You Know Republicans Are In Trouble . . .

. . . when they lose to the Democrats on this question (which, of course, was part of a FoxNews poll):

If there is an all-out war between the United States and various radical Muslim groups worldwide, who would you rather have in charge — Democrats or Republicans?

Democrats 41%
Republicans 38%
Both the same
(not listed) 9%
Don't know
(not listed) 12%

Oh, and by the way, Bush got his lowest approval rating ever in a FoxNews poll -- 31%.

Understatement Of The Century

Outgoing Bush Aide Dan Bartlett said this in a recent interview:

There was never a more benign incident that turned into a bigger messaging problem than "Mission Accomplished." It set the wrong tone for what became a protracted, difficult mission. If there was ever a do-over, that would be it.

The rest of the interview is pretty funny as well. Bartlett basically tries to claim that the "Mission Accomplished" banner was placed behind Bush accidently. I love it.

Gore Leads In New Hampshire

From TPM Cafe:

[A] new Suffolk University poll find[s] that a whopping 32% of the state's Democrats would back Al Gore, making him the leader in the Democratic primary there. Hillary Clinton would be particularly damaged by his hypothetical entry, losing a quarter of her support. Without Gore, Clinton leads with 37% of likely Democratic voters, leading Barack Obama at 19%, and John Edwards and Bill Richardson, both at 9%.

And, on a totally unrelated subject, Olbermann's show was pretty interesting last night:

Keith Olbermann announced on Wednesday's Countdown that the White House is refusing on grounds of executive privilege to honor Senate subpoenas and release documents relating to its warrantless wiretapping. In addition, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, David Addington, has sent a letter to Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) saying Cheney's office will not comply with oversight by the National Archives because it is not "an agency."

Olbermann then turned to law professor Jonathan Turley, who agreed tentatively that the administration might move slowly enough to "run out the clock" on its time in office. "But there is one thing that might concern them about the court," Turley said, "and that is, you know, for many years, since we first found out about this program, some of us have said that this was a clearly criminal act that the president called for. ... If we're right, not only did he order that crime, but it would be, in fact, an impeachable offense."

"Both sides, both Democrats and Republicans, have avoided this sort of pig in the parlor," Turley continued. "They don't want to recognize that this president may have ordered criminal offenses. But they may now be on the road to do that, because the way Congress can get around the executive privilege in court is to say, we're investigating a potential crime."

I also liked Turley's comment with regard to Addington's position: "In past administrations, if someone like Mr. Addington made such a moronic argument as this one, they would be out of a job the next week. ... I think that what it really shows is the lack of sort of adult supervision within the administration." More coverage on this can be found here.

Turley's "lack of adult supervision" comment was right on target. We've often heard comments that the current administration is the worst in American history, but I've long been of the opinion that the Bush Regime is also the most childish administration in history. I hope Turley's statement -- or something like it -- becomes a Democrat talking point.

Toles

The Washington Post's "Hacktacular" Defense Of Scooter Libby

There they go again.

The Washington Post is once again defending convicted felon Scooter Libby. This time its WaPo columnist (and former Iraq War cheerleader) Richard Cohen who has come to Libby's aid. Here is what Cohen has to say about the Plame Investigation which led to the conviction of his good friend Scooter:

It would not have been conducted if, say, the Iraq war had ended with 300 deaths and the mission had really been accomplished. An unpopular war produced the popular cry for scalps and, in Libby's case, the additional demand that he express contrition -- a vestigial Stalinist-era yearning for abasement. No one has yet explained, though, how Libby can express contrition and still appeal his conviction. No matter. Antiwar sanctimony excuses the inexplicable.

Accountability is one thing. By all means, let Congress investigate and conduct oversight hearings with relish and abandon. But a prosecution is a different matter. It entails the government at its most coercive -- a power so immense and sometimes so secretive that it poses much more of a threat to civil liberties, including freedom of the press, than anything in the interstices of the scary Patriot Act. The mere arrival of a form letter from the IRS will give any sane person a touch of angina.

I don't expect George Bush to appreciate this. He is the privileged son of a privileged son, and he fears nothing except, probably, doubt. But the rest of us ought to consider what Fitzgerald has wrought and whether we are better off for his efforts. I have come to hate the war and I cannot approve of lying under oath -- not by Scooter, not by Bill Clinton, not by anybody. But the underlying crime is absent, the sentence is excessive and the investigation should not have been conducted in the first place. This is a mess. Should Libby be pardoned? Maybe. Should his sentence be commuted? Definitely.

Let me see if I got this right. A Republican-appointed prosecutor gets perjury and obstruction convictions in a jury trial presided over by a Republican-appointed judge in a case where the evidence clearly supported the verdict, and the Washington Post is acting as if history's greatest miscarriage of justice just took place.

Give me a fucking break.

I could go on and on about this and the rest of the Washington Post's bullshit on this topic, but Eric Boehlert has done a much better job than I could ever do. His analysis can be found here.

By the way, TPMMuckraker is reporting that Steven Griles, the former No. 2 guy at the Interior Department, got a 10-month prison sentence for lying to congressional investigators about his ties to Jack Abramoff. The prosecutor on that case was only asking for a prison term of five months. I'm certain the Washington Post is going to have a problem with the sentence as well.

This Is Weak

From The Huffington Post:

The Supreme Court tightened limits on student speech Monday, ruling against a high school student and his 14-foot-long "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner.

Schools may prohibit student expression that can be interpreted as advocating drug use, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court in a 5-4 ruling.

Joseph Frederick unfurled his homemade sign on a winter morning in 2002, as the Olympic torch made its way through Juneau, Alaska, en route to the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Frederick said the banner was a nonsensical message that he first saw on a snowboard. He intended the banner to proclaim his right to say anything at all.

His principal, Deborah Morse, said the phrase was a pro-drug message that had no place at a school-sanctioned event. Frederick denied that he was advocating for drug use.

"The message on Frederick's banner is cryptic," Roberts said. "But Principal Morse thought the banner would be interpreted by those viewing it as promoting illegal drug use, and that interpretation is plainly a reasonable one."

Morse suspended the student, prompting a federal civil rights lawsuit.* * *

This Is Hilarious

From The Swamp via Firedoglake:

When the MoveOn.org Political Action Project found out that Lieberman was one of the hosts of a $3,000-a-person Washington fundraiser tonight for Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the grass-roots, anti-war group pounced.

MoveOn has long been at odds with Lieberman, a strong backer of the war who won re-election last year as an independent. He has worked together with Collins for years as leaders of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
The word went out from MoveOn Tuesday: Donate money to defeat Collins, who could face a tough re-election battle next year, it told members in an e-mail.

Within 24 hours, more than 5,600 members donated an average of $63 each, for a total of $355,000.

MoveOn, knowing a good thing, decided to keep it going, and Wednesday sent out another e-mail.

“Wow,” the organization said. “In less than 24 hours, thousands of us around the country chipped in more than $280,000 to help anti-war candidates beat Joe Lieberman’s pro-war fundraiser. It’s amazing.

Keep up the good work, Joe.

Exactly

What Atrios says:

[T]orture is wrong. We shouldn't torture. There should be no procedures in place for torture. Everyone should understand this. But if the Joker does in fact have a nuclear bomb ready to go off underneath Gotham, and vigilante crime fighter Batman needs to employ a little force to learn the magic code needed to stop it before the timer counts down to zero, then I imagine that if Batman does in fact manage to stop the destruction of the city that no jury would convict or that a presidential pardon would likely take care of things if they did.

Bush Is Now The Most Unpopular President Since Nixon

Wow:

In 19 months, George W. Bush will leave the White House for the last time. The latest NEWSWEEK Poll suggests that he faces a steep climb if he hopes to coax the country back to his side before he goes. In the new poll, conducted Monday and Tuesday nights, President Bush’s approval rating has reached a record low. Only 26 percent of Americans, just over one in four, approve of the job the 43rd president is doing; while, a record 65 percent disapprove, including nearly a third of Republicans.

The new numbers—a 2 point drop from the last NEWSWEEK Poll at the beginning of May—are statistically unchanged, given the poll’s 4 point margin of error. But the 26 percent rating puts Bush lower than Jimmy Carter, who sunk to his nadir of 28 percent in a Gallup poll in June 1979. In fact, the only president in the last 35 years to score lower than Bush is Richard Nixon. Nixon’s approval rating tumbled to 23 percent in January 1974, seven months before his resignation over the botched Watergate break-in. * * *

Given these numbers, I think Bush will have no choice but to pardon Scooter. I'd be willing to bet that nearly every person in this country who still supports Bush also wants to see him pardon Libby. If Bush fails to do so and Libby ends up going to prison, expect to see Bush's approval number drop into the upper teens.

Carl Levin -- Political Coward

This Washington Post piece by Democratic Senator Carl Levin made me ill:

I voted against going to war in Iraq; I have consistently challenged the administration's conduct of the war; and I have long fought to change our policy there. But I cannot vote to stop funding the troops while they are in harm's way, conducting dangerous missions such as those recently begun north of Baghdad. I agree with Lincoln, who decided "that the Administration had done wrong in getting us into the war, but that the Officers and soldiers who went to the field must be supplied and sustained at all events." As long as our nation's policies put them there, our troops should hear an unequivocal message from Congress that we support them.

And the Democrats in Congress wonder why their numbers are tanking so badly? It's crap like this that makes me proud I left the Democrat Party last year.

Oh, and by the way, 14 more of our troops have died in Iraq. But let's look on the bright side -- that's 14 less troops that Senator Levin has to "support."

UPDATE: Here is Senator Russ Feingold's response to Levin:

I’m disappointed that Senator Levin chose to announce his shift by disingenuously suggesting that the Feingold-Reid plan would somehow cut funding for troops in harm’s way. Senator Levin knows full well that the plan I introduced with Majority Leader Harry Reid, and which was supported by a majority of Senate Democrats, would end funding for the war in Iraq only after our brave troops have been safely redeployed out of Iraq. It is time for Senator Levin and Senator Jack Reed to drop their opposition to the Feingold-Reid plan to safely redeploy our troops by March 31, 2008, and then end funding for the mistake in Iraq.

BushCo's Pakistan Policy Has Failed Miserably

My thinking in the months following the 9-11 attacks was that we needed to send at least 100,000 of our troops into Afghanistan and use it as a jump-off point from which to invade Pakistan. After all, the Taliban originated in Pakistan, and it was clear that there were elements within the Pakistani government that still supported the Taliban. If they're not with us, then they're against us, right?

Pakistan has nukes, you say? So what. We have more. Plus, we probably could have gotten our allies to help us in such an endeavor, given (1) all the goodwill we had around the world in the months following the 9-11 attacks, and (2) Pakistan was actually linked to the 9-11 attacks through its association with the Taliban (i.e., no need to manipulate the intelligence like BushCo had to do with regard to Iraq). I have no doubt the American people would have supported such an invasion. Americans, after all, supported the invasion of Iraq, at least initially.

But instead, we made a deal with Musharraf and then decided to invade a country that was no threat to us or anyone and that had no ties with the 9-11 attacks. And we know how that all turned out.

The U.S. debacle in Iraq has been expensive for us not only in lives, treasure, and loss of goodwill, but also because Afghanistan is currently going to hell in a hand basket. And now, it's starting to look like our deal with Pakistan is going to come back and bite us in the ass:

Pakistan is on the brink of disaster, and the Bush administration is continuing to back the man who dragged it there. As President Pervez Musharraf fights off the most serious challenge to his eight-year dictatorship, the United States is supporting him to the hilt. The message to the Pakistani public is clear: To the Bush White House, the war on terrorism tops everything, and that includes democracy. * * *

The roots of the crisis go back to the blind bargain Washington made after 9/11 with the regime that had heretofore been the Taliban's main patron: ignoring Musharraf's despotism in return for his promises to crack down on al-Qaeda and cut the Taliban loose. Today, despite $10 billion in U.S. aid to Pakistan since 2001, that bargain is in tatters; the Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan, and al-Qaeda's senior leadership has set up another haven inside Pakistan's chaotic border regions.

The problem is exacerbated by a dramatic drop-off in U.S. expertise on Pakistan. Retired American officials say that, for the first time in U.S. history, nobody with serious Pakistan experience is working in the South Asia bureau of the State Department, on State's policy planning staff, on the National Security Council staff or even in Vice President Cheney's office. Anne W. Patterson, the new U.S. ambassador to Islamabad, is an expert on Latin American "drugs and thugs"; Richard A. Boucher, the assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, is a former department spokesman who served three tours in Hong Kong and China but never was posted in South Asia. "They know nothing of Pakistan," a former senior U.S. diplomat said.

The level of incompetence within the Bush Administration never ceases to amaze me.

Only In [Bush's] America

From the AP:

The cash-strapped city of New Orleans is turning to foreign countries for help to rebuild as federal hurricane-recovery dollars remain slow to flow.
Kenya Smith, director of intergovernmental relations for Mayor Ray Nagin, said city leaders are talking with more than five countries. He wouldn't identify the countries, saying discussions were in the early stages. But he said the city is "very serious" about pursuing foreign help.

"Of course, we would love to have all the resources we need from federal and state partners, but we're comfortable now in having to be creative," Smith said. He did not know if the city would have to overcome any obstacles if it got firm pledges for aid, but "we want to make sure we're leaving no options unexplored."

For months Nagin has complained bureaucracy is choking the flow of much-needed federal aid dollars to New Orleans - slowing the city's recovery. As of June 8, the city said it had received just over half of the $320 million FEMA has obligated for rebuilding city infrastructure and emergency response-related costs. The city has estimated its damage at far more than that - at least $1 billion. And that doesn't include other improvements - such as raised neighborhoods - meant to help build the stronger city promoted by Nagin and his recovery director.

Discussions with foreign representatives have been occurring off and on since the storm, but Smith said the city became re-engaged after a news report in April that millions of dollars in aid offered by foreign countries after Hurricane Katrina went unaccepted. * * *

Deep Vote

Wow:

Iran's parliament on Wednesday voted in favor of a bill that could lead to the death penalty for persons convicted of working in the production of pornographic movies.

With a 148-5 vote in favor and four abstentions, lawmakers present at the Wednesday session of the 290-seat parliament approved that "producers of pornographic works and main elements in their production are considered corrupter of the world and could be sentenced to punishment as corrupter of the world."

The term, "corrupter of the world" is taken from the Quran, the Muslims' holy book, and ranks among the highest on the scale of an individual's criminal offenses. Under Iran's Islamic Penal Code, it carries a death penalty.

The "main elements" referred to in the draft include producers, directors, cameramen and actors involved in making a pornographic video.

The bill is so harsh, in fact, that even "Key Grips" and "Best Boys" aren't excluded from the death penalty.

Iran's parliament also voted to execute the five people who voted "no" on the bill, as well as the four who abstained.

Hellmuth Wins 11th Bracelet

From Fox Sports:

Phil Hellmuth now holds the record he's coveted for years.

The "Poker Brat" won his 11th career bracelet at the World Series of Poker Monday night, taking down event No. 15, a $1,500 no-limit hold 'em event.
He outlasted a field of 2,628 to take down the $637,254 first place prize.

He now leads poker legends Johnny Chan and Doyle Brunson by one, and needs just one more final table appearance to tie T.J. Cloutier's record of 39.

Doyle Brunson reportedly bet $300,000 on Hellmuth to win a bracelet this year, then bet another $100,000 at the end of Day 1 when Hellmuth was one of the chipleaders.

This Is What Happens To Democrats Who Wimp Out On Iraq

From TPM Cafe:

A key number in the new Los Angeles Times poll: It finds that approval of Congress has sank to 27%, the lowest in a decade -- and even more tellingly, that less than one-third of liberals approve of the job Congress is doing.

The numbers would seem to suggest the possibility that the Dem leadership's decision to send President Bush a no-withdrawal-timelines Iraq funding bill may be further eroding public support for the new Dem Congress. * * *

I heard on the radio this morning that Harry Reid's approval rating has now fallen below Dick Cheney's approval rating. Maybe these poll results will convince the Democrats to go after Bush aggressively with regard to the Iraq Debacle, but something tells me they won't.

How Do You Spell Hypocrite?

B-O-R-K:

Judge Robert Bork, one of the fathers of the modern judicial conservative movement whose nomination to the Supreme Court was rejected by the Senate, is seeking $1,000,000 in compensatory damages, plus punitive damages, after he slipped and fell at the Yale Club of New York City. Judge Bork was scheduled to give a speech at the club, but he fell when mounting the dais, and injured his head and left leg. He alleges that the Yale Club is liable for the $1m plus punitive damages because they "wantonly, willfully, and recklessly" failed to provide staging which he could climb safely.

Judge Bork has been a leading advocate of restricting plaintiffs' ability to recover through tort law. In a 2002 article published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy--the official journal of the Federalist Society--Bork argued that frivolous claims and excessive punitive damage awards have caused the Constitution to evolve into a document which would allow Congress to enact tort reforms that would have been unconstitutional at the framing. . . .

Here We Go

Turkey invades Iraq (maybe):

Turkish troops crossed into northern Iraq early Wednesday to chase Kurdish guerrillas who attack Turkey from bases there, three Turkish security officials said. Turkey's foreign minister denied its troops had entered Iraq.

The senior security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, characterized the raid as a "hot pursuit" raid that was limited in scope. They told The Associated Press it did not constitute the kind of large incursion that Turkish leaders have been discussing in recent weeks.

One official said several thousand troops went less than two miles inside Iraq and were still there in late afternoon. "It is a hot pursuit, not an incursion," one official said.

Another official said by telephone it was "not a major offensive and the number of troops is not in the tens of thousands." He also said the Turkish troops went into a remote, mountainous area.

A third official, based in the border region, said 600 commandos entered Iraq, and were backed up by several thousand troops along the border. He said the commandos raided Iraqi territory across from the Turkish border town of Cukurca before dawn after rebels opened fire from Iraqi soil on Turkish patrols.

The official said the commandos returned to their bases in Turkey later in the day. There was no immediate explanation for the conflicting accounts of the officials.

Next Up -- TreasonGate 2: The Pardon

Via Yahoo News:

Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison Tuesday for lying and obstructing the CIA leak investigation.

Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, stood calmly before a packed courtroom as a federal judge said the evidence overwhelmingly proved his guilt.

"People who occupy these types of positions, where they have the welfare and security of nation in their hands, have a special obligation to not do anything that might create a problem," U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said.

Walton did not set a date for Libby to report to prison. Though he saw no reason to let Libby remain free pending appeal, Walton said he would accept written arguments on the issue and rule later.

The best thing that can happen would be Judge Walton ordering Libby to start serving his prison term as soon as possible. That would mean that Bush would have to pardon him sooner than later, and I think he might pay a political price for that (i.e., his approval rating will drop from 33% to 29%). I don't expect that Scooter will ever see the inside of a prison cell.