REAGAN, THE SUN KING. Headline of this article in The Onion: "Reagan Pyramid Nears Completion."

That just about says it all.

--Nick Confessore

IRR READY OR NOT. There's been some back-and-forth as to whether or not this was actually going to happen, but the Pentagon seems to have bowed to the inexorable logic of the situation and decided to mobilize the Individual Ready Reserve:

For the first time since Operation Desert Storm, the Army plans to announce this week an involuntary mobilization of thousands of troops from the Individual Ready Reserve, the latest signal that the service is struggling to bolster ranks stretched thin by the global war on terrorism.

The move, which Army officials say is likely to involve notifying roughly 6,500 soldiers about a possible deployment, is meant to fill holes in active and reserve units preparing to go to Iraq and Afghanistan this fall and early next year.

In most cases, the Pentagon created the holes when it took soldiers with critical skills in short supply -- such as civil affairs, intelligence, vehicle maintenance and truck driving -- out of their units and shifted them to military units needed for more urgent deployments since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Now the bill for this system of "robbing Peter to pay Paul," as one defense official put it, has come due.

This is really all of a piece with other Bushian practices like big-time deficit spending, the drawing down of munitions stocks, the fraying of international organizations, and so forth -- short-term actions with negative long-term consequences. Time after time we're degrading the sources of American economic, military, and diplomatic strength in a desperate effort to keep things together for the duration of the Bush administration's term in office. The president certainly didn't create the military overstretch that 9-11 only exacerbated, but instead of responding to it, he made things worse by launching an elective war.

Whoever wins the election, this is an issue that's going to need to be addressed soon afterwards. Michael O'Hanlon had some suggestions in a recent Prospect Online column.

--Matthew Yglesias

NOW HE TELLS US. Buried at the end of this Washington Post article on the speakers each party has lined up for their respective conventions is a fascinating and completely unrelated squib:

"I would not have voted for [President Bush's] tax cut, based on what I know...There is no doubt that the people at the top who need a tax break the least will get the most benefit...Too often presidents do things that don't end up helping the people they should be helping, and their staffs won't tell them their actions stink on ice."

Who is this person? Former senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), who made those remarks in a recent interview with Business North Carolina magazine.

The mind reels. Why do they only develop a conscience after leaving office?

--Nick Confessore

WHO LOST IRAQ? Paul Krugman asks that provocative question in his column today. The kicker:

Let's say the obvious. By making Iraq a playground for right-wing economic theorists, an employment agency for friends and family, and a source of lucrative contracts for corporate donors, the administration did terrorist recruiters a very big favor.

Well said.

--Nick Confessore

OCTOBER SURPRISE NUMBER ONE. The New York Times is reporting that the new Iraqi government will put Saddam Hussein on trial "in the next few months."

I.e., before Election Day. Obviously, the president and his aides have been looking at the same poll numbers Kevin Drum has.

What makes this such a good manuever is that it is perfectly plausible on its own terms -- why not put Saddam on trial as soon as the new government gets on its feet? And having the former dictator in a courtroom, subject to justice, militates against earlier images of President Bush as a cowboy bent on getting his man dead or alive. Expect the trial to make frequent appearances in Bush's stump speech this fall and likely at the Republican convention, as the incumbent proclaims that he has made the world safer from terrorism by bringing down Saddam and forcing him to face justice at the hands of the formerly ruled.

--Nick Confessore

DRAGON SLAYER NEEDED. I'm rather sympathetic to conservatives who are tired of getting compared to fascists, but it would help their case more if they didn't write stuff like this from The Weekly Standard:

You can file the of Mussolini's rise under "H" for Hegel, the idea that extreme movements always beget extreme counter forces. It was the far left, by relentlessly chipping away at the foundations of Italian life, that gave birth and power to the far right--as it did a decade on when Hitler rode nearly the same path under similar circumstances.

This is what seems most pertinent today, as "activist" groups like Moveon.org and demagogues like Michael Moore and angry men like Al Gore and George Soros rail so irrationally against both the president (comparing him to Hitler and Mussolini in a variety of contexts) and the structures of daily American life, including the legally adjudicated Supreme Court decision that ultimately decided the 43rd presidency in advance of a tedious recount that would've yielded the same outcome.

As it turns out, Judge Calabresi's intemperate comparison was indeed useful, though with an irony he didn't intend. Either this November or in four years, George W. Bush is going to be turned out of office; even the judge agrees with that. Someday, though, a populace provoked by the left's constant fire-breathing may look for a dragon slayer who won't go quite so easily.

So . . . we may not like George W. Bush but if we don't lay off with the complaining soon enough the right's going to come up with a leader who's not afraid to pour some castor oil down our throats to shut us up? What kind of an argument is this supposed to be? And this isn't the first time I've found conservatives "warning" liberals to stop making so much trouble or else something nasty might happen to our nice little democracy. Back in the real world, the populace seems increasingly disenchanted with the president so I'm not too worried, but still. . . .

--Matthew Yglesias

DISGRUNTLEMENT WATCH: FOUNDER OF MODERN CONSERVATISM EDITION. The New York Times reports on National Review founder William F. Buckley's decision to relinquish control of his magazine, but the more interesting stuff is at the bottom:

As for conservatism today, Mr. Buckley said there was a growing debate on the right about how the war in Iraq squared with the traditional conservative conviction that American foreign policy should seek only to protect its vital interests.

"With the benefit of minute hindsight, Saddam Hussein wasn't the kind of extra-territorial menace that was assumed by the administration one year ago," Mr. Buckley said. "If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war."

Asked whether the growth of the federal government over the last four years diminished his enthusiasm for Mr. Bush, he reluctantly acknowledged that it did. "It bothers me enormously," he said. "Should I growl?"

Well now, that's certainly not the tune I've been hearing from their publication lately. Today's web edition, however, is strangely free of hawkish content. Meanwhile, Bruce Bartlett writes that taxes are going up no matter which party wins the election, which would certainly seem to kick the remaining plank out of the Bush campaign platform.

--Matthew Yglesias

THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER. Here's a great post on Campaign Desk illustrating just how completely abritrary -- and inevitably self-contradictory -- the press's characterizations of a political candidate can be. Liz Cox Barrett points out that back when John Kerry was being looked at as a potential running mate for Al Gore, the pundits fell over themselves to proclaim how charismatic and exciting a politician he was. Some of the same pundits now routinely parrot the cliches that Kerry is boring and wooden.

Something similar happened to Gore himself, you'll recall. Until the late 1990s, he was widely regarded as a Boy Scout -- earnest, honest, level-headed, etc. Once it became obvious that he would be the Democratic standard-bearer in 2000, however, the Republican oppo shops and their shills in the opinion media worked overtime to reimagine Gore as a scheming, pathological, duplicitous fake. Mainstream reporters bought it hook, line, and sinker.

--Nick Confessore

JUST POSTED ON TAP ONLINE. After two years of Bill Frist's merciless Senate majority, is it the right time for Tom Daschle to call for protecting "the rights of the minority"? Mary Lynn F. Jones considers the current political reality and concludes that, if Democrats take back the Congress, they may be done with playing nice.

Meanwhile, says Michael Tomasky, Ralph Nader has gone a pander too far. When his campaign was that of a progressive tilting at windmills, he could almost be excused -- but what kind of idealist talks immigration with Pat Buchanan?

BUSH'S WORST FOREIGN POLICY DISASTER. Hint: It ain't Iraq. It was stupidly and short-sightedly letting Kim Jong-Il get access to North Korea's previously padlocked-and-unavailable bomb-grade plutonium.

Fred Kaplan elaborates on the forthcoming deal that the Bush administration is finally negotiating. The White House will spin this as a victory. In reality, what is transpiring right now is the administration's attempt to make the best out of a very bad situation that could have been avoided.

--Nick Confessore

THE RETURN OF THE NIGER FORGERY. The Financial Times has a report on some new developments in the case of the forged documents "proving" that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium yellowcake from Niger:

The journalist - Elisabetta Burba - reported in a Panorama article that she suspected the documents were forgeries and handed them to officials at the US embassy in Rome.

The businessman, referred to by a pseudonym in the Panorama article, had previously tried to sell the documents to several intelligence services, according to a western intelligence officer.

It was later established that he had a record of extortion and deception and had been convicted by a Rome court in 1985 and later arrested at least twice. The suspected forger's real name is known to the FT, but cannot be used because of legal constraints. He did not return telephone calls yesterday, and is understood to be planning to reveal selected aspects of his story to a US television channel.

So if this is right, the administration's intelligence people got snowed by a longtime crook. Josh Marshall here and Laura Rozen here who, I believe, have been working with the "US television channel" in question, however, say that this is wrong. The FT, on their account, is being used as part of a disinformation campaign on the part of the real culprits in an effort to discredit an important source and muddy the waters before the release of a story that will, allegedly, "shuffle the tectonic plates" under Washington.

Somewhat lost in this blogospheric drama is the FT's actual lede, however, which asserts that there is independent, non-forged evidence to support the Niger contention and that this is why British intelligence continues to stand by the story. If that's right, then the mystery remains why US intelligence is so unconvinced by their colleagues in the UK. Intelligence cooperation between different countries is always a tricky business, but no two states have a longer history of collaboration on this front than the US and UK, so it's odd to see such persistent disagreement on a fairly basic factual question.

--Matthew Yglesias

MO' ABOUT MO. AND THE VEEPSTAKES. The A.P. asked around Missouri and found yet more evidence that there is not widespread support for St. Louis Congressman Dick Gephardt in that swing state -- and that Gephardt would not automatically carry the state in November if he joined John Kerry on the Democratic ticket. In particular, Gephardt doesn't seem to have much in the way of grassroots connections with party leaders, let alone swing voters, in areas outside his district:

"I mostly know Gephardt from seeing him on 'Meet the Press,'" Charles Christy, longtime Boone County Democratic Committee chairman, said Friday as he greeted volunteers at party headquarters in a former Columbia art gallery. "Me, I like that young fellow from North Carolina. That John Edwards is a fresh face and exciting."

While high-profile Missouri Democrats are gleeful at the prospect of having a home-state friend on the national ticket - "it will ignite the excitement!" declared state party chairwoman May Scheve Reardon - many rank-and-file Democrats outside St. Louis expressed indifference about Gephardt, and in candid moments, a touch of resentment.

Gephardt visited Missouri Democrat Days, an annual party festival in Hannibal, during his losing 1988 bid for the party's presidential nomination. He won Missouri's primary that year.

He didn't stop in again until this year, once more wedging a winter Hannibal visit into a national campaign schedule. Daryl Boulware took due notice of the 16-year absence.

So who do Missouri Democrats like, if not their neighbor?

On Friday, The Associated Press contacted 11 randomly selected county Democratic chairmen and chairwomen across Missouri to inquire what they would tell Kerry if he asked which prospective running mate would carry Missouri, which President Bush won in 2000.

Seven of the 11 promptly named Edwards, frequent second-place finisher to Kerry in early contests.

"Gephardt just doesn't have the get-up-and-go that Edwards has," said Irma Brannum of Poplar Bluff, Butler County party chairwoman. "Edwards is the exciting one," said St. Charles County chairman Joe Koester.

Now, this is far from a scientific survey. But there does seem to be a real emerging consensus on the Gephardt as V.P. question. And when it comes time to vote, the opinions about Gephardt that will matter most will be like those expressed in this article -- not the thoughts and views of those who have known him best and longest, but the impressions of those who've know him only at a distance, and have no investment in him or his career.

--Garance Franke-Ruta

WEEKEND UPDATE. Stuck on line for F-911 all weekend? Here's what you missed:

The Columnists

• Nicholas Kristof. Sudan: There's not nothing we can do.
• David Brooks. Liberals listen to idiots, whereas conservatives are led by Rush Limbaugh distinguished public intellectuals.
• Thomas Friedman. In my fantasy world, everything's working out fine -- time for a vacation!
• Maureen Dowd. No, Dick Cheney, fuck you.
• David Broder. Only stifling democracy in Taiwan and Hong Kong can bring democracy to China -- or at least so says this one guy.
• Jim Hoagland. All our problems could be solved if the Saudis would just, like, admit that they have a problem.

The Op-Ed You Actually Need To Read

• Mary Bridges on the trial of Slobodan Milosevic.

--Matthew Yglesias

BURNING BUSH. Like a lot of people in Washington, D.C., I went to see Farenheit 9/11 this weekend. My friends and I bought our tickets last Monday, and by the time Saturday rolled around, every show was sold out and lines were forming around the block. You'd think The Return of the King had just been released. It was obivous, of course, that my fellow movie-goers were a self-selected crowd. They booed and hissed when Dick Cheney or John Ashcroft was on the screen. They clapped when a wounded soldier at Walter Reed Army Medical Center told Moore that, though he had been a Republican, he planned to become "very active" in the Democratic Party when he got out of the service. These were folks who had come in primed to believe the worst about the Bush administration.

For my part, though I'd never seen any of Moore's previous films, his public appearances and doings had always given me a rather low opinion of the guy. His everyman schtick rang hollow to me, his rants over-the-top and ill-informed. So I went in with my skeptic's hat on and my bullshit detector turned to high.

In some ways, I got what I expected. There are a lot of cheap shots, such as a gross moment where Moore has dug up some b-roll footage showing Paul Wolfowitz sucking on his comb before pushing it through his hair. Moore is also apparently of the view that showing a connection is enough to show causation. Thus we are treated to extensive descriptions of the links between the Bush family and the Saudis and between the Saudis and the terrorists they fund, with Moore suggesting that these links are one of the reasons Bush was so unresponsive to Osama bin Laden before 9/11. There are other problems with Moore's take, too. My colleague Noy Thrupkaew, in her review of Moore's movie, stated the intellectual contradictions therein quite succinctly:

The war on Afghanistan was a deliberate distraction, but we didn’t send enough troops there; homeland-security policy tramples on our civil liberties but is then too lax; Bush is both a cowboy dummy and a master puppeteer of diversionary wars and a media-fueled culture of fear. Where there isn’t a contradiction, there’s a gaping hole: What, pray tell, are we to do about our very real problems? What should we do instead, in this infernal struggle against fundamentalism, in the mess of Iraq?

All of this is true. (David Edelstein's review in Slate likewise captured some of what I felt watching what Moore had wrought.) And yet -- it was hard not to be affected by the film. Farenheit 9/11 is, for all its flaws, a very powerful piece of work. There are three or four moments that are alone worth the price of admission. (Bush intoning about the need to fight terrorism, then instructing reporters to "watch this drive," is priceless.) I found myself somewhat convinced that, should it receive wide enough distribution outside places where anti-Bush sentiment already runs high, the film could change people's views. It's no wonder Bush partisans are engaged in a pathetic and so far unsuccessful effort to get the movie dropped from theaters across the country.

Anyway, I'm not a film critic, so I'll stop there. But I would highly recommend a trip to the theater for anyone who reads this blog.

--Nick Confessore

OH -- YOU MEANT RESTORING THAT KIND OF INTEGRITY. The inimitable, irreplacable duo of Dewar and Milbank have more on Cheney's outburst:

Vice President Cheney today acknowledged that he had a bitter exchange on the Senate floor with a senior Democratic senator, in which Cheney uttered a big-time obscenity, but said he had no regrets and that he "felt better after I had done it."

Cheney made the comments in an interview with Fox News, as his language in the exchange with Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.) attracted considerable attention in talk shows and commentary on television, radio and the Internet.

Later in the interview, Cheney added, laughing, that "a lot of my colleagues felt that what I had said badly needed to be said, that it was long overdue."

Nice model he's setting for the kids there. But then again, I'm sure this kind of bravado will appeal to the Fox News set, who see this kind of thing as an example of an appealing kind of toughness in Republicans -- and as a sign of moral lassitude in everybody else.

--Garance Franke-Ruta

ZELL-ING OUT. Not that it's a surprise or anything, considering the way he's been attacking the Democratic Party for months now, but Georgia Sen. Zell Miller has still reached a new low for someone calling himself a Democrat in agreeing to speak at the Republican National Convention in New York. Quoth the AP:

Georgia Sen. Zell Miller, the highest profile Democrat to endorse President Bush for re-election, will speak at the Republican National Convention later this summer, a congressional aide said Friday.

According to the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Miller will give his address on Wednesday night of the convention in New York. The Bush-Cheney campaign was expected to make an official announcement later in the day. The convention will be held Aug. 30-Sept. 2.

The speech by Miller, a former two-term governor, comes 12 years after he delivered the keynote address for Bill Clinton at the 1992 Democratic National Convention, also held in New York.

Miller, who is retiring in January, has voted with Republicans more often than his own party and has been a key sponsor of many of Bush's top legislative priorities, including the Republican's tax cuts and education plan.

In May, Miller spoke at the Georgia Republican convention and criticized Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry as an "out-of-touch, ultraliberal from Taxachusetts" whose foreign and domestic policies would seriously weaken the country.

"I'm afraid that my old Democratic 'ties that bind' have become unraveled," Miller said.

While it's not entirely clear what the Democrats can do about Miller, given that he's already set to retire, Miller's continuing courtship of the GOP higher-ups and the president ought to start counting for something, and counting soon.

Just two years ago Miller told supporters of Max Cleland, "No outsider, no matter how well-intentioned, no matter how well-respected, can come into Georgia and holler 'liberal' and expect Georgians to jump," according to the Atlanta Journal Consitution.

His new speaking engagement proves he still believes that if you're going attack someone as a liberal, it helps to do it as an inside job.

--Garance Franke-Ruta

JUST POSTED ON TAP ONLINE. Breaking news from Arizona, where Ralph Nader's effort to get himself on November's ballot is proving more than unsavory. As the Arizona Democratic Party seeks to disqualify many of the signatures supporting Ralph's candidacy, Max Blumenthal burrows into the seedy world of professional petitioning to show us Nader's newest grassroots allies.

Also on The Daily Prospect:

• Fahrenhaughty 9/11: Michael Moore’s new film is powerful, sure -- but it’s also sanctimonious, callous, and cheap. By Noy Thrupkaew.
• Thucydiots: Two weeks ago, conservatives cast themselves as Reagan's children. But their Iraq adventure makes them look more Nixonian than Reaganesque. By Jim Sleeper.
• Good Bill Hunting: The Hunting of the President's director/screenwriter talks about Clinton's gift, Larry Case's fantasy car, and what his movie has in common with The Stepford Wives. An interview with Harry Thomason. By Tara McKelvey.
• Kerry's Catch-22: President Bush has set a fiscal trap. If elected, President Kerry would have to work hard to spring free of it. By Robert Kuttner.
• A Global Vision for Labor: Andy Stern sees a new mission for the biggest unions -- and it’ll require some major changes. By Harold Meyerson.

RYAN'S TOAST. Illinois GOP senate candidate Jack Ryan, perhaps the first politician in history to be brought down by a sex scandal involving wanting to have sex with his wife, is planning to withdraw from the Illinois senate race, the A.P. is reporting:

Illinois Republican candidate Jack Ryan intends to abandon his Senate bid after four days spent trying to weather a political storm stirred by sex club allegations, GOP officials said Friday.  

A formal announcement was expected within hours, said these officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Ryan conducted an overnight poll to gauge his support in the wake of the allegations made by his ex-wife in divorce records unsealed earlier this week. Aides said in advance his only options were to withdraw or to redouble his campaign efforts with a massive infusion of money from his personal wealth.

Illinois GOP leaders would select another candidate in the event of a withdrawal. Ryan's replacement would become an instant underdog in a campaign against Democratic State Sen. Barack Obama.

Some have worried that a Ryan withdrawal may allow the state GOP to field a stronger candidate against state Senator and rising Democratic Party star Barack Obama, such as former Illinois GOP Gov. Jim Edgar. That prospect seems extremely unlikely; Edgar had already refused to run for the senate seat last year, despite a personal appeal from President Bush, and many considered Ryan to be the strongest statewide candidate the troubled Republican Party could field. Smart money in the state says that the Republicans will have to run a damage-control race from here on out and simply resign themselves to a relatively weak candidate who is at least taint-free and perceived as generally decent, such as state Sen. Steve Rauschenberger, who lost to Ryan in the primary.

--Garance Franke-Ruta

THE REAL REAGAN? I recall that when Edmund Morris's long-awaited biography of Ronald Reagan, Dutch, finally came out some years ago, it was widely criticized (for Morris's use of, among other things, consciously made-up scenes attempting to get the reader inside Reagan's otherwise mysterious persona). But I got around to reading Morris's remembrance of Reagan in the current New Yorker, and it was very, very good. It's the only thing I've read about the late former president, in fact, that left me feeling I knew more than I did when I started. I won't say Morris's piece is balanced -- more important than that, it is nuanced and complex and contradictory. I felt like I was getting a fuller picture than in other articles and coverage.

Check it out here if you are not already totally saturated with Reaganania.

--Nick Confessore

WHO IS IGNORING WHAT? I don't recall conservatives having been too upset "that more wasn't done to stop the killing" in Rwanda back in 1994, but I was only thirteen, so perhaps I'm mistaken. Still, I can't help but think there's a whiff of disingenuousness about Rich Lowry's column lambasting global indifference to the unfolding tragedy in Sudan. The point, it seems, is simply to excoriate the president's critics:

Unfortunately, Sudan doesn't fit comfortably into the Bush-bashers' international-relations categories, or we might hear more about the issue. For the president's critics the word "diplomacy" means one thing: strong-arm Israel. And "multilateralism" tends to mean only appeasing France. So the administration's diplomatic achievement in Sudan might as well not exist, and its effort to muster other international actors -- from the U.N. to Europe -- behind a multilateral diplomatic and humanitarian-aid initiative in Darfur is ignored. And even though China is obstructing diplomatic pressure on Sudan because of its oil business there, there are, unsurprisingly, no cries of "blood for oil."

Fair points, perhaps, but if I were writing about the ineffectual response to a global crisis, I might spare some time to criticize not the president's political opponents, but the president himself. After all, unlike his opponents, the president is actually in a position to do something about all this. And he isn't. Lowry's fundamental unseriousness about this is typified by his laudatory reference to "the administration's history of involvement in Sudan," which he glosses thusly:

Negotiations between the North and South had been bumping along ineffectually for years, until Bush appointed former senator John Danforth -- now the U.S. representative to the U.N. -- as his special envoy to the country. High-level Bush officials were engaged in the peace talks on a daily basis, and finally a ceasefire was forged this May.

That's perfectly correct, but the ceasefire negotiations the administration oversaw have nothing to do with the Darfur crisis. Or, rather, it does have something to do with the Darfur crisis -- it's counterproductive. As this week's New Republic editorial points out, "The Bush administration fears that, if it alienates the Khartoum government over Darfur, it will undermine one of its signature African achievements -- the potential end to the 21-year civil war in southern Sudan."

Now as I pointed out the other day the stark reality is that there isn't a huge amount we can do about Sudan at this point, since such a large portion of our military is otherwise engaged in Iraq. Phil Carter has some worthwhile thoughts on that point, and on what it would take to build a military force-structure that's well adapted to the 21st century security environment. Thinking seriously about military reform, however, isn't nearly as fun as using mass murder abroad as an opportunity to level some political cheap shots.

--Matthew Yglesias

MOORE IN THE MIDDLE. I've been out in the heartland all week and wanted to add a note on how Michael Moore's movie looks from here. The thing to remember is that most of the presidential campaigns' television advertisements are being shown out here and in the Southwest, and the ads for Moore's movie can be especially devastating when viewed in that context. I was down in Springfield, Il., earlier in the week and saw a John Kerry health-care spot -- "Country," which is in rotation in 14 battleground states, including Illinois media market neighbor Missouri -- followed immediately by what appeared, at first, to be a Bush campaign advertisement. Except that it quickly became clear that it wasn't. It was the ad for "Farenheit 9/11," which makes the golfing president look callow and out-of-touch. The two spots together provided quite a striking one-two punch -- and the Moore ad made the fairly traditional Kerry spot suddenly that much more memorable.

--Garance Franke-Ruta

"CHANGING THE TONE." Another of President Bush's campaign promises goes up in smoke, courtesy of Vice President Cheney.

Remind me again of who's to blame for bringing bitter partisanship and polarization to Washington?

--Nick Confessore

GOOD FOR THE GOOSE. I can't fault Michael Moore for assembling a rapid-response team to defend Fahrenheit 9/11; he's just stockpiling the same sort of firepower that'll be used in attempts to discredit the film. (And quite an arsenal he has, according to The New York Times -- although I have to wonder at the choice of perennial albatross Chris Lehane.)

But if, as Moore says, "The most important thing we have is truth on our side," why aren't they willing to release transcripts of the film to potential critics? Atrios linked to today's Scarborough Country, which featured Lehane and Michael Isikoff; Isikoff has become the first journalist to feel the full wrath of the Moorish army, for his depiction of Moore's presentation of the post–September 11 Saudi flights. Isikoff's report is the sort of close-but-not-quite journalism that merits a correction, sure, but Lehane et al. seem to be more interested in their own outraged reaction than in making sure the problem doesn't happen again:

SCARBOROUGH: Will you provide Michael Isikoff and will you provide us a full transcript of this movie?

LEHANE: You can come to us whenever you want about any single fact that you want.

(CROSSTALK)

SCARBOROUGH: No, no. Answer the question.

...

LEHANE: You come to me with any issue that you have and I‘ll go over it with you.

(CROSSTALK)

SCARBOROUGH: Chris Lehane, will you provide us a full transcript, yes or no?

LEHANE: As I provided Michael Isikoff when he asked, I provided the transcript of the issue that he was looking at.

SCARBOROUGH: OK.

(CROSSTALK)

LEHANE: And Michael still hasn‘t answered my question.

As a PR strategy, this makes sense; the filmmakers hold all the cards and will continually have inaccurate stories to decry as malicious. (It works pretty well, too; for example, Atrios was referencing the conversation to criticize Isikoff, and didn't touch the transcript issue.) Don't get me wrong here -- it's refreshing to see a smart PR strategy on the anti-Bush side. But especially when one of your causes involves disclosure of documents, shouldn't you be willing to disclose the transcript of the film you want people to accurately quote?

--Jeffrey Dubner

JUST POSTED ON TAP ONLINE. What does the upcoming handover of sovereignty in Iraq mean for the U.S. economy? Donald Rumsfeld and Alan Greenspan may seem to operate in distinct worlds, but, as Robert Reich explains, their missions are inseparably linked.

Also on The Daily Prospect:

• Dodge the Draft: There are rumblings in Washington to bring back the draft -- but when it comes to the military, "bigger" and "better" don't go hand in hand. By Michael O'Hanlon.
• Gun Nut: Uh, Mr. President, your Freudian slip is showing. By Charles P. Pierce.
• Bell's Curveball: Publicly, House Democrats distanced themselves from Chris Bell after he filed an ethics complaint against Tom DeLay. But privately, they exult. By Terence Samuel.
• Purple People Watch: Senate races are shaping up, with appearances from Heritage Foundation and the Coors Light Twins. A weekly roundup from the swing states by The American Prospect staff.

ARE PRO-CHOICE CATHOLIC POLITICIANS? From this Associated Press report, it looks like the bishops' task force assigned to think through the issue of political leaders who disagree with the church's teachings on abortion and euthanasia is adopting something of sensible middle ground. They're obviously aware of the risks of instituting a flat denial of Communion to such individuals:

"Disciplinary actions are permitted," McCarrick said. "But they should be applied when efforts at dialogue, persuasion and conversion have been fully exhausted."

McCarrick said keeping the sacrament from defiant Catholic lawmakers could turn Communion into a "partisan political battleground," create a backlash in support of abortion rights and raise concerns about the loyalties of Catholic politicians.

"It could be more difficult for faithful Catholics to serve in public life because they might be seen not as standing up for principle, but as under pressure from the hierarchy," McCarrick said. "We could turn weak leaders who bend to the political winds into people who are perceived as courageous resistors of episcopal authority."

He recommended instead that bishops do more to educate Catholics that opposition to abortion and euthanasia is based on the earliest church teachings and is unequivocal.

Church leaders at the Colorado meeting voted 183-6 to adopt a statement warning lawmakers at odds with church teaching that they were "cooperating in evil," but made no definitive statement on whether they should be denied Communion. Under church law, each bishop decides how to apply Catholic teachings in his own diocese.

More on this as it develops.

--Nick Confessore

STABBING BACK. The stab-in-the-back defense has hit the big-time, graduating from conservative media outlets like National Review to Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz -- you know, actual administration officials who might be considered to bear some responsibility if that Iraq War thing doesn’t work out so well in the end. Wolfowitz’s cut at the press took the meme to a new low, spurring a little rightful outrage from Howard Kurtz:

[T]he suggestion that they are too cowed to leave Baghdad ignores the great courage that many of these journalists have shown.

In the past couple of months:

New York Times reporter John Burns and several colleagues were blindfolded and driven to a makeshift prison before being released after eight hours.

Times reporter Jeffrey Gettleman and his driver were abducted by gun-toting men with scarves over their faces before being released.

Washington Post reporter Dan Williams barely escaped death when his car came under hostile fire after he traveled to Fallujah.

CNN correspondent Michael Holmes also escaped injury when his car was blasted by AK-47s, but two of CNN's Iraqi employees were killed.

In another attack, hostile fire shattered the window in a car carrying Fox's Geraldo Rivera.

Wouldn't any prudent person be careful about traveling on these dangerous roads? Are journalists supposed to be cowboys who chase stories with no regard to their personal safety? And aren't the reporters operating in an environment that administration officials predicted long ago would be a safe and democratic environment once Saddam was toppled?

The administration will run into more of this if it plans to really push the argument that, if things end poorly in Iraq, it’ll be because the media compromised the effort. If there’s one he-said, she-said that the media won’t take part in, this is probably it.

--Jeffrey Dubner

CLINTON REDUX. I've not read My Life, but I did notice that Michiko Kakutani's New York Times review of the book was incredibly harsh, as well as predictably shallow and lazy. One might chalk this up to bias, but Kakutani is rather well known for nasty reviews; I doubt it was payback for Bill Clinton's slams of the Times. I do, however, think the paper made a mistake in assigning such a book to a reviewer who evidently has little patience for questions of policy. (See Prospect editor Michael Tomasky's take here.)

Someone at the Times evidently agrees, since they've rushed Larry McMurtry's review of the same book onto the Web a couple of weeks early. McMurtry's is a more positive, though not at all fawning, treatment. It's worth reading. And, of course, so is Slate's eternally-helpful "Juicy Bits" column, which features the book in this installment..

--Nick Confessore

TRENT LOTT PART II? Here's the Los Angeles Times on last March's bizzare coronation ceremony for the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, which was attended by a panoply of leading Republicans (and a few Democrats):

It's not every day that a onetime federal tax cheat gets an ornate crown placed on his head in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington before an audience of more than 300 while he explains that Hitler and Stalin, whose souls he claims to have posthumously redeemed, view him as the new Messiah. But then the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who has presided over mass weddings in Central Park, has always had a flair for the unusual.

The "international crown of peace awards" ceremony staged by Moon and his wife on March 23 -- first disclosed by Salon.com writer John Gorenfeld and now being more widely reported -- is not only a tribute to his entrepreneurial skills but it also offers a valuable lesson in how Washington works.

Weird stuff. As the Times relates, "The name of the senator who gave permission for Moon to use the Dirksen Building remains a mystery." Wouldn't it be nice to know which senator exercised such poor judgment?

--Nick Confessore

NO RECOURSE FOR THE LITTLE GUY. Pandering to the insurance industry, gas and oil producers and tobacco companies, the Senate has added the so-called Class Action Fairness Act of 2004 (S. 2062) to its summer legislative agenda. Anything but fair, this legislation would make it far more difficult for consumers to fight corporate abuse. Just how badly does big business want this legislation passed? Enough to hire nearly over 475 lobbyists to advocate for this anti-consumer legislation.

Visit Moving Ideas to learn more about this anti-consumer bill and what you can do to help defeat it!
--Editors of MovingIdeas.Org

JUST POSTED ON TAP ONLINE. "We realized that we were all badly disillusioned with the government and felt we just had to stand up and be heard, even though that was a little against our usual behavior." So says William C. Harrop, ambassador to Israel under George H. W. Bush and the organizer of Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change. See what else Harrop had to say in his interview with the Prospect's Laura Secor.

Also on The Daily Prospect:

• Backstage Pass: How David Bossie and Citizens United snuck their anti-Clinton ad onto 60 Minutes (in seven markets, anyway). By Rob Garver.
• The Last Hurdle: John Kerry's biggest problem -- still -- is the national security gap. Here's how he can close it. By Kenneth S. Baer.

THE MORAL CASE. Looking back on the Iraq War, the editors of The New Republic concluded this week:

But, if our strategic rationale for war has collapsed, our moral one has not. In the '90s, this magazine supported military intervention to prevent slaughter in Bosnia, Kosovo, and (unsuccessfully) Rwanda. And, in the process, we learned that stopping genocide brings unexpected rewards. Because the United States went to war twice in the Balkans, southeastern Europe is now largely at peace, increasingly democratic, and slowly integrating into Europe. By contrast, in Rwanda, where the United States stood by, genocide's aftershocks have helped plunge much of Central Africa into war, killing millions and destabilizing an entire region.

I'm not so sure about this rationale. Ironically, arch-interventionist John McCain's op-ed in today's Washington Post shows us the best reason for skepticism. Writing about the unfolding catastrophe in Sudan, he writes:

The U.N. Security Council should demand that the Sudanese government immediately stop all violence against civilians, disarm and disband its militias, allow full humanitarian access, and let displaced persons return home. Should the government refuse to reverse course, its leadership should face targeted multilateral sanctions and visa bans. Peacekeeping troops should be deployed to Darfur to protect civilians and expedite the delivery of humanitarian aid, and we should encourage African, European and Arab countries to contribute to these forces.

The United States must stand ready to do what it can to stop the massacres. In addition to pushing the U.N. Security Council to act, we should provide financial and logistical support to countries willing to provide peacekeeping forces. The United States should initiate its own targeted sanctions against the Janjaweed and government leaders, and consider other ways we can increase pressure on the government. We must also continue to tell the world about the murderous activities in which these leaders are engaged, and make clear to all that this behavior is totally unacceptable.

This is pretty weak brew, seeing as how the genocide in Sudan is actually unfolding before our eyes, rather than, as in Iraq, being something that took place years ago. A prominent US official is calling for other countries to intervene militarily while we "provide financial and logistical support." Why shouldn't we do more? The answer, of course, is that our ground forces are stuck in Iraq participating in a mission that's under-manned as it is. Indeed, since the Iraq War started, we've seen situations where there's been a compelling case for American humanitarian intervention in Liberia, Congo, and Haiti as well as Sudan, but in all cases there simply wasn't very much we could do consistent with the continuing mission in Iraq. Meanwhile, even if other countries were inclined to send their forces abroad, the fact is that we're also trying to gain more foreign support for the Iraq mission.

The point is simply that there's no shortage of problems in the world that could be ameliorated by the use of American military power. On the contrary, the problem is that there's a shortage of American military power to ameliorate serious humanitarian problems. That means that unless we're going to create a much larger military, we need to be careful about how we expend those forces. That applies not only to "realist" skeptics of humanitarian mentions but also -- in some ways especially -- to those of us who believe in using American power to advance American interests. Like anything else, the use of force entails opportunity costs in addition to direct ones, and jumping at anything with any kind of humanitarian component winds up creating a need to ignore more acute crises later.

--Matthew Yglesias

COUGH UP. Here's an interesting scoop about how the Republican K Street machine works. Not only is the GOP leadership pressuring trade groups to hire Republicans, but they are pressuring Democratic business lobbyists to spy on Democratic legislators. Reports The Hill:

Democratic lobbyists are giving House Republican aides and lawmakers closely held information about the voting intentions of congressional Democrats in exchange for access to private meetings with GOP officials on Capitol Hill.

For House Republican whips, the inside information on Democratic voting strategies can yield a crucial awareness of what the ultimate vote count on the floor might be.

...

House Republican sources provided The Hill with e-mails showing lobbyists providing information about Democratic whip efforts to defeat the foreign sales corporation (FSC) tax measure. The $143 billion in tax breaks for corporations passed 251-178; 48 Democrats broke ranks and voted for the bill, and 23 Republicans opposed it.

The e-mails reveal that some Democratic lobbyists are willing to sell out their former bosses and that House Democratic leaders are having difficulty keeping their members in line.

In an e-mail, a Democratic lobbyist asks permission to attend a meeting about FSC: “I heard there is a … meeting tomorrow at 3pm. Is it OK for me to attend on behalf of my clients?”

The GOP aide replied: “Sure, but what intel are you gonna get us? You worked for [Rep. Robert] Matsui [D-Calif.] right? Where are the California Dems? Is [Minority Leader Nancy] Pelosi [D-Calif.] really holding Dems feet to the fire?”

The lobbyist replied: “Yeah, I worked for Matsui (back when he was [for] free trade). I think Pelosi will be working this hard — you probably already know this, but I just heard that the Dems will be putting in repatriation in their substitute (which will mollify the [California] and West Coast Dems).”

Interesting stuff, and completely unprecedented, as far as I know.

By the way, in case you're wondering -- yes, Roll Call and The Hill regularly scoop The Washington Post and The New York Times on lobbying stories.

--Nick Confessore

RISING WAGES? USA Today's editorialists take a whack at John Kerry's criticism of the president:

Most measures of economic health, while below levels of the booming 1990s, have been heading upward. The economy has added an impressive 1.2 million jobs since January, inflation rose a modest 2% over the past year, and wages are picking up.

This is reminiscent of The Washington Post's June 19 editorial which made the same point:

Now comes the next round of political gloom-mongering. Sen. John F. Kerry, the victor in the Democratic primaries, has been telling voters this week that although job creation may have recovered, wages are the real problem. "In the last year, wages have gone down, and prices have gone up," the candidate told an audience on Tuesday. Actually, hourly wages for non-supervisory workers have risen this year by 2.2 percent as of May, so they kept pace with consumer price inflation.

Damn those lying, pessimistic Democrats. Except that as the Post had to concede yesterday, Kerry's actually right:

On June 19 we wrote that wage increases had kept pace with inflation in the year to May, and criticized Sen. John F. Kerry for suggesting that wages had fallen behind. We were wrong and Mr. Kerry was right: Hourly wages for non-supervisory workers rose 2.2 percent, while the consumer price index rose 3.1 percent.

So back to USA Today: While "wages are picking up" nominally, real wages -- called "real" because they're the ones that matter -- are actually going down, not "heading upward." Now as to whether there's anything in particular Kerry could do in the short term to fix this, I'm not so sure. Things like indexing the minimum wage to inflation and making it easier to organize unions should boost the labor share of economic growth down the road, but that's a different story.

--Matthew Yglesias

WE TAKE IT BACK. After having the Office of Legal Counsel write a memo explaining that torture isn't really torture, and that even if it is, the laws don't apply to the president, but in case they do, here's a whole bunch of ways to break the law and get away with it, too, and then refusing the release the memo to Congress without any legal authority, the White House has decided to release it after all and note that maybe this whole thing wasn't such a good idea in the first place. The Post's coverage fails to note that the author of the "disavowed," "derided," "overbroad," and "irrelevant" legal opinion has since been appointed to a spot as a federal appellate judge by the Bush administration.

The administration's line on this is still filled with impenetrable ambiguities. "Bush has not authorized any interrogations that would employ methods outside the law, [an official said] said." The whole point of the memo, however, was to define as legal certain things that are not, in fact, legal. It didn't say, "go break the law," it said, "if you do this you won't be breaking the law." So when they say they're not employing methods outside the law, we need to know which law they're talking about -- the real ones, or the ones their lawyers have made up.

Stepping back, though, the really important thing is this: The administration wrote this opinion, and then sought -- quite stridently -- to keep it secret. Only when faced with a public outcry are they willing to back away from the doctrine it entailed. If the White House had had its way, the public would never have heard a word of any of this, and the memo would never have been disavowed. And, of course, we don't know what other secret memos may be lurking around somewhere. What's more, as Michael Froomkin points out it's not clear from this that the administration has disavowed the expansive view of presidential power that underlay the original torture memos -- the new position seems to be that Bush could order torture if he wanted to, but he just isn't doing it.

--Matthew Yglesias