US Attorney fired for not following through on voter-fraud cases. But FBI Director says there were no not-followed-through cases to his knowledge

Gee, another lie. From Reuters:

Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, noted that among the shifting reasons given for firing prosecutors was failure to energetically pursue voter-fraud investigations.

Schumer asked Mueller if he was aware of any FBI voter-fraud probe that should have resulted in an indictment but did not.

"Not to my knowledge," the FBI director replied.

Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

Warm as hell in DC. Read the rest of this post...

Dick Cheney and the mysterious $140,000 contract

TPM has more information on Dick Cheney's odd ties to the corrupt GOP lobbyist who bought off Randy "Duke" Cunningham. How did this guy, out of nowhere, get the contract to screen the president's mail, presumably for Anthrax? The guy was a nobody. Had never had a federal contract before. His company showed no revenue, ever. Yet somehow the guy is hired by Dick Cheney's office to oversee the Anthrax mail threat at the White House, and then the guy gets hundreds of millions of dollars of DOD contracts, and bribes a sitting GOP congressman. All because Dick Cheney for some reason let this incredibly corrupt stranger in the very secure White House door shortly after September 11.

As Josh Marshall notes:

It all comes back to the same question. Why did a company like Wade's, which had no track record whatsoever and had only been approved to receive federal government contracts two months earlier, get a contract from the White House to screen the mail of the President of the United States? Was Wade actually working in concert with or as the cut out for accused fellow Cunningham briber Brent Wilkes? And what role might Doolittle and Ney have played? And what about Wade's claims of having pull with the Vice President? Is that what got him the deal?

Read Josh's update - there's more to this story that the White House isn't telling us. Read the rest of this post...

Fulfilling the wish of the electorate, Democrats send a message to Bush about Iraq

These paragraphs say so much:

Three months after Democrats took power in Congress, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the moment was at hand to "send a message to President Bush that the time has come to find a new way forward in this intractable war."

But Republicans _ and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an independent Democrat _ argued otherwise.

John McCain, R-Ariz., a presidential hopeful, said that "we are starting to turn things around" in the Iraq war" and that a timeline for withdrawal would embolden the terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere.

All through the Iraq debate, Republicans keep warning us about emboldening the terrorists in Iraq. Not sure how much more emboldened those terrorists in Iraq can get. Four years after George Bush told us the mission was accomplished, those terrorists in Iraq continue to engage the most powerful military in the world. That seems to have really emboldened them.

McCain and Lieberman keep trying to prop up Bush and his failed war policy by claiming progress where there is none.

And, one more time, Maine's Susan Collins proved she is no moderate. She plays one in Maine, then votes with her right-wing Republican leaders, Mitch McConnell and Trent Lott, in DC. Read the rest of this post...

BREAKING: Senate Votes to keep Iraq timetable

Historic vote just occurred in the U.S. Senate. By a vote of 50 - 48, the Senate rejected the Cochran amendment to strip out the Iraq troop withdrawal timetable language from the Supplemental appropriation. Bottom line: The Senate just approved withdrawal timetable language for the first time.

It's not perfect. It's still non-binding, but it is a critical vote to change the course of the war. The Senate bill will go to a conference with the House bill that passed last week.

Lieberman and Mark Pryor from Arkansas voted with the Republicans, of course. Oregon's Gordon Smith and Nebraska's Chuck Hagel voted with the Democrats. Read the rest of this post...

Impending critical Senate vote on Iraq

The Senate is approaching a vote on an amendment by Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS) to remove the language about the timetable for bringing the troops home. The vote will be very close. And, it is a critical vote that start the process of ending this war. Just watched Lieberman give his usual pro-war speech rife with Bush talking points. The Republicans (and Lieberman) have never had a plan for their war -- and their war is a disaster.

Chris Bowers wrote a very good synopsis of the situation in the Senate:

The vote this afternoon is on an amendment to the supplemental that seeks to strip all language regarding timetables and withdrawal from the supplemental. In order to defeat this amendment, and assuming that Gordon Smith and Ben Nelson are on board (which are not terrible assumptions, but are assumptions none the less), right now Democrats need one more vote. The primary targets to acquire this vote are Chuck Hagel, Mark Pryor, and John Warner. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that in the next few hours, those three people will decide whether or not Bush receives a blank check to continue his war indefinitely, or not. All three are up for re-election in 2008.

If this amendment passes, there will still be other amendments in the coming days, and there will also be a conference bill where Pelosi can try and strengthen what the senate eventually passes. Also, even if the already compromised House version of the bill ends up becoming still weaker, progressives will have the opportunity to defeat the conference report on the supplemental down the road. However, make no mistake: if we lose this vote, either a total blank check, or something very close to it, will pass the Senate, which puts us in real danger of a total blank check, or something very close it, arriving on Bush's desk even without a veto showdown.

Read the rest of this post...

Bush is the symptom, conservativism the disease

From Markos. Read the rest of this post...

Meanwhile, other parts of the world teeter

For many people, Iraq is (understandably) the "meanwhile." That is, there's all sorts of new stuff always coming up in politics, let alone regular life, and Iraq is a constant, always vaguely in the news and occasionally getting "better" or "worse" for a while during the overall downward trend. For me, though, because I work on and write about Iraq and the Middle East all the time, the rest of the international system often becomes the meanwhile.

Pakistan is one of those nations that would get much more attention if this administration had not embroiled us in a massive strategic and human disaster in Iraq. My conception of Pakistan generally put it in a category similar to Saudi Arabia: a kind of fuzzy dictatorship that we liked because the leadership is more favorable to U.S. interests (security, primarily) than would be the governmental amalgam of democratic processes. Pakistan has a restive Islamist population, but also lacks many of the problems inherent with the rentier states of the Middle East. Perhaps, many observers hoped, Musharraf would be the Pakistani Ataturk, and he talked about economic development, promised to fight corruption, and, in a landmark speech in 2002, denounced Islamic extremism.

But Ilan at DemocracyArsenal makes a different comparison, saying Musharraf's current position is not unlike that of the Shah in 1970s Iran. If Musharraf is indeed losing his grip on his nation, it's something to not only watch closely, but to think about in terms of a potential post-Musharraf situation. We have a huge strategic interest in the future of Pakistan (whose location, demographics, and nuclear arsenal give it much potential for either good or disaster) and the internal rumblings, concurrent with Musharraf's recent Putin-esque power moves, are significant warning signs. Read the rest of this post...

Report charges broad White House efforts to stifle Climate Change research

The Republican war on science continues. From ABC News:

Bush administration officials throughout the government have engaged in White House-directed efforts to stifle, delay or dampen the release of climate change research that casts the White House or its policies in a bad light, says a new report that purports to be the most comprehensive assessment to date of the subject.

Read the rest of this post...

Tillman's family wants further investigation

The Tillman family is not satisfied:

Pat Tillman's family firmly rejected the Defense Department's findings into the former NFL star's friendly-fire death in Afghanistan, calling for congressional investigations into what they see as broad malfeasance and a coverup.

"Perhaps subpoenas are necessary to elicit candor and accuracy from the military," his family said in a statement Monday night, after hearing the results of the latest probes.

There is something more to this story. When Pat Tillman died, the Bush Administration, which refuses to comment on the deaths of individual U.S. soldiers, leapt out with a statement:

“Pat Tillman was an inspiration on and off the football field, as with all who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the war on terror. His family is in the thoughts and prayers of President and Mrs. Bush,” Taylor Gross, a spokesman for the White House, said in a statement.

Just yesterday, at the White House press briefing, Dana Perino reiterated the White House line:

The President feels that Pat Tillman was an inspiration to all of us. And I looked back, and in 2004, one of the things that the President said was that "Pat Tillman set aside a career in athletics and many things the world counts important -- wealth and security and acclaim of crowds. He chose instead the rigors of Ranger training and the fellowship of soldiers, and the hard duty in Afghanistan and Iraq."

And, of course, we hold Pat Tillman's family in our thoughts and prayers. And as there's more information to release from the White House, we'll let you know. But as you said, the Department of Defense is having a briefing at 4:00 p.m.

I don't think the Bush White House has issued a statement about any other individual who has died in the war. They won't even allow photos of the flag-draped caskets. One has to wonder how far up the chain of command the cover up extends. Given the way the Bush team plays politics with war, it's probably pretty far. Read the rest of this post...

Leave Elizabeth Edwards alone

Go home and die.

That's the prescription of some in the media to Elizabeth Edwards' announcement that her breast cancer has returned. You see, Mrs. Edwards and her husband John, the former Senator and current Democratic presidential candidate, had the temerity to announce last week that in spite of Mrs. Edwards' diagnosis, they were staying in the race for president, and they plan to win.

Well, the gatekeepers in the mainstream media would have none of that. First up, Katie Couric on "60 Minutes." Here's a sampling of her interview questions for the Edwards.



Yes, you see, John Edwards simply can't in good faith continue his day job while his spouse has cancer, while his poor children are suffering at home over mommy's diagnosis, since that would be exactly what Katie Couric, mother of two, did while her husband was dying of cancer. Couric stayed on the job, and her husband ultimately died.

ABC did a similar broadcast last night explaining the "controversy" over the Edwards' decision to stick it out.

Here's what ABC's correspondent had to say:

There have been questions about the Edwards' decision to continue their run for the White House... Analysts say in the long run voters might think twice about supporting a candidate whose attention may not be fully focused on the presidency.

Well, they weren't thinking twice until you put the idea in their head, ABC - thank you very much. And who did ABC get to back up this incendiary charge? A pundit from a leading conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, who might just have a reason for harming a Democratic presidential candidate (oh, and ABC didn't bother mentioning that AEI was politically conservative - read: Republican). Here's what the right-wing pundit had to say:

Americans are gonna look past the emotion and think in a pretty hard-nosed way about what all this means for somebody making decisions that affect all of our lives, not just those of his family.

Now, in all fairness to ABC, their broadcast was certainly more balanced than CBS's - they showed a woman with cancer who supported the Edwards' decision, and a man who was initially critical but then was won over by Mrs. Edwards' herself.

But why even go there?

Why do a segment about whether the Edwards' are right to have chosen to live? ABC could have just as easily interviewed a liberal pundit or - here's a thought - an expert on dying who could have told them that living life to its fullest is the best way to honor and care for yourself and your loved ones. But ABC didn't do that. Hell, ABC didn't even interview the "dying" expert as a counter-balance to the pundit. ABC chose instead to raise the question of whether John Edwards was a bad spouse, and Elizabeth Edwards a bad mom. For some in the audience, who had never contemplated the question at all, the issue is now in play. And thanks to ABC and CBS, there is no way for John Edwards to fully deny that he has stopped beating his dying wife. Read the rest of this post...

Removing troops from Iraq is "offending language" to the GOP

Republicans have no plan for Iraq. Never had one. Never questioned the war. Never challenged Bush. Now, they're offended by legislation that would start the process to get our troops out of the civil war:

"The final bill is likely to have the offending language in it," the Senate minority leader said as the Senate prepared to begin debating the war-funding bill, which sets March 31, 2008, as a goal for removing combat troops from Iraq.

At that point, he said, Bush would have to veto the legislation and lawmakers would have to get to work again.

Veto the bill because there's a plan to end the war. That's what will offend the American people. Read the rest of this post...

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Never, ever thought I would say anything remotely nice about Laura Ingraham, but on the Today Show this morning she launched in to an very strong defense of Elizabeth Edwards. Laura has also had breast cancer -- and she went to work every day during her treatment. That's how she made it through. This was the first time I've ever heard Laura Ingraham use that anger of hers for something positive. And, what's more, on this one, I agree with Laura.

Anyway, have some coffee. Start the comments. Read the rest of this post...

Wal-Mart continues its PR spin

It's great that Wal-Mart handed out $270+ million in charitable donations last year and of course, it's nice to see that their "associates" received bonuses last year. Heck, Wal-Mart even points the AP to a specific individual who made "substantially more than $1,000" which may be common or it may be the exception that proves the rule. Putting aside the warm and fuzzy PR spin, why can't Wal-Mart finally get serious about the bigger issue of health care?

Let's say a full time worker picks up a bonus of $1,000 or even $1,500 and then pays taxes on that amount. How many months insurance for a family will that cover? One? Two? I think it might be too generous to say three months. This kind of PR spin reminds me of the tax cuts that the GOP loves to roll out. Sure a few extra bucks in your pocket is fine, but what about the 800 pound gorilla in the room called health care? Health care for families is still an after-tax tax since so many families have to at least contribute to the health care fees, it is high time we quit this silly distraction and get serious.

Perhaps Wal-Mart can shed some light on it's seriousness about how it really cares about its "associates". The CEO is making north of $16 million in total compensation (no doubt including health care for that particular "associate") and the corporate profit for 2006 was $12.6 billion. Quit the side show and get serious. Read the rest of this post...

"Students for Mitt" to make commission from campaign contributions

Interesting. College students as campaign money gatherers. Just when you think you've seen it all, something like this happens. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Participants in "Students for Mitt" will get 10 percent of the money they raise for the campaign beyond the first $1,000. While candidates often offer professional fundraisers commissions up to 8 percent, campaign experts believe the Massachusetts Republican is the first to do so with the legion of college students who have historically served as campaign volunteers.

Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

Off to bed. Read the rest of this post...