INSIDER INSIGHT: Best of political blogs
The Associated Press' overnight Washington editors scour the political blogs for interesting opinions,
analysis and information. Their morning reports consist of the original headlines and text from the blogs. Click below for today's edition, compiled by Jerry Estill.
PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN The latest on Fred Thompson. I'm told by a good source that later today Fred Thompson will take the next step on the road to becoming a presidential candidate. Specifically, he will give the go-ahead to put into place his financing and fundraising operation. This won't change Thompson's official status, but it's the next logical step one would take if one intended to change that status by entering the race.
Fred Ready for Primetime. We hear from an NBCer: [via] Chuck Todd, tells us that Fred Thompson had a conf. call with over 100 donor/fundraisers to formally explore a presidential run. They are going to open their "testing the waters" phase on June 4th, when they're expected to launch a one-day blitz to raise a significan amount of money.
Introducing the McCain Campaign Dead Pool! The general trend of the polls is unmistakable. John McCain’s campaign is sinking like the Titanic after having run into the iceberg of immigration "reform". … There are two possibilities as far as the McCain campaign is concerned. The first is he turns things around and zips back to the front of the pack. But let’s be realistic – were it not for his media-awarded putative frontrunner status, John McCain would have no business even being in this race just like Joe Lieberman had no business being in the Democrats’ 2004 race. Like old Joementum, McCain is simply too out of sync on too many issues with the party whose nomination he seeks. … Because the McCain Campaign Dead Pool was my idea, I get to make the first selection. I’m choosing Friday, August 31, 2007. http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/g/1315a5a3-cf2c-4d73-bb0a-b14c78c6ced3
INVESTIGATIONShttp://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/03/16/waxman-v-toensing/> issue an apology? And Fred Hiatt <http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/04/18/wapo-editor-drinks-the-kool-aid-over-fred-hiatt/> should follow her lead <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18924679/> .http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/05/29/plame-was-a-covert-agent/ http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/29/221048/263
Plame was a Covert Agent. It's official. Valerie Plame was a covert agent at the time her name was leaked by Novak. Will Victoria Toensing <
Plame was covert. Yet another wingnut article of faith shattered by reality.
Valerie Plame Was Covert. Oh, Victoria. Ms. Toensing, dahling. Let us review, shall we? Oh, yes, let's. Joseph Wilson's wife, you remember, the covert C.I.A. agent? Well, about that "covert" status you went on and on and on about, my dear. Read it and weep, because the right-wing neocon slime machine lost this one, unfortunately so did this country.http://www.taylormarsh.com/archives_view.php?id=25666
Another Reason To Question The Tenet Regime At Langley. NBC has received a declassified report <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18924679/> from the CIA which states that the agency considered Valerie Plame a "covert agent" at the time her identity was revealed to Robert Novak and other journalists in July 2003. … Plame drove into the office in Langley. She traveled abroad under her own name. She helped arrange for her husband to do some fact-checking on a sensitive intelligence matter. Her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, then came home and leaked his observations to two nationally-known journalists, and then wrote his own op-ed in the New York Times under his byline. And her husband managed to list her in Who's Who. … If that's keeping an agent covert, it speaks volumes about the agency's competence during the George Tenet years. … I suppose the only reason that Fitzgerald didn't bother to indict Richard Armitage for the crime was that it would have meant explaining how the CIA tried to hide its NOC asset in plain sight.http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/010095.php
Politicization of immigration judges exposed. ThinkProgress noted last week that the Justice Department has expanded its internal investigation of partisan hiring practices after Monica Goodling admitted that she "considered party affiliation in screening applicants to become immigration judges <http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/25/gonzales-goodling-immigration/> ." The Legal Times sheds new light <http://www.law.com/jsp/dc/PubArticleDC.jsp?d=1179824708832&hub=TopStoriesMoreTextAlert> on this controversial process. This hiring process has since been ended, following a lawsuit by a Hispanic immigration lawyer who charged that the Justice Dept. "discriminated against her on the basis of her race and gender when it chose two white men for the vacancy." But the legacy of Gonzales lives on.http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/30/politicization-of-immigration-judges-exposed/
CROSSED THE LINE. For all of the posturing by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee during the testimony of former Department of Justice political appointee Monica Goodling, they and their Democrat colleagues in the Clinton administration went to far greater lengths to identify and track the political activities of career and politically appointed lawyers in the Department of Justice and elsewhere. "We knew the political affiliation of every lawyer and political appointee we hired at the Department of Justice from January 1993 to the end of the Administration," says a former Clinton Department of Justice political appointee. "We kept charts and used them when it came time for new U.S. Attorney nominations, detailee assignments, and other hiring decisions. If you didn't vote Democrat, you weren't going anywhere with us. It was that simple."http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=11497
AK-Sen: Stevens under FBI investigation. The FBI has been on a tear in Alaska of late, cracking a ring of corrupt Alaskan state legislators (all Republican, of course), who had the temerity to call themselves the "Corrupt Bastards Club <http://www.adn.com/news/government/story/8144643p-8038526c.html> ". (The Anchorage Daily News has a whole section <http://www.adn.com/news/politics/fbi/> dedicated to the FBI investigation.) And my, who turns up as a target <http://www.adn.com/news/politics/fbi/story/8929084p-8829178c.html> of the FBI investigation? Our favorite Internet expert and bridge builder extraordinaire -- Ted Stevens.http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/29/19343/2954
Very uncomfortable. "Enhanced interrogation", the Bush administration's preferred newspeak for torture, appears to have been coined by the Nazi Party in the 1937 <http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/05/verschfte_verne.html> . http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/014368.php
There are way too many facile comparisons of whatever group or individual we dislike to Nazis. But when the shoe fits.
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