and not just from Feingold, Reid and Schumer throwing down the gauntlet to Bush with regard to the Iraq withdrawal.  Too much, in fact, for even the Mule News Train to carry it all.  But hop on and check it out anyway!

• Remember how Jane and Marcy, in their last PoliticsTV.com Libby trial video, called for John Conyers to take Fitzgerald up on his call for Congress to look into the material his investigation of the Plame case has turned up? Well, gueeesssss whaaaaat? No sooner had the words left their lips, than this happened:
  

  Aides to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Congressman John Conyers, D-Mich., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said they were engaged in discussions Tuesday about the possibility of holding immediate hearings and subpoenaing Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to provide details of his nearly four-year-old investigation, and the evidence he obtained regarding the role Vice President Dick Cheney and other White House officials played in the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson.  …

   […]

  An aide to Senator Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said Tuesday that the senator is still determined to investigate the flawed intelligence that the administration used to convince Congress and the public to back the Iraq war.

  The Levin aide said the senator will likely seek testimony from Libby, Cheney, and senior members of the White House who played a role in the Plame leak, and that it "makes sense" to fold the issues surrounding the CIA leak case into the hearings about pre-war intelligence since they overlap with the leak case.

  […]

  … Fitzgerald said he may be inclined to share the evidence he collected over the course of three years with lawmakers if they ask for his documents.

  At least one member of Congress has indicated that he will likely take Fitzgerald up on his offer. Congressman Maurice Hinchey, D-NY, who has led the effort among Democrats in Congress to expand the CIA leak probe, said the guilty verdict returned against Libby does not go far enough in settling questions surrounding Cheney's role in the case, and that he intends to call for a criminal probe to pursue charges against the vice president.

  Ahhhh.  And of course Waxman's got his own plans, including having Valerie Plame testify before Congress about all of this.  Music to my ears.

• Here's another nice news tidbit:  Democrats plan to a) fix the broken AMT by b) undoing a good chunk of Bush's 2003-free-money-for-rich-people tax cut scam.   Republicans, predictably, are whining.

• You call this "supporting the troops", George?  Axed US Attorney David Iglesias was essentially fired for (get this) being in the Reserves:
  

  Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY): One of the reasons that they said– that the Justice Department said– that you had a performance problem, was that you were an "absentee landlord".  Just to get the record clear here: isn't it true that you served in the Navy Reserve which required you to serve your country approximately forty days per year?

  Fmr. U.S. Attorney David Iglesias: That's correct sir.  In fact, I took my call from [Director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys] Mike Battle (the call where Battle informed Iglesias he was fired) ironically on Pearl Harbor Day as I was coming back from Navy duty in Newport, Rhode Island.  I'm required to serve at least 36 days per year. Sometimes I add a little extra duty so it probably averages out to 40, maybe 45 days of duty per year.

  Schumer: Didn't the Department know you were a Reservist when they recommended you for U.S. Attorney position in the first place?

  Iglesias: I'm very proud of my Navy service and it was on my resume– featured very prominently.

• Speaking of the scandal of the fired US Attorneys, a shout-out to excellent local Minnesota blog Minnesota Campaign Report for digging up The Strange Case of Rachel Paulose, who the Bush Junta and Norm Coleman tapped to replace longtime and respected US Attorney Tom Heffelfinger last year.
• In order to combat the right-wing bullfeathers brigade's lying out their butts about the Libby trial, Media Matters has put together a handy list of all the revived lies the GOP/Media Complex is pushing.  Read it, know it, love it and most importantly, USE IT.  Send it to friends and family.  Cite it in calls to radio and TV call-in shows.  Mention it in letters to newspapers and magazines.  You know what to do.

• By the way, Media Matters also has the goods on the GOP/Media Complex's efforts to invent a fake Obama "scandal" to go with the fake Clinton "Whitewater scandal" of the 1990s, where the only real scandal was how they showed themselves to be tools of and stenographers for the Republican Party.

• Something all the conservatives agitating for a pardon for Poooor Widdle Scooter ignore is that Bush would be violating guidelines and practices set down by his own Justice Department if he does pardon Libby.  

• Well, well, well.  Interesting how the homophobic conservative movement seems to love its self-hating gay male prostitutes and porn stars.  First James "Jeff Gannon" Guckert, now Matt Sanchez, king of the CPAC escorts.  (Oh, and now he's going the "liberals made me gay" route to explain his career.  Isn't that just extra-special?)

And that's all for now, as the News Train goes chugging away.  Drop a comment or two in the thread if you've got something the News Train missed — or if you just want to kick back and chat.  Chug chug chug chug!