Not much news really on the Buttercheeks front.

He’s been caught in a lie again, but it’s hard to get excited about that any more, really. (I stand ready, though, to go to BOLD ALL CAPS any time he’s found to have uttered a meaningful truth in his congressional testimony.)

Documents indicate eight congressional leaders were briefed about the Bush administration’s terrorist surveillance program on the eve of its expiration in 2004, contradicting sworn Senate testimony this week by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

The documents underscore questions about Gonzales’ credibility as senators consider whether a perjury investigation should be opened into conflicting accounts about the program and a dramatic March 2004 confrontation leading up to its potentially illegal reauthorization.

A Gonzales spokesman maintained Wednesday that the attorney general stands by his testimony.

At a heated Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, Gonzales repeatedly testified that the issue at hand was not about the terrorist surveillance program, which allowed the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on suspects in the United States without receiving court approval.

Instead, Gonzales said, the emergency meetings on March 10, 2004, focused on an intelligence program that he would not describe.

Gonzales, who was then serving as counsel to Bush, testified that the White House Situation Room briefing sought to inform congressional leaders about the pending expiration of the unidentified program and Justice Department objections to renew it. Those objections were led by then-Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey, who questioned the program’s legality.

“The dissent related to other intelligence activities,” Gonzales testified at Tuesday’s hearing. “The dissent was not about the terrorist surveillance program.”

“Not the TSP?” responded Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y. “Come on. If you say it’s about other, that implies not. Now say it or not.”

“It was not,” Gonzales answered. “It was about other intelligence activities.”

A four-page memo from the national intelligence director’s office says the White House briefing with the eight lawmakers on March 10, 2004, was about the terror surveillance program, or TSP.

The memo, dated May 17, 2006, and addressed to then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert, details “the classification of the dates, locations, and names of members of Congress who attended briefings on the Terrorist Surveillance Program,” wrote then-Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte.

It shows that the briefing in March 2004 was attended by the Republican and Democratic House and Senate leaders and leading members of both chambers’ intelligence committees, as Gonzales testified.

Schumer called the memo evidence that Gonzales was not truthful in his testimony.

“It seemed clear to just about everyone on the committee that the attorney general was deceiving us when he said the dissent was about other intelligence activities and this memo is even more evidence that helps confirm our suspicions,” Schumer said.

Frankly, what else do you expect once the President makes it clear that no member of his administration will ever be prosecuted for contempt of Congress? Guys like Buttercheeks are going to go to Capitol Hill and have themselves a little fun. The media can harp all they want about the open contempt with which the Senate Judiciary Committee treated Buttercheeks. The fact remains that he had the last laugh. He’ll always have the last laugh.

Think Progress is still giving it the old college try, though, with headlines like “Gonzales Contradicts Prior Statements, Confirms Existence Of Other Spying Programs”.

Older, wiser people chuckled softly to themselves when they read that. The exuberance of youth! “Confirms” indeed! Let’s recognize clearly that when it comes to NSA surveillance programs, Buttercheeks is nothing if not a pendulum. When there are no consequences for lying — yes, JimC, I said lying — there’s no reason at all why you can’t have some fun, and oscillate back and forth between two exactly opposite statements.

Today’s testimony contradicts what Gonzales had said previously. In June, Gonzales claimed that both he and Comey were referring to the same domestic spying program. “Mr. Comey’s testimony related to a highly classified program which the president confirmed to the American people sometime ago,” he said.

Now here’s why you should always click on the links that the management helpfully provides. If you click on that last link — the one inside the quote — it takes you to a June 5th Think Progress story with the headline: “Gonzales Contradicts His Sworn Testimony About Bush’s Warrantless Spying Program”.

You see the pattern, right? The thing about a pendulum clock is that it doesn’t go “tick-tock”, it goes “flip-flop”.

Or maybe the pendulum metaphor is the wrong one? Maybe Russian matrioshka nesting dolls is the right metaphor? By the time he’s done — and that won’t be for a good long while, it looks like — Think Progress will have a perfect little sequence of nested “contradicted his own previous sworn testimony” headlines.