"Wall of Separation"
The conservative myth that PBS is some kind of hotbed for liberalism isn't true, but to see the network go out of its way to prove its conservative bona fides is disconcerting.
Two months ago, PBS gave Richard Perle a whole hour to repeat discredited neocon arguments about Iraq and the Middle East, including the notion that Saddam Hussein had a working relationship with al Qaeda, and the bizarre argument that Osama bin Laden's "network has been destroyed." As Media Matters noted, Perle's PBS special "made a series of assertions about the Iraq war that have already been shown to be false."
It appears that PBS is going down a similar road this month, with a special on religious liberty called "Wall of Separation."
The "wall of separation" is a metaphor deeply embedded in the American consciousness. Most Americans assume that the First Amendment prevents the mixing of politics and religion. The freedom of religion clauses protect individuals from the entanglement of religion with government and secure the right to freely exercise religious faith. America is a religiously pluralistic culture guided by a secular government.
But what would surprise most Americans is the discovery that this is not what the Founding Fathers intended when they established the nation and wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights. In fact, they had a radically different interpretation of the role of religion in state and federal governments.
Uh oh. This reads a bit like a pamphlet from Focus on the Family. In fact, "Wall of Separation" is a production of Boulevard Pictures, which explained on its website that this PBS special will explain that the Founding Fathers had "a radically different definition" of religious liberty than what we have today, and that "the modern understanding of the role of religion in the public square is exactly the opposite of what the Founders intended."
If this is starting to sound to you like religious right rhetoric, we're on the same page.
As my friends at Americans United for Separation of Church and State found, there's reason to be skeptical about this new PBS special and those who put it together.
When Corporation for Public Broadcasting Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson, a close Karl Rove ally, took over PBS a few years ago, he told the Association of Public Television Stations along with officials from the CPB and PBS that they should make sure their programming "better reflected the Republican mandate."
I think we're seeing the results of Tomlinson's agenda.
--Steve Benen
Lott on radio
In case you missed it, Trent Lott had one of the classic lines of the immigration debate this week.
Comments by Republican senators on Thursday suggested that they were feeling the heat from conservative critics of the bill, who object to provisions offering legal status. The Republican whip, Trent Lott of Mississippi, who supports the bill, said: "Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem."
I see. A far-right senator believes the "problem" with the policy discourse is far-right radio for a far-right audience.
Keep in mind, this wasn't a stray comment for Lott, who seems to have been thinking about this. The other day, the Washington Post quoted Lott saying, "I'm sure senators on both sides of the aisle are being pounded by these talk-radio people who don't even know what's in the bill."
You mean right-wing blowhards like Limbaugh can rile up a large audience based on nothing but demagoguery? And that conservative audience will bombard Hill offices with whatever they last heard on the radio?
Welcome to our world, Trent.
--Steve Benen
NSLs
In many ways, it was the scandal that got away. In March, we learned that Bush Justice Department, more specifically the FBI, was engaged in widespread, illegal misuse of "national security letters" (NSLs).
Using NSLs, the FBI has the power to obtain secret information about Americans -- including phone calls, internet visits, even credit ratings -- whether they're suspected of wrongdoing or not. Officials can probe personal information without the consent, or even knowledge, of a judge.
There are, however, some laws and internal Justice Department regulations to regulate how the NSLs are obtained by law enforcement officials. As it turns out, the FBI violated these laws. What's more, while DoJ officials claimed they didn't realize the agency was ignoring the NSL safeguards, the truth was that their own lawyers had been warning them about abuse, but officials ignored the concerns.
This week, however, the Washington Post ran a front-page piece explaining that the illegal abuse at the FBI is bigger, more widespread, and more scandalous than anyone outside the DoJ realized -- an internal audit found more than 1,000 abuses while reviewing 10% of NSL investigations since 2002. If the statistical sample is representative, we’re looking 10,000 instances of FBI agents obtaining information about Americans that they could not legally receive.
When this controversy first emerged in March, the problem drew bi-partisan criticism, but was quickly forgotten. Even after FBI Director Robert Mueller conceded that the bureau had been breaking the law, there was far more interest in the scandal surrounding purged U.S. Attorneys, and the FBI mess was quickly brushed off the front page (and the political world's radar).
But in light of a little-noticed court ruling the day after the Post article, we'll likely learn quite a bit more about this controversy, too. (thanks to reader R.S.)
Just one day after a news that an internal audit found that FBI agents abused a Patriot Act power more than 1,000 times, a federal judge ordered the agency Friday to begin turning over thousands of pages of documents related to the agency's use of a powerful, but extremely secretive investigative tool that can pry into telephone and internet records.
The order for monthly document releases commencing July 5 came in response to a government sunshine request by [the Electronic Frontier Foundation], which sued in April over the FBI's foot-dragging on its broad request.
Something to keep an eye on.
--Steve Benen
Iran divides Bush gang
Just two weeks ago, Condi Rice insisted that the entire Bush administration is absolutely united behind a single policy when it comes to Iran. Never mind all those rumors about Cheney's team actively circumventing the president's team in order to instigate a U.S. conflict with Iran, Rice said, everyone is on the same team: "The president of the United States has made it clear that we are on a course that is a diplomatic course. That policy is supported by all of the members of the cabinet, and by the vice president of the United States."
Two weeks later, Rice's comment almost appears quaint.
A year after President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced a new strategy toward Iran, a behind-the-scenes debate has broken out within the administration over whether the approach has any hope of reining in Iran's nuclear program, according to senior administration officials.
The debate has pitted Ms. Rice and her deputies, who appear to be winning so far, against the few remaining hawks inside the administration, especially those in Vice President Dick Cheney's office who, according to some people familiar with the discussions, are pressing for greater consideration of military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.
Steve Clemons' report from late May about the "race currently underway between different flanks of the administration to determine the future course of US-Iran policy" appears more and more accurate all the time.
And while the administration's factions continue to maneuver for position, Iranian officials are in the midst of the most intense crackdown on its people in a generation.
The recent detentions of Iranian American dual nationals are only a small part of a campaign that includes arrests, interrogations, intimidation and harassment of thousands of Iranians as well as purges of academics and new censorship codes for the media. Hundreds of Iranians have been detained and interrogated, including a top Iranian official, according to Iranian and international human rights groups. [...]
"The current crackdown is a way to instill fear in the population in order to discourage them from future political agitation as the economic situation begins to deteriorate," said Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "You're going to think twice about taking to the streets to protest the hike in gasoline prices if you know the regime's paramilitary forces have been on a head-cracking spree the last few weeks."
Cheney and Lieberman want a war, Rice and Europe want diplomacy, and Ahmadinejad wants to crush any hints of dissent, while ensuring that Iranians don't hear a peep about any diplomatic discussions between Iran and the West.
Stay tuned.
--Steve Benen
Lieberman on Reid
Joe Lieberman has decided to join the GOP Smear Machine, which kicked into high gear this week when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid offered some fairly mild criticism of outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace during a conference call. From a radio show in Connecticut:
Q. There was a big flap yesterday about some comments made by Harry Reid concerning Gen. Petraeus, and the outgoing Peter Pace, saying they were incompetent, basically. Is that useful, and do you know that to be true or not... It's generally being reported in a lot of places.
LIEBERMAN: I don't know what Harry Reid is up to. I was very upset, even offended, by what he said about General Pace and General Petraeus. Look, you call General Pace incompetent? That's abs - this is a man who has devoted his entire life to the Marine corps, the service of our country, defense of our country.
Hmm, the president fired Gen. Pace, after he devoted his entire life to the Marine corps, the service of our country, defense of our country. Did Lieberman find that offensive? Put it another way -- which is more "upsetting" to Lieberman, a senator's mild, one-sentence criticism of a general's judgment, or the president firing that general in the midst of a war?
Lieberman wasn't quite through:
Q. Why is he doing this? Why is Reid doing this?
LIEBERMAN: I have no idea. Then to say that Petraeus is out of touch? I mean, Harry Reid in Washington says David Petraeus, who's in Baghdad, away from his family, heroically trying to rally our forces and succeed over in Iraq... that he's out of touch? I mean, it's just - the danger here - my colleagues who have been opposed to the war have said "we're opposed to the war, but we support our troops." But when you start to attack the top two generals, you know, that's... that's wrong.
That's been the standard right-wing line for a couple of days now -- if you disapprove of a general, then you're necessarily anti-military and deserve to have your patriotism questioned. Yesterday, the Republican National Committee issued a statement saying that Reid "attack[ed] our military." Conservatives online are following along, insisting without reason that Reid made "anti-military slurs."
Since when is it heresy to question the competence of military leaders? Pace's tenure has, at times, been rocky. His relationship with congressional leaders has, at times, been awkward. For that matter, Petraeus' judgment has come under question of late. There need not be a rule that military leaders must remain criticism-free at all times.
Indeed, if generals must be exempted from criticism, and those who spend their lives in military service should not be questioned, why is it that John McCain offered some harsh words, in public, for the last general to command U.S. troops in Iraq? Opposing Gen. George Casey's confirmation as the Army's chief of staff, McCain cited the general's "unrealistically rosy" assessments and "failed leadership" and told him: "I question seriously the judgment that was employed in your execution of your responsibilities in Iraq. And we have paid a very, very heavy price in American blood and treasure because of what is now agreed to by literally everyone as a failed policy."
Was this outrageous, too? Did conservatives condemn McCain for levying a personal attack on a general in a time of war?
Or is it more likely the case that Republicans and Lieberman are desperate to manufacture scandals, whether the facts support them or not?
--Steve Benen
OSC investigation into Rove's political affairs intensifies
In April, the Office of Special Counsel launched what the LA Times described as a "broad investigation into key elements of the White House political operations that for more than six years have been headed by chief strategist Karl Rove." The OSC, generally a fairly obscure federal investigative unit that reviews Hatch Act violations and charges of discrimination in the federal workforce, suggested the probe would encompass quite a bit, including the U.S. Attorney purge, missing White House e-mails, and the Bush gang's efforts to politicize presidential appointees.
"This is a big deal," Paul C. Light, a New York University expert on the executive branch, said of OSC's plan. "It is a significant moment for the administration and Karl Rove. It speaks to the growing sense that there is a nexus at the White House that explains what's going on in these disparate investigations."
We haven't heard too much about the investigation since, but ThinkProgress reports that things are moving right along.
Eighteen agencies have been asked by the Office of Special Counsel to preserve electronic information dating back to January 2001 as part of its governmentwide investigation into alleged violations of the law that limits political activity in federal agencies.
The OSC task force investigating the claims has asked agencies, including the General Services Administration, to preserve all e-mail records, calendar information, phone logs and hard drives going back to the beginning of the Bush administration. The task force is headed by deputy OSC special counsel James Byrne.
Why 18 separate federal agencies? Because Karl Rove's office has been awfully busy. From April:
White House officials conducted 20 private briefings on Republican electoral prospects in the last midterm election for senior officials in at least 15 government agencies covered by federal restrictions on partisan political activity, a White House spokesman and other administration officials said yesterday.
The previously undisclosed briefings were part of what now appears to be a regular effort in which the White House sent senior political officials to brief top appointees in government agencies on which seats Republican candidates might win or lose, and how the election outcomes could affect the success of administration policies, the officials said.
Oddly enough, the day before that report was published, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) delivered a sweeping indictment of the White House's political tactics in a speech at the Brookings Institution. "Instead of promoting solutions to our nation's broad challenges, the Bush Administration used all the levers of power to promote their party and its narrow interests," Emanuel explained. He added that the Bush gang lives by a "guiding principle... insinuating partisan politics into every aspect of government."
A White House spokesperson responded that Emanuel's conclusions sounded like something from "the National Enquirer," and accused Emanuel of "creating grand conspiracy theories that have no basis in fact."
Funny, the Bush gang isn't saying that anymore.
--Steve Benen
Snow on prosecutors
Tony Snow stuck to the White House line on March 15 when describing the U.S. Attorney purge:
"[W]hat the President has -- the Department of Justice has made recommendations, they've been approved. And it's pretty clear that these things are based on performance and not on sort of attempts to do political retaliation, if you will."
As The Daily Show's Jon Stewart explained this week, after showing a clip of Snow's quote, "That was three months ago. Three months later, a dozen subpoenas, six hearings ... thousands of released e-mails, it turns out that their performances were actually pretty good. And all signs are now pointing to political motivations. I wonder how the White House is going to reconcile this apparent discrepancy?"
Which leads us to Snow's spin from this week:
Q: Okay, but at the beginning of this story, the President, you, Dan Bartlett, others said on camera that politics was not involved, this was performance-based.
MR. SNOW: That is something -- we have never said that.
Snow does realize that people record these press briefings, right? He understands how easy it is to check when he insists "we have never said that," doesn't he?
It's almost as funny as when White House officials tried to convince reporters that the administration has "never" had "a stay-the-course strategy."
I can almost understand the Bush gang lying; I just wish they were better at it.
--Steve Benen
When Iraq resembles a 'Mad Max' movie
Steve Fainaru highlights today one of the most important stories of the war in Iraq that gets a fraction of the attention it deserves: private contractors from companies like Blackwater, which have been engaged in parallel "surges" of their own.
Private security companies, funded by billions of dollars in U.S. military and State Department contracts, are fighting insurgents on a widening scale in Iraq, enduring daily attacks, returning fire and taking hundreds of casualties that have been underreported and sometimes concealed, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials and company representatives.
While the military has built up troops in an ongoing campaign to secure Baghdad, the security companies, out of public view, have been engaged in a parallel surge, boosting manpower, adding expensive armor and stepping up evasive action as attacks increase, the officials and company representatives said. One in seven supply convoys protected by private forces has come under attack this year, according to previously unreleased statistics; one security company reported nearly 300 "hostile actions" in the first four months.
There was one part of Fainaru's piece that stood out for its anecdotal significance.
Holly vowed he would never again use unarmored vehicles for convoy protection. He went to his primary shipper, Public Warehousing Co. of Kuwait, and ordered a change. PWC hired ArmorGroup, which had armed Ford F-350 pickups with steel-reinforced gun turrets and belt-fed machine guns.
Other companies followed suit, ramping up production of an array of armored and semi-armored trucks of various styles and colors, until Iraq's supply routes resembled the post-apocalyptic world of the "Mad Max" movies.
Nothing says "progress in Iraq" like comparisons to a post-apocalyptic action film in which a desert area plunges into anarchy, with roving bands of well-armed militias struggling to maintain order.
--Steve Benen
This week's local muck all-star: Ed Jew of San Francisco... well, of Burlingame.
--Paul Kiel
What happens when the film industry runs up against the wrong Republican power lobbyist (i.e. Jack Abramoff)?
--Paul Kiel
Russert on FNC
Democratic presidential candidates decided quite a while ago that there's no upside to legitimizing the Republicans' Fox News Channel by participating in one of its debates. The response has been predictably bitter -- and consistent -- from the right.
Fox News chief Roger Ailes said, "The candidates that can't face Fox, can't face Al Qaeda." Joan Vennochi parroted the line in the Boston Globe, writing, "If you can't face the bad boys of Fox News, how can you face the bad boys of Iraq or Iran?"
Now, NBC's Tim Russert is getting in on the game.
COLMES: That's why -- you know, candidates of both parties should come on this show. They don't. Democrats don't want to go on with him; some Republicans don't want to come on with me. I think that's wrong. And I think Democrats make a mistake not allowing a debate to take place on the FOX News Channel.
RUSSERT: It's a TV show. If you can't handle TV questions, how are you going to stand up to Iran, and North Korea, and the rest of the world?
While I'm delighted to see so many media personalities compare Fox News to the world's most dangerous regimes, the suggestion that Democratic candidates are somehow afraid of a partisan news network is pretty silly.
The point, which I'd hoped was obvious by now, is that Dems (accurately) perceive Fox News as a partisan outlet, with a Republican audience, and with an agenda contrary to Democratic policies. As E. J. Dionne recently put it, "I am an avid reader of conservative magazines such as National Review and the Weekly Standard. But if these two publications teamed up to sponsor a Democratic debate, would anyone accuse Edwards, Obama and Clinton of 'blacklisting' if the candidates said, 'no, thanks'?"
Digby recently summarized the broader point nicely.
What the Democrats are saying is that unlike George W. Bush they aren't dumb enough to legitimize the enemy's propaganda.... [I]t's a waste of time. FOX is a partisan Republican network and the Democrats are trying to get Democratic primary votes (who do not and will not watch FOX for any reason.) They might as well be holding the debate in Dick Cheney's office. The vast, vast majority of Fox's audience are older, white, male right-wingers, hard core 28 percenters who would rather stick needles in their eyes than vote for a Democrat. It's ridiculous to think Democrats have any chance of persuading the audience of a network whose most popular show stars a man who says this:
O'REILLY: OK, I think it's a small part, but I think it's there. On the other side, you have people who hate America, and they hate it because it's run primarily by white, Christian men. Let me repeat that. America is run primarily by white, Christian men, and there is a segment of our population who hates that, despises that power structure. So they, under the guise of being compassionate, want to flood the country with foreign nationals, unlimited, unlimited, to change the complexion -- pardon the pun -- of America.
Mr. Russert, steering clear of such nonsense has nothing to do with an ability to "stand up to Iran and North Korea."
--Steve Benen
I highly recommend this post by MJ Rosenberg on the backstory behind the Hamas takeover of Gaza.
--Josh Marshall
Bartlett on Bush
White House Counselor Dan Bartlett, who recently announced his departure, reflected on his tenure and his boss on CNN the other day. (via Tim Grieve) Bartlett’s perspective was so odd, I initially thought he was kidding.
"[T]he good thing about this president -- and I think this is the reason why he was re-elected, is that, when he's finished here, and at the same time I'm finished here in a couple of weeks, I can look in the mirror and say, I think we did what was best. I think we looked at all the issues. We tried our best to do the right thing for the country.
"And I think the president will have the same mindset when he returns to Texas at the end of his presidency. And at the end of the day, that's all you can expect.
"You may not always agree with him. But I think he's demonstrated that he's doing something -- the things that he is doing, however bold or aggressive or wrong-headed that some people think they are, he's doing what he thinks is best for this country." (emphasis added)
I can just imagine the 2009 headlines: "George W. Bush: He failed, but it wasn't on purpose."
--Steve Benen
Obama talks about the absence of his father in eloquent Father's Day weekend speech. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Happy Hour Roundup.
--Greg Sargent
BREAKING: Yet another U.S. attorney purge casualty at the Justice Department.
Michael Elston, the chief of staff to the deputy attorney general, is resigning, the AP's reporting.
Update: More here. Thanks for the memories.
--Paul Kiel
It's an overstatement to call Mike Gravel a minor Democratic presidential candidate. But it seems that he's finally found a way to set himself apart from the pack: by crafting the most befuddling campaign ad in history.
His campaign spokesman explained to us the intent behind the ad, in which Gravel stares silently into the camera lens for a full minute, then walks off into the distance, pausing only to hoist a rock into a lake: "It's interpretational."
Reader interpretations of Gravel's ad are welcome.
Update: TPM Reader HS sees Gravel's opus as an existential statement on pop culture:
The key to the ad is the person in the background with the Members Only jacket (I think that is what it is.) It is a homage to the final scene in The Sopranos. The ad, like Gravel's campaign, has no point because life is pointless.
--Paul Kiel
AP: "In his first public comments on the Bush administration's surprise decision to replace him as chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace disclosed that he had turned down an offer to voluntarily retire rather than be forced out."
--Josh Marshall
Dallas may become the first of the top ten largest US cities to elect an openly gay mayor.
--Josh Marshall
Can't say I'm surprised exactly.
According to a 2005 complaint submitted to the DOJ's inspector general's office, voter suppression kingpin Bradley Schlozman was purging female minority lawyers from the appellate section of the Civil Rights Division -- each of whom had been hired under Democratic administrations -- and replacing them with what he called "Good Americans".
--Josh Marshall
An email we've obtained shows that the Obama campaign is spreading a negative (and ultimately false) story to reporters about Bill Clinton.
Update: Here's a dispiriting postcript to this whole affair.
--Greg Sargent
The pieces of the Duke Cunningham case are still coming together.
Tommy Kontogiannis, the international financier who bribed Cunningham by overpaying for his old yacht, has pleaded guilty to corruption charges.
--Paul Kiel
M.J. Rosenberg on America's unfortunate unintended contribution to Hamas' victory.
--Andrew Golis
This is fun. Romney is facing new charges that he flip-flopped on stem-cell research -- but this time, his own campaign's to blame for it.
--Greg Sargent
Hillary's campaign manager predicts Obama will outraise her this quarter. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Morning Roundup.
--Greg Sargent
Justice Department opens investigation into British defense contractor accused of paying bribes to Saudi Prince Bandar.
--Paul Kiel
Today's Must Read: the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division under Bush, a shift in priorities you might say.
--Paul Kiel
The work continues.
The Bush/Gonzales Justice Department begins proceedings to purge voter rolls in North Carolina using trumped up claims about potential vote fraud.
This is of course in the pattern of earlier DOJ efforts to sue to have rolls purged in other swing states.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, we've obtained a tape of the controversial Reid conference call with liberal bloggers.
Yes, he did say that Pace is "incompetent." The controversy still seems overblown. But he did say it. Take a look.
--Greg Sargent
Two more bloggers on conference call with Harry Reid say in interviews with us that they didn't hear him describe General Pace as "incompetent" or disparage General Petraeus, as reported in The Politico.
--Greg Sargent
Oh, good. According to a 2003 Army manual for the 101st Airborne, Arabs are "reluctant to accept responsibility" and aren't so good with time constraints. So much for timetables.
--Paul Kiel
Today The Politico reported that Harry Reid disparaged Generals Pace and Petraeus in a conference call with liberal bloggers. Conservatives jumped on the story, and Tony Snow even used it to bash Reid today.
But now three people on the conference call have told us in interviews that they didn't hear Reid say any such thing.
Update: Chairman of the Republican Party joins the fun, blasts Reid over Politico story.
--Greg Sargent
Rudy Giuliani takes indirect swipe at Bush, says we're lacking "strong, bold, aggressive leadership."
--Greg Sargent
Tony Snow: Bush fights on the front lines.
Late Update: Here's a transcript of the exchange at today's White House Press Briefing:
Q I have one follow-up. Are there any members of the Bush family or this administration in this war?MR. SNOW: Yes, the President. The President is in the war every day.
Q Come on. That isn't my question.
MR. SNOW: If you ask any President who is a Commander-in-Chief --
Q On the front lines --
MR. SNOW: The President.
--Ben Craw
Ready the pardon pen!
From the AP: "A federal judge said Thursday he will not delay a 2 1/2-year prison sentence for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a ruling that could send the former White House aide to prison within weeks."
--Paul Kiel
Jerusalem Post announces it will stop its bizarre practice of sending out Rudy's fundraising mail under the paper's name.
--Greg Sargent
Hans von Spakovsky, Bradley Schlozman's former tag team partner on the voter suppression cause at the Civil Rights Division, went before a Senate panel yesterday. And wouldn't you know it, it turns out that he just isn't responsible for the stuff that happened there. The former chief of the voting rights section disagrees.
--Paul Kiel
Yesterday we showed you Part 1 of our conversation with Al Franken. In today's episode of TPMtv we bring you Part 2, in which the Senate candidate from Minnesota expounds on Iraq ...
--Ben Craw
Gen. Petraeus, perhaps giving a peek at what he'll be telling Congress in September about Iraq, proclaims that he's seen "astonishing signs of normalcy" in the country.
--Paul Kiel
Reed Hundt lays out the winning platform for an anonymous third party candidate.
--Andrew Golis
Edwards to introduce plan to dramatically change the way pharmaceutical drugs are patented and marketed. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Morning Roundup.
--Greg Sargent
Today's Must Read: hold on to your mouse -- a new FBI audit found widespread abuse in agents' secret demands for communications data.
--Paul Kiel
Bush at 29%, Congress at 23% in new WSJ/NBC poll. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Happy Hour Roundup.
--Greg Sargent
Rudy slams Bill Clinton as soft on terrorism -- even though the same Rudy said Clinton shouldn't be blamed for this a mere nine months ago.
--Greg Sargent
This one goes down in the annals of all-time greatest witness dodges in a congressional hearing.
Here's GSA Chief Lurita Doan saying that it all comes down to the verb tense.
House reform committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) ended the hearing by calling on Doan to resign.
--Paul Kiel
Today's subpoenas to the White House are just the start of a long, winding road.
--Paul Kiel
State Dept.'s Nick Burns: "Irrefutable evidence" Iran is arming the Taliban.
Sec. Def. Bob Gates: Iran kinda maybe arming the Taliban.
--Josh Marshall
Rudy Giuliani, when asked why there was no mention of Iraq in his speech yesterday on what he would do as President:
"That's in the hands of other people."
--Greg Sargent
Al Franken is running for Senate in the state of Minnesota. And as everyone knows, the path to U.S. Senator from Minnesota goes through TPM World Headquarters. In today's episode of TPMtv, Al makes the requisite stop by the office, and we talk with him about his potential future opponent (Sen. Norm Coleman), his highly evolved fundraising methods, and the single most adorable thing he's ever heard said in congress ...
--Ben Craw
Struggles of GOP fundraisers reveal that Republican confidence in Bush is in a "state of collapse." That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Morning Roundup.
--Greg Sargent
Judiciary committees subpoena former White House counsel Harriet Miers, former Karl Rove aide Sara Taylor.
The timing has to do with emails released last night that provided even more evidence of White House involvement in the U.S. attorney firings.
--Paul Kiel
Today's Must Read: what's needed to cure Iraq's ills? Why, according to a U.S. general, yet another Iraqi surge to complement the U.S. surge.
--Paul Kiel
Sounds like Barney Frank and I are on the same wavelength when it comes to Mitt Romney (quote grabbed by TPM Election Central's Eric Kleefeld) ...
"The real Romney is clearly an extraordinarily ambitious man with no perceivable political principle whatsover. He is the most intellectually dishonest human being in the history of politics."
Sounds about right.
--Josh Marshall
Last week, Prince Bandar, the powerful former Saudi ambassador to the U.S., was implicated in a kickback scheme with a British defense conglomorate. Now, it appears, the money trail from London to Riyadh leads through Washington D.C.'s most corrupt bank.
--Paul Kiel
Swampland's Ana Marie Cox asks Joe Klein some tough questions in a new podcast. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Happy Hour Roundup.
--Greg Sargent
Look out! Another voter suppression player from the Justice Department is set to testify before a Senate committee tomorrow: Hans von Spakovsky. Here's our rundown.
--Paul Kiel
When I sat down at my email this morning there was a weird email in my inbox.
The 'from' field said "Jerusalem Post" and the 'subject' line was "A Message from Rudy Giuliani". Sure enough they were sending out his fundraising pitch. Here's our report.
--Josh Marshall
A couple weeks ago Drinking Liberally, a nationwide political and social organization where liberals and progressives gather in bars to socialize and talk politics, celebrated the 4th anniversary of its founding. In today's episode of TPMtv, we report from the flagship chapter at Rudy's Bar and Grill in Hell's Kitchen on what the group represents and how it affects the progressive movement in general ...
Late Update: For the full, unedited versions of all of our interviews at Drinking Liberally, click here.
--Ben Craw
Joe Trippi and the Edwards campaign respond to Edwards adviser Mudcat Saunders' assertion that unnamed liberal bloggers should "go to Hell."
--Greg Sargent
Is the failure to stall the Iraq War dragging down the new Dem-controlled Congress?
A new poll finds that Congress' approval rating is at its lowest in a decade -- and that less than one-third of liberals approve of the job Congress is doing.
--Greg Sargent
Voter suppression kingpin Schlozman 'clarifies' testimony to the senate. More soon.
--Josh Marshall
Some choice words from Eugene Robinson, a regular oasis of non-Bush hagiography on the WaPo oped page ...
That was a wonderful reverse-Borat moment Sunday, with the joyous townspeople of Fushe Kruje yelling "Bushie! Bushie!" and Albania's prime minister gushing over the "greatest and most distinguished guest we have ever had in all times." The crowd pressed in for autographs, photographs, a presidential peck on the cheek. Years from now, in his dotage, Bushie will feel warm all over when he recalls those magical hours in Albania. How they adored him!Outside of greater Tirana, however, the president's stock as an apostle of freedom continues to fall -- and rightly so. Even as Albania swooned, the rest of Europe was digesting a blue-ribbon report issued Friday about the abduction, secret detention and abusive interrogation of suspects in Bush's "war on terror."
--Josh Marshall
Edwards adviser who riled up the netroots yesterday issues an apology. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Morning Roundup.
--Greg Sargent
Not that it would have altered the final result. But one of the reasons for the relatively low vote tally in favor of the Gonzales no-confidence resolution was that presidential candidates Biden, Dodd and Obama didn't bother to show up.
Brownback and McCain didn't make it either. But then McCain seldom votes at all these days.
--Josh Marshall
Thinking outside the box.
In 1994 the US Air Force looked into the possibility of creating a non-lethal 'gay bomb' which would breakdown unit cohesion in opposing armies by spraying them with a chemical that would spontaneously make them into homosexuals.
How quickly it would take for the mystery chemical to make the opposing soldiers gay is not clear. But presumably it would have to be pretty fast. No period of sexual confusion or questioning.
--Josh Marshall
The Times has an article about how computer techies are developing such sophisticated software that they're now increasingly able to fool the 'captcha' tools we fill out at various sites.
Captchas are those annoying widgets that ask you to type in a squiggled word or series of letters in order to prove that you're a real live person and not some spambot trying to break through a security layer or to fill a comments forum with spam. We actually use them at TPMmuckraker to keep spam out of the comments.
This interested me because I'd already seen signs that technology was overcoming these captcha programs, but in a funny way.
Of late, I've had several captcha fill-ins I was asked to type in where I actually had a difficult time figuring out what the letters were. And I'm human. Really.
Have you had this too?
Late Update: TPM Reader PHB has some additional thoughts on this matter at his blog. And he actually seems to understand the technology.
Later Update: Here's Microsoft's new approach. You have to determine which pictures are cats and which are dogs.
--Josh Marshall
So senate Republicans 'blocked' a Gonzales no-confidence vote. Didn't we use to call this a filibuster? Like maybe a couple years ago?
--Josh Marshall
I was just reading this article from the Associated Press about the new steps the NYPD is taking to screen for commercial trucks that might be used in terror attacks -- with conventional explosives, radioactive material for dirty bombs, even chlorine which has become a weapon of choice of late in Iraq. Since I and my family live in Manhattan, this is a subject of real interest to me. And it's reassuring to the extent it sounds like the NYPD is on top of scanning for radioactive materials being brought into the city.
But the experience of reading that article put me in the mind of an email I received late last week from an acquaintance who's involved in counter-terrorism policy. This person wrote to take me task, gently, but take me to task nonetheless for what he felt was the 'dismissive' approach I have taken on the site to the threat of homegrown domestic terror. And as evidene he pointed to the posts I did about the JFK bomb plot over the last couple weeks.
Now, just to give a little more information. This isn't some Fox News whack job 'terrorism expert' ranting at me. This is someone who comes out of the Democratic policy world and would probably call himself a fan or at least a regular reader of the site.
And I confess that every time at the beginning of one of these new plots is discovered I feel a certain unease. I don't want to be seen pooh-poohing a real threat and a very serious issue, which of course it is. And it's certainly not my intention to imply that the police shouldn't be scrutinizing and rolling up plots even when the plotters seem like whackjobs who couldn't screw in a light bulb. Intentions to kill hundreds of people are plenty for me.
In the final analysis though the criticism doesn't add up for me. There's no denying the fact that the administration, often the prosecutors and always the media are in a tacit conspiracy of nonsense to take virtually nonexistent or purely notional 'plots' and fool everyone who doesn't read the details into thinking that a major terrorist plot has been foiled. I don't see how we can remain sane or balanced as a society, or maintain our equilibrium in the face of the threats we do face without simply calling these things as we see them. The little lies, the avoiding saying the obvious for some larger purpose, is just too corrosive. We can lampoon the nonsense and take the threat seriously at the same time.
--Josh Marshall
Ouch. This new LAT poll is not good for John McCain. Among Republicans nationally he's fighting for 3rd place with Mitt Romney down at 12%. (Romney has 10%). Giuliani has 27% and the not-yet-running Fred Thompson is at 21%.
On the Dem side it's Clinton 33%, Obama 22%, Gore 15%, Edwards (8%). However, Obama does better in the head-to-heads against Republicans than does Hillary.
Here's a question I have. As the Times article puts it, "Republicans antsy for a conservative standard-bearer in the presidential race have begun to rally behind Fred Thompson." It's been widely noted over recent days that Thompson's pro-life position seems to be of quite recent vintage.
But let's open the scope of the question up a bit. I remember Fred Thompson from when he was in the senate. And I never thought of him as a down-the-line conservative, at least not relative to the rest of the senate GOP caucus. So aside from the fact that he's now saying he's down the line pro-life it really doesn't surprise me that he had a kinda sorta position on the issue back when he ran for senate in the mid-90s. He always struck me as a bit more of a libertarian type Republican.
Sure, he's conservative compared to Giuliani on most social issues. And for all his toadying over the last three years too many party Republicans just don't like McCain. And my point here isn't to say he's a 'moderate', whatever that might mean. But isn't issue here that Thompson just looks presentable -- in the sense that he can talk the GOP no-nonsense hocum like the best of them -- and compared to the crop of jokers on offer, that's plenty for most 'conservatives' to sign on?
--Josh Marshall
Pervez Musharraf has been the linchpin of US policy not only for Pakistan but for much of the War on Terror. But in the US intelligence community and in Pakistan there's a growing belief that Musharraf's days in office are numbered.
--Josh Marshall
An adviser to John Edwards sets off a blog-brawl by telling the netroots to get lost. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Happy Hour Roundup.
--Greg Sargent
CNN does Rudy Giuliani a favor by sprucing up his anti-terrorism resume for him.
--Greg Sargent
Todd Gitlin and Jo-Ann Mort remember philosopher Richard Rorty, 1931-2007.
--Andrew Golis
Judge Robert Bork: torts for me but not for thee.
Bork, after a career advocating tort reform, is suing the Yale Club of New York City for $1 million plus punitive damages for failing to provide adequate staging for the dais he had to mount to give a speech at the club.
He slipped and fell, injuring his head and leg.
--Josh Marshall
Near as I can tell the DOJ and the White House are still refusing any comment on Karl Rove's alleged role in siccing the DOJ on former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman (D-AL).
If you see any press reports of other journalists posing the questions, let us know.
--Josh Marshall
Remember this?
"The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
This week at TPMCafe, we've got the inside story of how these sixteen words went from a forged Italian letter to the President of the United States' State of the Union. Peter Eisner and Knut Royce, co-authors of The Italian Letter: How the Bush Administration Used a Fake Letter to Build the Case for War in Iraq, are joining us at TPMCafe's Table for One to share the story.
--Andrew Golis
Missed the Sunday chat shows? Not to worry. We survey the state of the war (and Joe Lieberman's call for war with Iran) through the prism of the Sunday morning talk shows in today’s Sunday Show Roundup edition of TPMtv ...
--Ben Craw
This is an out of the way article. It's on A2 in today's Post. But it may be the important news reported in the paper today. According to the article, under pressure from Congress, the CIA is moving to reduce its dependence private contractors, who now make up roughly one-third of the CIA workforce. There's a separate and very important question of how the use of such contractors affects the legality and accountability of intelligence work. But purely on a budgetary level the numbers are quite telling. According to the article an investigation revealed that a government civilian employee runs the Agency around $126,500 a year while an outside contractor, doing the same work, runs about $250,000. And the key point is that most of the 'contractors' are actually Agency employees who 'resign' mid-career and then more or less immediately come back as contractors at twice the cost to the government.
Some of that money likely goes to the analysts and agents who have themselves become contractors. But I'd be confident that the lion's share goes to the companies they go to work for, building in an unnecessary and costly layer of cost which has the only net result of fattening some CEO's pocket.
It's also an invitation to corruption. If you look at the Duke Cunningham and several of the related scandals, they were largely about ex-intel officers leaving government work, setting up a company to do what they were doing on the inside and then hiring their colleagues away from the intel agencies and then hiring them back as contractors. It's a slow hollowing out of the government's capacity and these outside companies compete by buttering up corrupt members of Congress for intel earmarks that force the government to buy their services.
The big question in my mind is whether a similar crackdown will take place in the Pentagon where these practices and this sort of waste is at least as prevalent.
--Josh Marshall
Today's Must Read: The Senate is expected to hold a symbolic vote of no-confidence against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales tonight, if Democrats can get enough Republican support to bring the resolution to the floor.
--Laura McGann
New February 5th glut of primaries upends the strategies of the GOP Presidential candidates. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Morning Roundup.
--Greg Sargent
Over at TPMmuckraker, Spencer Ackerman has gotten a copy of the Council of Europe's report on the CIA's secret detention facilities (aka "black sites", "secret prisons" ...) and he's sharing his findings here.
We've posted the actual report here.
--Josh Marshall
Powell on Gitmo
As Kevin Drum noted, Colin Powell's description of what should be the U.S. policy towards Guantanamo Bay was clear, concise, and right.
"If it was up to me, I would close Guantanamo. Not tomorrow, but this afternoon. I'd close it," he said.
"And I would not let any of those people go," he said. "I would simply move them to the United States and put them into our federal legal system. The concern was, well then they'll have access to lawyers, then they'll have access to writs of habeas corpus. So what? Let them. Isn't that what our system is all about?"
He added, “[E]very morning I pick up a paper and some authoritarian figure, some person somewhere, is using Guantanamo to hide their own misdeeds,” Powell said. “[W]e have shaken the belief that the world had in America’s justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open… We don’t need it, and it’s causing us far more damage than any good we get for it.”
Now, was that so hard?
--Steve Benen
‘With Democrats, you really have to hone your arguments’
The now-infamous K Street Project, created by congressional Republicans to dominate Washington's powerful lobbying industry, is obviously long gone. It started unraveling a bit last year, but the election of a Democratic House and Senate sealed the deal.
Roll Call reported the other day that the "legacy" of the Project, of course, lives on. Democrats aren't creating their own parallel initiative (indeed, the Dems' lobbying reform proposals explicitly ban any similar effort), but after years of hardball tactics, K Street is the only part of Washington in which Republicans maintain a majority.
The result is an awkward environment -- Republican lobbyists are completely lost in trying to figure out how to function in a Democratic Congress. Their perspective provides a good illustration of why having Dems run Congress actually makes a difference.
Several Democratic and Republican lobbyists agreed GOP consultants often get it wrong with Democrats because their corporate pitch is such an easy sell in Republican offices, which already are ideologically sympathetic to businesses' concerns.
Meeting with Democrats, some Republicans neglect to factor in a much wider array of constituencies that hold sway with the new majority, including labor, environmental and consumer groups.
"Republican lobbyists are used to walking into an office and just saying, 'I'd like you to do this,'" said one Republican operative who regularly lobbies across the aisle. "With Democrats, you really have to hone your arguments, and you really have to sell them on policy." (emphasis added)
In previous years, in Tom DeLay's Congress, corporate lobbyists had it easy. Their clients had a wish list, and the GOP majority was anxious to deliver.
Now these lobbyists are finding that when they ask the Democratic majority to do something, those darned liberals want reasons and stuff. They ask pesky questions, such as, "Why?"
No matter how frustrated rank-and-file Dems get with Dems on the Hill, it's worth remembering that when it comes to running Congress, there is a difference between a Democratic majority and a Republican one.
--Steve Benen
Military Envisions Longer Stay in Iraq
For all the talk about the administration embracing the "Korean model" for a long-term presence in Iraq, Thomas Ricks looks at the future from the military's perspective.
U.S. military officials here are increasingly envisioning a "post-occupation" troop presence in Iraq that neither maintains current levels nor leads to a complete pullout, but aims for a smaller, longer-term force that would remain in the country for years.
This goal, drawn from recent interviews with more than 20 U.S. military officers and other officials here, including senior commanders, strategists and analysts, remains in the early planning stages. It is based on officials' assessment that a sharp drawdown of troops is likely to begin by the middle of next year, with roughly two-thirds of the current force of 150,000 moving out by late 2008 or early 2009. The questions officials are grappling with are not whether the U.S. presence will be cut, but how quickly, to what level and to what purpose.
This comes on the heels of a report two weeks ago that the White House is "developing what are described as concepts for reducing American combat forces in Iraq by as much as half next year." It'd be more encouraging if we haven't been hearing similar rhetoric for years.
Indeed, the same problem exists here. As publius noted today, we've seen reports just like Ricks' for a long while, and none came to fruition.
But just as importantly, what would this "post-occupation" force look like? There'd be 20,000 U.S. troops for security, 10,000 to train Iraqi security forces, at least 10,000 for logistics, and a "small but significant" deployment for counter-terrorism.
This doesn't exactly sound like an effective way to end an occupation. As Matthew Yglesias noted, "[I]t's precisely the widespread -- and, crucially, accurate -- Iraqi perception that US forces aren't there just to help them out and aren't planning on leaving that drives the appeal of both Sunni and Shiite nationalist groups that are opposing us."
--Steve Benen
Red Meat Season?
Joel Achenbach has an interesting item today arguing that the extended presidential primary season has led the candidates in both parties to pander shamelessly, in order to offer more "red meat" to their respective bases. I think Achenbach is only half right.
We're already deep into Red Meat Season.... It's no secret that candidates play to the base during the primary season, and that nominees drift toward the center for the general election. But the center has become a killing ground. [...]
Only partisans are paying attention, and partisans aren't political vegans. So anyone seeking the party's nomination must know how to serve up the big slabs of flesh.
Maybe, but has the pandering to the parties' bases really been that bad? In looking at the Democrats' leading candidates, Clinton, Edwards, and Obama have practically been the models for restraint.
During one campaign event not too long ago, a voter in Iowa noted the record budget deficits generated by Bush's fiscal recklessness and asked Edwards to respond. An easy one for red-meat politics, right? Wrong. Edwards said domestic programs, not deficit reduction, would be his top priority. He insisted that politicians should be "honest" about the "common sense in the math."
Hillary Clinton is routinely offered opportunities to denounce her 2002 vote on the Iraq war resolution. Under Achenbach's model, the senator would quickly pander, telling progressive audiences what they want to hear. She hasn't. Obama seems to reflexively reject pandering altogether. Said one constituent, "Obama tells you the hard truths, and other politicians, particularly from Chicago, they tend to tell you what they think you want to hear."
So where's all the red-meat pandering bothering Achenbach? He quotes one example from one Democratic candidate: Mike Gravel. That's hardly persuasive evidence.
Indeed, Achenbach's piece is filled with notable examples, but they're all from Republicans trying to placate the far-right GOP base. Said Ron Paul of his rivals, "They're worried about the immediate next election, which is the Republican primary, and anything they can do to pander, they'll do it, and they'll forget about what they believe in, they'll forget about the Constitution, they'll forget about building coalitions."
I'm afraid Achenbach put a pox on both houses, when only one deserves it.
--Steve Benen
Powell advises Obama
It was odd enough when Mark McKinnon, a senior media adviser to John McCain who also led George W. Bush's ad efforts in 2000 and 2004, said he'd back Barack Obama if he got the Democratic nomination. It's even odder that Bush's Secretary of State has advised Obama on foreign policy and is open to voting Democratic in 2008.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has sought out former Secretary of State Colin Powell for advice on foreign policy matters. [...]
Powell said he has met twice with Obama, the Illinois senator.
Asked about how he plans to vote in 2008, the lifelong Republican would not commit to supporting the GOP nominee. "I'm going to support the best person that I can find who will lead this country for the eight years beginning in January of 2009," Powell said.
It's not exactly a vote of confidence in the Republican field, now is it?
--Steve Benen
Broder on Plame
I foolishly believed David Broder's analysis of the Plame scandal bottomed out last fall, when the "dean" of the DC media establishment dismissed the entire controversy as an "overblown...conspiracy theory," insisted that Valerie Plame had not actually been "outed" as a covert CIA official, criticized Patrick Fitzgerald for nothing in particular, and argued that journalists "owe Karl Rove an apology."
Of course, that was written in September 2006. Perhaps Broder would consider the evidence presented at Scooter Libby's trial and change his mind. Perhaps he would begin to appreciate the seriousness of the controversy. Perhaps he could reflect on what he wrote nine months ago and realize his misjudgment.
Despite the absence of any underlying crime, Fitzgerald filed charges against Libby for denying to the FBI and the grand jury that he had discussed the Wilson case with reporters. Libby was convicted on the testimony of reporters from NBC, the New York Times and Time magazine -- a further provocation to conservatives.
I think they have a point. This whole controversy is a sideshow -- engineered partly by the publicity-seeking former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife and heightened by the hunger in parts of Washington to "get" Rove for something or other.
Like other special prosecutors before him, Fitzgerald got caught up in the excitement of the case and pursued Libby relentlessly, well beyond the time that was reasonable.
Broder's been having a really bad year, but regurgitating GOP talking points like this is just beneath him.
Oddly enough, Broder's column ran on page B7 of today's Washington Post. Readers found a more accurate appraisal of the scandal four pages earlier, on page B3, from Carol Leonnig, who covers the federal courts for the Post, and who debunked some of the "myths" surrounding the Plame controversy.
One can only hope Broder reads it.
Update: On a related note, Rick Perlstein reminds me that Broder's recollection on the moral equivalence between Nixon and McGovern in 1972 is equally odd.
--Steve Benen
A Tennessee newspaper digs into Fred Thompson's past tolerance towards abortion. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Sunday Roundup.
--Greg Sargent
Lieberman wants to strike Iran
Just when it seemed Joe Lieberman's neocon qualities couldn't get any more offensive, he manages to kick things up a notch.
This morning on CBS's Face the Nation, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) strongly advocated preparing for a strike against Iran.
"I think we have to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq," Lieberman said. Host Bob Schieffer followed-up: "Let's just stop right there. Because I think you probably made some news here, Senator Lieberman. You're saying that if the Iranians don't let up, that the United States should take military action?" "I am," Lieberman responded.
Lieberman added that "if there's any hope" of stopping Iran's nuclear program, "we can't just talk to them.... We've got to use our force and to me that would include taking military action."
When John McCain sang about bombing Iran, he was kidding. Regrettably, Lieberman wasn't.
About two weeks ago, Steve Clemons raised eyebrows with a report on the "race currently underway between different flanks of the administration to determine the future course of US-Iran policy." As Clemons described it, Cheney's team is actively circumventing the president's team in order to instigate a U.S. conflict with Iran.
Clemons’ report was bolstered by comments from the IAEA’s Mohamed ElBaradei, who told BBC Radio last week that a war with Iran is a serious possibility because of “new crazies who say ‘let’s go and bomb Iran.’” He didn’t identify the “crazies,” but warned of those who “have extreme views and say the only solution is to impose your will by force.”
The "crazies" with "extreme views" unfortunately aren't limited to the administration.
--Steve Benen
Bush standing firm behind Gonzales
The Senate is scheduled to consider a no-confidence resolution condemning Alberto Gonzales tomorrow, but even if it passes, don't expect too much of a reaction from the White House. Whether the Senate trusts the Attorney General or not is of no interest to the president.
The White House on Sunday dismissed Senate plans to hold a no-confidence vote on the attorney general and said the outcome will not undermine President Bush's resolve to keep Alberto Gonzales at the Justice Department.
"Not a bit. Purely symbolic vote," presidential spokesman Tony Snow said. He was asked in a broadcast interview whether Bush might reconsider his decision to support Gonzales should a sizable number of Republican senators vote for the no-confidence resolution.
"It is perfectly obvious that the president has the right to hire and fire people who serve at his pleasure," Snow said.
The point, of course, isn't whether Bush has employment power over those who serve at his pleasure, but rather whether Gonzales' conduct has been tragic enough to force his ouster.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) recently said, "The president should understand that while he has confidence in Attorney General Gonzales, very few others do. Congress has a right -- and even an obligation -- to express its views when things are this serious."
I don't disagree in the slightest. I just don't think anyone should be surprised when Bush and Gonzales treat the no-confidence vote the way they treat habeas.
The AP added that tomorrow's resolution "could be Congress' last effort to force Gonzales ouster." That's not quite right -- the Senate could consider impeachment.
--Steve Benen
Hispanic outreach
That Democratic presidential candidates are reaching out to Hispanic voters hardly seems like front-page news, but the New York Times fronts a piece today about Dems doing just that. The article details much of what you'd expect: Dem candidates have decided "to hire outreach consultants, to start Spanish-language Web sites and to campaign vigorously before Hispanic audiences."
The Times piece did, however, include one tidbit I hadn't heard before.
Strategists for several Democratic campaigns say the new calendar has set the stage for Hispanic voters to have much more influence in picking the parties' presidential nominees than they did when states like Iowa and New Hampshire were essentially alone among the early states in the nominating process.
In fact, in the 2004 race, Senator John Kerry did not assemble a Hispanic outreach and media operation until about five months before the general election.
Really? There's no point in spending too much time re-litigating the Kerry campaign three years later, but I can't help but find it amazing that they didn't create a Hispanic outreach program until that late in the game.
Granted, exit polls showed that Kerry won the Hispanic vote by a fair margin, 53% to 44%. But Bush's share of the Hispanic vote went up considerably over his 2000 performance, and Kerry lost a number of close contests in southwestern states with large Latino populations.
Maybe Team Kerry could have started Hispanic outreach a little sooner?
--Steve Benen
Maureen Dowd
In her column today, Maureen Dowd asks a reasonable question.
Be honest. Who would you rather share a foxhole with: a gay soldier or Mitt Romney?
A gay soldier, of course. In a dicey situation like that, you need someone steadfast who knows who he is and what he believes, even if he's not allowed to say it out loud.
Hmm, a patriotic young American willing to put his or her life on the line in service to the United States, or a presidential candidate who avoided military service and still has no idea whether U.N. weapons inspectors were allowed entry into Iraq in 2003? In a military crisis, who do I trust?
It really isn't a tough call.
--Steve Benen
