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The mystery over Porter Goss’ abrupt departure as DCI continues. I slept in way too late this morning and didn’t catch Tony Snow’s premiere appearance as White House press secretary, so I’m unaware if the administration provided any further information/explanation about Goss’ leaving. I strongly suspect they (the administration) didn’t. What else could be said, anyway? It will be a cold day in Hell before this, or any, administration comes out and says something like “Well, Porter and John just didn’t see eye to eye on Issue X, and since John’s The Boss, Porter has to go.” Nonetheless, Goss’ resignation sure created a firestorm of speculation over the weekend. One of the more interesting opinions comes from Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, a “panel” regular on Fox News Sunday:

BILL KRISTOL, WEEKLY STANDARD: I think Porter Goss was doing what he had to do. I think he was trying to carry out the president's agenda. He took a lot of heat from the permanent bureaucracy at the agency. He fired someone two weeks ago for leaking, which the president wanted, and his reward was to be fired.

And I think it's an outrage, and I think it's a terrible signal to conservatives anywhere in the State Department, Defense Department, CIA, anywhere in the federal government who are trying to carry out the president's agenda against the bureaucracy, that, unfortunately, the White House is not going to stand behind them.

Now we have...

WALLACE: Well, why do you think he was fired?

KRISTOL: Well, because I think Negroponte wanted him gone, and John Negroponte is a nice man, a former ambassador, foreign service officer, didn't approve of Porter Goss's aggressive attempt to get the CIA much more engaged in covert operations and spying.

I think the CIA will now become a mini State Department. Everyone will be happy. They will replicate the career bureaucrats who are in charge, and anyone who believes in aggressively carrying out President Bush's foreign policy is going to be worried now that he'll stick his head out.

The New York Times won't like it. Other people within the bureaucracy won't like it. And you won't get backed up by the White House.

While Kristol is one my favorite pundits (along with Charles Krauthammer, Christopher Hitchens and Victor Davis Hanson [links unrelated to Goss]), I seriously hope he’s wrong on this issue. Brit Hume, another FNS regular, disagreed with Kristol:

HUME: Chris, I think Bill has raised the essential question here, and that is who really won here. Did the softies who tend to be against the administration policy -- and there were plenty of them at the CIA. They leak like mad. Does the ouster of Goss represent a victory for them, or does it represent a victory for the real tough guy here, who may be Negroponte?

Bill's suggestion is, I think, that Negroponte represents sort of State Department thinking -- he, after all, was a career diplomat -- and that the real tough guy got kicked out, and the soft hearts won. I'm not at all sure that's true.

My sense is that Goss was trying to do the right things and that he simply ultimately wasn't able to. And I think it's an interesting question. If the administration was trying to install there the kind of thinking that you've gotten out of the State Department regarding the war on terror over the years, you wouldn't be looking toward Michael Hayden.

And, of course, this morning Dubya announced Hayden’s nomination to head the CIA. One hopes the housecleaning at CIA will continue, and even intensify.

Today’s Editorial at National Review Online urges the administration to make it perfectly clear the removal of leakers and active obstructionists to U.S. foreign policy is not over. I agree. Career bureaucrats don’t make policy, they implement it. If you, as a career CIA person, have serious policy disagreements, you make your point as forcefully as you can and argue for change. If you are over-ruled, you shut up, salute smartly, and carry on with the policy. You do not go running to the New York Times or the Washington Post in an effort to embarrass the administration or otherwise discredit the policies you disagree with. If you’re caught engaging in this sort of behavior, the best you can hope for is to be fired. Worst case, you go to prison. Deservedly so.

And how bad has it been at the CIA these past few years? See the NRO editorial for a very brief refresher course on just how obstructionist (and porous) the CIA has been in the recent past. This has got to stop.

As if we needed additional reminders of who, and what, we’re fighting, Captain Ed provides a graphic account of the sheer depravity and evil of the Islamofascists. Excerpt:

What is painfully and disgustingly clear is the cowardice of the "men" who brutally tortured Bahjat. The Times gives entire gruesome description of her last conscious moments. Without a doubt, the perpetrators used Bahjat to indulge the darkest impulses of their souls, sending her to death in an orgy of violence that defies description. The use of adjectives of any kind cannot possibly do justice to the horror of this murder.

It reveals the cowardice and evil at the heart of terrorists, no matter the cause. When a cruelty grows too banal for them, they come up with ways to increase the depravity. These sick and disgusting cowards use a woman in the most grotesque manner possible, and then send off the video to her family. Of course, their pride doesn't extend to revealing their identities on the video so that they can actually take responsibility for their cowardly cruelty. This is the measure of the terrorists that have declared war not just on us but on liberty wherever it appears. The terrorist groups are nothing but a club for craven sociopaths and psychopaths that use religion as an excuse to get their sick, twisted kicks.

Atwar Bahjat was an Iraqi TV journalist, and her death is so horrifying as to be unimaginable in civilized society. Beheaded slowly on video, after being tortured in the most brutal manner. And we should extend Geneva Convention “rights” to people who inflict horrors such as this on innocent journalists? Shoot them on sight. They deserve no better, and much worse, to be frank.

So. It’s hard to switch tracks after that last item, but I’ll try. Spent the best part of my day off watching Anaheim continue to dominate Colorado, followed by a closely played game between Edmonton and San Jose. One of the more entertaining aspects of play-off hockey is the emergence of a hot goalie, and Boy Howdy do the Ducks ever have one in Bryzgalov.

Bryzgalov hasn't allowed a goal in 229 minutes, 42 seconds, longest ever by an NHL rookie in the postseason, and fourth longest for any goalie. George Hainsworth tops the list with a stretch of 270:08 in 1930. Giguere is sixth on the list with 217:54 scoreless minutes in 2003.

Bryzgalov has said reading philosophers such as Socrates and Plato has helped him put things in perspective, and that he feels no pressure in goal because hockey is, after all, a game.

The man is an Iron Curtain, to steal a phrase. And…an intellectual hockey player? Makes me grin, that does! It doesn’t look like Colorado will ever be in this series, although they may steal one game at home. I’ll stand by my prediction of the Ducks in five.

San Jose beat Edmonton, 2-1, but the game could have gone either way. This looks to be a long and closely played series. Either team could win…it’s that close. No prediction here, but it should be obvious I hope San Jose wins. A San Jose win would set up a “Shuttle Series” in the Western Conference. And that’s just a little bit wrong…two California teams in a hockey conference final? That’s more than just a little bit wrong, it’s a lot wrong! {insert big ol’ grin here}