NO LAUGHING MATTER

Rush Limbaugh on Abu Ghraib: from the inaugural issue of this blog, May 8, 2004

http://pbd.blogspot.com/2004_05_01_archive.html#108461877938199525
CALLER: It was like a college fraternity prank that stacked up naked men --

LIMBAUGH: Exactly. Exactly my point! This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off?

Yesterday we learned just how monstrous things actually were in Abu Ghraib. Fraternity pranks? Blowing off steam? Watch this, if you can bear it

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/02/ted_zimbardo

I guess you would call it “ironic”

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/180657.php
[FZ] Maybe people didn't pay much attention to President Bush's presser today, but he did say this regarding the incursion of Iraq by Turkey:

"The Turks need to move quickly, achieve their objective, and get out."

Quite an astonishing statement, as we head into the sixth year of our own objective. . .

Here is a question I haven’t seen seriously addressed in our press: Is the mountainous deficit spending over Bush’s war the true cause of the current economic crisis?

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23286149-2703,00.html
THE Iraq war has cost the US 50-60 times more than the Bush administration predicted and was a central cause of the sub-prime banking crisis threatening the world economy, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. . . .

More: http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/29/out-of-sight-out-of-mind/

http://www.juancole.com/2008/02/fact-check-on-mccain-and-political.html

“Sustainability”

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14727.html
At the president’s White House press conference this morning, a reporter raised a reasonable question: “You’ve said, Mr. President, that you want to leave Iraq in a sustainable situation at the end of your administration. Can you describe for us specifically what do you mean by ’sustainable’? Do you have specific goals and objectives that in your mind would meet the criteria of sustainability?” . . . [read on]

Here we go: the Justice Dept has said it won’t enforce contempt citations against WH personnel. Nancy Pelosi forces the issue. What happens next?

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/pelosi_makes_criminal_referral.php
[Paul Kiel] If Mukasey, through D.C.'s U.S. attorney, rebuffs the referral as expected, the House has a backup plan. The House also passed a resolution that would allow the House Judiciary Committee to pursue a lawsuit against the White House over the subpoena. If a judge agreed to hear the case, it might lead to a decision as to whether the President's sweeping invocation of privilege is Constitutional.

Priceless. The Republicans are very, very disappointed in the telecoms. After working so hard to get them immunity for conducting illegal surveillance under Bush’s orders, they are shocked – SHOCKED – that these companies aren’t giving them bigger political donations!

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/todays_must_read_285.php

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_02/013219.php

More on telecom immunity

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/28/its-all-about/
[Emptywheel] We know that the Administration only became intransigent about immunity for telecoms after a telecom lobbyist took over as Counselor to the President. And we know the telecoms cut off wiretaps--even a FISA one--when they didn't get paid by the FBI . . . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14728.html
[Bush] “[N]ow, all of a sudden, plaintiffs attorneys, class-action plaintiffs attorneys, you know — I don’t want to try to get inside their head; I suspect they see, you know, a financial gravy train — are trying to sue these companies.” . . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14729.html
[CBS’s Bill Plante, from the Bush press conference] “You can get the Congress to protect telecom companies from lawsuits, but then there’s no recourse for Americans who feel that they’ve been caught up in this. I know it’s not intended to spy on Americans, but in the collection process, information about everybody gets swept up and then it gets sorted. So if Americans don’t have any recourse, are you just telling them, when it comes to their privacy, to suck it up?”

Bush protests, saying he “wouldn’t put it that way … in public” . . .

Watch: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/bush_suck_it_up.php
As expected, President Bush used today's press conference to bang that drum on the surveillance bill. It's "dangerous" that the House Democrats aren't giving in. . . .

[NB: By the way, let me just say that I would almost respect Bush if he said, “Look, let’s be fair. The telecoms did what they did because we told them to, and because we assured them it was legal – if you want to question that legality, take it out on us, not on them.” That, of course, is NOT what he says. But remember that one company, Qwest, refused to go along – so the telecoms knew that something was questionable about it all.]

Their Master's voice

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/28/AR2008022802022.html
[Bush] “Congress needs to act to help homeowners avoid foreclosure. Unfortunately, the Senate is considering legislation that would do more to bail out lenders and speculators than to help American families keep their homes. The Senate bill would actually prolong the time it takes for the housing market to adjust and recover, and it would lead to higher interest rates.

This would be unfair to the millions of homeowners who make the hard choices every month to pay their mortgage on time, and it would be unfair to future home buyers.

Instead, Congress should move ahead with responsible legislation to modernize federal -- the Federal Housing Administration and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. . . .”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/28/AR2008022803722.html
Senate Republicans yesterday blocked consideration of a bill designed to prop up the struggling housing industry, declaring that the Democratic-backed provisions would harm mortgage lenders and inflame the housing crisis. . . .

A dubious milestone: 1 in every 100 Americans is now in prison

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/28/AR2008022801704.html

http://www.slate.com/id/2185479
[Daniel Politi] One in 15 black men, and more specifically, one in nine black men ages 20 to 35, are behind bars. For Hispanic men, the figure is one in 36. Although the violent-crime rate has decreased 25 percent since 1987, spending on corrections has increased 127 percent (adjusted for inflation). Meanwhile, many believe that nonviolent criminals could be better served by other types of punishment, including community service, which would be far cheaper. "Getting tough on crime has gotten tough on taxpayers," a Pew director tells the NYT.

More: http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4222

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/our-prison-problem-by-dday-this-story.html

What. A. Liar.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/epa_head_receives_alberto_gonz.php
Stephen Johnson, head of the EPA. . . .

McCain’s lobbyist entourage

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/28/shining-a-light-on-the-mccain-lobbyist-express/

Theocracy watch: McCain used to talk about “agents of intolerance.” Well here’s one, who’s supporting him. What will McCain do about it?

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/2/28/20240/4219

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/mccains_radical_preacher.php
“It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God's chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day.”

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/john_hagee_post.php
[Eric Kleefeld] So here's the question: Will the same media outlets who have hammered Barack Obama about Louis Farrakhan's uninvited endorsement now ask John McCain to denounce and reject the support of John Hagee, which was actually sought and publicly accepted?

Excuse me, I’ve met Bill Ayers. He’s a friggin’ EDUCATION PROFESSOR now (can you get more harmless than that?)

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/180561.php
Fox News falsely claims that Weatherman Bill Ayers was Obama's "mentor" and a "principal" in his first campaign.

Beyond parody

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/180661.php
[Josh Marshall] Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) has always been one of my favorite buffoons in Congress. No one trick pony, he's been putting in long moron hours for years up on the Hill and on the chat shows. But it was a particular tour de force even for Jack when he showed up last night on MSNBC to bash Barack Obama for not wearing a flag lapel . . . without remembering to wear one himself . . .

The politics of branding – how it’s helping Obama

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14730.html

VP suggestions for Obama

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4227

Bloomberg? http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/politicalinsider/2008/02/bloomberg-could-make-a-dream-t.html

Bonus item: “Faithless bastards”

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/28/kinsley-nutshells-the-press/
Michael Kinsley: I guess I share the conventional wisdom on both of these points. McCain has always been a media darling. At a magazine editors convention a few years ago, he started a speech by saying he was happy to be there addressing "my base." He gets and deserves points for jokes like that.

And the SNL take on Obama is also correct. He is a media darling now. Hillary is rightly bitter. I am puzzled--something happened about six weeks ago that was like a light switch turning off, or on: all of a sudden, she became "the Clintons" and every resentment of her and her husband came to the surface among the media, liberals, everybody.

That said, I am not the best person to explain the media Obama swoon, since I have been a swooner myself.

No doubt we'll all turn on him at some point, faithless bastards that we are. . . .

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:01 AM

 
UNDERSTANDING THE MENTALITY

The dog ate my email

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/02/27/BL2008022702079.html
[Dan Froomkin] The Bush White House has made a mockery of the Presidential Records Act and its requirement that official White House records -- including e-mails -- be preserved for posterity.

At a congressional hearing yesterday, it became clear for the first time that top White House officials knowingly adopted a new e-mail system in 2002 that was riddled with technical problems that not only risked data loss but could easily be exploited by those who wished to keep their e-mails from public scrutiny. We've known for a while that a lot of White House e-mails, by some accounts numbering in the millions, are missing and have possibly been erased. Yesterday's discovery raises the question of whether that happened by accident -- or by design. And the White House's unhurried approach to addressing the problem is hardly reassuring. . . . [read on]

What will Congress do? http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/27/111621/616

Emptywheel, Queen of timeline analysis

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/27/january-23-2006/
Sorry. I'm afraid Waxman has me hooked on these damn email documents. . . .

More: http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/27/sis-has-filled-in-the-blanks/

How screwed up is this? We now have a government in which the lawyers and “Justice” people are telling us torture is okay because it isn’t really torture – and the military guys are saying, we want nothing to do with it

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/army_official_yes_waterboardin.php
[Paul Kiel] With the parade of administration officials who've testified about waterboarding in the past several weeks -- that it was once legal, but is not anymore (though it could be found legal again); that it may "feel like" torture, but that doesn't mean it is torture; that as the U.S. practices it, it bears no relation to the technique used by the Spanish Inquisition (it's more in line with the Khmer Rouge way of doing things) -- you can be excused for feeling more than a little confused.

And you may have despaired of ever seeing a clear, unequivocal exchange on the topic with a government official. Like this one from today's hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, with Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency . . . [read on]

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the “bipartisan” shell organization put together to bash Democrats over the FISA bill, isn’t so bipartisan

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/dems_jump_ship_from_bipartisan.php

Man, they really are shameless, aren’t they?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/27/144117/624
[McJoan] The right is increasingly afraid of losing the battle over telco amnesty, and has been throwing everything they've got at the hold out Dems in Congress. They've spread the lie that this issue is about protecting American from the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and WaPo to television sets across the nation.

Now they're using veterans to do their dirty work. The American Legion, the veterans' community-service organization that represents the men and women who have fought for their country and their Constitution, is urging those men and women to push Congress to pass the Protect AT&T Act. . . .

No, we’re not “losing intelligence”: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/today_must_read.php

Fox News: wouldn’t life be simpler if Congress just backed out of government and let the Bush gang run things the way it wants?

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/who_needs_oversight.php

As near as I can tell, Bush has only two economic principles: (1) Extra money in a rich person’s pocket does more to stimulate the economy than extra money in an average consumer’s pocket; (2) Money spent on war overseas does more to stimulate the economy than the same money spent on repair, infrastructure, and development projects here at home

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/27/waiting-for-president-clueless-to-leave/

Iraq is falling apart

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/28890.html
Iraq's three-man presidency council Wednesday announced that it's vetoed legislation that U.S. officials two weeks ago hailed as significant political progress. . . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/27/AR2008022703842.html
U.S.-backed Sunni volunteer forces, which have played a vital role in reducing violence in Iraq, are increasingly frustrated with the American military and the Iraqi government over what they see as a lack of recognition of their growing political clout and insufficient U.S. support. . . .

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/whats-another-war-in
Somehow no one cares that Turkey has invaded Iraqi Kurdistan. . . .

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_02/013218.php

The white elephant in Baghdad

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/28870.html
The State Department's new embassy construction chief has rejected his predecessor's certification that the $740 million new U.S. embassy in Baghdad is "substantially completed" and has instead begun a top-to-bottom review of the troubled project. . .

The white elephant at SMU

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/11/27/bush-library/
$500,000,000

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/27/18512/
George W. Bush has always said he thinks history will be his judge. His decision not to give history very much to work with, however, is causing some problems at Southern Methodist University, which recently agreed to house his presidential library . . . read on]

[NB: You’ve heard the joke – the library will only contain one book: “My Pet Goat”]

More jokes: http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/2/28/25311/8397

McCain’s secret talent

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2008_02_24_archive.html#1379486130570291988
[Atrios] Increasingly I've come to realize that John McCain is very good at convincing people that he agrees with them. I don't just mean members of the media, but also various interest groups (even more liberalish ones). It's a great skill for a politician to have if you can pull it off well, because everyone loves being flattered about the fact that they're correct and someone like St. John McCain recognizes it. . . . [read on]

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/27/54746/2132
[BarbinMD] The easiest job in America? Covering John McCain's run for the White House. The only requirement is to report what he says, remind America that he is a straight talker, blatantly ignore anything that interferes with that narrative, and then get home to write that novel. . . .

More: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/cokies-law-by-digby-chris-matthews.html

More signs that McCain’s détente with right-wing talk hosts is fragile at best: Bill Cunningham, the hate monger who did McCain’s warm-up act in Ohio, says that he was TOLD to pitch “red meat” to the audience, and resents McCain’s backing away from his comments after encouraging him to do it

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080227/NEWS01/302270009
Radio talk show host Bill Cunningham burned up national TV time, getting about five minutes on CNN last night to give his side regarding his controversial remarks before the John McCain rally in Cincinnati yesterday.

"They told me to fire up the crowd. You're talking to conservatives," Cunningham said of the McCain campaign.

"Get them fired up and give them some red meat. And I did. In fact, when I left, John, the crowd was cheering" . . .

"All was well. No problem whatsoever until about an hour later . . . when John McCain threw me under the bus, under the Straight Talk Express. I got thrown under the bus." . . .

McCain denied ever meeting Cunningham before, saying "I will certainly make sure nothing like that happens again." But Cunningham told CNN he met McCain twice before, including with former U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine at Kenwood Country Club. "John McCain is developing -- maybe because of his advance in years -- a bad memory,'' Cunningham said. . .

"I've had it up to here with John McCain. He's off the list. . . . ."

The McCain election road map

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/180471.php
[Josh Marshall] Hopefully, everyone can now see the McCain strategy for running against Barack Obama. Yes, we have some general points on taxes, culture wars and McCain as war hero who can protect us in ways that flash-in-the-pan pretty boy Barack Obama can't.

But that's not the core. . . [read on]

[NB: But just remember -- he's a NICE GUY. . . . and a STRAIGHT SHOOTER]

Our sick, vicious political system

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2008/02/obama_fights_false_links_to_is.php
[AP] For Barack Obama, it is an ember that he has doused time and again, only to see it flicker anew: links to Islam fanned by false rumors, innuendo and association. . .

More: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/tennessee_gop_smears_obama_wit.php

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2008/02/could_hillary_c.php

http://www.americablog.com/2008/02/thursday-morning-open-thread_28.html

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/28/the-race-card-let-us-count-the-ways/

The Republican establishment tells its locals: drop the racist, bigoted language (let third parties do that for us)

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/180499.php

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/rove_dont_hussein_obama_1.php

On electoral rules and procedures (seating Michigan and Florida; the necessity of Texas; and now this): do Clinton’s people think we don’t notice when they switch from arguing one side of an issue to the exact opposite as soon as they realize it’s no longer in their political interests? Don’t they realize that the transparency of it shows EXACTLY what is going on?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/27/clinton-camp-presses-supe_n_88640.html
For weeks, the Barack Obama campaign has warned that Hillary Clinton would try to use her ties to the Democratic establishment to muscle 'super delegates' into backing her presidential bid, overriding a popular vote majority and Obama's plurality of pledged delegates elected in primaries and caucuses.

Now, however, as Obama has gained steadily in the polls, the Clinton campaign has reversed field. Top Clinton aides are pleading with uncommitted super delegates to hold off making any commitments, fearful that any commitments they make would be to back Obama, not Clinton. . . .

Things that make you go hmmmm . . .

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gfd1crHwEDJCP-3_UVArM_pmEhYQD8V2P8H01
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton says she won't release her tax returns until she has the Democratic presidential nomination in hand . . .

Heh

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/180493.php
Rejected or Denounced?
[AP] During a series of satellite television interviews, [Hillary] Clinton was questioned by Dallas station KTVT about comments by Adelfa Callejo, a local activist who supports Clinton candidacy. The interviewer quoted Callejo as saying "Obama's problem is he happens to be black" and asked Clinton to respond.

"Well obviously I want all of us judged on our merits," Clinton said. "I believe strongly that the fact we have an African American and a woman running for the Democratic nomination is historical and I'm very, very proud of that."

"I want people though to look beyond, look beyond race and gender, look at our records, look at what we stand for, look at what we've done and I think that's what most voters are looking for," she said.

The interviewer asked Clinton whether she rejected or denounced Callejo's comment.

"People have every reason to express their opinions, I just don't agree with that," she said, adding "You know, this is a free country. People get to express their opinions."

One of the problems with our current political system is the role of campaign advisors who have their own massive operations (and reputations) to maintain: they can’t ever be seen as losing an election, even when their advice is terrible, because they’ve always got another campaign to go work on. So protecting themselves is, in the end, more important than protecting their candidates. Today’s case in point: Mark Penn

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/27/131938/900
[New York Observer] Mark Penn thinks that people have the wrong impression about him, and about Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

"I think that people misunderstand," he said in a 45-minute phone interview Monday evening . .

What’s going to happen in Texas?

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/texas_a_perplexing_and_complex.php

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/27/133736/812

I didn’t know this: on every single primary/caucus day so far, Obama has won the balance of delegates – except for one tie

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/27/20620/9054

Obama: over one million contributors

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/02/yes_he_could.php

Obama vs McCain (vs the facts) on Iraq

http://www.juancole.com/2008/02/obama-scores-against-mccain.html

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/28/the-gift-that-keeps-on-taking/

The McGuffin: no third party run for Bloomberg

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/nyregion/28bloomberg.html

Poor David Broder: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/27/221845/824

Republican congressional candidates: only the best and the brightest

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/27/9476/25242
"Not only was I football player, but I also was in social studies class, and I have a passion for how this country works," Olivo said. . . .

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/27/16458/7786

The GOP has bankrupted the country . . . and their national campaign fund isn’t in such great shape either

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/27/enron-accounting/

More: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8691.html

The Republicans love them ethics

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14716.html
[Steve Benen] After watching congressional Republicans, during their run in the majority, embrace a fairly transparent culture of corruption, congressional Dems are still anxious to help clean up the mess. Right now, Dems are weighing a proposal to create an independent panel to consider ethics complains against lawmakers, creating a system whereby members would no longer be responsible for policing each other.

It hardly comes as a surprise that Republicans oppose the creation of an independent panel, but what is surprising is what the House GOP is prepared to do about it. . . .

Goodbye Bill Buckley

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/say-what-you-want-about-william-f.html
“Everyone detected with AIDS should be tatooed in the upper forearm, to protect common-needle users, and on the buttocks, to prevent the victimization of other homosexuals.”

More: http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/27/late-nite-fdl-more-buckley/

There go all my flyboy readers

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/180488.php
"The Air Force is tightening restrictions on which blogs its troops can read, cutting off access to just about any independent site with the word "blog" in its web address."

Bonus item: Following up on Bush’s hilarious prediction that the Republicans are going to do just great in the fall, here is his even more hilarious explanation for why he is so confident

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/27/104858/767
"When I say I'm confident, I am so because I understand the mentality of the American people.”

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 8:02 AM

 
BYE-BYE

WH emails: conveniently gone forever

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/expert_white_house_had_primiti.php
[AP] A computer expert who worked at the White House provided the first inside look at its e-mail system Tuesday, calling it a "primitive" setup that created a "high" risk that data would be lost. . . .

[Paul Kiel] Remember that as The Washington Post outlined last month, the Bush Administration managed to dismantle the Clinton Administration's email archive system without replacing it with anything at all. . . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/26/AR2008022602312.html
After promising last year to search its computers for tens of thousands of e-mails sent by White House officials, the Republican National Committee has informed a House committee that it no longer plans to retrieve the communications by restoring computer backup tapes, the panel's chairman said yesterday. . .

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_02/013204.php

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/26/waxman-hearing-on-white-house-emails/

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/26/no-wonder-fitzgerald-never-official-closed-his-investigation/

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/26/what-they-didnt-want-mcdevitt-to-talk-about/

The Pentagon Inspector General – where scandals go to die

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/26/21634/1848
[Smintheus] A spokesman for the Defense Department Inspector General's office told me on Tuesday that they will conduct an inquiry into the multi-year delay in purchasing mine-resistant vehicles for Marines serving in Iraq. . . .

The long delay in ordering MRAPs and the resulting casualties for combat troops is a huge scandal. . . .

The Bush gang, still lying about FISA

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/national_security_experts_cont.php
You've heard from President Bush over and over and over and over again about the imminent danger the country is in. And you've heard from the director of national intelligence and attorney general about how the telecoms are quaking over the uncertainty created by not securing retroactive immunity.

Yesterday, four former top national security officials put forward a different line in a letter to Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell. . . .

McConnell and the administration, they wrote, was distorting the truth about surveillance capabilities after the lapse of the Protect America Act. The country is not "at greater risk," they write. "The intelligence community currently has the tools it needs to acquire surveillance of new targets and methods of communication." . . .

I love how the GOP attack machine names these groups

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/bipartisan-think
The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies . . . [read on]

What will the House do on FISA?

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/when-pressure-isnt-pressure-by-dday.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/26/131033/862

Karl Rove loves to play the villain (okay, you’re right, it isn’t playing)

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/02/hbc-90002498

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/free-don-siegelman-by-dday-this-is.html

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/simpson_responds_to_rove.php

Tell me how this hack (and Hatch Act violator) still has a government job

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/when-can-you-oust-an
[Matthew Blake] In May, a White House Office of Special Counsel report found that Doan had violated the Hatch Act, the law that prevents federal employees from engaging in partisan politics. Investigations from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and also Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Ia.) laid out charges that she intimidated employees, awarded a no-bid contract to a friend and inappropriately interfered in approving a contract where the government was overcharged by millions of dollars.

Yet Doan still leads GSA— to the surprise and dismay of a number of congressional investigators and GSA employees. That she hasn’t resigned and the White House’s hasn’t told her to raises a broader question: What does it take before a government official leaves for the good of her agency? . . .

Another one. . .

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/staff_to_epa_administrator_cal.php
[Paul Kiel] I've said it before, and I'll say it again: no one will ever accuse Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson of a lack of chutzpah. . . .

An encouraging prediction

http://www.senateguru.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=9
George W. Bush on June 14, 2006: I feel confident we will hold the House and the Senate.

George W. Bush on February 25, 2008: I'm confident we'll hold the White House in 2008.

The Republicans DON’T filibuster a bill calling for an Iraq withdrawal (presumably, because they think they’ll win the vote)

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/26/154254/313

Let’s see if this one has legs: the military “fears” Obama

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2008/02/john_solomons_w.php
[Greg Sargent] Here's some more proof, as if you needed it, that our old pal John Solomon isn't exactly having a salutary impact on the journalism at The Washington Times, as his former colleagues assured us he would.

Today's edition of WashTimes rolls out a fresh and newly-minted Obama smear . . . [read on]

Oh, really? Maybe Obama wasn’t lying about the story that undersupplied U.S. troops had to scavenge weapons from dead Iraqis

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/180262.php

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/02/army_cos_has_no_reason_to_doubt_obamas_soldier_story.php

Stop it!

http://www.americablog.com/2008/02/clinton-surrogate-says-obama-is-really.html
[John Aravosis] It's hard to define "over the top," but using racism comes to mind (such as sending around pictures of your opponent wearing traditional Somali clothing that makes people think he's a Muslim since we all know that all Muslims are radical terrorists) - even worse, being caught using racism again and again and again. To wit, this from Clinton surrogate, Democratic Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones, referring today to Somalia as Obama's "country" and Obama's "nation." . . .

More: http://www.americablog.com/2008/02/is-democratic-congresswoman-using-house.html

Debate review: Tim Russert’s shameful performance

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/180286.php

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-do-we-defeat-tim-russert-by-digby.html

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/27/talk-about-cults/

The silly season

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/inane_question_of_the_night_an.php
[Greg Sargent] But the inane question of the night award goes to this Russert inanity, which we just heard moments ago:

"Do you accept the support of Louis Farrahkan?"

Obama, unsurprisingly, denounced Farrakhan, and used the occasion to argue that there's yet another historic dimension to his candidacy:

"What I want to do is rebuild what I consider to be a historic relationship between the African-American community and the Jewish community."

Hillary, in her rejoinder, seems to suggest that Obama didn't go far enough:

"There’s a difference between denouncing and rejecting. . . .

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?last_story=/politics/war_room/2008/02/26/debate/
Sen. Obama: "I don't see a difference between denouncing and rejecting. If Senator Clinton feels reject is stronger than denounce, I would be happy to reject and denounce." . . .

Look, I’d be the last to deny that the press plays favorites – they do. But you just can’t get any traction by whining about it

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/02/26/debate_first_post/index.html
[Alex Koppelman] In response to a question about NAFTA, Clinton balks, "I keep getting the first question." Then she adds, "Maybe we should ask Barack Obama if he's comfortable and needs another pillow."

There are audible boos. . . .

More: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/02/clinton-wonders.html

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/hillarys_grievance_with_the_pr.php

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/hillarys_new_strategy_run_agai.php

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/us/politics/27watch.html

Here’s how the Republican candidates do it: encourage and enable vicious third-party slanders and hate speech, which they distance themselves from and “regret,” but never quite seem to STOP

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/26/AR2008022602971.html
A supporter of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) ridiculed Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) in an introductory speech at a McCain rally here this morning, repeatedly using Obama's middle name, Hussein, and deriding him as a terrorist sympathizer. . . .

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/26/152128/409

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/26/hate_speech_as_to_obama_and_cl/

Rick Renzi (R-AZ) has been indicted on 35 federal counts – but Honest John McCain still wants him in his campaign

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/26/mccain-hearts-renzi/

McCain tells the Federal Election Commission they have no jurisdiction over his campaign

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/180161.php
Any day now, McCain will pass the spending limit for the primaries under the public financing system. He wants out of the system and claims he has a "constitutional right" to withdraw. The FEC says it must agree to his withdrawal, but it's unable to act because of a lack of commissioners. . . .

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14705.html

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/todays_must_read_284.php

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/180208.php

The Abramoff email McCain never wanted us to see

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/25/mccain-withheld-controver_n_88304.html
In the 2006 Senate report concerning [Jack] Abramoff's activities, which McCain spearheaded, the Arizona Republican conspicuously left out information detailing how Alabama Gov. Bob Riley was targeted by Abramoff's influence peddling scheme. Riley, a Republican, won election in November 2002, and was reelected in 2006.

In a December 2002 email obtained by the Huffington Post -- which McCain and his staff had access to prior to the issuance of his report -- Abramoff explains to an aide what he would like to see Riley do in return for the "help" he received from Abramoff's tribal clients.

An official with the Mississippi Choctaws "definitely wants Riley to shut down the Poarch Creek operation," Abramoff wrote, "including his announcing that anyone caught gambling there can't qualify for a state contract or something like that."

The note showed not only the reach of Abramoff, but raised questions about Riley's victory in what was the closest gubernatorial election in Alabama history.

And yet, despite the implications of the information, McCain and the Senate Indian Affairs Committee sat on the controversial portion of the email. According to an official familiar with the investigation, McCain also subsequently refused to make the email public after the report was released. . . .

Bonus item: JFK!

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/in-federal-court-cia
The Central Intelligence Agency will quietly defend its refusal to release a batch of top-secret files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in a Washington courtroom . . .

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:47 AM

 
LAST THROES

Remember when we all called the supposedly temporary “surge” an “escalation” by another name? Guess what – it was an escalation

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/washington/25cnd-troop.html
The Defense Department is projecting that when the U.S. troop buildup in Iraq ends in July, there will be about 8,000 more troops on the ground than when it began in January 2007 . . .

Another Iraq vote today: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/25/192959/661

If the nation is in danger because we don’t have the revised FISA in place, why not support a temporary extension of the “Protect America Act”? Watch Alice try to explain the unexplainable

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/white_house_keeps_beating_that.php

More: http://www.first-draft.com/2008/02/today-on-hol-10.html

A full-court press for telecom (and Bush admin) immunity

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/02/25/fisa/index.html

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/group_launches_ads_pressuring.php

When fear fails

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/curtain-is-pulled-back-by-dday-once.html
[Dday] They're playing with a deck that's out of aces. The only thing they have is fear. When it doesn't work, they try to scare even more, but the obviousness of the lie forces an unprecedented backtrack. . .

Musharraf to step down in Pakistan?

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/musharraf-to-step

The Pentagon general counsel who told a Gitmo prosecutor that tribunals were okay, just so long as everyone is found guilty? He’s out

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/25/19820/8582

More: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/controversial_pentagon_officia.php

60 Minutes' Don Siegelman (D-AL) story about the politicization of justice points the finger directly at Karl Rove – here’s your chance to see it (especially if you live in those parts of Alabama where the story was blacked out)

Watch it: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/todays_must_read_283.php

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/siegelman-story-reaches-light-of-day-by.html

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14685.html

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/25/whats-wrong-with-the-politicized-siegelman-prosecution/

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/25/profiles-in-politicization-60-minutes-finally-airs-siegelman-story/

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/corruption_in_washington_/2008/02/railroaded.php

Not in Alabama: http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/25/60-minutes-blocked/

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/25/60-minutes-goes-black-who-does-it-protect/

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/25/122426/519
Channel 19 is owned by Oak Hill Capital Partners . . . Oak Hill Partners represents interests of the Bass family, which contribute heavily to the Republican Party. . .

Rove wants a chance to tell his side: please, by all means, come on down

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/25/bullying-cbs-didnt-work-out-so-well-this-time-did-it-turdblossom/

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/rove_its_a_lie.php

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/007062.html

John McCain, sensing that his “we could be in Iraq for a hundred years and I wouldn’t care” comment isn’t going over very well, now says the war in Iraq is almost over

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/02/mccain-further.html

More: http://atrios.blogspot.com/2008_02_24_archive.html#1310489862671998741
[Atrios] The War is Over. But it will continue forever. But the Iraqis will handle everything. But our troops need to stay there anyway.

Straight talk

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080225/ap_on_el_pr/mccain_9
John McCain said Monday that to win the White House he must convince a war-weary country that U.S. policy in Iraq is succeeding. If he can't, "then I lose. I lose," the Republican said.

He quickly backed off that remark. . .

The McCain/lobbyist story – more to come

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/180067.php

Not likely, but: What if Mitt Romney gets back in?

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/02/romneyback.html

McCain’s general election strategy (against Obama)

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14692.html

You know this “Obama is a closet Muslim” story is never going to go away. Right wing fringe groups will continue to portray him as a Manchurian Candidate, smuggled into our political system by terrorists plotting to take over the country.

What is unforgivable (if true) is for this crap to be coming from the Clinton camp too. I know I promised not to spend a lot of time here criticizing her campaign any more, but this is just beyond the pale

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/179989.php

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14688.html

They deny it: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/25/123554/815

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/hillary_spokesperson_wolfson_s.php

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/02/clinton-on-phot.html

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/02/25/clinton_response/index.html

Things that make you go hmm. . . . http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/editorblog/054
An International Herald Tribune story of October 22, 2007, covers the irony of the Clinton campaign feeding stories to the Drudge Report as part of its strategy . . .

See? Obama hates America

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/24/obama.patriotism/index.html

In case there is any confusion about this: politicians put on local garb ALL THE TIME

http://www.juancole.com/2008/02/sartorial-politics.html

After weeks of saying “Texas and Ohio are the firewall,” and arguing that winning the big states is all part of the Big Plan for Victory – after Bill himself says that winning both is essential – the Clinton team looks at the polls and says, “well, maybe winning Texas isn’t so important anyway”

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/180065.php
Obama up four points in Texas, according to latest CNN poll. . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/25/193333/826
[Clinton] I’d love to carry Texas, but it’s usually not in the electoral calculation for the Democratic nominee. Florida and Michigan are . . . [read on]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/25/AR2008022502501.html
[Dana Milbank] They are in the last throes, if you will. . .

Everything plus the kitchen sink

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/us/politics/26clinton.html
[T]he campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is now unleashing what one Clinton aide called a “kitchen sink” fusillade against Mr. Obama, pursuing five lines of attack since Saturday in hopes of stopping his political momentum. . .

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/02/25/clinton-aide-compares-obama-to-jesse-jackson/?mod=googlenews_wsj
Despite the backlash against President Clinton when he compared the candidacy of Sen. Barack Obama to that of Rev. Jesse Jackson after the South Carolina primary, a top Clinton adviser evoked that comparison again today. . . .

More: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/02/23/obama_it_takes_a_knockout.html
[Obama] “[L]ook, I'm the challenger, I'm the upstart, I'm the insurgent. She's the champ, she's part of the Democratic network in Washington, and if you're the title holder then you don't lose it on points. You've got to be knocked out."

Nationally . . .

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/180096.php
Jan 13: Clinton 42%, Obama 27%
Feb 3: Clinton 41%, Obama 41%
Feb 25: Obama 54%, Clinton 38%

http://www.slate.com/id/2185208
[Daniel Politi] The New York Times and USA Today lead with new national polls that show voters think Sen. Barack Obama has a better shot at beating Sen. John McCain. . . Obama's base of support has expanded substantially among the Democratic electorate. His most significant increase in support has come from men, 67 percent of whom now back the senator from Illinois, which is a marked increase from 26 percent in December. He's also gained support from voters with household incomes under $50,000 (48 percent now from 35 percent in December) and moderates (59 percent compared to 28 percent). Although Obama has made strong gains with women they are still divided among both candidates, and Clinton continues to have an edge with white women.

Another crooked Republican, caught cold but refusing to resign

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/2/25/233442/210

Audits are for wusses

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/25/153820/067
[Roll Call] The National Republican Congressional Committee apparently stopped conducting independent audits of its finances five years ago, according to Republican sources and Federal Election Commission records.

The NRCC will not confirm its audit history, citing an ongoing investigation into financial irregularities apparently centering on former Treasurer Christopher Ward. But the indication is that the committee did not conduct an independent audit at all during the 2003-2006 tenure of former Chairman Tom Reynolds (N.Y.) and his audit committee chairman, Rep. Greg Walden (Ore.).

Bonus item: GOP trying to repair its racist image

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14690.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/25/195453/914
[Kos] Step one: stop being racist. Appearing less racist then becomes less of a challenge.

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:34 AM

 
JUST KIDDING!

You know that terrible thing the Democrats did, leaving our nation naked and defenseless by refusing to pass Bush’s favored version of the FISA bill? Well, not so much. . .

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/admin_officials_never_mind.php
[Paul Kiel] Whoops. Strike that: the sky is not falling. But it'll probably fall soon. So Dems should still give in, pronto. . . [read on]

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_02/013188.php

“McCain breaks the law that he wrote”

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/24/21035/8739
This afternoon Dean and officials at the DNC held a conference call in which they spelled out why they will file a complaint with the FEC against McCain. . .

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/2/24/144550/344
[Howard Dean] John McCain poses as a reformer but he seems to think reforms apply to everyone else but him... [read on]

More: http://www.americablog.com/2008/02/john-mccains-other-scandal-its-actually.html

Who is Vicki Iseman?

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/23/vicki-isemans-lobbying-career/

More: http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/the-same-old-story
Roughly two decades ago, after abetting a lobbying scandal that cost the taxpayers billions and almost torpedoed his political career, Sen. John McCain sought to recast himself in the mold of an untouchable, business-as-unusual Washington crusader. This week, reports suggesting that the Arizona Republican performed political favors for industry on behalf of a lobbyist have challenged the legitimacy of that carefully crafted persona. . . .

http://www.americablog.com/2008/02/george-will-on-john-mccain-this-morning.html
[George Will] "All of this may be perfectly innocent, this may be what Senators are supposed to do and all that, and it may not be corrupt, but it is the appearance of corruption. And the appearance of corruption is the rationale Mr. McCain has used promiscuously in his towering moral vanity to say that everyone else is guilty . . .”

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/24/the-first-stage-is-denial/
[Emptywheel] John McCain will never be President. . . . [read on]

Watch carefully: here is an object lesson in how the Republicans take a fringe political slander, filter it through the echo chamber by getting people to talk about it, then seduce the media into featuring it as a legitimate story “because it’s out there”

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/179868.php
[Josh Marshall] On Friday night's Bill Maher show, Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) claimed that Barack Obama refuses to say the pledge of allegiance to the American flag. This along with other bogus claims about Obama come from the hoax emails circulating on the internet . . .

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/179930.php
[Josh Marshall] Ben Smith, at The Politico, flags that today CNN's running a 'online poll' asking if Barack Obama has enough patriotism to be president. As Ben, with some understatement, put it's "it's odd to see the mainstream media drive a largely whispered question that none of his main, named critics -- Hillary, McCain, or the RNC -- will touch." Yeah, I'd say so.

That's how it works. Starts at right-swing smear sites and hoax emails. Then the AP's Nedra Pickler, who specializes in scooping up this slop and laundering it into the mainstream press, writes it up for the AP that runs across the country. And then picks it up and makes it a regular part of the campaign conversation. . . .

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14680.html

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/25/the-scoundrels-are-here/

http://www.americablog.com/2008/02/time-to-declare-war-on-cnn.html
[John Aravosis] This is unforgivable. . . .

You think this is just a coincidence? I don’t

http://www.slate.com/id/2185087
[Daniel Politi] Meanwhile, the NYT fronts a look at the "hushed worry" of many Obama supporters who fear he will be assassinated if he wins, or gets close to winning, the presidency. Leave aside the obvious question of whether this sort of high-profile story could give anyone any ideas and the fact that by mentioning Obama on the same breath as Dr. Martin Luther King and Sen. Robert Kennedy the NYT is successfully raising the candidate's mythic stature, but are these fears really "hushed"? As the paper mentions, his supporters mention the fears "without prompting," the Times itself has written about it before, a TV reporter famously asked Sen. Ted Kennedy about it, it's clearly a favorite topic of conversation around the Internet, and the phrase "assassinate Obama" even made it on the list of the top 100 Google search terms early last month. . . .

Bill Kristol offers this friendly advice to Hillary Clinton: start acting more like a Republican

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/24/kristol-politics-of-fear/

Here’s why they call it The Village

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2008_02_24_archive.html#7867225906301107219
GEORGE WILL [Surrounded by Cokie Roberts and the gang at ABC This Week]: It seems to me Obama’s problem is that you can only be a novelty once, and for a while. And he needs – he’s worked one pedal on the organ quite enough now; this stuff, I’d call it banal eloquence, where he says, ‘In the face of despair, we can still hope.’ I have news for him: Americans aren’t in despair. Look around you. Who’s despairing? We have mild problems.

Bonus item: Ralph Nader is running for President again. I know I have some Nader supporters who read this blog, so I won’t rehash the bitter debates over what happened in 2000. People are entitled to vote for whomever they want. But, really: if you don’t think Nader helps the Republicans, look at what THEY say (thanks to Fubar for some of these links)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20001027/aponline115918_000.htm
[Oct 27, 2000] GOP Group To Air Pro-Nader TV Ads

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60340-2004Jul18.html
[July 19, 2004] Republicans Helping Nader to Help Themselves

http://www.newsweek.com/id/54427
TRY TO GUESS WHO'S BACKING NADER . . .

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080224/ap_on_el_pr/nader_4
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, speaking shortly before Nader's announcement, said Nader's past runs have shown that he usually pulls votes from the Democratic nominee. "So naturally, Republicans would welcome his entry into the race," the former Arkansas governor said on CNN. . . .

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14677.html

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/24/nader_who_doesnt_deserve_atten/

http://www.americablog.com/2008/02/reader-feedback-about-ralph-nader.html

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2008_02_24_archive.html#3756368877577738440
[Atrios] Who cares?

.38% in 2004.

I could get .38%.

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:50 AM

 
LAST GASPS

Hey, it’s not much but it’s all he’s got

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080223/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush
President Bush said Saturday that Democratic leaders in the House are blocking key intelligence legislation so trial lawyers can sue phone companies that helped the government eavesdrop on suspected terrorists after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Terrorists are plotting new attacks against America "at this very moment," Bush said . . .

"When Congress reconvenes on Monday, members of the House have a choice to make: They can empower the trial bar, or they can empower the intelligence community," Bush said in his Saturday radio address. "They can help class-action trial lawyers sue for billions of dollars, or they can help our intelligence officials protect millions of lives." . . .

Why that’s a lie: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/23/125150/025

Where will the FISA debate end?

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/02/23/mcconell/index.html
[Glenn Greenwald] Ponder what it says about our press corps that the White House knows it can (a) block all attempts to extend the PAA and then (b) spend the next several weeks blaming Democrats for helping the Terrorists by allowing the PAA to expire. I know I've made that point before, but this one is so brazen, so transparent and audacious, that it just hasn't yet ceased to amaze. . . . [read on]

More: http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/007049.html

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/fisa-battle-is-more

Quibbling over the details of torture – what the hell have they done to this country?

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/nadler-justice

McCain is lying about his lobbyist ties

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/mccains_lying_problem.php

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/23/mccains-favors-for-iseman-involved-allowing-far-right-wing-families-to-sustain-their-shell-companies/

Hey John, can’t you keep your story straight?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/23/132549/831
[On the Iseman story, February 22, 2008] “Since it was in The New York Times, I don’t take it at face value. . .”

[February, 2000] As long as Saddam Hussein is in power, I am convinced that he will pose a threat to our security. "The New York Times" reported just a few days ago that administration officials worry that Saddam Hussein continues to develop weapons of mass destruction.

NYT’s ombudsman questions the innuendo of its McCain/Iseman article

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/opinion/24pubed.html

I’m sure the feeling is mutual

http://www.wnem.com/politics/15387513/detail.html
Republican John McCain bluntly said Friday that he hopes Castro will die "very soon." . . .

More: http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2008/02/mccain-is-not-fit-to-be-president.html

Bush’s Pentagon tries to influence the election

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14673.html

Things tighten up between Clinton and Obama, and it gets nasty – very nasty

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/obama_closing_the_gap_among_su.php

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/rasmussen_obama_catching_up_in.php

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4330128&page=1

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/hillary_shame_on_you_barack_ob.php

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/02/clinton-draws-c.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/23/AR2008022302178.html

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14676.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/23/18116/1469

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/23/hillary-slams-obama-on-nafta/

http://www.americablog.com/2008/02/mark-penn-is-on-mission-to-destroy.html

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/2008/02/obama_suggests_clintons_anger.html

Grim assessments for Clinton

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/us/politics/24mood.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-campaign24feb24,0,7152756.story?page=1

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/02/23/dispatch_from_maryland.html

Here’s one way to think about the election: would you rather see Obama as Governor of Illinois, or Clinton as Senate Majority Leader?

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/002893.php

Here’s a name we haven’t heard for a while: the hopelessly craven (and wonderfully named) AP reporter, Nedra Pickler, thinks that it’s good journalism to go to GOP slimemaster and dirty trickster Roger Stone for an “objective” assessment of Obama’s patriotism. You won’t be surprised to hear what he thinks

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/179835.php

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2008_02_17_archive.html#7619029581586734605

Sunday talk show line-ups

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/24/sunday-talking-head-thread-90/
ABC's This Week: Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) on Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq. Roundtable: E.J. Dionne Washington Post, Peggy Noonan Wall Street Journal, Cokie Roberts, George Will.

CBS' Face The Nation: Charlie Black, strategist for Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign; Govs. Jennifer Granholm, D-Mich., and Janet Napolitano, D-Ariz.

CNN's Late Edition: Adm. Mike McConnell: Director of National Intelligence. Governor Ed Rendell (D-PA), Governor Kathleen Sebelius (D-KS); Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN). Robert Bennett lawyer for John McCain. Bill Schneider CNN Senior Political Analyst; Amy Walter The Hotline, CNN Political Contributor; Suzanne Malveaux CNN White House Correspondent. (AP is also reporting Mike Huckabee may be on, but he isn't listed on the CNN website. Just so ya know.)

Fox News Sunday: Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN), Mark Sanford (R-SC), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Jon Corzine (D-N.J).

NBC's Meet The Press: Ralph Nader. Roundtable: David Brooks, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Michele Norris, Chuck Todd.

Bonus item: Privacy, shmivacy

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080223/ap_on_re_us/abortion_grand_jury;_ylt=Ah0HocJRx6bOdJWcuB6VscSs0NUE
A Planned Parenthood clinic in suburban Kansas City will turn over a limited number of patient records to a grand jury investigating abortions there, a clinic attorney said Friday. . .

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 8:00 AM

 
BREAKDOWN ON THE STRAIGHT TALK EXPRESS

Honest John McCain, caught in a lie

http://www.newsweek.com/id/114505
A sworn deposition that Sen. John McCain gave in a lawsuit more than five years ago appears to contradict one part of a sweeping denial that his campaign issued this week to rebut a New York Times story about his ties to a Washington lobbyist.

On Wednesday night the Times published a story suggesting that McCain might have done legislative favors for the clients of the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, who worked for the firm of Alcalde & Fay. One example it cited were two letters McCain wrote in late 1999 demanding that the Federal Communications Commission act on a long-stalled bid by one of Iseman's clients, Florida-based Paxson Communications, to purchase a Pittsburgh television station.

Just hours after the Times's story was posted, the McCain campaign issued a point-by-point response that depicted the letters as routine correspondence handled by his staff—and insisted that McCain had never even spoken with anybody from Paxson or Alcalde & Fay about the matter. . . . [read on]

This is a problem: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/it-gets-worse-for-mccain-by-dday-its.html

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/02/22/mccain/index.html

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14667.html

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/stumper/archive/2008/02/21/what-we-actually-know-about-mccain-and-iseman.aspx

A REAL problem

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/22/AR2008022202634.html
Broadcaster Lowell "Bud" Paxson yesterday contradicted statements from Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign that the senator did not meet with Paxson or his lobbyist before sending two controversial letters to the Federal Communications Commission on Paxson's behalf. . . .

More: http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/22/paxson-refreshes-mccains-memory/

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/legs-by-dday-bud-paxson-has-now.html

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/179783.php
[Josh Marshall] Maybe they'd prefer to go back to the affair story?

McCain: SURROUNDED by lobbyists

http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/special3/articles/0811mccain-advisers-ON.html

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/179774.php
[Josh Marshall] Turns out John McCain is such a scourge of lobbyists everywhere that his senior advisor, GOP lobbyist Charlie Black, is now conducting most of his lobbying work by phone from the Straight Talk Express.

I have to confess that this new detail has vanquished my ability to snark. . . .

More: http://www.samefacts.com/archives/john_mccain_/2008/02/influence_peddling_on_the_straight_talk_express.php

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/21/mcvain-in-bed-with-lobbyists-frequently/

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080222/ap_on_el_pr/mccain_lobbyist
McCain said Friday that while lobbyists serve as close advisers to his presidential campaign, they are honorable and he is not influenced by corruption in the system. . .

McCain: “I'm moving on...I do not intend to discuss it further”

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/22/13481/6231

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14669.html
[Steve Benen] There’s always been some degree of mystery surrounding the media’s embarrassing, almost sycophantic, love for John McCain. For a group of people who are supposed to be secret liberals and agents of the Democratic Party, seeking in desperation to insert a left-leaning bias in every news story, reporters often seem unsure if they want to ask this conservative Republican a question or for an autograph.

Of course, the explanation is clear enough. McCain gives reporters exactly what they want: access. He holds press conferences constantly; he’ll chat with reporters for hours on the campaign bus; he’ll even ask them for their opinions on various aspects of his campaign. Reporters, who expect to be kept at arm’s length, can’t help but swoon.

So it’s hard not marvel when McCain, just yesterday, all of a sudden, decides he’s feeling shy . . .

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_02/013176.php
[Time] In the wake of a scandalous New York Times story suggesting a romantic fling with a lobbyist, McCain arrived at a Ford Focus car assembly plant with a decidedly tense grin plastered across his face. His campaign staff promptly separated anyone with a pen or a tape recorder from the candidate. "The McCain campaign decided who they wanted on the tour, and it's only photographers," a nice lady from Ford announced after a reporter spotted the candidate behind a car chassis and tried to approach him. . .

At the end of the day, McCain boarded the plane with his wife, his staff, and his daughter, Meghan, who trailed an entourage of friends, bound for Indianapolis. On another night, he would have sauntered to the back to chew the fat with reporters. But on this night, he only came half-way down the aisle, keeping a safe distance. "Everybody happy?" he called out. "Fun day. Fun day." McCains eyebrows bounced up and down to signal his sarcasm.

His question, of course, was rhetorical. He didn't want to hear anything more. Before anyone could answer he had wheeled around and gone back to his seat, beyond the reach of reporters and their notebooks for just a while longer. . . [read on]

Was there a meeting of McCain’s staff to discuss the Iseman “problem”? Mr. Straight Talk: it depends on the meaning of “meeting” . . . and “staff”

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/22/so-was-there-a-meeting/

Watch the self-appointed moralists of the Right try to explain why, even if the stories of McCain’s philandering are true, it’s DIFFERENT from Bill Clinton’s philandering

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14666.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/22/AR2008022202881.html

Connections

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/179716.php
[Josh Marshall] How is John McCain's attempt to back out of the public financing system getting tripped up by the failed nomination of vote-suppression guru Hans von Spakovsky? Whose evil genius was brought to light by the US Attorney scandal?

And how is it that if John McCain goes ahead and keeps spending money over the campaign finance limits he agreed to abide by back in August he could, at least in theory, do five years hard time in the slammer? . . .

More: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/mccains_fec_problem.php

McCain masters the discourse of a Unitary Executive: I don’t have to follow the laws if I don’t want to. He says the FEC judgment on his campaign finance shenanigans is just an “opinion”

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/mccain_shrugs_shoulders_over_f.php

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/john_mccain_/2008/02/shorter_john_mccain.php

Rick Renzi (R-AZ) indicted – and guess whose campaign he works for?

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/breaking_gop_rep_renzi_indicte.php

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/179744.php
[Josh Marshall] Minority Leader Boehner is telling Rep. Rick Renzi, who's just been indicted for wire fraud, extortion, money laundering and a few other things, should resign. Meanwhile, John McCain, who has Renzi as one of his Arizona campaign co-chairs, says he doesn't "know enough of the details to make a judgment."

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/22/111219/739

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/22/133257/391

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/22/what-got-added-to-the-renzi-indictment-since-october-2006/

McCain criticizes Bush’s big budget bills – all of which he voted for

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/22/162937/880

McCain is 71 – let’s take a serious look at the question of his health, shall we?

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/22/mccains-brain-hows-it-doin-of-assholes-brains-and-sen-mc-cain/

In other news

Don’t hold your breath, but. . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/22/AR2008022201643.html
An internal watchdog office at the Justice Department is investigating whether Bush administration lawyers violated professional standards by issuing legal opinions that authorized the CIA to use waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques, officials confirmed yesterday.

H. Marshall Jarrett, counsel for the Office of Professional Responsibility, wrote in a letter to Democratic lawmakers that his office is investigating the "circumstances surrounding" Justice opinions that established a legal basis for the CIA's interrogation program, including a now-infamous memo from August 2002 that narrowly defined torture and was later rescinded by the department.

"Among other issues, we are examining whether the legal advice contained in those memoranda was consistent with the professional standards that apply to Department of Justice attorneys," Jarrett wrote. . . .

More: http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/2/22/19153/6345

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/23/washington/23justice.html

How does this line of argument work for you? The Bush gang claims that we are losing valuable intelligence information every day that the revised FISA bill languishes in Congress – but they refuse to support a temporary extension and they refuse to negotiate on the issue of retroactive telecom immunity

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/admin_officials_claim_surveill.php

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/22/17128/5107

There’s still a war going on. . .

http://www.juancole.com/2008/02/turkey-invades-iraq-sadr-renews-freeze.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080223/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/23/world/middleeast/23basra.html

Yes, Karl Rove DID take an interest in putting together a legal case to get rid of Alabama’s Democratic governor

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i_LLY8gc6av_Whr8kdxbeuy5EFXwD8UV31U00

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/2/22/122547/094/794/461951

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/tv-alert-by-dday-they-buried-it-on-same.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/02/22/BL2008022201767.html
[Dan Froomkin] Sunday's episode of "60 Minutes" offers a glimpse of the secret Karl Rove.

Not the public Rove -- the jovial number-crunching doofus who has taken to popping up on Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and even has his own column in Newsweek.

I'm talking about the other Rove -- the dirty trickster and master of calumny . . .

Obama questions the military’s spending priorities – the Right Wing howls in fury. Guess who’s telling the truth?

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/02/from-the-fact-3.html
"You know, I've heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon -- supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon," he said. "Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq. And as a consequence, they didn't have enough ammunition, they didn't have enough humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23301273/
The Pentagon on Friday tried to cast doubt on an account of military equipment shortages mentioned by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, whose campaign team stood by the story. . . .

More: http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/2/23/44711/5543

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/179784.php
[Josh Marshall] It would appear that we have another case where the Bush Pentagon, particularly the Office of Public Affairs is forcefully inserting itself into the civilian election process. . .

Bonus item: Don’t get me started. Ralph Nader may be deciding to run for President again. (Have you heard the groundswell of calls begging him to do it?)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080222/ap_on_el_pr/nader;_ylt=AoVK2TD6FF4umWCHg7T5Ikus0NUE

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:48 AM

 
WORST-CASE SCENARIOS

Bush wrecks the world

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080222/ap_on_re_mi_ea/turkey_iraq
[10,000] Turkish troops launched a ground incursion across the border into Iraq in pursuit of separatist Kurdish rebels, the military said Friday — a move that dramatically escalates Turkey's conflict with the militants.

It is the first confirmed ground operation by the Turkish military into Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. It also raised concerns that it could trigger a wider conflict with the U.S.-backed Iraqi Kurds . . .

http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20080220/wl_mcclatchy/2855957
The Bush administration is pressing the opposition leaders who defeated Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to allow the former general to retain his position, a move that Western diplomats and U.S. officials say could trigger the very turmoil the United States seeks to avoid. . . .

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_02/013175.php
[Time] Many of the Muslim delegates seemed stunned, finally, by the rush of history unleashed by the Bush Administration. "Everything the United States has favored is now radioactive, especially democracy," said Rami Khouri, a Lebanese journalist. The Administration had pushed for elections in places like the Palestinian territories where the essential components of democracy — a free press, a free economy, the rule of law — did not exist. Religious parties had won, or gained momentum, in most of these elections, and the U.S. had backtracked, refusing to accept the Hamas victory in the Palestinian territories, re-embracing autocrats like Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. "Our indigenous democratic reformers," Khouri said, "are in retreat across the region." . . . [read on]

More: http://www.juancole.com/2008/02/three-events-that-changed-world.html

Sorry, old bean! Pip pip and all that, eh?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/22/world/europe/22britainweb.html
In tones freighted with frustration, Britain’s foreign secretary, David Miliband, on Thursday told the House of Commons that “contrary to earlier explicit assurances” the Central Intelligence Agency had confirmed using an American-operated airfield on the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean for refuelling two American “rendition” flights carrying terrorism suspects in 2002. . .

Isn’t this the ultimate example of “wanting the issue more than the bill”? Bush and the Republicans, while shouting every day that each moment we face without a revised FISA bill puts the nation in horrible danger, have refused to negotiate an extension of the current bill and refused to consider a revised bill without telecom immunity. And so it lapsed last week. Have the skies fallen in? No.

As is usual in these things, the Senate and House need to meet to reconcile their different versions. A meeting is set up for Democratic and Republican officials to negotiate this urgent, urgent bill. Guess what? The Republicans don’t even show up

What they want is for the House to vote on the Senate bill, simpliciter – and with the Democratic Blue Dogs it would probably pass. Let’s see what happens

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/dems_republicans_refuse_to_par.php
[Paul Kiel] After all the fear-mongering, charges of fear-mongering, counter-fear-mongering, and so on, the surveillance bill discussions went behind closed doors when Congress left for the week.

The chairmen and ranking members of the judiciary and intelligence committees are supposed to be the ones forging that compromise. . . . [read on]

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/bush_no_compromise_on_surveill.php
[Paul Kiel] Well, this is probably why the Republicans didn't show up today to help hash out a compromise. There's not going to be one. . . . [read on]

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/21/16501/6800
[McJoan] Republicans put country at risk
That's their argument, right? Every day without telco amnesty is one day closer to the total annihilation of everything, or something. When they aren't fear-mongering, they are bleating about the wonderful "bipartisan" effort in the Senate to give Bush all the license he ever wanted to break the law. Well, here's what they really think about bipartisanship. . . [read on]

More: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/republican-lost-weekend-by-dday-so.html

Instead, they issue a new “24” style fearmongering ad campaign

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/02/21/fear_fear_fear/index.html

The “legal branch” of the Bush junta still hasn’t resolved Cheney’s ridiculous claim that the Vice President is a distinct branch of government, not liable to rules binding the Executive branch

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/21/opr-endorses-pixie-dust/

John McCain tries to explain away the Iseman/lobbyist story. His poor wife, Cindy, has to perform the old “loyally standing at his side” routine so may humiliated political wives have had to perform. And his answers, such as they are, don’t dispel the suspicions

Watch: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/179459.php

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/mccain_comments_distort_fcc_ma.php
[Paul Kiel] Whatever you may think of this morning's New York Times and Washington Post stories, they turn on whether John McCain did legislative favors for Vicki Iseman, the lobbyist with whom McCain denies having had a romantic relationship.

And McCain was keen to hit back hard on that account at his news conference this morning. When one reporter asked him about one of the key details in the Times piece -- that McCain, then the chairman of the Senate commerce committee, had written a letter to the Federal Communications Commission on behalf of one of Iseman's clients -- he responded . . .[read on]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/179505.php
[David Kurtz] A couple of things John McCain said at his press conference this morning didn't pass the smell test. . . .

More: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/update_mccains_fcc_remark.php

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/an_artful_dodge.php

As noted here yesterday, the real meat of the story remains his overly cozy relationship to lobbyists generally. That side of the story is unrefuted and growing stronger

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/john_mccain_/2008/02/the_iseman_cometh.php
[Mark Kleiman] Regardless of whom McCain was or was not shtupping, the AP's version of the McCain/Iseman story has one allegation of a clear impropriety, in more detail than the Times version:

In late 1999, McCain twice wrote letters to the Federal Communications Commission on behalf of Florida-based Paxson Communications — which had paid Iseman as its lobbyist — urging quick consideration of a proposal to buy a television station license in Pittsburgh. At the time, Paxson's chief executive, Lowell W. "Bud" Paxson, also was a major contributor to McCain's 2000 presidential campaign.

McCain did not urge the FCC commissioners to approve the proposal, but he asked for speedy consideration of the deal, which was pending from two years earlier. In an unusual response, then-FCC Chairman William Kennard complained that McCain's request "comes at a sensitive time in the deliberative process" and "could have procedural and substantive impacts on the commission's deliberations and, thus, on the due process rights of the parties."

McCain wrote the letters after he received more than $20,000 in contributions from Paxson executives and lobbyists. Paxson also lent McCain his company's jet at least four times during 1999 for campaign travel.

"No favors for lobbyists or special interests"? Are you sure? Is it routine for a Senator from Arizona to pressure regulatory agencies on behalf of companies based in Florida? [Added note: Megan McArdle points out that just getting a speedy resolution is worth a lot, even assuming, implausibly, that McCain really intended to influence the timing but not the outcome.] Let's hear McCain's campaign (headed by a lobbyist who is donating his time) deny this, or explain it. . . .

More: http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/a_real_story.php

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2008/02/about_that_time.php

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/mccain_and_iseman.php

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14658.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_02/013167.php

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/go-to-guy-by-digby-im-probably-less.html

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/21/did-vicki-iseman-steal-honor-in-three-presidential-elections/

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/21/mccains-cronies-rick-davis-uber-lobbyist-at-the-helm/

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/21/iseman-and-mccain-enable-conrad-black-to-commit-fraud-with-canwest/

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/its-his-judgment-stupid-by-tristero.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/21/AR2008022101131.html
[WP] The Anti-Lobbyist, Advised by Lobbyists

Senator McCain! Senator McCain! I have more questions!

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080221/METRO/802210457
Sen. John McCain toured Ford's Wayne Stamping and Assembly Plant on Thursday, but canceled a press conference in which he was sure to face more questions about his ties to a Washington lobbyist. . .

Every cloud has a silver lining: McCain uses the NYT story to raise money

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/already_mccain_raising_money_o.php
“We could expect attacks were coming; as soon as John McCain appeared to be locking up the Republican nomination, the liberal establishment and their allies at the New York Times have gone on the attack. . . .”

[Greg Sargent] Interestingly, the fundraising email makes no mention of the fact that the paper endorsed McCain. . . .

Also from the fundraising email: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/21/145624/866
“Objective observers are viewing this article exactly as they should - as a sleazy smear attack from a liberal newspaper against the conservative Republican frontrunner. Sean Hannity said, after reading the article three times, ‘It was so full of innuendo and so lacking of fact, and so involved in smear, I came to the conclusion that the goal here was to bring up a 20-year-old scandal.’ Washington attorney Bob Bennett, who was the Democrat counsel during the Keating investigation, said, ‘This is a real hit job.’"

[NB: OBJECTIVE OBSERVERS? Sean Hannity? And Bob Bennett IS HIS LAWYER!]

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14658.html

The right-wing is iffy on backing up McCain, but it’s easy for them to slam the Times

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14650.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/21/104558/425

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_022108/content/01125106.guest.html
[Rush] The important question for John McCain today is, is he going to learn the right lesson from this, and what is the lesson? The lesson is liberals are to be defeated. You cannot walk across the aisle with them. You cannot reach across the aisle. You cannot welcome their media members on your bus and get all cozy with them and expect eternal love from them. You are a Republican. Whether you're a conservative Republican or not, you are a Republican. At some point, the people you cozy up to, either to do legislation or to get cozy media stories, are going to turn on you. They are snakes. If the right lesson is not learned from this, then it will have proved to be of no value. There's a great opportunity here for Senator McCain to learn the right lesson and understand who his friends are and who his enemies are.

[NB: Friends like YOU, Rush, who have been beating on him like a drum for weeks?]

One little problem with the “liberal media” trope: the Times printed the story, but the McCain-Iseman information came from REPUBLICANS. Hmmmm. . . . .

http://www.pensitoreview.com/2008/02/21/timing-sourcing-suggest-gop-behind-mccain-smear/

The story behind the NYT story – fascinating

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=8b7675e4-36de-43f5-afdd-2a2cd2b96a24

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14656.html

Shorter John McCain: I have learned NOTHING from the past six years

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/20/mccain-more-occupations/
ROBERTS: So it’s clear you have no regrets in saying that the U.S. could be in Iraq for a hundred years.

MCCAIN: The U.S. could have a military presence anywhere in the world for a long period of time. . .

McCain’s doublespeak on campaign finance

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/179450.php
[David Kurtz] John McCain may not be able to drop out of public financing for the primary campaign.

It goes back to that campaign loan he secured with a promise to accept public financing.

Now that he wants to opt out, the FEC is saying, essentially, not so fast . . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/21/AR2008022103141.html
The nation's top federal election official told Sen. John McCain yesterday that he cannot immediately withdraw from the presidential public financing system as he had requested, a decision that threatens to dramatically restrict his spending until the general election campaign begins in the fall. . .

More: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/todays_must_read_281.php

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/21/152528/224

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/179368.php

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/02/the-other-mccai.html

Eleven in a row for Obama

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080221/ap_on_el_pr/campaign_delegates;_ylt=AqmWbCnvX0MWoU.KJeNbG9Ws0NUE

Haw haw haw

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/21/AR2008022102713.html
As if their list of disadvantages in the November elections is not long enough, House Republicans have spent this month worrying whether some of their crucial campaign cash has disappeared. . . .

Bonus item: Rush is frantic

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5717
"We're trying to avoid a fifty state landslide!" . . . [read on]

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:30 AM

 
KA-BOOM!

The Iseman cometh. . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/us/politics/21mccain.html
Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s client, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.

Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity. . . [read on]

[NB: Really, though, while the romantic angle is explosive, the best-documented parts of the story concern his shameless hypocrisy on dealing with lobbyists generally.]

More details: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/20/AR2008022002898_pf.html

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?last_story=/politics/war_room/2008/02/20/mccain

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/20/20552/2339

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/20/she-gets-around/

More to come? Probably so

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/179402.php
[Josh Marshall] This is an odd story for a couple reasons. We know that the McCain Camp went to the mattresses to get this story spiked back in December. And some heavy legal muscle was apparently brought to bear. When a story has to go through that much lawyering it often comes out pretty stilted and with some obvious lacunae. And this one definitely qualifies. Reading the Times piece it struck me as a bit of a jumble. The reference to a possible affair is there in the lede. But then most of the piece is a rehash of a lot of older material about McCain's record before getting back to the relationship with Iseman.

In terms of a relationship between the two, the Times piece seems quite hedged. According to two staffers, staffers became concerned there was a romantic relationship. They took steps to protect McCain from himself. According to the Times sources, after being confronted by staffers, McCain "acknowledged behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance from Ms. Iseman." . . .

At the moment it seems to me that we have a story from the Times that reads like it's had most of the meat lawyered out of it. And a lot of miscellany and fluff has been packed in where the meat was. Still, if the Times sources are to be believed, the staff thought he was having an affair with Iseman and when confronted about it he in so many words conceded that he was (much of course hangs on 'behaving inappropriately' but then, doesn't it always?) and promised to shape up. And whatever the personal relationship it was a stem wound about a lobbying branch.

I find it very difficult to believe that the Times would have put their chin so far out on this story if they didn't know a lot more than they felt they could put in the article, at least on the first go. . . .

Reading all of this stuff I have the distinct feeling that only a few pieces of the puzzle are now on the table. Given unspoken understandings of many years' duration, a lot of reporters and DC types can probably imagine what the full picture looks like. But we're going to need a few more pieces before the rest of us can get a sense of what this is all about.

This isn’t much of a denial, is it??

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/2/20/212230/141
"It is a shame that the New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit and run smear campaign. John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this election.

"Americans are sick and tired of this kind of gutter politics, and there is nothing in this story to suggest that John McCain has ever violated the principles that have guided his career."

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/strong_claim.php
[Matt Yglesias] Does John McCain's campaign really want to go on record with the idea that he has "never done favors for special interests or lobbyists"? I would, personally, find it shocking if there were truly zero instances in the man's 25 year congressional career in which he did something for a special interest. What about Charles Keating? This seems like an invitation for trouble down the road.

“It’s not the sex, it’s the corruption”

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/20/late-nite-fdl-its-not-the-sex-its-the-corruption/

http://demosthenes.blogspot.com/2008/02/yippee-kay-yay-gop.html
[Demosthenes] This scandal couldn't be worse. It's not that it raises the question of Gary Hart-style philandering, though it certainly does. It's that he was philandering with a lobbyist, a telco lobbyist no less. He's not just receptive to corporate lobbyists, he's intimate with them. It destroys that "Maverick" image and makes him worse than other Republicans. It puts him right back into the mold of the Keating 5. It's not going to go away, either; Republicans won't cut him enough slack, and Democrats will gleefully feast on what remains of his reputation. If there's anything to this, it could destroy his candidacy. There's no way he can win. . .

http://econ4obama.blogspot.com/2008/02/st-john-and-lobbyists-money-quote.html
[NYT] “Unless he gives you special treatment or takes legislative action against his own views, I don’t think his personal and social relationships matter,” said Charles Black, a friend and campaign adviser who has previously lobbied the senator for aviation, broadcasting and tobacco concerns. . . .

Like other presidential candidates, he has relied on lobbyists to run his campaigns. Since a cash crunch last summer, several of them — including his campaign manager, Rick Davis, who represented companies before Mr. McCain’s Senate panel — have been working without pay, a gift that could be worth tens of thousands of dollars.

In recent weeks, Mr. McCain has hired another lobbyist, Mark Buse, to run his Senate office. In his case, it was a round trip through the revolving door: Mr. Buse had directed Mr. McCain’s committee staff for seven years before leaving in 2001 to lobby for telecommunications companies. . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/21/02419/4767
[Smintheus] So, McCain uses undue pressure to try to force the FCC to grant a sweetheart deal to Iseman's clients (involving several Pittsburgh TV stations). He's so far out of line that he gets rebuked by the FCC Chairman. The episode becomes known and draws public comparisons to McCain's efforts on behalf of Charles Keating a dozen years earlier. And McCain tries to dispel allegations of wrongdoing by...suppressing information about a cozy flight he took with Iseman after a Miami fundraiser earlier that same year.

In 1999, CIPB filed this rather more detailed report about McCain's efforts on behalf of Paxson in the Pittsburgh case. CIPB was demanding an investigation of McCain's activities. . . .

More: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/arrogance-express-by-digby-back-in-2000.html

The fascinating story behind the story: McCain threatens to “go to war” against the NYT. Why did the NYT sit on the story, and why was it published now?

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8614.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/20/AR2007122001356_pf.html

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/20/mccains-favors-for-one-special-lobbyist-the-bob-bennett-angle/

http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2008/02/john-mccain-vicki-iseman-new-york-times.php

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_02/013167.php

How Fox News is “covering” the story

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4072

The guy at the heart of the CIA torture tape destruction case

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/todays_must_read_280.php
[Paul Kiel] The story goes something like this: Porter Goss, then the director of the CIA, was viewed as something of a buffoon by the career officers. They didn't like the crew he brought in (like his #3 Dusty Foggo, who was subsequently indicted for taking bribes from Brent Wilkes), and they didn't like the way he ran the place. So Rodriguez pretty much ran things the way he thought they ought to be run in his division. And when the issue of whether to destroy those tapes arose again in late 2005, he did what he thought was right. He saw the tapes as "a sort of time bomb that, if leaked, threatened irreparable damage to the United States’ image in the Muslim world, his friends say, and posed physical and legal risks to C.I.A. officers on them."

And Goss... did nothing. The Times reports that there is "no record of any reprimand or punishment" in Rodriguez's personnel file at the agency . . .

More: http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/20/the-pointy-end-of-a-dull-spear/

Gitmo prosecutor told: go ahead and have your tribunals, just so long as everyone is found guilty

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/former_gitmo_prosecutor_pentag.php
[Paul Kiel] At this point, it's not even controversial to say that the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay are a sham. The current chief judge there has written that the military tribunals have “credibility problems." And the former chief prosecutor, after resigning, publicly criticized the system as "deeply politicized."

Now that former prosecutor, Col. Morris Davis, has given more evidence of that politicization in an interview with The Nation . . . Davis says that in an August, 2005 meeting with William Haynes, then the Pentagon's general counsel, Haynes seemed to completely discount the possibility of the military tribunals acquitting any of the detainees. Now, of course, Haynes has been installed as the official overseeing the whole process, both the prosecutors and the defense. . .

More: http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/2/20/123948/883

Only George Bush could say this (after visiting the Rwandan genocide museum) with absolutely no sense of irony or recognition

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2008_02_17_archive.html#3701114073843181344
BUSH: A clear lesson I learned in the museum was that outside forces tend to divide people up inside their country and are unbelievably counterproductive. . .

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/02/20/BL2008022001456.html

Can this be right? Bush approval plummets from 34% to a jaw-dropping 19% in one month?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/20/125334/887

Well, maybe not: http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4071

[NB: Yeah, 19% just sounds much too HIGH, doesn't it?]

Musharraf’s party rebuked in Pakistan elections, but he plans to stay in office. Now what?

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/02/20/pakistan/index.html
Musharraf said Wednesday he intends to remain in office and work with the new government. . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/world/asia/20diplo.html
The United States would still like to see Pakistan’s opposition leaders find a way to work with Mr. Musharraf in some kind of power-sharing deal, administration officials said, but that notion appears increasingly unlikely given how poorly Mr. Musharraf’s party did in the elections . . .

“Musharraf is obviously a poison pill,” said Daniel Markey, a former South Asia expert at the State Department under President Bush. “He is fading out. The question is, what happens next?” . . .

Is this how John McCain is trying to convince us he’ll be a stronger and safer leader than Obama?

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/mccain-weak-on

http://www.juancole.com/2008/02/mccains-holiday-from-history-in.html

McCain calls on Bush to veto the anti-torture bill

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/mccain_bush_should_veto_antito.php

McCain lies about tax increases

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=02&year=2008&base_name=straight_talk

Huckabee opens up against the GOP establishment’s “smug, elitist, arrogant attitude” – don’t miss it!

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/179314.php

Obama on pace to raise $36 million this month

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/source_obama_on_track_to_raise.php

Teamsters and Boilermakers endorse Obama

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/teamsters_boilermakers_endorsi.php

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/20/135156/219

Obama’s delegate lead grows

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/obamas_delegate_lead_growing.php

Obama campaign manager: no way Clinton can catch us now

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/obama_campaign_hillary_has_vir.php

On the Obama “cult”

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/on-cult-by-digby-it-was-only-matter-of.html

Obama supporter gets humiliated on national t.v.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/179291.php

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/179357.php

Some hope for our electoral future

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/20/democracy-in-action/
[Burnt Orange Report] Early voting starts today in Texas. In Waller County, a primarily rural county about 60 miles outside Houston, the county made the decision to offer only one early voting location: at the County Courthouse in Hempstead, TX, the county seat.

Prairie View A&M students organized to protest the decision, because they felt it hindered their ability to vote. For background, Prairie View A&M is one of Texas' historically Black universities. It has a very different demographic feel than the rest of the county. There has been a long history of dispute over what the students feel is disenfranchisement. There was a lot of outrage in 2006, when students felt they were unfairly denied the right to vote when their registrations somehow did not get processed. . . .

1000 students, along with an additional 1000 friends and supporters, are this morning walking the 7.3 miles between Prairie View and Hempstead in order to vote today. . . .

More: http://www.americablog.com/2008/02/in-texas-students-march-73-miles-for.html

Theocracy watch: a semi-victory in the evolution/creationism fight

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/progressreport/2008/02/pr20080220/

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14645.html

The kind of man he is

http://mediamatters.org/items/200802200001
In a discussion of recent comments made by Michelle Obama, Bill O'Reilly took a call from a listener who stated that, according to "a friend who had knowledge of her," Obama " 'is a very angry,' her word was 'militant woman.' " O'Reilly later stated: "I don't want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there's evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels . . .”

[Unless??!!???]

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/20/oreillys-lynching-party-and-michelle-obama/
[Jane Hamsher] It's not a "slip of the tongue," and it's not that he doesn't realize the use of the term "lynching" is racist and hateful and threatening and eliminationist just because he's an old, out-of-touch white guy. It's how he speaks to the lizard brain racism that still consumes the country in order to inspire a different kind of "unity." . . .

Bonus item: Hey, some people can pull off wearing a cowboy hat, and some can’t. This guy sure can

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/photoblog.php

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:51 AM

 
THE PHENOM

Obama buries Clinton by 17% in a state that should have been competitive for her – and in the process makes inroads into the key demographic groups where she held an advantage. This is very bad news indeed for Hillary

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/02/19/todd_clinton/index.html
[Alex Koppelman] Watching MSNBC Tuesday night, we caught NBC Political Director Chuck Todd, whose political insights are widely respected, delivering a solemn pronouncement about the state of Hillary Clinton's campaign. According to Todd, by the end of Tuesday's contests, Barack Obama will likely have a lead of 150 pledged delegates, and an overall lead (counting superdelegates) of 80 delegates.

This lead will be very difficult for Clinton to overcome, Todd told viewers. "All the contests that are remaining... if Hillary Clinton was to win all of them, she would need to win 58 percent of the pledged delegates, at this point, just to get the lead again in pledged delegates," Todd said. When likely Obama victories are factored in, that number rises to 65 percent.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/179232.php
[Josh Marshall] The premise of Clinton's campaign after Super Tuesday has been her trump cards of female voters and working class/lower income Democrats. But that assumption is due for a major reevaluation. In each successive contest he's cutting more into those core constituencies. Tonight in Wisconsin Obama tied Hillary among female voters and beat her by 10 points among voters making less than $50,000 per annum.

We've had four big post-Super Tuesday primaries -- in LA, MD, VA and WI. The topline numbers in each were relatively similar -- ranging from 17% in Wisconsin to 29% in Virginia. But the underlying story is that from Louisiana to the Chesapeake to Wisconsin, the underlying demographic structure of the electorate, the playing field, as it were, got better for her. But it didn't help.

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_02/013158.php

Exit polls: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/exit_polls_obama_cut_deep_into.php

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/179218.php

http://www.slate.com/id/2184689/

Why she should have done better: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jnAz95tEY6R1i2LsDfQ6Uz23MXqQD8UT96A80
Wisconsin is almost the kind of state Hillary Rodham Clinton would have invented to win a Democratic presidential primary, brimming with whites and working class voters who usually support her. . .

Oh, by the way

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/state/#WI
[Wisconsin, with 99% reporting] Obama 645,554/McCain 224,122

I’m with Mark Kleiman here

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/02/ceasefire.php
It looks to me as if the Democratic primary season is effectively over. Time for Obama supporters to aim their fire at John McCain, who, after all, presents a target-rich environment. . . [A]nyone looking for criticism of Hillary Rodham Clinton or her campaign will have to look elsewhere from now on. . .

More: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/179162.php
[Josh Marshall] Whoever wins the Democratic nomination, it seems clear that that victory won't be celebrated any time soon. The writing could be on the wall on March 5th. But even if that's the case, the race seems unlikely to be settled for some time after that. And there's of course the possibility, though I think it's not likely, that the fight could go all the way to the convention.

And during that time, who takes on John McCain? McCain is already making a number of position changes that are getting little or no media attention. He's caught up in some very questionable campaign finance gambits. And he's launching daily and fairly harsh attacks on Barack Obama, as he's wise to do as long as the Democrats are distracted by their own primary fight.

Someone at the DNC, or other party organization should be putting together a campaign apparatus in waiting that will take on the Republican nominee until a clear Democratic winner can take over. But at the moment I'm not seeing any sign of it. . .

The kind of people they are

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NmM2NDQ3ZWQ1YWM0Y2QyZTUxMDdkY2M2OTJlNGE5MWE
[Lisa Schiffren] During the Clinton Administration we were all introduced to then U. of Pennsylvania Professor Lani Guinier — also a half black/half Jewish, red diaper baby. . . .

I don't know how Barak Obama's parents met. But the Kincaid article referenced above makes a very convincing case that Obama's family, later, (mid 1970s) in Hawaii, had close relations with a known black Communist intellectual. And, according to what Obama wrote in his first autobiography, the man in question — Frank Marshall Davis — appears to have been Barack's own mentor, and even a father figure. Of course, since the Soviet Union itself no longer exists, it's an open question what it means practically to have been politically mentored by an official Communist. Ideologically, the implications are clearer.

Political correctness was invented precisely to prevent the mainstream liberal media from persuing the questions which might arise about how Senator Obama's mother, from Kansas, came to marry an African graduate student. Love? Sure, why not? But what else was going on around them that made it feasible? . . .

It was, of course, an explicit tactic of the Communist party to stir up discontent among American blacks, with an eye toward using them as the leading edge of the revolution. To be sure, there was much to be discontented about, for black Americans, prior to the civil-rights revolution. To their credit, of course, most black Americans didn't buy the commie line — and showed more faith in the possibilities of democratic change than in radical politics, and the results on display in Moscow.

Time for some investigative journalism about the Obama family's background, now that his chances of being president have increased so much.

John McCain: if you watch any of his “victory” speeches, they are old recitations of long-familiar mantras, delivered without passion or real conviction. Has anyone talked about how exhausting a 9 month Presidential campaign will be? 71 year old McCain looks tired already

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_02/013157.php
[Kevin Drum] Whatever else you can say about McCain, "new thinking" pretty clearly isn't part of his appeal. On foreign policy, he's for the status quo squared. His only real problem with George Bush is that he hasn't been militaristic enough. And on domestic policy he's practically famous for not paying attention to much of anything beyond his two or three pet issues. If running for president requires him to embrace Jerry Falwell, swear fealty to supply-side tax drivel, and repudiate his own immigration plan — well, he's perfectly willing to do it. As near as I can tell, he really doesn't care enough about any of this stuff to think it's worth standing up against.

Personally, I think the Republican electorate did a pretty good job of choosing the least repellent of the candidates they were offered. But they sure didn't do it because John McCain was the candidate of fresh ideas. . .

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_02/013158.php
[Kevin Drum] By the way, was it just me or did John McCain look unusually scripted and robotic tonight? His heart really didn't seem to be in his victory speech.

In other news. . . .

It’s gone too far to use “1984” as a metaphor: we’re there now. Big Brother says, you can’t take the govt to court for invading your privacy unless you can prove we did it to you specifically. But that information is classified, so you can’t see it, sorry

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/supreme_court_refuses_to_hear.php

More: http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/19/scotus-rejects-warrantless-wiretapping-challenge-case/

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/19/scotus-says-no-thanks-to-aclu-suit-will-it-change-the-fisa-debate/

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/02/19/lawlessness/index.html

Our Nuremberg (thanks to Buzzflash for the link)

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2008/02/just-following-orders-doj-opinions-and.php

I like this: People who have always hated the women’s movement now condemn feminists for not being quick to defend the rights of women who are supposedly being helped by the war in Iraq – because, you know, the war was all about helping the women

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/19/wingnut-lecture-series-on-feminism-thanks-ill-pass/
[Katha Pollitt] We reject the use of women's rights language to justify invading foreign countries. . . [read on]

More: http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict-iraqconflict/women_2681.jsp
Just as Iraqi women were anticipating a new era of democracy and freedom, a wave of intimidation by extremist groups has arisen to crush their hopes. Violent oppression of women is spreading across Iraq . . .

http://www.vday.org/contents/vcampaigns/spotlight/conflictzones
[W]ar exponentially increases the crimes of violence against women and girls. . .

For women, not just during war but for decades to come, armed conflict means escalated military, sexual, and domestic violence, lack of security as a displaced person or refugee, and vulnerability to sex traffickers and coerced prostitution even by the peacekeepers themselves. Given the 21st century's escalating armed conflicts, impunity for wartime sexual violence cannot be tolerated. As patterns of wartime rape and sexual violence continue today in places such as Sudan, Congo, and Iraq, it is paramount to expose and condemn these crimes through international media coverage and public outcry and efforts in our communities themselves. . . .

“Iraq still a fiasco”

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/ricks-iraq-still-a
[Spencer Ackerman] There are three books anyone who wants to understand the Iraq war should read . . .

Investigating the destruction of the CIA torture tapes

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/washington/20intel.html
Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. . . . dispatched a cable to the agency’s Bangkok station ordering the destruction of videotapes that showed C.I.A. officers carrying out harsh interrogations of operatives of Al Qaeda.

“He would always say, ‘I’m not going to let my people get nailed for something they were ordered to do,’ ” said Robert Richer, Mr. Rodriguez’s deputy in the clandestine branch until late 2005, who recalls many conversations with his boss about the tapes.

With the tapes’ destruction now the subject of overlapping Congressional and criminal inquiries, investigators are trying to determine whether Mr. Rodriguez, 59, acted on his own or with at least tacit approval from superiors at the C.I.A. or the White House. Officials now say a recent review by the C.I.A. of Mr. Rodriguez’s personnel file found no record of any reprimand or punishment for his action. . .

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:39 AM

 
A QUESTION OF COMPETENCE

This is the kind of stubborn, ignorant thinking that drives a nation into fiscal catastrophe: Bush believes that his massive unfunded spending on the war, which has blown the deficit back up to record levels, has been GOOD for the economy

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/18/bush-iraq-economy/

A sea change in Pakistan – and I see no sign that the Bush people are prepared for it

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/18/AR2008021800830.html
Voters in Pakistan appeared to deliver a sharp rebuke to President Pervez Musharraf on Monday, handing significant victories to the country's two leading opposition parties in parliamentary elections . . .

http://www.slate.com/id/2184674/
[Daniel Politi] The papers all remind readers that a parliament led by members of the opposition could move to impeach Musharraf or simply invalidate the controversial results of the election that gave him another term late last year. But the NYT hints at the end of its story that might not be necessary as two people close to the president suggested Musharraf would resign if he has to face a parliament dominated by his opponents.

USAT focuses its Pakistan story on the deep repercussions that yesterday's election could have for the United States. A government led by opposition parties is likely to be more reluctant to cooperate with the United States, which has provided billions of dollars in aid for the fight against terrorism.

More: http://www.juancole.com/2008/02/musharrafs-party-roundly-defeated.html

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/important_developments_im_not.php

Why the telecoms may not need to be worried about immunity – but Bush and Cheney do

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/18/dont-cry-for-the-telcos-bush-cheney-are-the-only-ones-that-are-dying-for-immunity/

The latest right-wing FISA ploy: You hate lawyers, right, well guess who is opposed to telecom immunity?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/18/14140/6183

A close reading of Steven Bradbury’s gruesome defense of torture turns this up: If waterboarding is finished quickly, it isn’t torture; if other “enhanced techniques” don’t go on long, there is no risk of permanent harm, therefore no torture. On this argument, if detainees hold out against such treatment without fessing up, it’s their own fault if their health is put in jeopardy

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/18/19822/9657

McCain snags the much-cherished George H.W. Bush endorsement. A new article speculates on his Cabinet. It’s friggin’ Night of the Living Dead

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/2/18/155236/396

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/elect-mccain-and-you-elect-whole.html
[USAT] • Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., in a prominent job, possibly even secretary of state.

• Former Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., as attorney general.

• Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani as homeland security secretary.

• Former Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas as treasury secretary. . .

McCain’s campaign in a nutshell: more war, less taxes

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/mccain_previews_general_electi.php

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/18/mccains-completely-incoherent-narratives/

McCain’s duplicity on campaign financing

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/mccain_campaign_banked_on_taxp.php

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/18/1151/75637

If it was ever true that McCain was a “maverick,” he’s put it all in a box – he’s simply regurgitating the same old neocon platitudes now

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/18/let-the-fawning-profiles-of-st-john-the-divine-begin/
[Arianna Huffington] Despite an avalanche of evidence showing that McCain the Maverick has long ago been replaced by McCain the Pandering Pawn of the Party's Right Wing, the press refuses to believe its own eyes. . .

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2008_02_17_archive.html#5645911244367066266
[Atrios] It's really quite hilarious that it's okay when Saint John McCain flip-flops, lies, goes against claimed longstanding principles, etc... because even though he does all of these things regularly and constantly, he doesn't like doing it.

McCain's a skilled politician who is good at telling members of the media - and interest groups - what they want to hear. He's good at making them think he agrees with them on whatever issue they happen to care about, and even though he almost never follows up with any coherent action or leadership on these issues, he has flattered the chattering classes by validating their Very Wise Positions and appealing to their intellectual vanity. Then when Saint John McCain is forced by Circumstances Beyond His Control to change his position, everyone involved feels very sorry for poor John McCain. Elites have contempt for those rubes known as "voters" so it pains them when voters force their sainted John McCain to do all of these bad things.

Our elite discourse is run by shallow easily flattered fools. . .

More: http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/kristofs_crystal_ball.php

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/spinning-away-shamelessness-by-dday.html

Tom Daschle, former Democratic Senate Majority leader, can probably deal a death’s blow to McCain’s campaign – here’s how

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/179004.php

The Clinton campaign: a slow motion car crash

http://baltimorechronicle.com/2008/010308Burns.shtml
[December 30] “I have a campaign that is poised and ready for the long term. We are competing everywhere through February 5th. We have staff in many states. We have built organizations in many states . . .

So from my perspective, you get up every day and you get out there and you make your case and you reach as many people as possible. That's what I intend to do, so I'm in it for the long run. It's not a very long run. It'll be over by February 5th.”

[NB: She might have been right about that.]

Clinton has made the case that winning Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania now are absolutely essential to her success. But then how did she and her people miscalculate so badly in Texas?

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178946.php
[David Kurtz] It's pretty clear now that the Hillary campaign wasn't prepared with a Plan B if its strategy for a Super Tuesday knockout punch didn't work. Now comes a report that the campaign only recently learned that her "firewall" state of Texas allocates delegates in such a way that even a big popular vote win might not yield a decided edge in state delegates.

More: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/hillary_camp_only_recently_lea.php

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/poll_hillary_obama_in_dead_hea.php
[Texas] Clinton 50/Obama 48

Oh, please

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178957.php
[David Kurtz] By now, you've probably heard of the new attack line from the Hillary campaign, accusing Obama of plagiarism because an ad-libbed portion of his stump speech mimicked the language and rhythm of a two-year-old speech by his friend and supporter, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. . . . Obviously, this isn't plagiarism.

[Jake Tepper] I asked Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson and Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass, if they could assure the public that neither Clinton nor McGovern has ever done what Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, did when he used the rhetoric of Gov. Deval Patrick without footnoting him.

They would not.

In fact, Wolfson seemed to say it wouldn't be as big a deal if it were discovered that Clinton had "lifted" such language.

"Sen. Clinton is not running on the strength of her rhetoric," Wolfson said.

More: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178994.php

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14620.html

A devastating question, it seems to me. Whatever one thinks of Clinton or her policies, she has run a pretty lousy campaign. Once she got knocked off the “I am the inevitable juggernaut” strategy, she had no Plan B. Her campaign has flailed around trying to find a line of approach to Barack Obama, delving at times into racially coded slurs, and in the latest version, attacking him for being TOO GOOD an orator. There is no clear plan for how to use Bill Clinton as an asset and not a liability during the campaign. Her campaign floaters that they might use superdelegates to override the popular vote, and may change the rules midstream on Michigan and Florida, were PR disasters. She has lost eight straight primaries and caucuses and stands to lose two more today. Now the Texas fiasco.

And so the question arises: For a candidate basing her argument on experience and competence, shouldn’t we be expecting a better-managed campaign than this?

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/hrc_/2008/02/what_hilzoy_said.php

Don’t tell me that the Republicans are more fired up about running against Obama than Clinton

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178922.php

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:06 AM

 
PRESIDENTS’ DAY

Reshaping the world in our image

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/lessons_learned_3.php
[Spencer Ackerman] Then at the end, as people are milling about and chatting on their way out the door, one of the PRT officials tells a judge how important it is to stand up against terrorism and promote equality and fairness before an impartial system of law. The judge nods at the platitude. "Tell me," he says through a translator, "is it true that in America, Bush can fire prosecutors he doesn't like?" . . .

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080217/ap_on_re_af/bush_africa
President Bush on Sunday said Congress should renew his global AIDS program and preserve a requirement that steers money into abstinence efforts.

"We don't want people guessing on the continent of Africa whether the generosity of the American people will continue," Bush said in Tanzania, the second stop of his African trip. . . .

The FISA fight: it’s all about the unitary executive

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/17/192219/178

More: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/run-for-your-lives-by-digby-is-everyone.html

It’s hard to be a scientist in a reality-challenged administration

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/17/AR2008021702186.html
The lead author and peer reviewers of a government report raising the possibility of public health threats from industrial contamination throughout the Great Lakes region are charging that the report is being suppressed because of the questions it raises. The author also alleges that he was demoted because of the report.

Chris De Rosa, former director of the division of toxicology and environmental medicine at the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), charges that the report he wrote was a significant factor in his reassignment to a non-supervisory "special assistant" position last year.

The House Committee on Science and Technology is investigating De Rosa's reassignment, in light of allegations that it was related to the Great Lakes report and his push to publicize the possibility of a cancer risk from formaldehyde fumes in Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers housing victims of Hurricane Katrina. . .

Please don’t help

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/us/politics/18mccain.html
Senator John McCain's campaign advisers will ask the White House to deploy President Bush for major Republican fund-raising, but they do not want the president to appear too often at his side, top aides to Mr. McCain said Sunday.

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_02/013148.php

Hey, McCain’s 71 – you expect a little trouble with lost memory

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14612.html

McCain learns the Bush mantra on Iraq: when things are going badly, that’s a reason to stay longer; when things are going well, that’s a reason to stay longer; when things are stagnant, that’s a reason to stay longer

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/2/17/13539/7708

The incoherence of the Republican addiction to “choice” theories

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/dumb-as-posts-by-digby-all-of-em.html

Some foreign policy advice for Obama

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3973

Clinton condemns military tribunals (Obama too)

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/27935.html

Hey Hillary, what about those tax returns?

http://www.examiner.com/a-1224714~Pressure_builds_on_Clinton_to_release_tax_returns.html

The silly season: is 60 “young”?

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2008_02_17_archive.html#8797460365340029100

Bonus item: The kind of man he is

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14611.html
[Steve Benen] Bush appeared alongside Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete for a press conference at Dar Es Salaam this morning, and was apparently annoyed that reporters were interested in a certain senator from Illinois who is running for president with African roots.

Jennifer Loven of the Associated Press asked Bush a question about his AIDS relief plan and then turned to Kikwete to note the excitement in Africa about Obama’s candidacy and asked the African leader to comment on “what you think it says about America that we might elect a black President with roots in Africa?”

Even though that part of the question was not directed at him, Bush weighed in first with mock exasperation that everyone seemed to be forgetting he was treated like a rock star on the trip. “It seemed like there was a lot of excitement for me, wait a minute,” the President said to laughter. “Maybe you missed it.”

It’s always about him, isn’t it?

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:05 AM

 
DON’T BE SURPRISED

My, who could have predicted THIS?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/washington/15fisa.html
The House broke for a week’s recess Thursday without renewing terrorist surveillance authority demanded by President Bush, leading him to warn of risky intelligence gaps while Democrats accused him of reckless fear mongering. . .

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/2/16/173534/633
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security sent a bulletin Friday to state and local law enforcement authorities advising them to watch for potential retaliatory strikes by Hezbollah . . .

And who could have predicted THIS?

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-usa-troops.html
The United States will probably have more troops in Iraq this summer than it did before pouring in forces last year -- even after a planned drawdown, a U.S. general said on Friday . . .

And who could have predicted THIS?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/16/72359/2597
[AP] Hundreds of U.S. Marines have been killed or injured by roadside bombs in Iraq because Marine Corps bureaucrats refused an urgent request in 2005 from battlefield commanders for blast-resistant vehicles, an internal military study concludes. . . [read on]

For all our efforts in Iraq, we’ll never be more than interlopers in the region

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/14/AR2008021403480.html
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will travel to Iraq next month in the first such visit by a leader of the Islamic Republic, Iraqi officials said Thursday, adding that Iran had postponed a fourth round of talks with the United States to discuss Iraq's security.

Invited by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Ahmadinejad is scheduled to arrive March 2 for a visit of two to three days to discuss bilateral relations, the officials said. He will also meet with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. . .

Our friends (part 1)

http://www.americablog.com/2008/02/saudis-reportedly-threatened-to-let.html
[Guardian] Saudi Arabia's rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday.

Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced "another 7/7" and the loss of "British lives on British streets" if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence. . . .

Our friends (part 2)

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/27758.html
A prominent U.S.-based human rights group Friday released what it said was a recording of Pakistan's attorney general acknowledging that next week's national elections would be "massively" rigged. . . .

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/world/asia/17pstan.html

This could backfire: the GOP strategy now is that, once the current "Protect America Act" expires, the nation will be on the verge of catastrophe. For reasons discussed here in detail two days ago, that is in no way true. But the more they ratchet up the panic, don’t they potentially run an even greater risk of people saying, “If it’s such an emergency, then why not pass the bill without retroactive telecom immunity”?

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/02/16/protecting_us/index.html

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/16/185848/456

You know any WH document entitled “Myth vs Fact” is going to be a hoot – and they don’t disappoint

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14605.html
“MYTH: If any new surveillance needs to begin, the FISA court can approve a request within minutes. In the case of an emergency, surveillance can begin immediately and FISA approval can be obtained later.

FACT: Reverting to the outdated FISA statute risks our national security. FISA’s outdated provisions created dangerous intelligence gaps, which is why Congress passed the Protect America Act in the first place. . .”

As Brian Beutler explained, “If the claim in the myth is, in fact, inaccurate, then the fact should read: ‘The FISA court can not approve a request within minutes, and emergency surveillance cannot begin immediately.’ Or something. But, of course, the ‘myth’ is true, and, as you can see, the ‘fact’ is a rather large heap of irrelevant bullshit.” . . [read on!]

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/16/111740/723

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/16/late-night-fact-you-will-die-horribly-no-later-than-tuesday/

We know that Bush is stunningly unreflective and unself-critical. But even when you know all that, reading tripe like this is hard to stomach

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/great-rationalizer-by-dday-this-bbc.html

It has been said that the genius of the American system is that it can withstand even an incompetent leader. Well, this principle is being put to the test. . .

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/16/the-end-of-americas-genius/

Oops! Sorry

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/washington/17fisa.html
A technical glitch gave the F.B.I. access to the e-mail messages from an entire computer network — perhaps hundreds of accounts or more — instead of simply the lone e-mail address that was approved by a secret intelligence court as part of a national security investigation, according to an internal report of the 2006 episode. . . .

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/16/183316/281

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/16/technical-glitches-and-minimization/

Brent Wilkes faces 25 years (!) in prison

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/prosecutors_seek_25_years_for.php

McCain is 71 friggin’ years old. Don’t tell me he’s going to “curb his temper” or transform his personality

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-BC-McCain-Temper.html
"F--- you," he shouted at Texas Sen. John Cornyn last year.

"Only an a------ would put together a budget like this," he told the former Budget Committee chairman, Sen. Pete Domenici, in 1999.

"I'm calling you a f------ jerk!" he once retorted to Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley. . . .

"I decided I didn't want this guy anywhere near a trigger," Domenici told Newsweek in 2000.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/03/AR2008020303242_pf.html
[January 27] "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine," Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), also a senior member of the Appropriations panel, told the Boston Globe recently. "He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."

More: http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/senator_hothead.php

180 degrees

http://www.wmctv.com/Global/story.asp?S=7842631
[February 8] Senator Thad Cochran has shifted his support to Senator John McCain for president. . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14606.html
[The Hill] Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) lambasted Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) Thursday for “betraying” the conservative movement. . . .

DeLay said McCain has no principles and indicated he would not endorse the senator if he won the GOP primary.

“If McCain gets the nomination, I don’t know what I’ll do,” DeLay said at the Capitol Hill Club, according to a source in the room. “I might have to sit this one out.”

[Steve Benen] He added that a McCain triumph for the GOP nomination would destroy the Republican Party.

This came a few days after DeLay told Fox News, “There’s nothing redeeming about John McCain.”

That was last month. This week, DeLay was in Arizona dropped in on a McCain fundraiser and said he would support McCain once he secured the Republican nomination.

In the end, they come around. They always do.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-gopcampaign29jan29,0,23257.story
[January 28] "Look at the three things Sen. McCain has done as senator," Romney said. "If you want that kind of a liberal, democratic course as president, then you can vote for him. But those three pieces of legislation, those aren't conservative, those aren't Republican, those are not the kind of leadership we need as we go forward."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-endorse15feb15,1,2396386.story
[February 14] Arizona Sen. John McCain got a Valentine's Day gift today when his former rival Mitt Romney threw his support to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. . .

McCain stakes his bet as Bush 2.0. Good luck with that

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/17/04412/1599

McCain’s flippety flops on campaign finance

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/2/16/1823/05384
[Jonathan Singer] I've said it before and I'll say it again: John McCain is one of the most cynical, conniving and excessively ambitious career politicians America has seen for a very long time. Today's evidence? McCain's machinations on public financing. . . .

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/16/112830/081

Very good, very useful: An instruction manual for right-wing propaganda

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/craftiness-of-right-by-tristero-in.html

Granted, DNC head Howard Dean is in a tough spot, but this response is hardly “Profiles in Courage”

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/howard_dean_speaks_out_about_r.php
The Democratic National Committee has given me what appears to be Howard Dean's most extensive and detailed answer to date on the role of super-delegates amid the ongoing battle between Hillary and Obama for their support.

Dean's verdict: "Their role is to exercise their best judgment in the interests of the nation and of the Democratic Party." . . .

More: http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/2/16/15405/9226

The superdelegate numbers don’t look good for Hillary

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/us/politics/17delegates.html

Okay, we know by now the old “Everything you do is good for us” reverse psychology of the GOP, so take this with a grain of salt – they now say they’re lusting after the opportunity to run against Obama

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/2/16/191657/271

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/16/grover-and-newt-ankle-bite-obama-with-1998-talking-points/

The Obama candidacy: passionate movement, or cult of personality? (thanks to Bill C. for the links)

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/2/7/112248/5633

http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2008/02/obama-a-cult-of.html

A LITTLE problem with the NY primary vote

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/nyt_many_new_york_city_precinc.php
[Eric Kleefeld] A new look at the election results from Super Tuesday could end up giving Barack Obama a few more delegates from New York — it turns out that hundreds of voting machines in New York City initially reported zero votes for him . . .

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/16/121517/415

I’m not going to make any excuses for this

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/2/16/143520/918
[ABC] Earlier this month, speaking at Tulane University, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, said this about the attacks coming his way from Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY:

"You challenge the status quo and suddenly the claws come out," Obama said. . .

Then yesterday Obama told reporters who had asked about Clinton's latest attack ad, "I understand that Senator Clinton, periodically when she's feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal." . . .

[NB: “periodically”?]

Hmmm. . . I thought everyone agreed that Michigan and Florida would be held to the same rules as everyone else? Now Clinton’s people are hedging on that. This won’t go down well

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/02/16/671358.aspx

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/02/shorter_harold_ickes.php

This is a problem Hillary faces: when “tough guy” candidates bully and browbeat the press, they complain but grudgingly admire it – especially a testosterone lover like Chris Matthews. When Hillary does it, it’s treated differently

http://www.americablog.com/2008/02/chris-matthews-is-right_15.html
MATTHEWS: What she has to do is get rid of the kneecappers that work for her, these press people whose main job seems to be punishing Obama or going after the press, to building a positive case for her. The kneecapping hasn't worked. Her press relations are lousy. I think if all you do is intimidate and punish and claim you'll get even relentlessly, people of all kinds of politicians -- and in all fairness, the press -- human reaction to intimidation is screw you. That's the human reaction. Don't tell me what to say, and that has been their whole policy. We're going to win this thing. Get out of the way."

Another problem: Hillary’s resident genius

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/02/pennism-du-jour-enjoy.php
[Sean Donohue] Two days later, after Obama’s eighth straight victory, [Mark] Penn told reporters: “Winning Democratic primaries is not a qualification or a sign of who can win the general election.” . . .

http://donklephant.com/2008/02/16/mark-penn-winning-primaries-pfft/
[Justin Gardner] [T]his is one of the highest paid people in Hillary’s organization. Can you honestly tell me you can trust her judgement to pick capable people to surround herself with when this is one of her top advisers?

More trouble for Penn

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/02/15/penn_and_exelon/print.html

David Broder: never wrong

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2008_02_10_archive.html#7772303246228878138
[WP] Bush Regains His Footing
By David S. Broder
Friday, February 16, 2007

It may seem perverse to suggest that, at the very moment the House of Representatives is repudiating his policy in Iraq, President Bush is poised for a political comeback. But don't be astonished if that is the case. . . .

Sunday talk show line-ups

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/16/AR2008021602369.html
FOX NEWS SUNDAY: Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle (D) and Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland (D).

THIS WEEK (ABC) Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

FACE THE NATION (CBS): Richmond Mayor L. Douglas Wilder (D), Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D), Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod and Clinton campaign strategist Howard Wolfson.

MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Sens. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.).

LATE EDITION (CNN): Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), Sens. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), former Democratic presidential candidate Bill Bradley and former Clinton White House counsel Lanny Davis.

Bonus item: Leave it to the Republicans to turn a steroid-pumping, lying baseball player into a partisan issue

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/sports/baseball/15clemens.html
A day after a dramatic, nationally televised hearing that pitted Roger Clemens against his former personal trainer and Democrats against Republicans, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said Thursday that he regretted holding the hearing in the first place. . . .

The chairman, Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, said the four-hour hearing unnecessarily embarrassed Clemens, who he thought did not tell the truth, as well as the trainer, Brian McNamee, who he thought was unfairly attacked by committee Republicans. . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14607.html
[Steve Benen] I should admit from the outset that I don’t watch baseball, and I have no emotional investment in any of the players who now stand accused of steroid use. In fact, in light of the House Oversight Committee’s high-profile hearing this week, featuring pitcher Roger Clemens and his principal accuser, I tend to think Congress’ time would be better served focusing on more substantive matters.

But it appears the hearing weren’t entirely a vacuous exercise in political theater. In at least a few instances, the spectacle helped demonstrate to people who don’t usually follow events on the Hill that when it comes to taking professional responsibilities seriously, congressional Republicans are a bit of a joke. . . . [read on!]

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=dw-clemenspettitte021308
Clemens was doomed from the start, crushed by sworn affidavits and repeated under-oath testimony from Pettitte and his wife Laura – almost unimpeachable witnesses – who not only backed up the words of former trainer Brian McNamee, but blew Clemens’ own stories out of the water. . .

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/7794774/Clemens-hearing-showed-inefficiency-of-politics
Realizing that he would spend Wednesday afternoon testifying (deceitfully, in my opinion) before congress, Clemens spent much of last week lobbying congressmen/women to hear him sympathetically. His efforts worked beautifully, as countless Republican representatives ignored glaring inconsistencies, inaccuracies and contradictions in Clemens' story and focused their attention on proving McNamee used to lie to newspaper and magazine reporters about his training regimen. . . .

Dan Burton (R-IN), weasel: http://walkoffbalk.blogspot.com/2008/02/dan-burton-is-huge-fan-of-roger-clemens.html

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178369.php

Of course! http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iRT5lT4E0_HRHdFxKQofvvDWZghAD8UQC7380
One of Brian McNamee's lawyers predicted Roger Clemens will be pardoned by President Bush, saying some Republicans treated his client harshly because of the pitcher's friendship with the Bush family. . .

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/02/national/main658658.shtml
[December 8, 2004] A spokesman said Wednesday President Bush continues to call on major league baseball to take "strong steps" on the steroid problem.

The president mentioned the issue in his State of the Union address last January, reports CBS News Correspondent Mark Knoller, and White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said Mr. Bush still regards it as a high priority. . . .

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:20 AM

 
ACT LIKE WINNERS

Well, well, well. The Democrats finally, finally, decide not to cave in when Bush trots out his tired old “you are putting American lives at risk” rhetoric. And guess what? The sky doesn’t fall in, patriots don’t surround Congress with pitchforks and molten tar and feathers. No. Bush blusters, stamps his feet, blusters some more, and then. . . . nothing. Hey George – this is what a lame duck feels like

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/todays_must_read_277.php
[Paul Kiel] What happened? The administration did everything right. The invocation of "countless American lives" hanging in the balance, the specter of terrorists delightedly chatting away undetected, the urgency emphasized by a threat to delay a long-scheduled presidential trip to Africa in order to secure the nation against attack.

That's right, the Protect America Act, the surveillance bill the administration pushed through Congress last August in a brilliantly executed squeeze play, will expire at midnight. The House should have already folded by now and simply passed the Senate's surveillance bill, complete with retroactive immunity for the telecoms. But the Dems haven't; they're sticking to the bill they passed months ago. What gives? . . . [read on]

Feels good, doesn’t it? http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/15/122332/745

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/15/14639/0532

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/02/15/BL2008021502107.html

Lessons from popular culture: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178739.php
The Brady Bunch. . . A Christmas Story. . . and Andy Griffith . . .

The telecoms await their fate

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/more_fisa_less_sarcasm.php

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/007007.html

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/02/15/poe/index.html
"I think there is probably joy throughout the terrorist cells throughout the world that the United States Congress did not do its duty today," said Representative Ted Poe, Republican of Texas.

[Glenn Greenwald] This is the kind of pure, unadulterated idiocy -- childish, cartoonish and creepy -- that Democrats for years have been allowing to bully them into submission, govern our country, and dismantle our Constitution. . . .

On one level, it's difficult to maintain any sustained optimism about the House's defiance yesterday. They were acting far more out of resentment over the procedural treatment to which they were subjected by the White House and, more so, the Senate -- having a bill dropped in their lap again just a couple of days before a deadline and told that they had to pass it, as is, and immediately -- than out of any principled objection to warrantless eavesdropping or telecom amnesty.

And it's painfully easy to envision more than enough "Blue Dogs" eventually joining their GOP colleagues to pass the Senate bill, thus handing the White House yet another complete victory, even if it comes a little later than it was demanded. . .

The issue is not "intelligence gaps." Rather, as [DNI Michael] McConnell candidly admits, the "real issue" is "liability protection for the private sector." To take them at their word, George Bush and Mike McConnell are putting the nation at risk in order to ensure that AT&T and Verizon do not have to be held accountable in a court of law for having broken the law. Think about how twisted and corrupt that calculus is.

One other vital point: The claim that telecoms will cease to cooperate without retroactive immunity is deeply dishonest on multiple levels, but the dishonesty is most easily understood when one realizes that, under the law, telecoms are required to cooperate with legal requests from the government. They don't have the option to "refuse." Without amnesty, telecoms will be reluctant in the future to break the law again, which we should want. . . .

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2008_02_10_archive.html#145113586871206541
[Atrios] I don't actually believe this is about protecting the telcoms; it's about protecting themselves. And given the fact that a supine press has been relatively unconcerned that the president had been illegally spying on Americans without warrants as required by law for years, one wonders just what it is they feel the need to hide.

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/15/123618/311

http://www.first-draft.com/2008/02/today-on-hold-8.html
Q What right does the President have to tell any company or any person in this country to break the law?

MR. STANZEL: I -- what's your point? . . .

The banality of evil

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/the_calculus_of_torture.php
[Paul Kiel] Yesterday, Steven Bradbury, the Justice Department official who heads up the Office of Legal Counsel, testified before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties. . . . .

Bradbury writes the legal opinions that tell the administration how far they can go. And when he (and earlier John Yoo) advised the administration that it was legal to waterboard prisoners, they had their reasons.

With regard to waterboarding, Bradbury explained with chilling sangfroid his legal reasoning. We've provided a full transcription of his answers below. It's the most detailed description of the Justice Department's analysis with regard to a particular interrogation technique ever given. . . [read on]

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/we_do_not_torture_like_the_spa.php
[Paul Kiel] Can there be a prouder moment in our nation's history? . . .

Joe Lieberman: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/lieberman_waterboarding_is_ok.php
"[Waterboarding] is not like putting burning coals on people's bodies. The person is in no real danger. The impact is psychological," he says.

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14594.html
[Steve Benen] “We are at war”? In context, Lieberman was, of course, referring to the “war on terror,” which will presumably never end, given that it’s a war against a tactic that has been, and will be, used forever. In other words, Lieberman isn’t exactly recommending torture on a limited, short-term basis — which would be offensive enough — but rather a pro-torture standard that would exist indefinitely.

Lieberman did say he wants our interrogation techniques to work within the Geneva Conventions. That’s an interesting standard — given that waterboarding is “torture under the Geneva Conventions and has been treated as a war crime in the United States for decades.” . . .

During World War II, when the Japanese waterboarded U.S. troops, we considered it a war crime and executed the torturers. Now, Joe Lieberman not only seems to believe we were wrong to do so, but also that we should follow the Japanese’s lead and utilize their WWII interrogation techniques. It’s hard to overstate how disgusting this is.

I am curious, though, how Lieberman might respond to a follow-up question. Why would torture though controlled-drowning be fully legal and acceptable, while torture with “burning coals” would be beyond the pale? If we believe there’s an imminent terrorist attack, and Jack Bauer needs to save the day, he should be able to fill a suspect’s lungs with water, but he shouldn’t be able to put burning coals on the guy’s skin? This is the well-thought-out interrogation standard Joe Lieberman has come up with?

This guy is a disgrace. If he were capable of shame, now would be a good time for it.

Alice: You see, the Army NEEDS the Field Manual to help them keep their behavior in control, but the CIA are professionals, so. . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14599.html

One less watchdog in the Bush administration

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/15/AR2008021501705.html

Ah, our good old friend Dusty Foggo. How you been, guy?

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/15/more-charges-for-dusty-foggo/

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/foggo_bribery_case_moves_to_vi.php

More like this, John. . .

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/15/mccain-doubles-down-on-100-years-in-iraq-pledge/
Republican presidential front-runner Sen. John McCain on Thursday defended his statement that U.S. troops could spend "maybe 100" years in Iraq -- saying he was referring to a military presence similar to what the nation already has in places like Japan, Germany and South Korea. . . . It's not a matter of how long we're in Iraq, it's if we succeed or not . . . [read on]

[NB: I can’t WAIT for November]

McCain learns a little Rove 101: Always attack your opponent first for something you are vulnerable on

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/15/late-night-fdl-mavericity-and-its-discontents/

McCain is doing a lot of Rumsfeld-bashing these days. But what did he say THEN?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/15/AR2008021503320.html

Clinton’s team had better find a better message than this

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/15/9350/11897

Blessed be the peacemakers. . . . maybe

http://www.slate.com/id/2184659
[Joshua Kucera] Gore and other Democrats, such as Nancy Pelosi and former candidates John Edwards, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd, are staying neutral so that they can act as peacemakers in the event of a divided convention, the Times says. The piece relies heavily on unnamed "associates" of Gore. "The issues party leaders are grappling with, they said, include how to avoid the perception of a back-room deal that thwarts the will of millions of voters who have cast ballots in primaries and caucuses." TP wonders, though, if the Times isn't being too credulous in not looking at other possible motives Gore and the others may have for staying on the fence. Could they just be worried about backing the wrong horse? It's a possibility the piece doesn't entertain. . . .

Bonus item: Star Wars?

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178761.php
[David Kurtz] One of the challenges of covering the Bush Administration these days is resisting the temptation to assume that everything they do is a stunt or a con. . . .

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/02/fishy-rationale.html
The Pentagon says it has to shoot down a malfunctioning spy satellite because of the threat of a toxic gas cloud. Space security experts are calling the rationale highly unlikely. "Having the US government spend millions of dollars to destroy a billion-dollar failure to save zero lives is comedic gold” . . . "There has to be another reason behind this," said Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center, tells the Washington Post. "In the history of the space age, there has not been a single human being who has been harmed by man-made objects falling from space."

So what could that other reason be? . . . [read on]

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14600.html

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/002863.php

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:01 AM

 
CALLING HIS BLUFF

Once again, Bush waves his arms and warns of dire consequences if Congress doesn’t immediately pass the revisions to FISA – with telecom immunity included. I don’t think the Dems have played this particularly well, but finally they’re coming around to the right question, “If you need the approved surveillance techniques so badly to keep us safe, why not accept a bill that gives you everything you asked for in that regard, then fight the telecom immunity issue separately? Why are YOU running the risk that the current law will lapse? Why are YOU forcing a divisive and legally dubious rider onto a bill that, whatever its merits, has nothing to do with current surveillance needs?”

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/14/173433/995/690/456954

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_02/013129.php

More like this please: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/14/134336/310
[Ted Kennedy] The President has said that American lives will be sacrificed if Congress does not change FISA. But he has also said that he will veto any FISA bill that does not grant retro-active immunity. No immunity, no FISA bill. So if we take the President at his word, he's willing to let Americans die to protect the phone companies.

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/fisa.php
[Matt Yglesias, prince of snark] It is fascinating that the Republican Party would rather allow what they believe to be a critical national security law lapse than allow it to be extended without the extension containing a rider immunizing large telecommunications firms from the consequences of prior illegal activity. It's almost as if the Republican Party exists to serve the interests of large business enterprises and very wealthy individuals, and tends to use national security and cultural anxieties as a kind of political theater aimed at securing votes so that they can better pursue their real agenda of enriching the wealthy and powerful.

Bush’s statement

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080214/ap_on_go_pr_wh/terrorist_surveillance

Reid’s letter: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/reid_bush_attempting_to_manufa.php
I regret your reckless attempt to manufacture a crisis over the reauthorization of foreign surveillance laws. . . .

Reyes’s letter: http://atrios.blogspot.com/2008_02_10_archive.html#6229571246195545757
I take strong offense to your suggestion in recent days that the country will be vulnerable to terrorist attack unless Congress immediately enacts legislation giving you broader powers to conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans' communications and provides legal immunity for telecommunications companies that participated in the Administration's warrantless surveillance program. . . .

The press coverage: distorted and misleading, of course

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_02/013133.php

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/02/15/poe/index.html

A matter of “life and death”?

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14588.html

Here’s why a lapse in the FISA law won’t actually stop ANY ongoing surveillance

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/things_will_be_fine.php

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/14/134336/310

House Democrats stand firm, for now

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/washington/15fisa.html
The House broke for a week’s recess Thursday without renewing terrorist surveillance authority demanded by President Bush . . .

More: http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/15/calling-the-presidents-fisa-bluff/
[Scarecrow] Yesterday, House Democrats finally said "enough" and called George Bush's bluff. . .

The Democrats vote a contempt resolution against Josh Bolten and Harriet Miers – the Republicans walk out in protest

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/house_passes_contempt_votes_ag.php

Why the contempt vote matters

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178584.php
[Josh Marshall] With torture debates and the raucous presidential primaries, folks don't think much anymore about the US Attorney scandal and the Bush administration political purge of the DOJ that led eventual to multiple resignations and the fall and disgrace of Alberto Gonzales, President Bush's Attorney and long-time legal confidant. But that's what these contempt citations are about. They're aimed at finally pushing through the stonewalling that the White House has now used for more than a year to keep the truth of what happened from becoming known. . . .

Oh, and about that “spontaneous” walk out . . .

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/house_gop_stages_walkout_durin.php
[Paul Kiel] When the Dems finally made a move to get a vote on the contempt resolutions against White House officials for ignoring subpoenas in the U.S. attorney investigations, the Republicans had a walkout all planned out. As Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) gave a speech haranguing the Dems for "political grandstanding" at a time of dire threats to national security (because work on the surveillance bill has still not been completed). They then filed out onto the steps, where a podium was waiting to complete the photo op.

No political grandstanding, indeed. . . .


The kind of people they are

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/14/house-in-chaos-after-repu_n_86639.html
Democratic aides were shocked when, during the middle of a memorial for Holocaust survivor and Congressman Tom Lantos, GOP Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart demanded a procedural vote on the floor, forcing members to leave the service early, even "while dignitaries were still giving tributes to Lantos." . . .

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=cqmidday-000002671580
“If there’s anyone in Congress who doesn’t deserve to have it happen to him, it’s Chairman Lantos,” said Rep. Jason Altmire , D-Pa. “Everyone was so shocked it happened to him.’’

“It was completely disrespectful and inappropriate,’’ said Brendan Daly, Speaker Nancy Pelosi ’s spokesman. Pelosi, along with Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer , D-Md., spoke at the service for Lantos, who died Monday of esophageal cancer. . . .

More: http://www.americablog.com/2008/02/republicans-disrupt-lantos-memorial.html

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178592.php

Seven lies in the immigration debate

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/14/immigration-refuting-the-right/

Every interrogation at Guantanamo was videotaped. Where are those tapes now?

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/2/14/121753/216

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021303164.html
Lawyers representing military detainees at Guantanamo Bay have expressed concern that the government has violated a federal court order by losing or erasing several years' worth of digital video recordings that could shed light on the legality of detainee treatment. . . .

Not good

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/14/161518/961
[Ohwilleke] The United States District Court for the Northern District of California held yesterday in the case of Mohamed v. Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. that the state secrets doctrine bars all suits against anyone involving "allegations of covert U.S. military or CIA operations in foreign countries against foreign nationals" which the government has not admitted. . . .

DOJ official: The way WE were doing waterboarding was nicer than the bad old Spanish Inquisition way of waterboarding. So it’s different, see?

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/justice_dept_official_cia_wate.php
The CIA's use of waterboarding was legal and not torture, a Justice Deparment official argued this morning, because it was a "procedure subject to strict limitations and safeguards" that made it substantially different from historical uses of the technique by the Japanese and the Spanish Inquisition. . . .

More: http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/the-legality-of

Uh, it used to be legal, now it may not be legal, but it could become legal again, see?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/14/AR2008021400223.html

The destruction of the CIA torture tapes: DNI John Negroponte ordered them not to do it, but they did it anyway. Everyone was running around with their hair on fire, convinced that there would be trials and imprisonment, maybe even war crime tribunals over torture. But now Negroponte says he doesn’t really remember any of that

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/_negroponte_destroyed_torture.php
“[T]he fact of the matter is that one handles and deals with so many different issues in any given day or time, I just didn’t happen to recall this situation. . . .”

How John McCain explains his vote to uphold torture, after all his public comments against it – you tell me if it holds water

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/todays_must_read_276.php

Like most supporters of either Clinton or Obama, I will be willing to support the other if the primary votes turn out that way. But the one thing that could split the party, the thing that could turn an almost certain victory in the fall into a disaster, is if one candidate snatches the nomination through backroom deals with superdelegates, even after the majority of popular votes, and delegates, have gone to the other. In the end, I think that won’t happen – but the Clinton people are openly preparing us for the possibility that this is exactly what they plan to do. Fighting a scorched earth battle to seize the nomination, but blowing the fall election in the process, would be a mistake of epic proportions

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/02/clinton_counts.html
Hillary Clinton will take the Democratic nomination even if she does not win the popular vote, but persuades enough superdelegates to vote for her at the convention, her campaign advisers say.

The New York senator, who lost three primaries Tuesday night, now lags slightly behind her rival, Illinois Senator Barack Obama, in the delegate count. She is even further behind in "pledged'' delegates, those assigned by virtue of primaries and caucuses.

But Clinton will not concede the race to Obama if he wins a greater number of pledged delegates by the end of the primary season, and will count on the 796 elected officials and party bigwigs to put her over the top, if necessary, said Clinton's communications director, Howard Wolfson. . . .

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14578.html

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/02/14/it_comes_down_to_the_superdelegates.html
However, Todd Purdum suggests a Clinton victory that way would be hollow at best: "It would mean that Clinton’s only hope of winning would be some kind of backroom deal in which she persuaded super-delegates, the party elders and leaders who need not take a firm stand until the first ballot at the convention in Denver, that Obama simply lacks what it takes, even if he has won more votes and delegates in the state-by-state count. It would be akin to winning the presidency in the Electoral College after losing the popular vote. We’ve tried that, and it doesn’t work out so well.”

Why it probably won’t play out that way

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178592.php

MoveOn weighs in

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/002862.php
"The Democratic Party must be democratic. The superdelegates should let the voters decide between Clinton and Obama, then support the people's choice."

[NB: Clemons then goes on to point out that MoveOn has endorsed Obama, which is true. But why is this being framed as a partisan debate? Wouldn’t the Clinton team be making exactly the same argument if they were ahead in elected delegates at this stage?]

Trouble in paradise?

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/report_tensions_abound_between.php
[WSJ] [T]he campaign has something of a shellshocked feel, as staffers privately chew over a blowup last week where internal frictions flared into the open. Clinton campaign operatives say it happened as top Clinton advisers gathered in Arlington, Va., campaign headquarters to preview a TV commercial. "Your ad doesn't work," strategist Mark Penn yelled at ad-maker Mandy Grunwald. "The execution is all wrong," he said, according to the operatives.

"Oh, it's always the ad, never the message," Ms. Grunwald fired back, say the operatives. The clash got so heated that political director Guy Cecil left the room, saying, "I'm out of here."

On Mark Penn: http://atrios.blogspot.com/2008_02_10_archive.html#2108339707922172997

This is a big deal

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/us/politics/15clinton.html
Representative John Lewis, an elder statesman from the civil rights era and one of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s most prominent black supporters, said Thursday night that he planned to cast his vote as a superdelegate for Senator Barack Obama in hopes of preventing a fight at the Democratic convention. . . .

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178650.php
[Josh Marshall] In the thick of a campaign it is easy to overrate the importance of an endorsement or a political hit. But it is difficult to overstate the significance of John Lewis' switch from the Clinton to Obama camps because it is a devastating blow on two or three levels wrapped together in a single person. Lewis' historic and moral stature in the African-American community and in the modern Democratic party bulks very large. . . .

But the most immediate and significant import is Lewis's signal that whatever the basis of his original endorsement he is unwilling to join Clinton in carving a path to the nomination through the heart of the Democratic party. The tell in Lewis's announcement is that he is not technically withdrawing his endorsement from Hillary, at least not yet. He is saying that as a super delegate (which is by virtue of being a member of Congress) he plans to vote for Obama at the convention. On Wednesday the Clinton camp started pushing hard on the idea that a delegate is a delegate and if they need to pack on super delegates to overwhelm Obama's edge with elected delegates then so be it. A win is a win is a win. I take this as Lewis saying he just won't sign on for that. . . [read on]

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/2/14/225232/180
[Big Tent Democrat] John Lewis is switching his endorsement from Clinton to Obama. Not surprising in that Obama has had great momentum. Easily justifiable for Lewis in that his district voted overwhelmingly for Obama and he is indeed a fine candidate. But the reasons given for switching are not helpful. Indeed, in my view, they are divisive . . . [read on]

So, Obama can’t attract working class voters, eh?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/14/203353/074
This afternoon the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) endorsed Barack Obama. And it's rumored the Services Employees International Union (SEIU) will soon do the same. Now the largest (SEIU) and 4th largest (UFCW) affiliated unions have joined the contest against the candidate supported by the 2nd and 5th largest unions. . . . [read on]

More: http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/ufcw_endorsement.php

No surprise, really, but it turns out that the real target of the Clinton campaign’s pressure against MSNBC wasn’t David Shuster, but Chris Matthews

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2008/02/sources_top_hil.php

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:46 AM

 
A MAN OF PRINCIPLE

If there was anything good you could say about John McCain, it was that he stood against waterboarding as a form of torture, noting that it was part of the Spanish Inquisition and that it was appalling to think that his country would engage in it. Well, we can cross that one off the list

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021302888.html
The Senate voted yesterday to ban waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics used by the CIA, matching a previous House vote and putting Congress on a collision course with the White House over a pivotal national security issue.

In a 51 to 45 vote, the Senate approved an intelligence bill that limits the CIA to using 19 less-aggressive interrogation tactics outlined in a U.S. Army Field Manual. The measure would effectively ban the use of simulated drowning, temperature extremes and other harsh tactics that the CIA used on al-Qaeda prisoners after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

President Bush has vowed to veto the legislation, which the House approved in December, and Congress does not appear to have enough votes to override a veto. . . .

McCain sided with the Bush administration . . .

Coward: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_02/013122.php
[Kevin Drum] But hey — who can blame him? It's one thing to be against torture in a primary debate where you're trying to appeal to independents and crossover voters, but it's quite another thing to be against torture after you've won the nomination and need to appease a conservative base that's righteously pissed off and not afraid to let you know it. A base that Joe Klein watched in action last November when McCain told Mitt Romney, "We're not going to torture people. We're not going to do what Pol Pot did. We're not going to do what's being done to Burmese monks as we speak":

[Joe Klein] I attended Frank Luntz's dial group of 30 undecided — or sort of undecided — Republicans in St. Petersburg, Florida, last night...and it was a fairly astonishing evening. Now, for the uninitiated: dials are little hand-held machines that enable a focus group member to register instantaneous approval or disapproval as the watch a candidate on TV. . .

When John McCain started talking about torture — specifically, about waterboarding — the dials plummeted again....Down to the low 20s, which, given the natural averaging of a focus group, is about as low as you can go. . . . [read on]

More: http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/13/mccain-waterboarding-fail/

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/13/174536/475

Ask him the question!

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/depends-on-if-legal-means-legal-by.html

Bush backers block temporary extension of the FISA bill, and now it will probably lapse

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/strange_bedfellows_block_dem_e.php
An odd collection of Republicans, liberal Dems, and Blue Dogs banded together this afternoon to shoot down the House leadership's attempt to extend for 21 days the administration's surveillance bill, the Protect America Act, which is set to expire Friday. . . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021300959.html
The 229-191 vote to kill the extension followed a toughly worded veto threat from President Bush. . . .

"Terrorists are planning new attacks on our country...that will make Sept. 11 pale by comparison," Bush said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/washington/14fisa.html
Broad spying powers temporarily approved by Congress in August appear likely to lapse this week after a daylong game of chicken on Wednesday between the White House and House Democrats produced no clear resolution. . . .

What will happen? http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/todays_must_read_275.php

Telecom immunity? The pivotal role of the Blue Dog Dems

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/full-court-press-by-dday-after.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/13/184739/237

The dumbest argument for telecom immunity so far

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/13/161019/181
[John Warner. R-VA] What we always have to remind our colleagues and the American public is that these companies have volunteered. They're not in this for a profit motive. . . . They're not unlike the men and women in the Armed Forces, all of whom today are in uniform because they raised their right arm and volunteered. . . .

Is the surge “working”?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_02/013115.php
McClatchy reports that the surge may be starting to lose its effectiveness . . . [read on]

More: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/iraq/story/27346.html

Alice: of course we don’t plan to have “permanent bases” in Iraq – because by our definition we don’t have “permanent bases” anywhere

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080213/pl_afp/usiraqwhousebases_080213171224
Amid a bitter dispute over US bases in Iraq, the White House signaled Wednesday it does not view any US military installations overseas -- except perhaps Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- as permanent. . . .

Finally, a contempt vote against the Bush gang. . . maybe

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/conyers_introduces_contempt_re.php
House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers (D-MI) introduced two resolutions this afternoon related to the subpoenas. The first is a criminal contempt resolution against White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers -- both were subpoenaed and did not respond, citing the White House's invocation of executive privilege. But Conyers also filed a resolution that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) file a civil suit against the White House. . . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/opinion/14thu1.html
[NYT] The House Judiciary Committee voted in July to hold Mr. Bolten and Ms. Miers in contempt. The House’s Democratic leadership has been trying to figure out the pros and cons ever since. The public needs to hear the testimony of these officials (along with Karl Rove, who is also refusing to appear), and the full House should vote as quickly as possible to hold them in contempt . . .

More: http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/13/conyers-has-gotten-cranky/

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/13/131332/637

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/13/191529/329

We know that the Bush gang likes to make inconvenient information just – disappear. But even for them this is pretty shameless

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14575.html

The best job in the world: being a former Bush administration official

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/13/more-on-the-no-bid-contract-to-ashcroft/

Massaging expectations

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/news_orgs_obama_winning_all_de.php
CNN: Obama 1,215, Clinton 1,190

AP: Obama 1,223, Clinton 1,198

CBS: Obama 1,242, Clinton 1,175

ABC: Obama 1,232, Clinton 1,205

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/2/13/81143/8416
[Jerome Armstrong, Hillary backer] Clinton leads Obama, 1127 to 1119, in pledged delegates.

Clinton leads Obama, 240 to 140, in super-delegates. . . [read on]

http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com/archives/2008/02/within_25.html
Clintonista Guy Cecil predicted today that his candidate will be within 25 delegates of rival Barack Obama after the March 4 primaries.

On a conference call with reporters, Cecil said that counting all delegates, supers and not, they expect Clinton to be "in a virtual tie" with Obama, post WI, OH, TX.

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/obama_campaign_were_on_the_ver.php
On a conference call this morning, Obama advisers sounded as confident a note as they ever have, arguing that yesterday's victories have left them with an all but insurmountable lead in delegates.

Obama adviser David Plouffe argued that yesterday's wins netted them an astonishing 50 delegates yesterday, leaving them with a lead in pledged delegates of 136. . . .

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/02/clinton_counts.html
Hillary Clinton will take the Democratic nomination even if she does not win the popular vote, but persuades enough superdelegates to vote for her at the convention, her campaign advisers say. . . .

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/hillary_camp_no_one_is_winning.php
On that conference call earlier, Hillary spokesman Howard Wolfson signaled what will be the Hillary camp's main argument when the spin wars over super-delegates start in earnest: Neither candidate can win this race without super-delegates.

Wolfson repeated variations of this point multiple times on the call. . . .

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2004179017_apondeadlineclinton12.html
Top Democrats, including some inside Hillary Clinton's campaign, say many party leaders _ the so-called superdelegates _ won't hesitate to ditch the former New York senator for Barack Obama if her political problems persist. Their loyalty to the first couple is built on shaky ground. . . .

Obama has won 23 of 35 contests, earning the majority of delegates awarded on the basis of election results

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178464.php
A quote from [Clinton campaign manager] Mark Penn that should go over extremely well: "Could we possibly have a nominee who hasn't won any of the significant states -- outside of Illinois? That raises some serious questions about Sen. Obama.”

I’m not sure this story tells us anything we don’t already know, but FWIW: John Edwards “might” back Clinton

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/02/13/edwards_may_back_clinton.html

Trying to paint Obama (hint, hint) as anti-Israel

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178330.php

OK, maybe Ed Rendell (D-PA) wasn’t race-baiting in his comments on Obama

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178423.php

An “admonishment” for Larry Craig from the Ethics Committee

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/senate_ethics_committee_wags_f.php

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178445.php
[David Kurtz] From a quick read through the letter, the Ethics Committee hits him harder than I might have expected. It's not just the arrest they tag him for but his efforts to withdraw his guilty plea. Oh, and there was the matter of him slipping the officer his Senate business card. They didn't like the appearance of that either.

Bonus item: Not that it’s within the normal scope of this blog, but hey – Republican favorite Roger Clemens is a cheater and a liar

http://www.slate.com/id/2184374/

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/clemens_makes_bid_for_golden_d.php

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:41 AM

 
LOSING TRENDS

Senate Dems cave on FISA bill – now attention shifts back to the House

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/senate_passes_surveillance_bil.php

Dodd: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/dodd_its_up_to_the_house.php
[Paul Kiel] Speaking to a conference call of reporters this afternoon, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) said that, reflecting on the string of defeats in the Senate today, he thought the House was the best hope for stripping retroactive immunity from the final surveillance bill. . . .

After the bill passes in the Senate, as is expected late today or tomorrow, the bill would head to a conference. There, conferees from both houses will try to hash out the significant differences between the House and Senate versions, the issue of retroactive immunity chief among them.

However, Dodd said, if the final bill emerging from that powwow does contain retroactive immunity, he said he'd "absolutely" filibuster that bill; he'd use "whatever vehicles we can" to stop it. . . .

Feingold: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/feingold_my_hope_is_with_the_h.php
“The Senate passage of this FISA bill, while not surprising, is extremely disappointing. The Senate missed a golden opportunity to pass a bill that would give our intelligence officials the tools they need to go after suspected terrorists while also safeguarding the privacy of law-abiding Americans. Instead the Senate, with the help of too many Democrats, is yet again giving the administration sweeping new powers – and letting it off the hook for its illegal wiretapping program. I hope that our House colleagues will hold a stronger line

Conyers: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/conyers_to_white_house_we_need.php
[Paul Kiel] Signaling the fight ahead when lawmakers get together to sort out the differences between the Senate and House surveillance bills, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) wrote White House counsel Fred Fielding today to deliver two messages: 1) from what he's seen of the documents relating to the administration's warrantless wiretapping program, there's no reason to grant the telecoms retroactive immunity (he prefers the term "amnesty"), and 2) Congress needs to know more before it can be expected to consider granting that amnesty. . . .

More: http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/12/fisa-on-to-the-house/

Even worse -- if that's possible

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/12/11136/6768
[Kagro X] In rejecting the Feinstein "exclusivity" amendment to the FISA revision considered on the Senate floor today -- an amendment that failed by a vote of 57 Ayes to 41 Noes, thanks to another "painless filibuster" of precisely the type we were promised would not be tolerated on this bill -- the Senate has voted to say that although they were passing a law governing surveillance, it was OK if the President decided that he really didn't like the law very much and wished to make up his own instead. . . .

Where things went wrong

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/thanks-democratic-senate-by-dday-senate.html
[Digby] Four committees looked at this bill. Three thought it needless to give amnesty to the phone companies. Only the Intel Committee saw it as a necessity, and they got their way. As Chris Dodd called it on a conference call today, this is "the single largest invasion of privacy in American history." . . .

It was a damned if we did, damned if we didn't situation. Which Harry Reid is pretty much responsible for, by virtue of bringing forward the Intelligence Committee version of the bill first. . .

More: http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3867

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/02/12/amnesty_day/index.htm

Fight on

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/12/frustrations-on-fisa/

One moment of humor, if you can call it that: the Bush gang has steadfastly refused to admit that the telecoms did the illegal wiretapping they need amnesty for – but yesterday Alice, well, was Alice . . .

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/02/on-cusp-of-sena.html
"The telephone companies that were alleged to have helped their country after 9/11 did so because they are patriotic and they certainly helped us and they helped us save lives," Perino said.

One of the worst “frames” in our current political discussion is whether the "surge" in Iraq is “working” or not – as if it were a light bulb or a door bell. It’s either working, or it’s not. But of course in a war, there are always complications. Now, some serious discussion about the overall effects of the surge (and no, it’s not “working”)

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2008/02/the_us_troop_surge_a_year_late.php

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/13/the-pause-that-deludes/

More amnesty

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080212/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/contract_fraud
A Bush administration plan to crack down on contract fraud has a multibillion-dollar loophole: The proposal to force companies to report abuse of taxpayer money will not apply to work overseas, including projects to secure and rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. . .

Destroying the myth that Republicans are small-government, tight spenders

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080212/ap_on_bi_go_ec_fi/monthly_budget
The federal budget deficit is running at a pace that is more than double last year's imbalance through the first four months of the budget year. . . .

The Bush administration sent its final budget request to Congress last week, projecting that the deficit for all of 2008 will total $410 billion, very close to the all-time high in dollar terms of $413 billion in 2004.

So far this year, federal spending is 8.3 percent ahead of last year's pace, at $949.1 billion. That is far ahead of the 3.2 percent increase in revenues, which have totaled $861.4 billion in the current budget year. . .

If waterboarding was legal, why didn’t they just say so? Why lie, conceal, and destroy evidence?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/12/AR2008021202691.html
After years of refusing public comment on a particularly harsh CIA interrogation method, top Bush administration officials have suddenly begun pressing a controversial argument that it was legal for the CIA to strap prisoners to a board and pour water over their face to make them believe they were being drowned. . .

More: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178226.php

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/durbin_requests_inspector_gene.php

So much for “judicial temperament”

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/12/scalia-torture/
Today in an interview with BBC Radio’s Law in Action, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia defended torture, claiming that it is not necessarily barred by the Constitution . . .

More: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178199.php

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178216.php

Obama sweeps three more primaries. Now let’s hear why they don’t mean anything

http://edition.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/state/#val=DC
DC: Obama 75/Clinton 24

http://edition.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/state/#val=MD
MD: Obama 60/Clinton 37

http://edition.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/state/#val=VA
VA: Obama 64/Clinton 35

Inside the numbers

Virginia: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/early_exit_polls_in_virginia_o.php
[A]ccording to early exit polls cited by Fox News, Obama holds a massive lead in Virginia over Hillary among women, 58%-42%. . . .

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/02/12/virginia_exits/index.html

Maryland: http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/maryland_exits.php
[Matt Yglesias] 62 percent of the electorate in Maryland was female, and women went for Obama 59-38. Obama won Latinos 53-47. He won non-college Democrats 63-33 and college Democrats 62-36. . . .He won Protestants and he won Catholics. He won urban voters and suburban voters and rural voters. . .

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/2/12/231534/150

Ominous indicators (for Clinton)

http://www.slate.com/id/2184346/
[John Dickerson] Obama sweeps the night by winning over Clinton's core supporters. . . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/12/AR2008021203196.html
For more than a month, the grand coalitions of Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama battled to a draw: women, rural Democrats and the white working class pairing almost evenly with African Americans, young voters and affluent, educated whites. . . .

Obama's thrashing of Clinton in the two states yesterday raised the possibility that her coalition is beginning to crack . . .

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/campaign_rdp;_ylt=AmmfF7Ge1i8RIVEzDR4qhX.s0NUE
[AP] Obama surged to the fore in the delegate race for the party prize with resounding primary victories Tuesday in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. . .

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178293.php
Howard Fineman [NB: grain of salt, there] just did a brief segment on MSNBC gaming out the delegate count and where it's likely to end up when the last primaries and caucuses are over. He said he based his comments on conversations with people in both campaigns. And the gist of it was that both sides agree that it's highly unlikely that Clinton can end up with more pledged delegates than Barack Obama. And the issue now is how close she can keep the margin.

If she can keep it within a couple dozen delegates, he argued, it would be credible to try to make up the margin with super delegates. On the other hand, if Obama's ahead by 100 or 200, the pressure against trying to make up the margin with non-elected delegates would just be too great. . .

More: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178167.php

Clinton hopes no one notices, tries to change public focus to March 4 primaries

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080212/ap_on_el_pr/campaign_dems_analysis

Ooooh, that hurts!

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178290.php
[NYT] Mike DuHaime, a Republican consultant who managed Rudolph W. Giuliani’s campaign, said Mrs. Clinton was making the right decisions in trying to make the most of her strengths.

“Clearly, she has had success in larger states and there are a whole bunch of delegates at stake on March 4,” Mr. DuHaime said. “They are not trying to figure out who can win the most states; they are trying to figure out who can win the most delegates.” . . .

Clinton loses another top campaign aide

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/02/clinton_deputy_campaign_manage.html

More: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/02/12/clinton_henry/index.html

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200802u/patti-solis-doyle

And then two more!

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/hillary_bloodletting_c

Don’t try to tell me that this isn’t a conscious race-baiting strategy. It may be coming from Clinton proxies, but it is despicable – and it has to stop

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,330248,00.html
[Susan Estrich] [T]here is a long pattern of what we in California call the “Bradley problem” in polling, after the former Los Angeles mayor who was elected governor in every poll, including the exits, except that he lost at the ballot box. Did I mention that he was African-American?

That was, according to the pollsters, the problem: about 10 percent of the electorate claimed that they were going to vote for him, and in many cases even told pollsters that they did, but they lied. . . .

Doug Wilder, who wasn’t elected to the Senate from Virginia, faced the same problem. We who are Democrats would like to believe that race is not a factor in the polling of our party members, but maybe we’re wrong. . . .

http://www.postgazette.com/pg/08043/856727-153.stm
Gov. Ed "Don't Call Me 'Fast Eddie' " Rendell met with the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last week to talk about his latest budget. But before turning the meeting over to his number-crunchers, our voluble governor weighed in on the primary fight between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama and what the Illinois senator could expect from the good people of Pennsylvania at the polls:

"You've got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate," he said bluntly. . .

Not buying it? http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2008/02/breaking_anothe.php
[Greg Sargent] I've just found another person asserting that maybe -- just maybe -- we should have something approaching conclusive evidence before alleging that the Clintons hatched a dastardly and bigoted scheme to "blacken" Obama and provoke a white backlash. . . .

[NB: I just want to point out that Sargent’s column was written BEFORE the Rendell and Estrich comments]

A tale of two campaigns: McCain’s victory speech

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/12/22545/6916
[Kos] So they cut from Obama to McCain talking about scary boogeymen under our beds.

Ouch for McCain.

Update: And look at all the people behind McCain -- old white dour people.

But look over there! Scary terrorists! Aaaaargh! Run for your lives!

That's what passes for "maverick" these days, huh?

Update II: Nice choice of words. "Cruel". "Harsh". His whole speech is a downer. Seriously, the contrast between Obama and McCain couldn't be starker.

A tale of two campaigns: Obama’s victory speech

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/in_victory_speech_obama_trains.php
“When I am the nominee, I will offer a clear choice. John McCain won’t be able to say that I ever supported this war in Iraq, because I opposed it from the beginning. Senator McCain said the other day that we might be mired for a hundred years in Iraq, which is reason enough to not give him four years in the White House. . . .

And I admired Senator McCain when he stood up and said that it offended his “conscience” to support the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy in a time of war; that he couldn’t support a tax cut where “so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate.” But somewhere along the road to the Republican nomination, the Straight Talk Express lost its wheels, because now he’s all for them.”

Watch the speeches, here

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178286.php

How the GOP would run against Obama

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/006987.html

Rush Limbaugh turns on his makers

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200802120001
[Eric Boehlert] Rush Limbaugh, the marauding Frankenstein's monster of the Republican Party, is on the loose again, causing all kinds of political damage with his signature off-balance swings. But as has become his custom recently, the pain from Limbaugh's rampage is being felt by his creators -- his enablers -- inside the GOP.

Limbaugh and the rest of his get-John McCain brain trust -- Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Michelle Malkin, and campus instigator Ann Coulter -- have been tripping over themselves to get in front of a microphone (preferably a television one) to denounce the Republican Party's presumptive nominee . . .

After years of watching Limbaugh and his various band of midnight riders within the Republican Noise Machine launch countless, hateful crusades against liberals and Democrats, it's extraordinarily satisfying to watch the Republican Party leadership discover what it feels like when Limbaugh sets his venomous, factually challenged sights on their own front-runner. . . .

What could be more enjoyable than watching McCain get bogged down in the far-right swamp? Answer: Watching a handful of right-wing pundits come to the belated conclusion that Limbaugh is a dunce. Or, as one Weekly Standard blogger put it last week, the Limbaugh-led response to McCain was "unhinged -- and at times spectacularly disgraceful." And Dinesh D'Souza concluded, that, yes, Limbaugh is an "egomaniac" who "has grown accustomed to conservative bigwigs worshiping at the Shrine of Rush." (Truth is, Limbaugh's not that well liked among Republicans.)

Really? Limbaugh is spreading misinformation? He's wallowing in demagoguery while bordering on megalomania? He and his pals appear to be far more interested in the number of media mentions they rack up than they do in advancing the conservative movement? Ah, what a tangled web the GOP weaves. . . .

Bonus item: Ho ho ho. The Right owns talk radio, the Left does better on the Internet. I have seen many explanations for this, but here’s the absolute dumbest

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14561.html
Erick Erickson, editor of the popular conservative megablog RedState, conceded that progressives currently enjoy an advantage over conservatives online — though he attributed it to an asymmetry in free time, since conservatives “have families because we don’t abort our kids, and we have jobs because we believe in capitalism.” . . . [read on]

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:54 AM

 
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG

How is the Bush gang going to manage a death penalty trial against 9/11 conspirators when evidence against them was obtained through torture?

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/evidence-from-torture-now-admissable.html

More: http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/2/11/122942/229

http://www.first-draft.com/2008/02/today-on-hold-6.html
Q Dana, is the White House at all concerned that some of the evidence of the confessions by many of these men may not be admissible because they were obtained through waterboarding, which the administration admitted to last week?

MS. PERINO: Kathleen, I'm not going to able to comment about the trial from this podium. And so I'm not able to comment on that . . .

Q One more, following up on that, though. When the President made his decision initially to authorize the interrogations of Khalid Shaykh Muhammad and the other two, did he weigh the possibility of criminal prosecutions and the admissibility of evidence?

MS. PERINO: I don't know, Mark. Obviously you're talking about time frames that are years and years ago. I just -- I don't know. . . [read on]

Watch: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178022.php

The “Clean Team”

http://www.slate.com/id/2184261/
[Daniel Politi] The Washington Post leads with word that the decision to charge six Guantanamo detainees with planning the Sept. 11 attacks was partly due to the success that FBI and military interrogators had in extracting information from the men without the use of "coercive interrogating tactics." The 16-month effort to reconstruct the evidence against the men apparently yielded good information and convinced the Bush administration to go ahead with the prosecutions. . . .

The existence of a so-called "Clean Team" in Guantanamo that had the goal of collecting much of the same information that CIA agents obtained through controversial, and sometimes illegal, tactics was reported by the LAT late last year. Today the WP, which gives the LAT credit for breaking the story, reveals how the interrogators were able to get good information from most of the detainees by "using time-tested rapport-building techniques." Throughout the process, interrogators were careful to tell detainees that they understood they may have been treated poorly in the past and to emphasize that any information they provided was strictly voluntary. But there are still questions about whether the detainees would have ever cooperated without first receiving the rough treatment and if the "Clean Team" would have been as successful without the CIA information as a guide to what the suspects might say. . . .

[NB: Hmmmm. . . . doesn't this imply that, in their own parlance, the CIA team was the "Dirty Team"?]

Muksaey: DOJ won’t consider the legality of torture on the torture tapes, except as an explanation of motive for their destruction (i.e., the CIA believed it was illegal)

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/investigation_focused_on_tapes.php

The Bush gang really, really, doesn’t want us to see that Rand Corporation study of their Iraq war screw-ups. (But eventually we will)

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14547.html

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/army-censorship

http://www.slate.com/id/2184252/

One of the running narratives of the Bush administration has been the disabling of the Inspector General process. Let’s summarize: they don’t want Congress investigating them, they don’t want the courts investigating them, they SURE don’t want the press investigating them – and now we see that they don’t want to investigate themselves. Just thought you should know

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/watchdogs-undermined

Bush: my problem, you solve it

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23108344/

Bush shrugs: so the rich don’t pay taxes, whaddaya gonna do?

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14545.html

The FISA fight – headed for a big vote today. It looks as if, barring something unexpected from Dodd or others to block it, telecom immunity and final passage will go through. Everything we have been through for the past few months has been for nothing – Bush and Cheney get EVERYTHING they want. And we have “Jello Jay” Rockefeller (D-WV) to thank for it

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/11/1583/53558
[McJoan] Sen. Patrick Leahy has announced that he will join with Chris Dodd, Russ Feingold, and others in opposing the SSCI version of the FISA bill. This is significant, in that one committee chairman, Leahy for the Judiciary Committee, is stating his clear opposition to the work of another chairman, Jay Rockefeller at Intelligence. . .

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/02/11/wsj/index.html
[Glenn Greenwald] There is some (understandable) confusion around about what is going to happen tomorrow with the FISA vote and Dodd's promised filibuster, as exemplified by this Kos diary touting an email from Sen. Leahy in which Leahy announces that he "will do everything in [his] power -- including joining [his] colleague Chris Dodd in a filibuster against this legislation -- to fix it." I shared this confusion until earlier today when these matters were clarified.

Contrary to the emphatic promise Dodd repeatedly made during his presidential campaign to lead a filibuster on the floor of the Senate to stop any bill that has telecom immunity in it (a promise which, incidentally, led to hundreds of thousands of dollars being donated to his campaign), there isn't going to be any actual filibuster tomorrow. Under the Unanimous Consent framework agreed to by all Senators (including Dodd), there will be a 60-vote requirement to invoke cloture on the FISA bill and for ultimate passage, followed by an allotted 4 hours of post-cloture "debate," but there will not be any real filibuster to prevent cloture. When Leahy says that he will "join" Dodd's filibuster, what he means is that he will merely cast a vote against cloture.

Dodd's efforts against this bill have been quite commendable, and the UC Agreement isn't completely worthless. It means that Democrats do not need 60 votes, or even 50 votes, to stop this bill. Rather, they only need 41 Senators willing to oppose cloture (which everyone knows they're not going to get).

Still, Dodd is not, after all, going to lead an actual filibuster on the floor of the Senate to stop the bill. Worse, the Republicans are going to be permitted to impose 60-vote requirements on key Democratic amendments without actually having to filibuster at all -- exactly the situation which Harry Reid vowed just two weeks ago he would not permit. . . .

Feingold: http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/11/george-bushs-perfect-crime/
The telephone companies and the government have been operating under this simple framework for 30 years. The companies have experienced, highly trained, and highly compensated lawyers who know this law inside and out.

In view of this history, it is inconceivable that any telephone companies that allegedly cooperated with the administration's warrantless wiretapping program did not know what their obligations were. And it is just as implausible that those companies believed they were entitled to simply assume the lawfulness of a government request for assistance. This whole effort to obtain retroactive immunity is based on an assumption that doesn't hold water. . . . [read on]

What we can do: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/11/102412/948

In Washington State: yes, this is the kind of person you want responsible for overseeing voting integrity

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/177975.php
“Like any sport worth its salt, in politics you have adversaries, opponents, enemies. Our enemies are loudmouth leftists and shiftless deadbeats. To win the election, we have to keep as many of these people away from the polls as possible.

Now your average leftist loudmouth is a committed individual and can almost never be persuaded to ignore his constitutional rights. The deadbeats, however, are a different matter entirely. Years of interminable welfare checks and free government services have made these modern-day sloths even more lazy. They will vote on election day, if it isn’t much of a bother. But even the slightest inconvenience can keep them from the polling place.

Many of the most successful anti-deadbeat voter techniques (poll taxes, sound beatings, etc.) that conservatives have used in the past have been outlawed by busybody judges. . . .”

More: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/esser_tk.php

McCain: no problem, move along http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178023.php
“I know that state parties declare elections when they have sufficient evidence as to who's won and who's lost. That's not unusual in any way.”

Nope, not unusual at all, except for this . . .

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178006.php
[Josh Marshall] Maybe calling an election off with only 87% isn't enough to make you think there's something fishy in these degraded times of ours. Maybe this will. . . .

According to our records (and I would strongly suggest other people with information check this against their data), the first report came in at roughly 9:30 PM eastern. With 16% of the vote, McCain ahead 27% to 26%.

Then at 10:15 PM, with 37% of the vote in, Huckabee moves ahead 26% to 23%.

Then there was an hour delay until the next update. That comes shortly after 11:15 PM, with 78% counted, McCain has moved ahead -- 25.4% to 23.8%.

Then there's another delay of an hour and twenty minutes. Shortly after 12:35, they get to 83% of the vote and now it's McCain 25.6% and Huckabee 23.8%.

The next update comes at 1:30 AM eastern. By this time they've counted a whopping 4% more of the vote. And with 87% reporting, it's McCain 25.5% to 23.7%.

So just to summarize here's basically how this works. We start out with McCain ahead. Huckabee jumps ahead with a 3% margin with almost 40% of the vote counted. Then everything slows waaaaay down. And we don't see anything else until about 40% more of the votes been counted and McCain is back in the lead. . . [read on]

And this: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178051.php
[King5-TV] When voters participating in the caucuses walked through the door, they signed in. In Snohomish County, that sign-in sheet is what Republicans used to report results. . . . Republicans acknowledge the sign-in sheet is not an accurate way to figure out who won. . . .

And this: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178053.php
Boss Esser's political benefactor, according to one Washington State political blog, is none other than state Attorney General Rob McKenna, who just happens to be John McCain's state campaign chairman . . .

More: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/wash_gop_its_complicated.php

Huckabee wants a recount

http://www.kgw.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D8UOBHGG0.html

I know politics is the art of spin, but it’s quite astonishing to watch Clinton and her people pretend that her string of losses (and more to come) don’t mean anything. Wait – where have we heard that before?

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178029.php
[Josh Marshall] A number of readers have brought up the fact that Hillary Clinton's strategy is starting to look a bit like Rudy Giuliani's. . .

http://www.americablog.com/2008/02/hillary-says-democratic-activists-and.html
[CNN] Hillary Clinton on Monday explained away Barack Obama's clean sweep of the weekend's caucuses and primaries as a product of a caucus system that favors "activists" and, in the case of the Louisiana primary, an energized African-American community . . . [read on]

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/11/121758/950
[Kos] One of the hilarious side-effects of every Obama victory is the spin from Clinton quarters and its surrogates and supporters explaining why said victories "don't matter". . . . [read on]

More: http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/clinton_on_the_sweep.php

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_02/013099.php

Is Clinton overplaying the Shuster incident? Could it backfire?

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/02/11/shuster/index.html

http://www.slate.com/id/2184195/

Yesterday we ran Jerome Armstrong’s argument that there was no state-by-state strategy that would produce Obama as a winner. Today, a rejoinder

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/11/115437/994

Another week, another GOP retirement

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/11/181016/621

“Democrat” Joe Lieberman to attend the GOP convention?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/11/1583/53558

Bonus item: Remember when they said no other candidate could make a music video as moving and inspiring as the one made from Obama’s speeches? Well, they were wrong

http://www.americablog.com/2008/02/you-saw-obama-video-now-watch-mccain.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:40 AM

 
I WISH I KNEW HOW TO QUIT YOU

George Bush, knowing that his “legacy” now inevitably depends on an administration to follow that will continue to defend and extend his policies (to say nothing of keeping secret all the evidence of criminality and extraconstitutional despotism the Bush gang has accumulated over the years), gets serious about the GOP campaign. McCain wasn’t their boy, but he’ll do

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/10/AR2008021002144.html
President Bush waded directly into the presidential campaign in an interview broadcast yesterday, defending Sen. John McCain as a "true conservative" but warning that his onetime rival needs to shore up relations with the Republican Party's base to take the fight into the general election this fall.

"If John is the nominee, he has got some convincing to do to convince people that he is a solid conservative, and I'll be glad to help him if he is the nominee," Bush said . . .

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/11/you-cant-just-quit-him/
[Bush] My attitude is, so long as they’re talking about me, we have a better chance of winning because our candidate will — what’s going to matter is not the past but the future when it comes to campaigns.

If the Democrat Party feels like they can win an election by focusing on me, I think they’d be making a huge tactical mistake. But I hope they do that then because our candidate will be able to talk about the future. . . . [read on]

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14537.html
[Steve Benen] The one factor that encourages me most about the 2008 presidential campaign is a simple desire for change. Only once in the modern (post-WWII) political era has a political party won three consecutive presidential elections, and the public’s desire to break from the last eight years couldn’t be much stronger. Dems can (and will) argue about which leading Democratic candidate is best suited to take advantage of the opportunity, but the opportunity is there regardless.

Of course, undergirding all of this is the same dynamic that existed in the 2006 midterms — Dems want to connect every candidate with an “R” after his or her name with the least popular president in generations.

At the presidential level this year, Republicans may make this easy. . . .

White House counselor Ed Gillespie told the NYT, “We understand that once there’s a nominee, the president won’t be the center of attention.” To which I say: Don’t be so sure. . . .

McCain has to do a delicate two step: drawing from Bush’s support and promising to assure conservative continuity, while not getting tarred with Bush’s unpopularity. Good luck!

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14537.html
[Steve Benen] Dems will absolutely be running against the last eight years, and presenting McCain as “four more years.” They’d be foolish not to — Americans are disgusted with the status quo, and McCain is running on a platform that offers more of the same.

The fact that the McCain campaign is “eager for Mr. Bush’s embrace” is exactly what Dems would hope for. From McCain’s perspective, he could use the president to shore up some conservative support. From Bush’s perspective, he has a conservative legacy to protect and even he realizes that a Democratic president would undo most of what he’s done. And from the Dems’ perspective, if McCain wants to be tied to Mr. 28%, we’re happy to oblige. . . .

More: http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/2/10/11106/6642
McCain Has a Real General Election Problem . . .

I think this is a GREAT idea: http://www.americablog.com/2008/02/kristol-is-advising-mccain-on-foreign.html
McCain's foreign-policy team is sprinkled with people, including Scheunemann, who were ardent backers of the 2003 Iraq invasion and who dismissed critics who warned of unintended consequences. They include . . . William Kristol, the editor of the conservative Weekly Standard. . .

[NB: I strongly encourage McCain’s putting together a team of advisors who are ALWAYS wrong]

And for the Democrats. . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/10/143347/014
[Devilstower] He's not leaving. He's never leaving.

By that I don't mean that Bush has a nefarious plot to exercise the Poppa Doc President for Life clause. I mean that the Bush legacy will not be restricted to that "the less said, the better" note he'll receive in future history books. The evil that presidents' do lives after them; the good is left as a target for the next conservative president. Bush hasn't left much good behind him, but what he has left is a set of policies and decisions that may cripple whichever of our Democratic candidates is so unfortunate as to succeed Bush. . . . [read on for a sad list]

That old compassionate conservative, just can’t help caring. . .

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/heckuva-job-by-digby-i-missed-this.html
[Bush] We're sorry you're going through what you're going through.

You know, life sometimes is, uh, you know, is unfair, and you don't get to play the hand that you wanted to play. But, the question is, when you get dealt the hand, how do you play it?

And I've come away with this impression of the folks of Macon County. One, you're down-to-Earth, good, hard-workin' people. They have a respect for the Almighty, and this community's going to be as strong as ever. That's what I think. . . . [read on]

Good thing that the Democrats took over Congress, isn’t it?

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/006977.html
[NYT] Even by the dismal standards of what passes for a national debate on intelligence and civil liberties, last week was a really bad week.

The Senate debated a bill that would make needed updates to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — while needlessly expanding the president’s ability to spy on Americans without a warrant and covering up the unlawful spying that President Bush ordered after 9/11.

The Democrat who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, John Rockefeller of West Virginia, led the way in killing amendments that would have strengthened requirements for warrants and raised the possibility of at least some accountability for past wrongdoing. Republicans declaimed about protecting America from terrorists — as if anyone was arguing the opposite — and had little to say about protecting Americans’ rights.

We saw a ray of hope when the head of the Central Intelligence Agency conceded — finally — that waterboarding was probably illegal. But his boss, the director of national intelligence, insisted it was legal when done to real bad guys. And Vice President Dick Cheney — surprise! — made it clear that President Bush would authorize waterboarding whenever he wanted.

The Catch-22 metaphor is seriously overused, but consider this: Attorney General Michael Mukasey told Congress there would be no criminal investigation into waterboarding. He said the Justice Department decided waterboarding was legal (remember the torture memo?) and told the C.I.A. that.

So, according to Mukaseyan logic, the Justice Department cannot investigate those who may have committed torture, because the Justice Department said it was O.K. and Justice cannot be expected to investigate itself.

As it was with torture, so it was with wiretaps. . . .

So Mr. Rockefeller and other senators want to give the companies immunity even if the administration never admits they were involved. This is short-circuiting the legal system. If it is approved, we will then have to hope that the next president will be willing to reveal the truth.

Mr. Rockefeller argues that companies might balk at future warrantless spying programs. Imagine that! . . .

McCain likes to blame the failures of the Iraq war on Donald Rumsfeld (who is conveniently gone from public view), without blaming the boss who hired Rumsfeld and gave him unprecedented latitude. A Rand Corporation study shows that the failures have been widespread and systemic throughout the Bush administration – and started at the top

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/this-just-in-bush-administration.html

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/washington/11army.html

Another broken promise on Iraq

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/world/middleeast/12gates.html
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Monday publicly endorsed the concept of ordering a pause in troop withdrawals from Iraq . . .

The death penalty

http://www.slate.com/id/2184177
[Daniel Politi] The New York Times leads with, and the Wall Street Journal fronts, word that military prosecutors will seek the death penalty for the six Guantanamo detainees that will be charged as early as today with conspiring to carry out the Sept. 11 attacks. The military will ask that all the defendants, including al-Qaida commander Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, be put to death because, as one official put it, "If any case warrants it, it would be for individuals who were parties to a crime of that scale." . . .

News that the military will seek the death penalty for the Sept. 11 conspirators immediately raised concerns that the move would bring unneeded international attention and pressure to a military commission system that has so far failed to begin a single trial and has been plagued with problems from the beginning. "The system hasn't been able to handle the less-complicated cases it has been presented with to date," a former Navy officer tells the NYT. It could be months before trials actually begin, and it's unclear how a death sentence could be carried out when Guantanamo doesn't have the necessary facilities. Some are also raising concerns that it's premature for prosecutors to be seeking the death penalty in a military commission system that has so far failed to determine how trials will be conducted. "Neither the system is ready, nor are the defense attorneys ready to do a death penalty case," a former military defense lawyer at Guantanamo tells the NYT. . . .

A crucial Supreme Court test for the Guantanamo “tribunals”

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/solicitor-general-to

The Washington State GOP suddenly stops counting caucus votes as McCain pulls slightly ahead of Huckabee. 13% of the votes are still unaccounted for. We know they do this to the Democrats, but to each other?

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/177811.php
[Josh Marshall] [T]he Washington state GOP put out a press release announcing McCain the winner based on the 87% returns. Now, I think it would be borderline for a media organization to declare one candidate a winner when the margin separating first and second was 1.8% with 13% of the results still uncounted. But for the officials holding the election to declare the result on that basis is simply bizarre. But that's what they did. . . .

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/177830.php
Huckabee is not conceding the state yet because, as he put it on Meet the Press this morning, there are some "weird things" going on . . .

http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/davidpostman/2008/02/huckabee_challenges_dubious_caucus_count_sends_lawyers_here.html
Republican Mike Huckabee's campaign is sending attorneys to Washington state to investigate what happened with the count of yesterday's Republican presidential caucus. Campaign Chairman Ed Rollins issued this statement . . . [read on]

The latest developments

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/177863.php
[Josh Marshall] For probably the first time in all the primaries and elections I've ever watched, the folks running the election decided to stop counting the votes with 13% of the votes uncounted. And this wasn't a 70-30 blow out, but a tight race where the two top vote getters were separated by less than 2% of the vote. Then this morning, state party chair Luke Esser decided to declare McCain the winner.

Now, when we were watching this last night and I was trying to examine the tea leaves this morning, I was assuming they'd come forward with some story that there was some hang up with the votes or some mechanical issue. Whether it would be true is another matter. But you'd think you'd at least come up with a good story.

But state party chair Luke Esser said that he just thought it was the right thing to do. According to Esser, sometime overnight Esser did some sort of back of the envelope statistical analysis of the the margin of McCain's lead (1.8%) and the number votes left uncounted (13%) and decided that Huckabee didn't have a chance and he'd shut the thing down and declare McCain the winner.

So was that a good idea? Here's Esser's rationale

“Maybe it would have been safer if I hadn't said anything. But it was an exciting and historic day for the state and I thought if I was confident about what the outcome would be I should share that with the people who had gone out to their caucuses.”

So it was just such a rollicking good time Esser figured he owed the participants a decision as long as he was confident what the outcome would be.

I'm really not sure I've ever heard anything that ridiculous. . . . [read on!]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/177867.php
[Josh Marshall] TPM Reader NM just flagged this article in the Seattle Times which quotes Esser now saying that the state GOP is going to try to get as "close as we can to 100 percent" of the vote counted.

I mean, don't knock yourself out, right?

Huckabee fights on

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/huckabee-hopeful

Obama wins another caucus, prepares for a big Tuesday ahead. How many losses in a row can Hillary withstand?

http://edition.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/state/#ME
Maine: Obama 59%/Clinton 40%

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/obama_wins_maine_by_large_marg.php
[Greg Sargent] CNN and MSNBC have just called Maine for Obama, giving him another sizable victory in a state that was supposed to act as a check on his momentum after yesterday's trio of landslide wins. Instead, tonight's outcome gave him another burst of forward motion in a month that's shaping up as a very dark one indeed for Hillary. . . .

Obama's victory effectively left Hillary advisers grappling with the possibility that the worst case scenario that they'd been anticipating for some time could come true: The prospect of no victories for the whole month of February. This coming Tuesday, Obama could very well sweep the Potomac Primary -- Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.

Obama's prospects are also pretty good in Wisconsin a week later . . .

Clinton makes a big change at the top of her campaign team: but don’t call it a “shake-up”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/10/AR2008021002699.html
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton shook up her presidential campaign yesterday, replacing campaign manager and longtime aide Patti Solis Doyle with Maggie Williams, her former White House chief of staff, in an acknowledgment of the unexpectedly difficult struggle in which she finds herself against Sen. Barack Obama. . . .

"Patti Solis Doyle has done an extraordinary job in getting us to this point -- within reach of the nomination -- and I am enormously grateful for her friendship and her outstanding work," Clinton said in a statement. . . .

The removal of Doyle, 42, was portrayed as an amicable one initiated by the campaign manager herself. But it gave credence to what some supporters have said for many weeks -- that the campaign had spent too much money yielding too few results and that fresh management and advice are needed for what could be a long battle against Obama. Doyle did not tell Clinton how rapidly the campaign was burning through money, according to one campaign official, who said Clinton learned about her financial constraints only after the New Hampshire primary on Jan. 8. . . .

Williams arrived on what she told friends would be a 30-day assignment to help oversee operations and review the campaign's management. She did not displace Doyle but there was, according to one account, tension between the two.

By one account, Williams decided early last week to return to her consulting firm, her temporary assignment over. By another, she announced that she was leaving to send a signal to Clinton that the dual management structure was untenable. . . .

Donna Brazile, who was Al Gore's campaign manager in 2000, said Williams, like Doyle, knows the candidate well and has her full trust. "Maggie's tough," she said. "She knows more than how to make the trains run on time. She knows how to break some heads."

Doyle, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, was the highest-ranking Hispanic in a campaign that has come to rely on Hispanic voters to win crucial states such as California and Arizona. Whether her departure will cost Clinton among this vital constituency is a critical question. . . .

The campaign long has had a very tight inner circle of Doyle, chief strategist Mark Penn, communications director Howard Wolfson, media adviser Mandy Grunwald and policy director Neera Tanden. Harold Ickes, former White House deputy chief of staff, has played an increasingly important role.

Since New Hampshire, others have been brought in to help. That group includes Doug Sosnik, former White House political director; Steve Richetti, who served as congressional liaison in the Clinton White House; and Linda Moore Forbes, who also served in the Clinton White House and who is helping nail down endorsements from superdelegates to the national convention.

Doug Hattaway, a veteran of the Gore campaign, has joined Clinton's communications operation. Roy Spence, a longtime friend of both the senator and the former president, has been offering advice on messaging and will play a lead role in overseeing the Texas campaign.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/10/162431/836
[Kos] The knives inside the Clinton campaign were out for Patty Solis Doyle, and her enemies finally succeeded. . . .

I liked Patty. It's rare to have high ranking Latinos anywhere in politics, and rarer still to see Latinas in positions of real power and influence. Reports have suggested she was too much of a micromanager, and discontent over her leadership has leaked into news reports ever since Clinton's Iowa defeat. Once Williams joined the campaign, this transition appeared to be inevitable. Williams was Clinton's chief of staff when she was First Lady.

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/02/fixing_the_wrong_problem.php
[Mark Kleiman] The Clinton campaign, having run itself aground under the able piloting of Mark Penn, has fired ... Patti Solis Doyle? (That ought to play well in Texas, don't you think?)

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14538.html

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/02/clinton_campaign_manager_steps.html

Just in case you think we’ve been too friendly to Obama here

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/2/10/202327/788
[Big Tent Democrat] A lot of my theories of this election will be facing their moments of truth in the next month. . . .

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/2/11/52238/9703
[Jerome Armstrong] I'm not talking about the national polls either, but how does Barack Obama put together a winning electoral advantage over John McCain? . . . [read on]

John Edwards talks with Clinton, Obama camps before deciding whom to endorse

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/edwards_aide_john_having_priva.php

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/2/10/182754/750

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/10/sunday-late-nite-will-john-edwards-endorse/

The fight over superdelegates continues

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080210/ap_on_el_pr/superdelegates;_ylt=AqusqmwxZ5IZ4IT6lBkiXbas0NUE
Hillary Rodham Clinton retains her lead among suddenly critical Democratic Party insiders even as Barack Obama builds up his delegate margin with primary and caucus victories across the country . . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/opinion/10devine.html
[Tad Devine] Many party leaders felt that the delegates would actually be more representative of all Democratic voters if we had more elected officials on the convention floor to offset the more liberal impulses of party activists.

But the superdelegates were also created to provide unity at the nominating convention.

They are a critical mass of uncommitted convention voters who can move in large numbers toward the candidate who receives the most votes in the party’s primaries and caucuses. Their votes can provide a margin of comfort and even victory to a nominee who wins a narrow race.

The superdelegates were never intended to be part of the dash from Iowa to Super Tuesday and beyond. They should resist the impulse and pressure to decide the nomination before the voters have had their say.

The party’s leaders and elected officials need to stop pledging themselves to either Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Obama, the two remarkable candidates who are locked in an intense battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.

If the superdelegates determine the party’s nominee before primary and caucus voters have rendered a clear verdict, Democrats risk losing the trust that we are building with voters today. The perception that the votes of ordinary people don’t count as much as those of the political insiders, who get to pick the nominee in some mythical back room, could hurt our party for decades to come.

The damage would be amplified if African-Americans or women, two of the party’s key constituencies, feel that a candidate who represents their most fervent hopes and aspirations is deprived of a nomination rightfully earned by majority support from voters.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/new-rules-by-digby-there-is-lot-of.html
[Digby] So while I am certainly sympathetic to the notion that the elite fat cats shouldn't decide for us, I think somebody needs to set forth some detailed criteria about how they should go about determining a more democratic way to decide this thing if there is a tie. Certainly the candidates are both hedging bets with this, which is perfectly understandable. This is shaping up to be trench warfare. . .

More: http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/the-superdelegate

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/the_rules_of_the_game.php

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3796

Fox News: of course

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/02/10/wallace/index.html
[Glenn Greenwald] Chris Wallace interviewed George Bush today on Fox News . . .

WALLACE: I want to follow up on that. Whether it is interrogation of terror prisoners or the intercepting of surveillance among al Qaeda members, are you ever puzzled by all of the concern in this country about protecting of rights of people who want to kill us?

Wallace's obsequious framing was too brazenly propagandistic even for Bush to accept:

BUSH: That is an interesting way to put it. I wouldn't necessarily define some of the critics of my policy that way. I would say that they want to be very careful that we don't overstep our bounds from protecting the civil liberties of Americans. . . . [read on]

Bonus item: A good quip from Lance Mannon, circa 2005 (thanks to Avedon Carol)

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2008_02_10_archive.html#4626402597056958617
If the Government is a car setting out to give every one a ride to work, then for 40 years the Republicans have been puncturing the tires, pouring sand in the gas tank, stealing the distributor cap, and, whenever they can get their hands on the wheel, driving it straight into the nearest ditch and then, pointing to the wreckage as the tow truck backs up to it, saying, See, this proves that people were meant to walk. And they do this so that they don't have to chip in on gas.

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:15 AM

 
THE TURNING TIDE

More costs to Bush’s war

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2008/02/ap_news_alert_28.php
[AP] The Associated Press has learned that a classified Pentagon assessment has concluded that prolonged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have prevented the military from improving its ability to respond to any new crisis. . . .

More: http://www.afsc.org/cost/
The Iraq war costs $720 million per day. How would you spend it? . . . [watch]

MY earmarks are better than YOUR earmarks

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/washington/10earmark.html
President Bush often denounces the propensity of Congress to earmark money for pet projects. But in his new budget, Mr. Bush has requested money for thousands of similar projects. . . .

Obama dominates

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/09/AR2008020901993.html
Sen. Barack Obama dominated Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in presidential balloting in Nebraska, Louisiana and Washington state last night, besting her by huge margins . . .

http://news.aol.com/elections/primary/main/democrats
La. Primary: Obama 57%
Neb. Caucus: Obama 68%
Wash. Caucus: Obama 68%

Obama ahead in delegates now?

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/obama_campaign_tonights_sweep.php

The fight for superdelegates

http://www.denverpost.com/sports/ci_8190382

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/09/AR2008020902703.html

Look, what David Shuster said about Chelsea Clinton was rude and completely inappropriate – but the ferocious response of the Clinton team is more about punishing a network they perceive as tilted against them

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/hillary_to_nbc_fire_david_shus.php
Hillary To NBC: Fire David Shuster . . .

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/177789.php

http://www.americablog.com/2008/02/hillary-may-boycott-msnbc-because.html
Hillary may boycott MSNBC because they're an offensive network, but FOX is okay . . .

Is all this a good thing? http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/177715.php
[VH] I am not a Hillary supporter - I voted for Obama. But, I applaud the response of the Clinton campaign for the insulting remark about Chelsea and Hillary. It is extremely important for both Democratic candidates to make the networks aware right now that treating either of them as Bill Clinton was treated will be done with severe consequences. . . .

More: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/177780.php

Huckabee wins huge in Kansas – will McCain be forced to put him on the ticket?

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/huckabee_wins_kansas_caucuses.php
Huckabee Wins Kansas Caucuses In A Blowout . . .

More: http://news.aol.com/elections/primary/main/republicans
Kan. Caucus: Huckabee 60%
La. Primary: Huckabee 43%
Wash. Caucus: McCain 26%

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14520.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-huckabee9feb09,0,1458032.story

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/02/09/politics/fromtheroad/entry3812334.shtml
Gov. Rick Perry. R-Texas, who has endorsed John McCain, called Mike Huckabee on Friday asking him to drop out of the race, according to a senior Huckabee campaign aide. Huckabee declined Perry's request. . .

More on that Washington State result

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/177796.php
[Josh Marshall] We're starting to lose confidence that the Washington state GOP is ever going to report the last 17% of the results of today's caucus. Perhaps they think if they wait long enough people will just forget they held one and they're just pretend it didn't happen. . . .

First thing you have to note is that 74% of caucuses showed up to vote against their all-but-certain nominee. . . .

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_02/013092.php
[Kevin Drum] [T]he rebuke of John McCain by Republican voters tonight has been stunning. Sure, Kansas and Louisiana are prime Mike Huckabee territory, so maybe you can rationalize McCain's losses there. But what about Washington state? McCain managed only 26% of the caucus vote there, barely edging out not only Huckabee, but Ron Paul and Mitt Romney as well — the first a protest candidate and the second a no-show. These were caucus goers, not primary voters, and they knew perfectly well that Romney had pulled out of the race, but they voted for him anyway. Why? To thumb their noses at McCain, presumably.

McCain: easy to beat?

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3782

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/moderate-maverick-by-digby-i-keep.html

http://www.votevets.org/mccain.html
[VoteVets] Senator John McCain presents himself as a maverick and a critic of the Iraq war. But a close read of his record indicates that his position on the Iraq war has consistently matched President George W. Bush’s. . . .

George Bush: the invisible visible of the modern Republican Party

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/08/the_conservative_abyss/

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/08/bush-cheney-best/
During his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) this morning, President Bush told the crowd of raucous right-wing activists that he “appreciates the fact that” they “invited Vice President Cheney” to speak. Between intermittent cheers of “four more years,” Bush told the crowd, Cheney “is the best vice president in history.” . .

Yeah, right

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_8220304
The office of Vice President Dick Cheney is seeking to block the release of videotaped depositions given by two aides who witnessed a physical encounter between an Iraq war opponent and Cheney.

In a motion filed Saturday, Cheney's office contended that the videotapes could be used to invade the privacy and embarrass two aides called to testify about the encounter in a civil lawsuit. . . .

Bye-bye Bloomberg bid?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/09/nyregion/09bloomberg.html

Sunday talk show line-ups

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/09/AR2008020902276.html
FOX NEWS SUNDAY: President Bush.

THIS WEEK (ABC): Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D), Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D), Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) and former congressman Tom DeLay (R-Tex.).

NEWSMAKERS (C-SPAN): Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander, Multinational Division-Center.

FACE THE NATION (CBS): Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R), former presidential adviser Karl Rove and political consultant Joe Trippi.

MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R).

LATE EDITION (CNN): House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.); House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio); Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.); and former secretary of state Colin L. Powell.

Bonus item: Members of Congress, having made it impossible to have civil and rational debates over policy issues while actually voting over them, schedule a series of “public debates” to mend their image

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14528.html
[Steve Benen] As I see it, there should be a forum in which all elected officials go to discuss important legislative matters of the day. Oh wait, we already have such a forum — it’s called the United States Congress . .

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 8:02 AM

 
THERE’S A WAR GOING ON

Our friends

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/02/08/iraq.women/index.html
The images in the Basra police file are nauseating: Page after page of women killed in brutal fashion -- some strangled to death, their faces disfigured; others beheaded. All bear signs of torture.

The women are killed, police say, because they failed to wear a headscarf or because they ignored other "rules" that secretive fundamentalist groups want to enforce. . . .

http://www.americablog.com/2008/02/bush-administration-strategy-in-anbar.html
[A.J. Rossmiller] Ilan Goldenberg tells us that the "Anbar Awakening" forces, essentially the Sunni groups we gave money and weapons to so they'd drive out the minor (if oft-cited) al Qaeda elements in Anbar, are close to open conflict with the major elected Sunni parties. I know, it's hard to believe that giving a large group of people a bunch of money and weapons might make them think about using it to gain political power (and not just do whatever we tell them), but it's true . . . [read on]

The best and the brightest

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/foreign-service
[Spencer Ackerman] ABC News reports that a GOP apparatchik who works in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has penned a scathing memo saying the State Department bureaucratic culture is "simply not up to the task" of Iraq. Read the memo. It really is scathing. . . .

Gee, maybe “You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists” wasn’t such a good slogan for Bush to use with our allies. Now, calling them “confused” doesn’t sound much better

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/09/world/asia/09gates.html
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Friday that many Europeans were confused about NATO’s security mission in Afghanistan, and that they did not support the alliance effort because they opposed the American-led invasion of Iraq. . . .

Uh-huh: http://www.americablog.com/2008/02/washpost-headline-rice-cites.html
[Chris in Paris] WashPost headline: "Rice Cites Significant Progress in Afghanistan"
Yes, I was quite curious as well what progress she was citing and the story fails to mention anything specific. Of course, this is because there is no progress to cite but don't tell that to whoever coughed up the headline. Afghanistan has drifted for years and now we have a resurgent Taliban, increased poppy production, dropping investments and a government who stands idle while a journalist is found guilty of downloading a report on women's rights. No wonder they can't cite a damned thing. . . .

More: http://www.juancole.com/2008/02/two-us-soldiers-killed-public-blames.html

Here’s a serious, thoughtful effort to assess the war from the standpoint of the Iraqis

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/winter-2008/full-iraq.html
[George Packer] A falsely justified and poorly waged war hardly deserves the excuse of good intentions. Iraq was a folly and a failure of the kind that happens once every few generations and leaves consequences for generations to come. The war swept up millions of lives, changing them in ways that were impossible for anyone to predict. In the summer of 2003, Iraq was volatile and fluid, and no one who knew anything knew what would come next. Some Iraqis spoke of a better future coming in six months or a year. Three years later, the better future had receded far into the distance: hunkered down in Baghdad or exiled in Damascus, Iraqis spoke of fifteen years.

By then the war was not about nothing. No war ever is. I don’t know where Haithem and Muna and the others are today—some of them might well be among the Iraqis I know to be dead—but for them, the war had a meaning. It meant a chance to live a decent life, something that had never been remotely possible and remains a dream even today. The war began as folly; it became a tragedy when the hopes and lives of Iraqis and Americans began to be expended by the thousands.

“I can never blame the Americans alone,” an Iraqi refugee named Firas told me in early 2007. “It’s the Iraqis who destroyed their country, with the help of the Americans, under the American eye.” To gain this wisdom, Firas had to lose almost everything. What would it take for Americans to understand what Firas already does? A recognition that Iraq was everyone’s loss, whichever side you were on. . . . [read on]

More: http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/complexity

What IS the going rate to hire a torturer, these days? (Just wondering, in case I need one)

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/wsj_contractors_likely_involve.php
[WSJ] The CIA's secret interrogation program has made extensive use of outside contractors, whose role likely included the waterboarding of terrorist suspects . . .

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/outsourcing-immorality-by-digby-in.html
[Digby] I suspect the use of "contractors" (who were probably recently privatized CIA employees) was done for some very specific reasons, namely that they mostly exist in legal no-man's land, falling under no jurisdiction and answerable to no treaties, at least up to now. It's very convenient. . . . [read on]

Makes you want to scream, doesn’t it? CIA chief clarifies that by saying waterboarding isn’t legal, he didn’t mean that it was illegal

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/177606.php

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/todays_must_read_272.php
[Paul Kiel] If the Bush Administration has taught us anything, it's that "torture" is in the eye of the beholder. It's the singular truth behind the repeated proclamations that "we do not torture." . . . [read on]

More: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/durbin_calls_for_inspector_gen.php

Here's the guy Bush wants to decide whether it’s legal or not

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/08/why-bush-is-so-desperate-to-get-bradbury-approved/

I guess there is no problem with detainee abuse. Thank goodness

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/justice_department_declines_al.php
Of the 24 cases of detainee abuse that the CIA's inspector general and Department of Defense have referred to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution in the last several years, the Department has declined to prosecute in 22 of them . . .

The DoJ official, Brian Benczkowski, disclosed that two of the cases remained pending -- it's unknown what those cases are. Benczkowski said that there had only been four referrals by the CIA's inspector general in the last year, and all four had been declined. . . .

At this point, this story seems apt . . .

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/08/gibney-taxi-discovery/
Taxi to the Dark Side, a documentary about an innocent Afghan taxi driver tortured to death by U.S. officials at Bagram Air Base, has received wide critical acclaim since its debut in April at the Tribeca Film Festival. The New York Times’s A.O. Scott said, “If recent American history is ever going to be discussed with the necessary clarity and ethical rigor, this film will be essential.”

Director Alex Gibney agreed to sell the rights of Taxi to the Discovery Channel because executives convinced him they would “give the film a prominent broadcast.” Now, however, Discovery has dropped its plans to air the documentary because the film is too controversial. . . .

Bush’s State of the Union speech promised lots of things he had no intention of doing anything about. He called for greater R&D in “clean” coal-burning technologies, then his Energy Dept cancelled the FutureGen plant project because an outside review panel granted it to Illinois instead of Texas. Here’s more

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/08/AR2008020804136.html
President Bush drew great applause during his State of the Union address last month when he called on Congress to allow U.S. troops to transfer their unused education benefits to family members. "Our military families serve our nation, they inspire our nation, and tonight our nation honors them," he said.

A week later, however, when Bush submitted his $3.1 trillion federal budget to Congress, he included no funding for such an initiative . . .

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080209/ap_on_go_pr_wh/immigration_backlogs
President Bush is asking Congress to spend money to help businesses root out illegal workers but he did not request additional funds to help legal immigrants become American citizens more quickly. . . .

In Bush’s America

http://www.americablog.com/2008/02/gift-cards-used-to-buy-food.html
[MSNBC] Here's a sign of how shaky the economy has become: Wal-Mart says its shoppers are redeeming their holiday gift cards for basic items — pasta sauce, diapers, laundry detergent — instead of iPods or DVDs.

Merchants had hoped shoppers armed with gift cards would provide a lift after a dismal holiday shopping season — partly because shoppers tend to spend even more than the value of the card. But that didn't seem to happen last month, and retailers are feeling the pain.

The Republicans keep trying to squeeze the Democrats up against the time limit when the current FISA law expires, forcing them to give in and just pass SOMETHING (i.e., the Bush version of the bill). Will it work this time?

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/reid_files_bill_to_extend_surv.php

In environmental news. . .

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/tk_biden.php
[Paul Kiel] Don't think we've forgotten about EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson. Because we haven't. And neither has House sleuth Henry Waxman (D-CA).

Last we heard of Johnson, he gave a masterful performance of wonkish evasion before the Senate environmental committee.

Today Waxman issued a subpoena to compel the EPA to provide "unredacted" copies of a PowerPoint presentation Johnson's staff made to him about California's petition to limit greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks.

The presentation shows that Johnson's staff recommended granting the petition. But Johnson ignored that and denied it anyway. . . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/08/AR2008020802269.html
A federal appeals court yesterday threw out the Environmental Protection Agency's approach to limiting mercury emitted from power-plant smokestacks, saying the agency ignored laws and twisted logic when it imposed new standards that were favorable to plant owners. . . .

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environment/la-sci-biofuel8feb08,1,4375177.story
The rush to grow biofuel crops -- widely embraced as part of the solution to global warming -- is actually increasing greenhouse gas emissions rather than reducing them, according to two studies published Thursday in the journal Science. . . .

http://www.americablog.com/2008/02/plastic-soup-twice-size-of-us.html
[The Independent] A "plastic soup" of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.

The vast expanse of debris – in effect the world's largest rubbish dump – is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting "soup" stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan. . . .

How the NRCC screwed itself

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8398.html
Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas), a certified public accountant, had pushed for months for an internal audit of the National Republican Congressional Committee, according to GOP members, but the committee’s treasurer at the time was reluctant.

Finally, at a recent meeting, the now former NRCC treasurer, Christopher J. Ward, relented, giving Conaway what was supposed to be an official internal audit from 2006. That document was a fake, the GOP members said. Even the letterhead on which it was sent was a forgery. . . .

More: http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/08/the-nrcc-meltdown-an-introduction/

Someone’s cracking the whip

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14512.html
[Steve Benen] Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran (R), 11 days ago, on the idea of John McCain getting elected:

“The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me.”

Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran (R), last night, on his presidential endorsement:

“I am supporting John McCain for the Republican nomination for president,” Cochran, R-Miss., said in a statement released Thursday. . . . [read on]

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14509.html

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3760

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/08/late-night-fdl-massaging-mccains-opticals/

Yes, David Shuster’s comment about Chelsea Clinton was tasteless and he deserves disciplining over it. But let’s remember who said this. . . .

http://www.attytood.com/2008/02/the_worst_thing_thats_ever_bee_1.html
"Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno."

Farewell Mitt: a video montage

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/177663.php

We’ll meet again: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_02/013082.php

[NB: Everyone says Romney is just keeping his powder dry until 2012. That means he assumes (a) that McCain will be a one-term President or (b) that Obama or Clinton will face such a series of catastrophes that the country will hunger for his new leadership]

Big primary events this weekend (Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington, Maine)

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/your_election_central_guide_to_3.php
[Eric Kleefeld] Super Tuesday is hardly over, but the Democratic campaigns are already geared up for some big races this weekend, with a total of 182 delegates up for grabs. Barack Obama is currently favored in three out of four of the contests, with only one possibly leaning to Hillary Clinton. . .

Wow – Democrats are threatening to QUIT the party if superdelegates decide the outcome against the electoral will

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3763

John Solomon, the master of pseudo-scandal journalism, brings his hackery to that bastion of hackery, the Washington Times. And here is his inaugural effort – dredging up a story about the Clintons from 1996:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2008/02/john_solomon_er.php

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14516.html

Bonus item: Sign me up

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/gwb_the_beloved_leader_/2008/02/resolution_of_censure.php
[Mark Kleiman] The Bush monarchists think they have the Democrats in Congress snookered. They have denied that Congressional subpoena power applies to them, and managed (with the supine help of Chuck Schumer) to install an Attorney General who is prepared to defy the law on that and other points. They have denied that they are limited by the Congressional power of the purse: claiming the authority to spend appropriated funds for purposes the Congress has forbidden. The Democrats don't want to force a government shutdown. And they don't have the votes for conviction on impeachment in the Senate, even if they had the votes to impeach in the House.

So until January 20, 2009, the power of the President is limited entirely by what he thinks he can get away with. Of course no Constitutional order is binding if major institutional players (the White House, in this instance) refuse to abide by it and other players in what should be countervailing positions (the Republicans in Congress) block what should be countervailing action.

But there remains the resolution of censure. . . .

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:30 AM

 
SO SORRY

Attorney General Mukasey closes the circle of 1984-logic: the Justice Department can’t investigate illegal torture or illegal wiretapping because previous DOJ cronies issued tailor-made edicts declaring them legal. So what can he do about it now?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/07/AR2008020701542.html
Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said this morning that waterboarding was deemed legal by the Justice Department at the time it was used by the CIA on three al-Qaeda captives, and as a result the Justice Department "cannot possibly" investigate whether a crime occurred. . .

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/mukasey_no_i_will_not_investig_1.php
[Paul Kiel] The Justice Department will not investigate whether CIA agents engaged in torture by waterboarding detainees, Attorney General Michael Mukasey said earlier.

Ditto goes for the administration's warrantless wiretapping program, Mukasey added later, when asked by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) whether he would appoint a special counsel to investigate.

The question came after Mukasey had baldly asserted that it was not a "practical view" that the president could order someone to act outside the law. Nadler wanted to know if the president hadn't done just that with his warrantless wiretapping program, which had ignored the constraints of FISA.

Well, Mukasey said, the President had ordered that on the advice of the Justice Department that it was lawful. So, just as he will not initiate an investigation of waterboarding since the DoJ had given its OK, he will also not investigate whether the warrantless wiretapping was lawful, since it was legal, because the DoJ said it was . . .

More: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/mukasey_no_i_will_not_investig.php

He said WHAT?!??

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/mukasey_the_law_is_what_the_ju.php
[Paul Kiel] Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-MA) wanted some clarity during his questioning. Was the attorney general really saying that anyone who acted pursuant to a Justice Department legal opinion was "insulated from criminal liability?"

Mukasey wanted to say it more carefully. "I think what I said was that we could not investigate or prosecute somebody for acting in reliance on a Justice Department opinion."

But even if that opinion was "inaccurate," Delahunt wondered, and that behavior really did violate the U.S. criminal code, you're saying that someone who relied on it would effectively have "immunity from any culpability?"

"Justified reliance," Mukasey answered, "could not be the subject of a prosecution." . . .

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/177496.php
[David Kurtz] We have now the Attorney General of the United States telling Congress that it's not against the law for the President to violate the law if his own Department of Justice says it's not.

It is as brazen a defense of the unitary executive as anything put forward by the Administration in the last seven years, and it comes from an attorney general who was supposed to be not just a more professional, but a more moderate, version of Alberto Gonzales (Thanks to Democrats like Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Schumer for caving on the Mukasey nomination.).

President Bush has now laid down his most aggressive challenge to the very constitutional authority of Congress. It is a naked assertion of executive power. The founders would have called it tyrannical. His cards are now all on the table. This is no bluff. . . .

[RF] It's not just that the Attorney General's position is that a DOJ Order makes the subject activity legal but that, as Nadler brought out, there is now no recourse to a judicial test, either criminal (through refusal to prosecute) or civil (through the state secrets privilege based solely on a DOJ affidavit). The DOJ is entitled to take whatever position it wants, however self-serving and unitary, but now there is no avenue for judicial review and so that is the end of the story. That is the important point here.

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14505.html
[Steve Benen] Attorney General Michael Mukasey has been kind enough to share some fascinating insights with the House Judiciary Committee today on an administration that believes it can immunize itself from law breaking. Seriously. . . . [read on]

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/4550
[Greenboy] [T]hat's why God created the Independent Prosecutor. . .

Oh, yeah, and he can’t do this either

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/mukasey_no_i_will_not_enforce.php
[Paul Kiel] Just to complete the theme of the day, Michael Mukasey said today that if Congress passed contempt citations against current and former White House officials based on their refusal to respond to subpoenas, the Justice Department would not enforce them, as federal law instructs. . . .

Mukasey's simple answer was "no." Enforcing the contempt citation is "not permitted when the president directs a direct adviser of his, somebody who directly advises him, not to appear or when he directs any member of the executive not to produce document." . . .

He also can’t answer this question. Sorry

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/07/mukasey-refuses-to-say-whether-he-was-instructed-not-to-enforce-subpoenas/
Robert Wexler [D-FL]:Have you been instructed by POTUS [Bush] to enforce or not to enforce subpoenas.

MM: I can't say. . .

Wexler: I asked about the President instructing someone not to appear. Have you been instructed to enforce or not to enforce contempt citations.

MM: That's privileged. . .

Monsters

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/07/washington/07cnd-intel.html
Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday vigorously defended the use of harsh interrogation techniques on a few suspected terrorists, saying that the methods made up “a tougher program, for tougher customers” and might have averted another attack on the United States. . . .

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/02/07/BL2008020701681.html
[Dan Froomkin] When you get right down to it, the White House's new argument in favor of waterboarding is that the ends justify the means. . .

Later in the day, CIA Director Hayden adds a qualifier: well, it was legal for us, but it might not be legal for the next President

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/washington/08intel.html

http://www.slate.com/id/2184050/
[Daniel Politi] The WSJ notes that it's looking increasingly likely that contractors were involved in waterboarding terrorist suspects. Although Hayden insisted that contractors must follow the same rules as CIA operatives, some doubt they can be held to the same standards or are as accountable. Also, some lawmakers are questioning whether using contractors for interrogations is even legal since, according to policy, "inherently governmental activities" must be performed by government employees.

You can say it, but that doesn’t make it true

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/goper_99_of_americans.php
[Paul Kiel] It's not even a close call, says Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX). If you've got a terrorist, and he has information that could save thousands of Americans lives, waterboarding is a no-brainer: "99% of the American people" would support such a technique, he said. . . .

Of course, Smith could have relied on an actual poll of American public opinion, rather than his own instinct. Like, say, this CNN poll from late last year, where two-thirds of respondents said that waterboarding is torture and 58 percent said that the government shouldn't be allowed to use the technique. But that would have been much less gratifying. . . .

Just think, this all started because John Negroponte blurted out something he shouldn’t have said

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/re-branding-torture-by-dday-couple.html
[D-day] A couple weeks ago, John Negroponte blurted out that America has used the practice of waterboarding, but only a few times. The admission of a torture technique dating back to the Spanish Inquisition, you would think, would have led to Negroponte's sacking, mass protests lasting weeks, and in a Parliamentary system, a no-confidence vote against the current government. Instead it led to a new PR strategy . . . [read on]

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/todays_must_read_271.php
[Paul Kiel] If it's seemed to you that the administration has blundered its way into its recent pro-waterboarding PR offensive, you're right. . . . [read on]

Uh, isn’t this, err, you know, also ILLEGAL?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/07/washington/07intel.html
At the time that the Central Intelligence Agency destroyed videotapes of the interrogations of operatives of Al Qaeda, a federal judge was still seeking information from Bush administration lawyers about the interrogation of one of those operatives, Abu Zubaydah, according to court documents made public on Wednesday.

The court documents, filed in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, appear to contradict a statement last December by Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director, that when the tapes were destroyed in November 2005 they had no relevance to any court proceeding, including Mr. Moussaoui’s criminal trial. . .

The Bush gang announced, with great fanfare, that they were giving up the idea of a long-term security treaty with Iraq (oops! don’t call it a treaty, because that would mean it needs Congressional approval) – they seem to have gotten the message that this dodge would push even Republicans into opposing them. So they backed off the idea . . . or did they?

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/my-offer-to-you

Just another day at the office for the lying thugs of the Bush administration. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: incriminating evidence suddenly shows up missing on the eve of a controversial confirmation hearing. So sorry, it’s been destroyed! we are told. Later, after the confirmation goes through, it turns out the evidence wasn’t destroyed after all

Remember? http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/11/06/ice.costume/index.html
[November 2007] The employee who wore what some said was a racially insensitive Halloween costume to a party hosted by a top immigration official is being directed by the Homeland Security Department Secretary to take administrative leave. . . .

The employee wore a striped prison outfit, dreadlocks and darkened skin make-up to the party hosted by Julie Myers, head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Myers was on a three-judge panel that originally praised the prisoner costume for "originality." . . .

A department photographer took a picture of Myers with the man, but the photograph or photographs, originally posted online, were deleted . . .

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/11/07/halloween.flap/index.html
[November 2007] Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill said Wednesday that she has placed a temporary "hold" on Julie Myers' nomination for the job of assistant homeland security secretary for immigration and customs enforcement until Myers answers questions about the party, including why photographs of her with the costumed employee were destroyed after questions were raised . . .

Now: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/07/ice.photos/index.html
The federal government has released to CNN more than 100 photographs of a Halloween party that temporarily threatened to derail the nomination of a top Department of Homeland Security official.

The images included several digital photos that the official had ordered erased because they were deemed to be inappropriate and offensive. . . .

Myers said she did not know the employee was wearing skin makeup, but ordered the photos destroyed because she did not think that "recognizing an escaped prisoner in any way was beneficial to the agency's goal of treating everyone in our custody with dignity and respect."

This week, in response to the Freedom of Information Act request filed by CNN on November 6, ICE released 113 official photographs of the party, including all of the deleted photos, which technicians were able to electronically restore.

An ICE spokeswoman denied the photos were suppressed until after Myers' job was secure, saying ICE responded in an "efficient time frame" to the FOIA request. . . Myers was confirmed on December 20.

[NB: Oh, and in case you didn’t know it, this eminently qualified Homeland Security expert just happens to be the niece of former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers. Small world:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/19/AR2005091901930.html
Myers also was an associate under independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr for about 16 months . . . Her uncle is Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, the departing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She married Chertoff's current chief of staff, John F. Wood, on Saturday.

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/09/16/unqualified-homeland-security/
[UPI] “I’m really concerned about your management experience,” Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, told her, pointing out that ICE, with 20,000 employees, was the second-largest investigative agency in the federal government.

“I think that we ought to have a meeting with (Homeland Security Secretary) Mike Chertoff … to ask him… why he thinks you’re qualified for the job.

“Because based on your resume, I don’t think you are,” Voinovich concluded.]

I’ve been saying this for months: watch for some last-minute move by the Bush gang to prevent this, if any Democrat wins. They must be scared to death by the prospect

http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=00321
[Steven Aftergood] By now no one expects the Bush Administration to make itself accountable for its controversial and possibly illegal practices. But the next President will have a unique opportunity to reveal what has been kept hidden for the last seven years. . . [read on]

More: http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/07/a-case-for-sunshine-scrutiny-over-secrecy-on-bush-records/

It had to slip all the way down to here, but you might have heard that Mitt Romney quit the GOP race yesterday. And, as you’d expect, he couldn’t resist an utterly phony and disingenuous explanation for it

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/here_it_is_mitts_droppingout_s.php
“Barack and Hillary have made their intentions clear regarding Iraq and the war on terror. They would retreat and declare defeat. And the consequence of that would be devastating. It would mean attacks on America, launched from safe havens that make Afghanistan under the Taliban look like child's play. About this, I have no doubt. . . .

If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.

This is not an easy decision for me. I hate to lose. . . . If this were only about me, I would go on. But I entered this race because I love America, and because I love America, I feel I must now stand aside, for our party and for our country.”

[NB: “That and the fact that I’m paying for this race myself, and the businessman in me hates dumping more millions down the rathole of a hopeless campaign. Not that any of that was a consideration.”]

Heh: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/7/12365/49993
[Kagro X] Word is Mitt Romney's powerful attacks on Mitt Romney's positions (both current and former) have just been too much for Mitt Romney to withstand, and he may have knocked himself out of the race.

More: http://www.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/02/i_hate_to_kick_a_man_when_hes_down_but_.php

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14502.html

How Romney REALLY made the decision

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/07/AR2008020704368.html
[H]e gathered his inner circle Wednesday morning at the campaign's North End headquarters in Boston. Still very much the corporate fix-it man, whose methodical approach to business had made him the multimillion-dollar personal fortune he was now spending at an alarming rate, Romney had ordered up formal presentations on whether to keep fighting against a surging Sen. John McCain.

One adviser assessed the communications and messaging challenges of staying in the race. Another described tactics. A third offered the financial bottom line. Another mapped out the difficult, state-by-state path Romney would face as an underdog trying to catch up to McCain in the Republican delegate count.

"There was a path," said a top aide who helped develop one of the presentations. "There was absolutely zero room for error. And then, it was, at best, probably not more than a 20 percent chance." . .

By the way, I hope you caught Romney’s “surrender” line, in all its hateful McCarthyite glory. Get used to it – you’ll be hearing it a lot more

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/shocking-by-digby-in-his-withdrawal.html

McCain gives his big coming-out speech as the presumptive nominee to the Conservative Political Action Committee – who had to ask their members not to boo him

http://www.politico.com/blogs/anneschroeder/0208/CPAC_to_all_CPACers_Dont_boo_McCain.html

It didn’t work: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/7/122025/6733

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/2/7/82013/41387

McCain crafts his new appeal to the conservative base: Just like Bush, only better

http://www.americablog.com/2008/02/mccain-to-right-wingers-come-on-you.html

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/08/bubble-boys/

It ain’t working: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14500.html

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/wingnut-triangulation-by-digby-somehow.html

McCain’s big edge

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/straight_talk_5.php
[Matt Yglesias] It's nice to see McCain lying about FISA at his CPAC speech.

There are a lot of reasons you can come up with for why John McCain may not be a strong general election candidate. But this is the flipside. Since he has a reputation for straight-talk, he's been granted by the press an unrestricted licenses to lie. It's hard to beat someone with one of those.

McCain’s big flaw

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2008/02/mccain_whats_fair_criticism.html
[Smirking Chimp] McCain’s tragic flaw: He knows the right thing. He often sets out to do the right thing. But he doesn’t follow through. We saw McCain’s weak character in 2000, when the Bush campaign defeated him in the crucial South Carolina primary by smearing his family. Placing his presidential ambitions first, he swallowed his pride, set aside his honor, and campaigned for Bush against Al Gore. It came up again in 2005, when McCain used his POW experience as a POW to convince Congress to pass, and Bush to sign, a law outlawing torture of detainees at Guantanamo and other camps. But when Bush issued one of his infamous “signing statements” giving himself the right to continue torturing-in effect, negating McCain’s law-he remained silent, sucking up to Bush again.

McCain as Nixon?

http://www.juancole.com/2008/02/mccain-as-nixon.html

A question McCain needs to answer

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/07/tortured-reasoning-2/
[Christy Hardin Smith] Jack Balkin asks a few good questions of Sen. John McCain. Ones that I'd like to know the answers to as well. Because last year, McCain said this about waterboarding:

"All I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today....It is not a complicated procedure. It is torture."








As you know, Fox News has a frequent habit of doing this – at what point do we decide that it’s not an accident?

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/02/07/fox-news-labels-john-mccain-a-democrat



I hate headline writers

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080207/ap_on_go_co/economy_stimulus
Senate can't agree on stimulus package
Senate Republicans blocked a bid by Democrats to add $44 billion in help for the elderly, disabled veterans, the unemployed and businesses to the House-passed economic aid package. . .

The tally was 58-41 [actually 59-40] to end debate on the Senate measure, just short of the 60 votes Democrats would have needed to scale procedural hurdles and move the bill to a final vote . . .

[NB: Yeah, when you can only get 59 bipartisan votes for your measure, it just isn’t good enough]

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/they-will-not-stop-by-digbgy-what-k.html
[Digby] If you look at the race so far, it's clear that it's no easy task to even unify the Democratic Party. And as long as the Republicans have 41 votes, they'll never stop obstructing. . .

The 60th vote?

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/177457.php
[AP] Senators in both parties prepared to greet the presidential race's front-runners Wednesday, as McCain, Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., left the campaign trail to vote for a proposed $205 billion economic stimulus package. McCain returned to Washington but made an eleventh-hour decision to skip the vote, aides to his campaign said. . .

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2008/02/mccain_racks_up_missed_senate.php
[AP] Republican presidential front-runner John McCain has skipped more than half the Senate's votes in the past year and he expects to miss more. . .

The sad clown

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/177560.php
[DD] I am a little depressed tonight. Rudy's gone. Mitt's gone. Is it just me, or is McCain the least funny of all the republicans? I mean, he says crazy things like "100 more years in Iraq", but I never laugh. Is it his timing? Or his material? I guess with Rudy and Mitt you could tell that even they didn't believe half of their own Shinola. But McCain? He seems like he does. Maybe its something else. Anyway, I shouldn't complain. The republicans have provided an abundance of comedy during this campaign. And its been a load of fun. But, I fear that the salad days are over.

Glenn Greenwald on the FISA votes

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/02/07/today/index.html
The first of the many Democratic amendments to fail yesterday was Sen. Cardin's amendments to change the sunset provision of the current bill from 6 to 4 years. Needing 60 votes, it received only 49. . . Under the perfectly calibrated agreement reached in the Senate -- whereby each amendment needs the number of votes it is certain not to receive -- this pattern will repeat itself over and over today. The only real remaining question with all of these issues appears to be the extent to which the House can mitigate some of the worst provisions in what will soon be the Senate's warrantless surveillance and telecom amnesty bill.

Finally! The California electoral vote-theft proposition dies for lack of support

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14503.html

OK, if you want some sleepless nights, imagine this scenario. There is more than two months between the last Democratic primary and the Democratic convention. Lots of time for behind-the-scenes mischief. Assume that Obama has more elected delegates, but backroom dealing among the superdelegates gives the nomination to Clinton (Yes, it could run the other way, but that seems much less likely – and would be less explosive if it did)

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3724

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/2/7/23459/25609

http://openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3633

A VP choice for Obama or Clinton

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_02/013077.php

Bonus item: Bye-bye Mitt

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14502.html
[Steve Benen] [M]y top 10 favorite Mitt Romney moments from the presidential campaign:

10. Romney took a surprisingly passive attitude towards the terrorist responsible for 9/11. “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person,” Romney said of Osama bin Laden. He later said the opposite.

9. Romney was asked why none of his five sons had joined the U.S. military. He responded that they’re all serving their country by working for his campaign.

8. Romney bragged that he wanted to “double Guantanamo.”

7. Romney, who consistently pleaded for tolerance of religious diversity when it came to his personal faith, told an audience that he wouldn’t allow Muslims in his cabinet.

6. Romney once argued that Iran, a mid-level country with a weak economy, represents “the greatest threat to the world since the fall of the Soviet Union, and before that, Nazi Germany.”

5. In his big religion speech at the H.W. Bush library, Romney insisted, “Freedom requires religion.” I’m still not sure what this is supposed to mean.

4. At a nationally televised debate, Romney argued, with a straight face, “[If] Saddam Hussein had opened up his country to IAEA inspectors, and they’d come in and they’d found that there were no weapons of mass destruction, had Saddam Hussein, therefore, not violated United Nations resolutions, we wouldn’t be in the conflict we’re in.”

3. Romney tried to pander to a South Carolina audience by proclaiming, “We should withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council.” (The United States can’t withdraw from the Human Rights Council — we don’t have a seat on the human rights council. The Bush administration has been boycotting the human rights council for quite a while.)

2. Romney’s story about having seen his father march with Martin Luther King was a convoluted mess.

1. “Who let the dogs out?“

#11 http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14504.html
[Steve Benen] Mitt Romney not only ended his presidential bid this afternoon, he did so with the kind of class and dignity we’ve come to expect from the Republican presidential field. . . .

Romney argued, with a straight face, that if he didn’t drop out, the terrorists win. And since he loves America, he can’t let that happen. If I’d known he was going to say this, I would have waited before publishing my top 10 list earlier.

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:55 AM

 
THE TORTURE GANG

People seem surprised that the Bush gang, after years of denial, is now openly, proudly admitting to waterboarding. Don’t be surprised – this is Rove 101: when you are about to get in trouble for doing something bad, don’t hide it, BRAG about it

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/02/06/BL2008020602244.html
[Dan Froomkin] We Tortured and We'd Do It Again
After years of dodging and dissembling, the Bush administration today boldly embraced an interrogation tactic that's been an iconic and almost universally condemned form of torture since the Spanish Inquisition. . . [read on]

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/todays_must_read_270.php
[Paul Kiel] Remember when Vice President Dick Cheney off-handedly admitted to an interviewer that "a dunk in the water" is a "no-brainer" if it can save lives? The White House did its utmost to deny the obvious.

But the strategy has changed. Now administration officials are proclaiming in the open that yes, the U.S. waterboarded three detainees, yes, it was legal, and yes, there's a possibility we'd do so again. The stress, of course, is on the fact that waterboarding is not in the current authorized battery of interrogation techniques. But nevertheless, there it is. The administration has apparently decided that this is a debate they can win out in the open.

The major threat, as the administration sees it, is pending bipartisan legislation that would restrict the CIA to using the Army Field Manual as its guide to interrogating detainees. Yesterday, Hayden made a twofold response to that. . .

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/white_house_waterboarding_is_a.php
[Paul Kiel] The administration's pro-waterboarding PR offensive continues! . . . [read on]

More: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/we_dont_discuss_interrogation.php

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/green-light-by-digby-now-it-makes-sense.html

http://www.first-draft.com/2008/02/today-on-hold-3.html

Why now? Maybe this

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/white_house_insists_on_confirm.php
[Paul Kiel] It's starting to seem all of a piece.

Yesterday, administration officials publicly acknowledged that CIA agents, with Justice Department authorization, had waterboarded three detainees. And the administration is eager to prevent that authorization from being threatened. According to Senate Dems, the White House has refused to strike a deal on pending nominees until the Senate deals with the Justice Department official who's authorized the use of enhanced interrogation techniques including waterboarding.

For more than three years, Steven Bradbury has been the acting head of the Office of Legal Counsel, the crucial Justice Department office that has the power to issue "advance pardons," as former OLC head Jack Goldsmith put it. But Senate Democrats, because of Bradbury's role in approving the warrantless wiretapping program and enhanced interrogation techniques that include waterboarding, have opposed White House efforts to have him confirmed and remove his acting status. . . .

Dems have returned Bradbury's nomination four times, and over and over again, the White House has renominated him . . [read on]

The Bush gang suddenly announces that they won’t seek a long-term security agreement (i.e., “treaty”) with Iraq after all. I suspect even their allies in Congress told them such an extraconstitutional move wouldn’t fly

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/06/wh-iraq-security-guarantee/
In November, President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki signed a non-binding “Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship” that committed the U.S. in concept to help “deter foreign aggression against Iraq” as well as “defending its democratic system against internal and external threats.” The White House said at the time that the arrangement would not need “input” from Congress because it was not intended to “lead to the status of a formal treaty.”

Critics of a permanent presence in Iraq blasted Bush’s effort to cut Congress out of the process, saying the President had “absolutely zero credibility” to “unilaterally negotiate an agreement with Iraq on security.” Bills have been introduced in both the House and Senate that would bar the White House from making any such deals without Congressional approval. . .

According to a “senior administration official” who spoke to CQ, the abandonment of the “security guarantee” means that “the final agreement would not include permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq.” Congressional critics are “wary” of the White House’s commitment, however, “noting that the proof would come with the text of the agreement itself.”

The distrust is understandable, considering that last week President Bush attached a signing statement to a defense authorization bill, saying that he would disregard a provision that “bars funding for permanent bases in Iraq.”

A Gitmo inside Gitmo. Christ

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-7288144,00.html
Somewhere amid the cactus-studded hills on this sprawling Navy base, separate from the cells where hundreds of men suspected of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban have been locked up for years, is a place even more closely guarded - a jailhouse so protected that its very location is top secret. . . .

Officer of the court, eh?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23038139/
[AP] The lead prosecutor in the terrorism case against Zacarias Moussaoui likely knew the CIA destroyed tapes of its interrogations of al-Qaida suspects more than a year before the government admitted it to the court . . .

Republicans block Senate stimulus package

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/06/washington/07cnd-fiscal.html

The Democrats seem to be letting the FISA issue slip away from them

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/6/151042/9243

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/6/181811/0391

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/6/121113/6419

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/6/11947/48974

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/still-not-making-trouble-by-digby.html
[Digby] Clammyc at Dkos puts this whole sad congressional session into context and it isn't a pretty sight. . . [read on!]

The National Republican Campaign Committee, facing a world of hurt

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/was_nrcc_staffer_cooking_the_b.php
Ever since Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), the chairman of the National Republican Campaign Committee, disclosed that "we learned earlier this week of irregularities in our financial audit process," people have been scrambling to find out what's up. . . .

More: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8349.html

After Super Tuesday, what next?

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14488.html

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/2/6/21258/82809

Close-reading the delegate counts

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/177383.php

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/2/7/03314/63374

The exact numbers from Super Tuesday are yet to be sorted out, but one thing seems clear – it was the night when Hillary was supposed to cement her front-runner status, so anything close to a tie was good for Obama

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8358.html
In a surprise twist after a chaotic Super Tuesday, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) passed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in network tallies of the number of delegates the candidates racked up last night. . . .

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8363.html
Five reasons Hillary should be worried . . .

A different take . . .

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/2/7/22227/46291
[Jeralyn Merritt] The New York Times analyzes Super Tuesday and concludes the "movement" and fervor that has become the hallmark of the Barack Obama presidential campaign fell short. Not that it petered out, just that as in New Hampshire, it failed to meet expectations.

One telling sign: Last minute voters tended to go for Hillary. . . .

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/2/6/94631/73045
[Big Tent Democrat] Unlike the entire world apparently, I see last night's results as the beginning of the end for the Obama Presidential campaign. . . .

The silly season

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/obama_supporter_he_will_be_fir.php
Obama supporter and Virginia first lady Anne Holton, the wife of Governor Timothy Kaine, is putting together a group called "Women for Obama." Why form such a group on behalf of a candidate who's running against the first female with a real shot at becoming president?

Well, as another member of the group, Megan Beyer, wife of former lieutenant governor Donald S. Beyer, put it to The Washington Post...

Beyer said Obama's "warmth" and his early opposition to the war in Iraq are big selling points with female voters. "In many ways, he really will be the first woman president," she said.

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/hillary_pollster_mark_penn_oba.php
[Greg Sargent] In the Clinton campaign conference call I mentioned below, Hillary pollster Mark Penn repeatedly said Obama was becoming an "establishment candidate" -- a rather strained effort to use Obama's high-profile endorsements to weaken his insurgent appeal. . .

Is he? http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/2/6/123556/6165

A tale of two campaigns (part one)

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/06/clinton-considers-lending-her-campaign-money/index.html
Our colleague Patrick Healy tells us that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, facing big primaries against her rival Senator Barack Obama in places like Ohio and Texas, is weighing whether to lend her campaign money.

And in a quick update, her campaign has just confirmed that she’d already lent her coffers $5 million of her own money in late January . . .

Her advisers says she’s considering another loan because money is tight now — the mega-primaries yesterday were quite the financial drain. And although she won many states yesterday, including some very big states like New York and California, the victories weren’t resoundingly decisive enough — especially when you look at the extremely tight delegate matchup right now — to inspire a lot of new giving, Pat says.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/6/203114/9642
[NBC] Some of Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign staff have voluntarily chosen to work without pay this month . . .

More: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/hillary_loaned_her_campaign_5.php

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/clinton_weighs_a_selfloan_to_f.php

A tale of two campaigns (part two)

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/obama_campaign_has_raised_over.php
Obama Campaign Has Raised Over $4 Million -- Since Polls Closed Yesterday!

Now over $6 million, and climbing: http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/hqblog

Clinton update: http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/2/7/11251/33154
[Jerome Armstrong] Clinton raised $3 Million in a single day . . .

It’s time to start gearing up aggressively if McCain is going to be the Republican nominee

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/go-howard-by-dday-from-dnc-email-how.html
[DNC] After championing campaign finance reform and ethics legislation to score political points, he now has a staggering amount of lobbyists involved in every aspect of his campaign. In fact, two of the top three sources for John McCain's campaign cash are D.C. lobbying firms, and he looked the other way as Jack Abramoff bought and paid for the Republican Party and the Culture of Corruption.

On immigration reform, he's run as far to the right as he can, aligning himself with the most extreme elements of the Republican Party.

On the war, McCain scoffed at Bush's call to leave troops in Iraq for 50 years, saying "Make it a hundred!"

On a woman's right to choose, McCain has vowed to appoint judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade.

On the economy, one of the issues that the American people care most about, McCain has said: "I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated." . . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14492.html
[Steve Benen] John McCain is not . . . the first presumptive Republican nominee in the modern era to ascend despite opposition from the party’s far-right base. Indeed, after a month of contests, McCain has done quite well without the support of conservatives and traditional GOP voters, much to the party’s consternation. . .

Today, McCain had a message for them: “Calm down.” . . .

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/mccain_gearing_up_to_start_tak.php
[Greg Sargent] One long term consequence of the protracted Dem contest is that it's now clear that Hillary and Obama will simultaneously be battling each other while likely GOP nominee John McCain starts sharpening his attacks on Dems in preparation for a grueling general election. . .

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14493.html

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/02/worried_about_mccain.php

Why we don’t run a lot of election polls here

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/177330.php
[California] Actual Results: Clinton 52%, Obama 42%
SurveyUSA: Clinton 52%, Obama 42%
Zogby Intl: Clinton 36%, Obama 49% . . .

Now, it's not all crow for Zogby. In Missouri, SurveyUSA had Clinton over Obama by 11 points while Zogby had Obama up by 3. The final result was Obama by 1 point.

More: http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/06/yes-hispanic-voters-vote/

For those who have been tracking this story, the Mississippi Supreme Court overrides the plain language of election law to allow the GOP to run their candidate to replace Trent Lott in the fall

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/2/6/221952/3996

Bonus item: No, we’re not going to rename this “Liberal Blog Digest”

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/the_trouble_with_progressive.php

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3706

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2008_02_03_archive.html#1969393665651395483

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:29 AM

 
SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE

Primary results!

Bad news for Clinton

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/6/0840/88540
[Kos] Obama has, at this point, won 11 states, of 22 in play. Worst-case scenario, he's already won half. If he picks up Alaska, which I suspect he will, he wins the battle of the states.

California is looking like it might head SUSA's way, so that'll be good news for Hillary. But the rest of the night is bleak. She didn't exceed expectations anywhere. She lost states she led big in just a few weeks ago. She's hurting for money. The calendar up ahead is tailor made for Obama. The momentum is there.

And hey, look at that -- Obama just took the lead in Missouri. . . .

More: http://www.americablog.com/2008/02/baracks-big-night.html

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/the_wrap_up.php

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/02/not_a_bad_night.php

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3679

Bad news for Obama

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/177248.php
[SM] You guys have lost your friggin minds . . . The guy hasn't managed to break out of his key demographics AT ALL. . . .

More: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/177218.php

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/2/6/0212/39792

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/trouble_1.php

Bad news for McCain

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/177189.php
[Josh Marshall] Chris Matthews is actually making a pretty solid point. And one that's going to be difficult one for McCain to deal with. That is, the states McCain is winning are ones Republican seldom win in general elections. . . .

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_02/013061.php

Bad news for Romney

http://www.slate.com/id/2183836
[Daniel Politi] Romney did well with those who see immigration as the top issue, as well as with those that describe themselves as conservatives. But he was hurt by the lack of support from white evangelicals, who mostly backed Huckabee. "The two of them are splitting the conservative vote, and as long as they continue to do so, John McCain can shoot right up the middle," a Republican strategist tells the LAT. Overall, it was a bad night for Romney, whose dream of making this a two-man contest were shattered by Huckabee last night. . .

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/177233.php
Just had a report from MSNBC out of the Romney camp. They've got a senior aide telling them that "tomorrow will be a day of frank discussions" about the campaign at Romney HQ. . . .

Bad news for Huckabee . . . uh, I don’t have any. He’s running so far ahead of expectations he must be giddy. He has no chance of winning, but perhaps he is locking up a VP slot

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/05/AR2008020504126.html

VP? http://www.juancole.com/2008/02/mccain-huckabee-ticket-would-huckabee.html
[Juan Cole] Some think McCain will tap Huckabee for his vice president.

Although on the surface, this move might seem logical, since McCain can't get the evangelical vote out by himself, I think it is very likely that Huckabee could sink McCain's candidacy. . . [read on]

An overall take on things

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/177259.php
[Josh Marshall] [L]et me try to pull together some rough thoughts on what happened here tonight. It's probably best to start with the indisputable facts. I haven't had a chance to look at the popular vote. But every estimate I've seen says this was close to an exact tie in delegates. And adding those delegates won today, to all those won in the earlier contests and all the pledged super delegates, Hillary, I believe I heard was above by about 50.

If you look at this from the vantage point of two weeks ago, it's a huge win for Obama, since he was trailing in states across the country by a very big margin. From the vantage point of the last couple days, however, it's much less clear. . .

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_02/013062.php
[Kevin Drum] The Democratic race tonight was really, really close. Among people who actually turned out to vote, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by about 49%-48%, according to CNN. . . .

More: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/02/05/spin/index.html

I saw little analysis of a very important factor: the huge number of voters in states like California who locked in their votes long ago (while Hillary was still riding high). This clearly counterbalanced exit polls that showed Obama doing well NOW. What are the electoral implications of early voting? How does this limit people’s options to adjust to changing trends (e.g., the likely nominee of the other party)? I think this is a dangerous thing, and no one seems to be talking about it

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/177188.php
[Josh Marshall] The second round exit polls looked very strong for Barack Obama. But the actual results coming in are making this a much closer night. . . .

A tale of two parties (part one)

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/voters-like-these-candidates-by-dday.html
[CNN] There's no doubt Democrats are torn between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. But the early exit polls show they are not bitterly divided: 72 percent of Democrats said they would be satisfied if Clinton won the party's nomination, while 71 percent say the same about Obama. . . .

A tale of two parties (part two)

http://www.slate.com/id/2183810
[John Dickerson] If Karl Rove thought claims about the conservative crackup were premature, the voters didn't listen. The early election results Tuesday suggested the GOP is still deeply split. . .

Heh http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/dizzy-foxes-by-digby-if-you-want-to.html
[Digby] If you want to have some fun, watch FoxNews tonight. They are so confused they can barely talk. . . [read on]

More: http://atrios.blogspot.com/2008_02_03_archive.html#8703948084324170810

In other news . . .

Wait a second: isn’t this a devastating admission of FAILURE?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/washington/05cnd-threat.html
Michael McConnell, the director of national intelligence, said on Tuesday that Al Qaeda is improving its ability to attack within the United States by recruiting and training new operatives . . .

Suddenly, the Bush gang is falling all over itself to take responsibility for waterboarding (whatever happened to “Disclosing our methods will only assist the terrorists, who will train their members to resist them”?) But they still insist that it’s not torture and it’s not illegal

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/05/terror.threat/index.html
Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell, who also testified at the hearing, said waterboarding remains a technique in the CIA's arsenal, according to The Associated Press. He said it would require the president's consent and legal approval from the attorney general, the AP reported. . . .

Hayden: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/cia_director_confirms_details.php

Mukasey: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/005170.php

McConnell: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/mcconnell_and_waterboarding.php

Negroponte: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/01/negroponte_confirms_use_of_wat.php

Investigate! http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/durbin_calls_for_investigation.php

Bush doesn’t even wait for a Senate vote: says he will veto any FISA bill without telecom immunity. Everyone should have seen this coming – now the question is, do the Dems have the guts to send him the bill anyway, and dare him to veto a bill granting him the essential investigative powers he says the nation needs?

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/bush_i_will_veto_any_surveilla.php

More: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/reid_why_you_gotta_be_like_tha.php

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/5/155323/6199

That’s not all: he also lists other certain-veto conditions, and preemptively cites other provisions he promises to simply ignore

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/05/white-house-writes-pre-emptive-signing-statement-on-exclusivity/

Bush tries to eviscerate the Open Government Act

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/05/AR2008020502840.html

This is well-put: what Bush wants to do is lock in a permanent deficit that constrains any future progressive policies

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/progressreport/2008/02/pr20080205/
Making The Bush Economy Permanent
President Bush took office in 2001 with an advantage few presidents have enjoyed: a $236 billion budget surplus. But Bush quickly "blew through" President Clinton's surplus. Now the next administration will have to pay the price for Bush's fiscal irresponsibility. With his new budget, Bush is trying to create the appearance of compensating for his fiscal exuberance, terminating or reducing 151 government programs -- while still producing near record deficits. . .

In 2001, Bush said his tax cuts would cost the government $1.3 trillion, but his 2009 budget -- which calls for making his signature tax cuts permanent -- indicates they would "cost the government more than $2 trillion in their second decade." Extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts would give the top one percent of households more than $1.1 trillion in benefits over the next decade. . . Without offsets, permanent tax cuts would increase deficits and add to national debt, "essentially doubl[ing] the size of the debt in 2050." Not surprisingly, Bush has not proposed adequate measures to pay for the cuts. . . .

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/02/05/BL2008020501603.html

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14473.html

Extend Bush’s tax cuts? Fat chance

http://www.slate.com/id/2183761

Guess who are the top recipients of campaign donations from military families?

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/05/military-donations/

Rush will probably claim some credit for slowing the McCain steamroller – but THIS was the non-endorsement that really hurt

http://www.citizenlink.org/CLtopstories/A000006444.cfm
[James Dobson] "I am convinced Sen. McCain is not a conservative, and in fact, has gone out of his way to stick his thumb in the eyes of those who are. He has sounded at times more like a member of the other party. . . . I cannot, and will not, vote for Sen. John McCain, as a matter of conscience. . . I simply will not cast a ballot for president for the first time in my life.”

Watch: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/dobson_i_will_never_support_mc.php

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14477.html

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/177093.php

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/its-not-personal-mac.html

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/movement-v.html

Why? Why? Why? Clinton says she wants to debate on the tilted playing field of Fox News.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/5/142715/9856

She gets blasted for it: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/netroots_open_fire_on_hillary.php

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/05/clinton-agrees-to-fox-debate/
[Jane Hamsher] Fox is not a news outlet, it's an openly partisan opinion factory and the Democrats should not be legitimizing them (and allowing them to recruit Democratic viewers to propagandize to) by doing this.

Bonus item: Alice in Wonderland

http://www.first-draft.com/2008/02/today-on-hold-2.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:52 AM

 
RAW DEALS

You had to know that the Republican agreement to a “fair, bipartisan” approach to voting on the FISA bill and all its amendments wasn’t worth spit

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/4/181245/7918
[McJoan] McConnell and Reid are on the Senate floor trading verbal blows over the most recent obstructionist move by the Republicans. They have tied up what was supposed to have been quick consideration of the economic stimulus package by invoking 30 more hours of debate . . .

Reid is as steamed as I've ever seen him . . . He's arguing that McConnell is using this stall tactic to try to run out the clock on the 15 day extension of FISA, thereby trying to get us back to the position we were in last August, forcing through a bad bill under strict time constraints.

More: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/fisa_update_retroactive_immuni.php

A closer look at Bush’s massive Pentagon budget

http://www.slate.com/id/2183592/
[Fred Kaplan] It's time for our annual game: How much is really in the U.S. military budget?

As usual, it's about $200 billion more than most news stories are reporting. For the proposed fiscal year 2009 budget, which President Bush released today, the real size is not, as many news stories have reported, $515.4 billion—itself a staggering sum—but, rather, $713.1 billion. . . . [read on]

More: http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/05/and-for-what/

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_02/013049.php

And this little tidbit . . .

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/exporting-the-anbar
[Spencer Ackerman] Walter Pincus has a great catch in today’s Washington Post. While no one was paying attention, the defense authorization bill approved up to $75 million for a Pakistani tribal force. The exportation of the Anbar Awakening is here, occurring in the dead of night, with no debate and, in all likelihood, fearsome consequences. . . [read on!]

Fiscal responsibility

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/04/AR2008020400493.html
[White House budget director] Nussle acknowledged that the deficit will grow to $410 billion in the current fiscal year. But he cast that largely as a result of the stimulus plan, which is expected to cost about $146 billion, and he noted that the deficit is low in historical terms, as a proportion of the economy. . . .

But while the deficit measured against the size of the economy will be far from a record, it will come after six straight years of red ink. The federal debt will have climbed to $9.7 trillion by the time Bush leaves office, a rise of $4 trillion during his administration, according to the budget.

Interest on the debt next year will total $260 billion, about what will be spent by the departments of Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, and Justice combined. . . .

Bush’s self-created line item veto

http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/04/rule-of-law-yeah-right/

Running the Bush administration like a two-bit patronage shop

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/connected_gop_contractors_join.php

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14461.html

Bush ties his all-time low job approval rating (27% in the CBS poll)

http://www.first-draft.com/2008/02/pony-time.html

On Condi Rice: history will not be kind

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/04/rice-911-commission/

A health policy primer

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/04/opinion/04krugman.html

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14467.html

John McCain: born in Panama?

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2008_02_03_archive.html#1809479447778282994

“You’re a flip-flopper! No, YOU’RE a flip-flopper” (whee!)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/04/AR2008020402806.html

Draft Gingrich? I have an ultra-conservative uncle who is my bellwether for conservative trends. He forwards almost daily missives from the right-wing echo chamber – and the latest blip seems to be an appeal for the Newt boy as the last-ditch alternative to the insufficiently conservative McCain. No, I do not think this will happen, but it’s fun to watch

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/04/AR2008020402798.html
It may be the best sideshow in presidential politics: the nation's top radio talker trying to take down the Republican front-runner in today's Super Tuesday showdown.

Rush Limbaugh has been relentless in his criticism of John McCain, prompting suggestions that he may have to soften his stance if the Arizona senator wins the nomination and faces off against Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. But if that happens, Limbaugh said in an interview over the weekend, he would rather see the Democrats win the White House. . . .

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/176992.php
[Josh Marshall] Earlier today I got a blast email from conservative direct-mail kingpin Richard Viguerie with his latest pitch on what conservatives should be doing:

Today, I’m calling for conservatives to consider opening up the Republican presidential race by bringing in a new candidate--someone who can unite economic, social, and nation-security conservatives and lead us to victory in November. . .

How screwed are the Republicans?

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/02/04/gop/index.html
[Glenn Greenwald] The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll reveals that Americans trust Democrats more than Republicans to handle every issue of any significance, including -- by a now fairly wide margin -- "the U.S. campaign against terrorism" . . .

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14466.html

I think Michael Bloomberg is giving us a pretty good idea of the sort of President he would be

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/02/04/bloomberg_may_get_on_state_ballots.html
Despite consistent denials that he will run for president . . .

Bonus item: One of my favorite bloggers, Steve Benen (Carpetbagger Report), talks about why he blogs

http://www.poliscifiradio.com/video/dig_pamph640.mov

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:56 AM