Unfortunately, this does mean he's retiring, just that he felt that he doesn't need to listen to witnesses called by Democrats, and that therefor no-one else has to hear their testimony either.  So in the middle of today's hearing he picked up the gavel and left the room, shutting off the microphones while a Democrat Congressman was still speaking.

This was after an earlier altercation in the hearing when Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind) had acused Amnesty Internation of endangering American troops by calling Guatanamo a 'gulag' and Sensenbrenner had for awhile refused to allow the witness to respond.

If K Streeter are no longer calling the shots in the Democrat Party then they are worried that come 2006 or 2008 they will be out on their butts when the Dems come into power and owe Dean and the grassroots for getting there - the Dems may actually have to serve the grassroot' interests and not K Streets.  There is probably no clearer example of the current Dem leadership caving to K Street than Biden who whored himself out to the banking interests to help the GOP pass the egregious Bankruptcy bill.

Sadly/Ironically, being a centrist the four Dems I mentioned above are four of my leading hopes for getting the Dem nomination for President in 2008 (or maybe a bit later in Ford's case, he is still pretty young).