When the U.S. military reported the deaths of American troops in a sneak attack on joint US-Iraqi compound in Karbala on Monday they meant to say that one American was killed at the base and four were kidnapped, driven over twenty miles away and executed.  Kinda makes the excuses made by the Iraqi security forces at the scene look even fishier, doesn't it?

(h/t: Spread the Word:IraqNAM)

... or at least that's what Dick Cheney thinks.  Dana Milbanks column in the Washington Post today looks at the testimony of Cathie Martin, Cheney's former communications director and finds that the VP loved to go on Meet the Press when the administration was in a tough spot.  Why?  Well, for all his supposed gravitas and journalistic seriousness, it appears Tim Russert has a penchant for giving Cheney a pass, and the White House knows it.  Cheney goes on MTP because he knows that Russert won't ask him any really tough questions and regardless of what he says he know there will be no follow ups or challenges to what he said.  This really isn't news to anybody who watches the show but one wonders if Tim Russert will bristle at the fact the White House essentially thinks of him as some sort of D.C. Larry King ready to throw softball questions at officials undeserving of his help.

The wording of your latest Quick Poll is quite the cop out.  I especially like how you threw "perceived" in before "blunders".

The reason Libby is arguing he was put forth as a sacrificial pawn to protect Rove is so that the defense can impeach the prosecution's witnesses on their alleged motive to lie to protect Rove.  The also need an alternate narrative.  You can't win by just poking holes in the prosecution's case, you have to present a believable theory as to why the facts are as they are.  Unless you are O.J., of course.

Any chance you guys exercise your amazing "bipartisan" powers and get this minimum wage bill through the Senate?  Last I looked a minimum wage increase had far more popular support than any of the divisive and extremely conservative judicial nominees the President put forward last year, so this should be a no-brainer.

Sen. Lieberman is now attacking bipartisanship in the Senate.  For years he's argued the Senate is too "partisan", but now that the plan for escalation in Iraq is creating a growing bipartisan opposition to the war, its suddenly time to step back and not go there.  Hey Joe, make up your mind!

Wow, looks like Scooter's defense is that he was chosen as a "sacrificial lamb" by the White House in order to protect Karl Rove.  Meanwhile it appears Libby learned of Plame's identity from his boss and destroyed notes that detailed Vice President Cheney's deep involvement in the Plame leak and pushback against Joe Wilson.  Big surprise, right?  

This only goes to show Lynn Cheney was half right when she said it didn't reflect well on the judicial system that a man like Scooter Libby was on trial; what she meant to say was it would reflect better if her husband was on trial.

I get the feeling that somewhere out there Dick Cheney is reading this LA Times article about no clear evidence of Iranian advanced weapons technology in the hands of Iraqi insurgents and saying to himself that it clearly bolsters the case for going after the Iranians.  Maybe we'll hear a line about it in the State of Union address or something?

Bush in free fall at 28%.

This summer is going to be long and hot here in Washington, D.C.  I can't wait.

I heard this on the news this morning and I gotta say I'm with Daniel Gross in asking why wouldn't increased demand for corn from both the ethanol and livestock industries lead American farmers to increase the amount of corn acreage in order to meet that demand?  Or are they saying in the short-term American farmers and imported corn are unable to meet skyrocketing corn demand which will cause some economic dislocation among livestock growers (smaller herds) and the meat-packing industry (one processing plant closed?) until things shake themselves out later? 

Now, I know not liking the President and his policy in Iraq can get you kicked out of the jury pool for the Scooter Libby trial, but why would it get you kicked off of a Qantas airline flight?

(h/t Americablog)

What do this story about the 2006 NIE estimate still not being ready and this story about the audacious insurgent raid on an American military compound in Karbala have in common?  They are both attempts to forestall bad news that might lose the White House's "new Iraq strategy" even more support. 

What, you say you can understand that they don't want anyone to see how bad the NIE estimates are but why Karbala?  Why does this bode ill for the upcoming "surge"? 

Look at it this way, the raid in Karbala looks bad for one because a number of American servicemen died and it suggests that insurgents are even more sophisticated than we've been lead to believe, after all they had American uniforms and spoke "some English", but the implication of the news reports is that the killers definitely had inside help.  From whom? well probably members of the Iraqi Army and police forces, the same guys we will be relying on to be out front pacifying Baghdad.  Its one of the only ways of reading the fact that these guys exclusively targeted and killed Americans and Iraqi security forces watched them run off without intervening. 

It's definitely a double whammy so I suggest you'll see much more made of the fact that the insurgents are really tricky as opposed to the fact the Iraqi military isn't entirely trustworthy.

In the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, 51% of Americans strongly disapprove of the president's performance in office.  Wow.  Those are terrible numbers.  Nearly Nixonian.

If you'd ever wondered why our public discourse on the issues of the day seems so ridiculously retarded then I recommend Howard Fineman's latest piece because it explains a lot about how members of our elite press corp view the country's political process.  Fineman moves away from the old "horse race" analysis to the new "high school musical" analysis which basically says that the political process is typified by all the unbearable stereotypes that so annoyed you in high school. 

In effect, that political process is juvenile and unserious and you really shouldn't give a damn because you're screwed either way. This especially holds if we're only talking about the 2008 Democratic Primary, because I gotta tell ya I have a hard time seeing Fineman give John McCain the kind of send up he does Al Gore, ie. "... the ultimate goody-goody but who had grown a beard, made a film and dropped out to attend the School Without Walls".  

Dirty hippy or beatnik references seem a little dated to me but hey, I don't work for GE/NBC/Newsweek nor do I get paid for juvenile crap like this... kinda what you'd expect from say, the annoying editor of your high school yearbook.

(h/t Kevin Drum)

And Big Pharma isn't interested in funding the research trials because they can't make enormous profits off of the potential cure?

I don't know what will happen or whether DCA will be the next medical breakthrough but I think this is just wrong on so many levels.  For an industry already heavily subsidized by you and I through exorbitant drug prices that  fall heaviest on American consumers, a large dose of federally subsidized drug research and a broken patent system that encourages the production of "me-to" drugs over actual innovation, you'd think that ponying up for an inexpensive cure would at the least be a good PR move, but evidently no.  Mr. Michelakis will hopefully find government funding for his research but don't expect to see commercials for DCA anytime soon. 

I could be wrong but it seems that a couple years ago when the NSA's secret warrantless wiretapping program was suddenly made public, any calls that it be brought into compliance with current law was tantamount to aiding our enemies in the destruction of the United State of America.  Going to a FISA court, even if several days or weeks after taking action, was too slow; the President already had the power to order domestic spying and anything else dangerously impeded our global war against terrorism, dammit! 

Okay, so what happened that made them suddenly say that the NSA program will now be regulated by the FISA courts?  I'm confused...have we lost the GWOT or something?  Judicial review....OH, THE HORROR!

Although it is not clear what's happening there are a lot of moves being made by the White House on the Judiciary front that seem to signal that they are going on the defensive.  Why, you say?  Well first we had Harriet Miers resigning as White House Counsel and her replacement by Nixon and Reagan administration veteran, Fred Fielding, someone with a lot more experience managing congressional oversight and scandal. 

Next, and possibly the most serious change, is the removal of a number of prominent U.S. attorneys many of who were overseeing investigations of a number of top Republican lawmakers and their associates.  Worst of all those attorneys were replaced without Senate authorization with the White House choosing a little known provision in the USA Patriot Act to ram the changes through.  Needless to say, many of the new appointees are long on political loyalty to the President and short on legal or courtroom experience. 

To add to the mess, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, is suddenly on a rampage giving speeches about the evils of "judicial activism".    I could be wrong but trotting out well-worn stale political rhetoric about the judiciary as some sort of preemptive defense is just lame.  Better arguments could be made that Presidents should never pick their long time political patrons/personal lawyers as Attorney General.

Any of you lawyers, notice any other trends out there?

"... for the first time in my life, Mr. Oreo cookie- without the chocolate on the outside- can understand why people celebrated when O.J. Simpson was acquitted."  What? 

Glenn Beck must be filling out some sort of new conservative media commentator quota at CNN and ABC because I can't fathom how someone with such an amazing penchant for wacko inflammatory statements has stayed on the air so long.  What we have here is someone who loves the sound of his own voice and one of the more annoyingly asinine new faces on television, but a leading cultural commentator with with a distinct voice.... ah, no. 

I leave you with Jon Stewart's astute assessment of Beck after he challenged the patriotism of new Rep. Keith Ellison:

 Finally, a guy who says what people who aren't thinking are thinking! 

Now, if that's what the networks were going for, then they've got the right guy!

How unpopular has George W. Bush become?  Extremely.  Mr. Bush has hit that point that he is so unpopular that the more we see him or hear from him, the farther his numbers go down. 

The White House political office has to be bumming because you know all the lead up to last week's speech was an attempt to make the President more visible and relevant after the drubbing his party took in the midterms, which frankly can also be laid at the feet of Mr. Bush. 

Someone's going to have to retire that, "The President remains popular" refrain because when your number have been below 50% as long as W's (over a year and a half) they rarely come up significantly and more often then not sink lower.  Good thing the White House doesn't place much faith in polling.

The folks over at Huffington Post did a run-down of President Bush's 60 Minute interview and found that he got stuck on the word "decisions", as in "I like making decisions."  Sadly, Scott Pelley could not move himself to tell the President that while he got a way too much credit for "liking to make decisions" maybe four years ago, more recently people have come to realize his decision-making ability pretty well sucks and wish he would stop.

Shorter David Brooks:  "Damn the Democrats for not coming up with a "serious" alternative plan that the White House would definitely ignore, because now we're stuck with the Bush plan.  Let me show you how we got here...."

There have to be other ways to try to puff up your middle-brow conservative credentials than saying this crap over and over again.

Christ, what a disaster.  He's only been back a short while and the damage caused is already starting to pile up.  And the funny thing is that Joe Lieberman is such an arrogant elitist prick that he thinks everything he says and does is somehow saving the country from itself. 

Any chance the people of Connecticut will revisit and rethink their choice of Senator sometime in the near future?  Please??

I know the White House never worries about these things, but you'd think they'd be a little concerned now that the President isn't even getting applause giving his "let's go kick some terrorist ass" speech on military bases?