Political Wire:
Roll Call identifies the ten most vulnerable incumbents in a special Election Preview section. “What a difference six months makes. The last time we put together this list, we believed that four Democrats were among the 10 most vulnerable House incumbents in the nation. Today’s list finds no Democrats among the most threatened. Not [...]

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See, now I’m confused. I thought we couldn’t “cut and run.”
LONDON — Tony Blair and George Bush will announce that they are to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq at a summit in Washington as early as this week, RAW STORY has learned.
The process has already been carefully choreographed in an attempt to bolster the popularity [...]

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New article from Sy Hersh:
Two people who worked on the N.S.A. call-tracking program told me they believed that, in its early stages, it did not violate the law. “We were not listening to an individual’s conversation,” a defense contractor said. “We were gathering data on the incidence of calls made to and from his phone [...]

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From The Progressive:
Q: Talk a little bit more about Dick Cheney. You call him “co-President” in your book.
Dean: I do. It was evident, even at the beginning, when Cheney was very confident they were going to win at the Supreme Court. I’ve got some friends who were in there and they were telling me what [...]

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Talking about biting the hand that’s fed them so well for so long:
The US oil industry charged the government with behaving like a third world despot after the House of Representatives voted to punish companies if they refused to change contracts to give the government a bigger share of rising oil profits.
“We live in a [...]

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It’s all so familiar, isn’t it?
LONDON (Reuters) - Senior officials from the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany will meet in London on Wednesday to discuss the next steps on Iran’s disputed nuclear program, a British official confirmed on Monday.
The meeting of political directors was postponed last week to allow the European Union [...]

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“Help!”

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Will someone please read this whole exchange out loud to every person who still supports this war?

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His Shrillness, via Jane:
Friday was a bad day for Senator Joseph Lieberman. The Connecticut Democratic Party’s nominating convention endorsed him, but that was a given for an incumbent with a lot of political chips to cash in. The real news was that Ned Lamont, an almost unknown challenger, received a third of the votes. This [...]

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I know I am:
Two key Democrats on the House committee that oversees the Department of Homeland Security criticized the agency last week for not releasing to Congress reports on 118 security plans for mass transit, rail, aviation, ports and borders.
Many of the reports were due in 2003.

Way to protect us, Republican majority!

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Way to show all that tolerance and respect for other’s opinions, Mark.
Asshole.
Glenn Greenwald:
National Review Editor Rich Lowry can’t believe that John McCain, whom Lowry notes is a “war hero,” was treated so disrespectfully when he spoke last night at the New School in Manhattan. Lowry finds it “incredible” and “amazing” that a war heo would [...]

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Duncan, who keeps track of these things, notes that the six-month crowd is driving yet another news cycle. The Beltway journalists, whose collective institutional memory has a three-month span, are eating it all up with a spoon:
We have a big problem. The dominant view among the in crowd in Washington is that the next 6 [...]

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Sebastian Mallaby:
Six years ago, Bush narrowly defeated Gore, apparently because voters thought he’d be a nicer guy to have a beer with. But after years of governmental bungling, of willful indifference to truth, the national mood seems to be changing. Voters have seen that nice guys can screw up. And technocrats with diagrams and charts [...]

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Singing “I Will Survive.”

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1. Beds Are Burning - Midnight Oil
2. Your Heart is an Empty Room - Death Cab for Cutie
3. If I Never Knew You - Shelby Lynne, Hank Ketchum
4. Like A Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan
5. From the Ritz to the Rubble - Arctic Monkeys
6. All Hands Against His Own - The Black Keys
7. All Through [...]

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No new taxes.

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The New York Times has an analysis piece today on how the Democrats treat presidential candidates who lost, and why that makes it unlikely Al Gore (and John Kerry) could have another shot at the nomination.
The Times neglects to mention the general public consensus that both Gore and Kerry won, and had the election stolen [...]

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The Wall St. Journal did an interesting piece on the New England Journal of Medicine’s apparent flexibility with the facts regarding the Vioxx study.
I used to work for a scientific abstracts journal, and much later, for a pharmaceutical consulting firm. Personally, I have very little faith in the integrity of the drug-approval process.
I was [...]

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Looks like Joe Sestak has a good chance of winning against wacky Curt Weldon:
Stan Greenberg, a Democratic pollster who worked for President Bill Clinton in the 1994 elections, said polls he conducted in three districts where Democrats were thought to have modest hopes of winning found incumbents struggling with just 50 percent of the vote [...]

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Little Ricky.

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Conservative Fatigue Syndrome.

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I was at a friend’s birthday party tonight (happy birthday, Lasagna!) and spent a sizeable portion of the evening standing in a corner by the beer cooler, talking (what else?) politics with Duncan.
As you can imagine, he was just tickled about Ned Lamont getting on the ballot in Connecticut. “It’s not often that we get [...]

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“Hooked On A Feeling,” David Hasselhoff - the video. Discuss.

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Libby’s lawyers say nuh uh, Libby never even saw the Cheney notes:
But Libby’s lawyers, in a filing that amplifies Libby’s previous requests for access to government documents, quoted from previously sealed grand jury testimony in which Libby said he had not seen the Cheney annotations until the FBI gave him a copy. They also state [...]

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I’m proud of you, graduates. Good for you, letting John McCain know what you think of him and his support of the Bush administration. Our country’s in serious trouble and we need to let the collaborators know we won’t forget their part.

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Bush better find Leiberman a job, ’cause it looks like he’s gonna need one.

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Because it’s important, and everyone needs to read it. Somegirl points out that the “real meat” of the immigration bill is yet another massive government database:
The EEVS [Employment Eligibility Verification System] would require - for the first time - all workers to obtain a federal agency’s permission to work, regardless of citizenship or immigration [...]

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Peggy Noonan’s all in a fluster over “The DaVinci Code”:
I do not understand the thinking of a studio that would make, for the amusement of a nation 85% to 90% of whose people identify themselves as Christian, a major movie aimed at attacking the central tenets of that faith, and insulting as poor fools its [...]

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Sen. Menendez may sign on to the censure resolution. I presume this news was released to gauge voter response, so speak up:
502 Senate Hart Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
202.224.4744
202.228.2197 fax
One Gateway Center,
Suite 1100
Newark, New Jersey 07102
973.645.3030
973.645.0502 fax
208 White Horse Pike, Suite 18
Barrington, New Jersey 08007
856.757.5353
856.546.1526 fax

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Rick Santorum. Poor stalked house.

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