"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