Feds unlikely to prosecute former Rep. Mark Foley for his behavior with congressional pages, ABC reports.
--David Kurtz
More on Jack Abramoff's HUD connection: HUD still maintains that Abramoff had no lobbying contacts with the department, but billing records from Abramoff's old firm tell a different story. Special cameo appearances by Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL), a former HUD secretary and the president's choice to chair the Republican National Committee, and current Secretary Alphonso Jackson. This angle to the Abramoff iinvestigation has been percolating for a while.
--David Kurtz
We should know later tonight whether Rep. "Dollar Bill" Jefferson (D-LA) is able to win re-election while the target of a federal bribery investigation. The polls close in his runoff at 9 p.m. EST.
Update: Jefferson ahead 56%-44%, with less than 25% reporting.
Late update: With 33% of precincts reporting, Jefferson leads Karen Carter 60%-40%.
--David Kurtz
Okay, these are fairly round numbers. But they give us at least a broad view of the problem. According a recent UN report, approximately 100,000 Iraqis per month are leaving the country. And an average of 2,000 per day are streaming out into Syria (the rest appear to be leaving through Jordan, approximately 1,000 per day according to this Brookings report). Bear in mind that Iraq is a country of just under 27 million people. So in demographic terms, that amounts to something like arterial bleeding.
The respected international aid and advocacy group Refugees International put the numbers together in a single report and put the number of Iraqi refugees at 2.3 million, with 1.8 million in neighboring countries (overwhelmingly in Syria and Jordan) and 500,000 internally displaced refugees persons (i.e., within Iraq).
For further information, here's a Human Rights Watch report on the treatment of Iraqi refugees in Jordan.
Beneath the aggregate numbers, there's the next question of who's leaving. Mass flight like this never cuts evenly across a country's demography. I know there's been a lot of anecdotal reports that Iraq's small but not numerically insignificant Christian community is basically fleeing the country en masse. And in January of 2006, a UN report said that 40% of "professionals" -- though that term can mean different things -- had left the country since the invasion. Given what's happened this year it seems inconceivable that the number hasn't ballooned since.
As we used to say in the Cold War (though it was perhaps Lenin's coinage?), people vote with their feet.
--Josh Marshall
Senate Majority Leader-elect Harry Reid (D-NV), following Friday's Oval Office meeting with the President on Iraq: "I just didn't feel there today, the president in his words or his demeanor, that he is going to do anything right away to change things drastically. He is tepid in what he talks about doing. Someone has to get the message to this man that there have to be significant changes."
More here, including the President's now standard fallback position when challenged: "I am the commander in chief." I doubt that is the sort of management technique he was taught at Harvard Business School. It's more like something Steve Carell's character in The Office would come up with.
--David Kurtz
We hear again and again that large numbers of Iraqis are going abroad to escape the descent into violence at home, particularly the well-educated and well-off. But is there specific and quantifiable data on this rather than anecdotal evidence? If you know of any concrete data on this, can you send it in to our comments emails?
--Josh Marshall
Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT): "They call me racist. Don’t even own a car."
Is that supposed to be funny?
--David Kurtz
Newsweek: Bush at 32%; 68% think America is losing in Iraq; 53% say invading Iraq was a bad idea.
--Josh Marshall
Via Muckraker, here's a snippet of a Congressional Quarterly interview with incoming House intelligence committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX):
Reyes stumbled when I asked him a simple question about al Qaeda at the end of a 40-minute interview in his office last week. Members of the Intelligence Committee, mind you, are paid $165,200 a year to know more than basic facts about our foes in the Middle East.We warmed up with a long discussion about intelligence issues and Iraq. And then we veered into terrorism’s major players.
To me, it’s like asking about Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland: Who’s on what side?
The dialogue went like this:
Al Qaeda is what, I asked, Sunni or Shia?
“Al Qaeda, they have both,” Reyes said. “You’re talking about predominately?”
“Sure,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
“Predominantly — probably Shiite,” he ventured.
He couldn’t have been more wrong.
Al Qaeda is profoundly Sunni. If a Shiite showed up at an al Qaeda club house, they’d slice off his head and use it for a soccer ball.
Ladies and gentlemen, your new intel committee chairman.
--David Kurtz
Is there anything more self-serving than Don Rumsfeld saying his worst day as defense secretary was when he learned of the Abu Ghraib abuses? (And which day was that exactly?) Worse than the attacks on 9/11, which killed nearly 3,000 people, a day on which a jetliner crashed into the Pentagon while Rumsfeld was in his office there?
No secretary of defense would subordinate the worst attack on the U.S. homeland in modern times to what Rumsfeld himself has called isolated incidents of abuse by low-level soldiers. That is, unless that secretary of defense was legally or morally culpable for that abuse, or as I'm sure is the case here, he is convinced that Abu Ghraib will be the symbol of his legacy and of the great failure that the Iraq adventure has become.
In either case, it says all you need to know about Rumsfeld that he doesn't consider 9/11 his worst day as secretary of defense.
--David Kurtz
Maybe if I ignore this for a while it'll get better?
From USNews ...
White House advisers say Bush won't react in detail to the ISG report for several weeks, while he assesses it and awaits various internal government reports on the situation from his own advisers. Bush tells aides he doesn't want to "outsource" his role as commander in chief. Some Bush allies say this is a way to buy some time as the president tries to decide how to deal with rising pressure to alter his strategy in Iraq and hopes the critical media focus on the Iraq war will soften.
What a pitiful coward this man is. Maybe if I just sort of shuffle the papers a bit and clear my throat everybody will get off my case. That's his response.
Just above that passage there's this ...
"We have a classic case of circling the wagons," says a former adviser to Bush the elder. "If President Bush changes his policy in Iraq in a fundamental way, it undermines the whole premise of his presidency. I just don't believe he will ever do that."
I'm not sure I've ever heard anything truer said on the whole sorry topic of this war. And it gets to the heart of the issue. He won't ever change course. Not because there's anyone who can't see that the present course is a catastrophe, but because changing course would cut the legs from under the collective denial of the president and his supporters. As bad as things get they can still pretend they're on the way to getting better. It's a long hard slog to January 2009 when it becomes someone else's fault. Once they pull the plug themselves, though, they admit it was all a disaster, that the whole presidency was, in Dick Gephardt's half forgotten phrase, "a miserable failure."
That is why we're in Iraq today. Get your head around it.
--Josh Marshall
A subcontinent of mortification? From the BBC ...
A survey of more than 1,000 men in India has concluded that condoms made according to international sizes are too large for a majority of Indian men.The study found that more than half of the men measured had penises that were shorter than international standards for condoms.
It has led to a call for condoms of mixed sizes to be made more widely available in India.
The two-year study was carried out by the Indian Council of Medical Research.
Over 1,200 volunteers from the length and breadth of the country had their penises measured precisely, down to the last millimetre.
The scientists even checked their sample was representative of India as a whole in terms of class, religion and urban and rural dwellers.
The conclusion of all this scientific endeavour is that about 60% of Indian men have penises which are between three and five centimetres shorter than international standards used in condom manufacture.
There must be some globalization joke in here. But I'm afraid to find it. Maybe about out-sourcing?
--Josh Marshall
If, like me, you're still following the mob angle to the Jack Abramoff scandal, then you'll enjoy the latest installment from the Palm Beach Post:
Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis was killed gangland-style nearly six years ago, but he may have been instrumental this week in helping a man get a reduction in his prison sentence in a high-profile slaying at a suburban Boca Raton deli.Circuit Judge Stephen Rapp reduced the sentence of Ralph Liotta from 15 to 12 years this week after hearing testimony that the man Liotta killed, John "J.J." Gurino, may have been Boulis' hit man. That was further proof of how dangerous Gurino was, and why Liotta was justifiably afraid of him, Liotto's attorney, Doug Duncan, argued.
. . .
Boulis, 51, was ambushed by a gunman in Fort Lauderdale in February 2001 as he sat in his BMW. In 2000 he sold SunCruz to Washington, D.C. attorney Adam Kidan and imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Boulis then sued Kidan and his partners in a dispute over the sale.
Does anyone know if Jack has sold the movie rights to his story?
--David Kurtz
Republican Rep. John Shimkus demanded Friday that two of Congress's leading Democrats apologize for what he said were accusations that he tried to cover up the Capitol Hill pages' scandal involving former GOP Rep. Mark Foley.In interviews with news media outlets in his south central Illinois congressional district, Shimkus lashed out at a fellow Illinoisan, Sen. Dick Durbin, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California.
"People, like Senator Durbin and Nancy Pelosi, who are using this for partisan gain, they ought to be ashamed of themselves," Shimkus said on WJPF-AM radio in Herrin.
According to the House Ethics Committee report released today:
After Foley resigned, Shimkus told another Republican member of the Page Board _ Rep. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia _ why he never informed the Democratic member of the board, Rep. Dale Kildee of Michigan, about Foley.Shimkus said, 'Dale's a nice guy, but he's a Democrat, and I was afraid it would be blown out of proportion."
--David Kurtz
Republicans spent nearly $40 million on House races in campaign's final days. Didn't win one seat; lost 29.
That's something like $1.29 million spent per seat lost.
--Greg Sargent
According to the just-released House report, Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) was sent a copy of an IM conversation where Foley had inquired after an ex-page's penis size. And when the scandal broke, he tried to keep the young guy quiet.
And no ethics rules were broken?
Update: More revelations from the report here.
--Justin Rood
Early reports are in on the ethics report on Foleygate -- and it's a mixed bag.
--Paul Kiel
The times, they are a-changin'. Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR), in a speech on the Iraq War last night:
"I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd. It may even be criminal."
--Paul Kiel
House ethics committee to hold press conference at 2 PM today about its Mark Foley report.
--Paul Kiel
Happy Last Day of the 109th Congress!
Over at TPMmuckraker, it's a day long celebration. Soon, we'll be posting our tribute to the Congress that was a muckraker's dream.
But first, are we finally going to get that long-promised report on the alleged Mark Foley cover-up today? Signs are... maybe.
--Paul Kiel
Former detainees will go to court today to hold Donald Rumsfeld responsible for the torture they endured. And guess what? Experts say the case isn't such a long shot. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
Below I favorably note Sen. Carl Levin's (D-MI) statement that he's willing to start handing out subpoenas in the hearings he's going to hold into the Pentagon's conduct of the war in Iraq. I won't deny for a second that there are hearings I'm looking forward to just to see some of the Bush administration's crooks and incompetents get their comeuppance. This isn't one of them.
Think how much might have been different if Congress had exercised any meaningful oversight role through any of this catastrophe. The level of irresponsibility, the lockstep indifference has been nothing short of depraved. Calling it an abdication of responsibility is like saying a murderer didn't have enough concern for his victim's health.
Even at this late stage in the game, there are basic dimensions of what's going on in Iraq that we're just clueless about. And I don't mean the policy answers we can't find. I mean, the facts about the conduct of the war that the administration -- the ultimate unreliable narrator -- just won't share with the public or the Congress.
Consider: why did we have to wait for the ISG, the ultimate band of CFR foggies, to tell us that the US has been systematically undercounting the numbers of Iraqi dead? This is hardly the most shocking of the lies I'm sure we're being told. But it does highlight the point. How can we find our way out of this mess if we're left in the dark?
--Josh Marshall
Are you a TPM fan slaving away in the decrepit old media? An enterprising new blogger? Come work for TPM. Be a part of a new kind of political journalism. We're hiring.
--Josh Marshall
That's more like it (from the Post) ...
Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) said he plans to hold a series of hearings on Iraq soon after becoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee next month when Democrats take control of Congress, and he said he is prepared to use subpoenas to get relevant documents from the Pentagon.
And this ain't bad either ...
Hamilton also told the senators that they are part of the problem. "I, frankly, am not that impressed with what the Congress has been able to do," said the 34-year House veteran. "I think the Congress has been extraordinarily timid in its exercise of its constitutional responsibilities on the question of warmaking and conducting war."
More please.
--Josh Marshall
Know your investigators.
In recent years under GOP control, the congressional intelligence committees have been known mainly for their silence and corruption. Meet the Democrats leading the "cleanup agenda" this January.
--Paul Kiel
First order questions, courtesy of TPM Reader MS ...
I've noticed a pattern in the official and media portrayal of the situation in Iraq that I am curious if others have also noticed. Bush, ISG, and other "advice reports" all seem to assume that the official government of Iraq, as personified by Nuri Maliki, has the same intentions for Iraq that we do.This assumption seems crazy to me as contrary evidence is everywhere. Maliki has repeatedly demonstrated favoritism toward the Shia and its militias and seems to be sponsoring -- or at least openly tolerating -- the Shia militias' conflict with the Sunni militias. Iraq is making commercial deals with Iran openly, publicly, and in clear defiance of us. Maliki ordered our troops to take down the barricades we had constructed to rescue a kidnaped soldier in Sadr City, immediately after Moqtada al-Sadr pressured him to do so. Sadr even kidnaped all the bureaucrats in Iraq's Education ministry in broad daylight. Can anyone seriously contend that was done without the official government's knowledge and approval.
Here's the point. If the true aim of Iraq's official government is what is seems; i.e., develop close ties with the Shia community in Iran, annihilate the Sunnis, and establish an Islamic government, why are we continuing to assist them?
Without addressing this specific question, is there any substantial body of people in Iraq -- south of Kurdistan at least -- who wants anything remotely like what President Bush wants? What is our constituency?
--Josh Marshall
Ouch! It's just one poll. But the latest Rasmussen poll has approval of Congress down at 13%. Has the number ever been that low?
--Josh Marshall
Howard Dean weighs in on the post-election battle over Katharine Harris' old seat:
Republican Vern Buchanan might be the official winner in a messy Sarasota-area congressional race, but Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean says the Democratic-controlled Congress should not seat Buchanan without another election."Absolutely not," Dean said in a taped Political Connections interview scheduled to air Sunday on Bay News 9. "You cannot seat someone if you don't have an election that's valid."
--Paul Kiel
Bush administration: We've taken too much lead out of the air. Time to ease up.
--Josh Marshall
I printed a number of press releases yesterday from politicians in response to the Iraq Study Group report. But the only one that, I think, really said anything was John Murtha's. The key passage from Murtha was: "The ISG recommended that we begin a withdrawal of U.S. troops by early 2008, depending on conditions on the ground. This is no different than the current policy."
From what I can tell, this isn't quite what the report says. It says we should have a majority of our troops out by early 2008. That's a big difference since, as Kevin Drum points out here, moving 50,000 or 100,000 troops out of war zone takes a very long period of time. You don't do it in a month. Kevin says that force protection doctrines require a withdrawal of that size to take someting like a year -- 12 months.
Now, the first thing I'd like is to see if anybody can point me in the direction of more precise information on the time frame of such a withdrawal. I don't have much doubt Kevin's in the ballpark. But I'd like to nail this down because if that estimate is right, as Kevin points out, that means we'd need to start the process of withdrawal in the next couple months to keep on schedule. So, can anyone point me to more specific information on that?
Murtha's larger point, however, seems right. Saying we'd like to get a lot of our troops out of Iraq in a year or a year and a half "depending on conditions on the ground" really is the same policy we have right now. A hope, absent a plan, and contingent on things getting better in Iraq -- a development that seems highly unlikely and less likely by the day.
The rub of the issue I don't see being discussed -- at least not directly -- is this, the category question: are US troops more a cause of instability in Iraq or a solution/buffer against instability? This has always been the anguish and impossibility of our position in the country. As I wrote over at TPMCafe almost a year and a half ago, the dilemma of our presence in Iraq has been that we're both the glue holding the place together and the solvent tearing it apart.
But it can't really be both. Or, rather, it has to be more one than the other. And that's the choice that the ISG, I think, couldn't make. The right policy flows logically from that choice. If our presence is more problem than solution than you pull the troops out in a way to mitigate damage and you do it in an orderly matter. But you wouldn't stop the course of withdrawal if things got worse on the ground. If anything you'd accelerate it.
Late Update: A anonymous reader disagrees ...
I don't think that's what the ISG report says.The Bush policy, in a nutshell, is: Proceed with training Iraqi forces and, as they get better, we hand them more responsibility, enabling us to leave. Conditions on the ground permitting. The ISG policy, in a nutshell, is: Withdraw US forces by the first quarter 2008, barring "unexpected developments in the security situation on the ground."
Still don't see the difference? OK.
What happens when you couple the "unexpected developments" with the ISG's comment that "The United States must make it clear to the Iraqi government that the United States could carry out its plans, including planned redeployments, even if the Iraqi government did not implement their planned changes." (page 7, and the context makes it clear they mean, "even if you don't do reconciliation, troop training, etc").
Constant level of violence? Not an "unexpected development." Failure to move forward on national reconciliation? Not an "unexpected development." Failure to train Iraqi security forces? Not an "unexpected development."
So what do we get?
Bush policy: We can only leave if the government is up, running, and healthy and the Iraqi security forces are ready to take over.
ISG policy: Ready or not, we're leaving. Unless, you know, Saudi Arabia or Iran or Turkey invades.
I think that's considerably different.
--Josh Marshall
Hmmm. That's reassuring. MSNBC's breaking news marquee reports that President Bush says "we will prevail in Iraq." That's about all the thought that needs to go into it, I guess.
Also, the president says a self-governing Iraq is a "noble goal", which also clarifies things.
--Josh Marshall
McCain hires a campaign manager:The strategist behind the infamous, racially-charged "bimbo" ad attacking Dem Senate candidate Harold Ford, Jr.
--Greg Sargent
The push has already begun -- Sens. Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Pat Leahy (D-VT) reintroduce legislation to restore legal rights to the prisoners at Guantanamo and elsewhere. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Paul Kiel
Santorum goes down swinging ...
After Gates was confirmed, Santorum -- who lost his seat in the November election amid a wave of unhappiness about the Iraq war -- took to the Senate floor.He delivered a nearly hourlong speech, warning of the dangers of not confronting "Islamic fascism" and its budding alliances with anti-American countries such as Venezuela, North Korea and Cuba.
"We are sleepwalking through the storm," Santorum said. "How do those who deny this evil propose to save us from these people? By negotiating through the U.N. or directly with Iran? By firing Don Rumsfeld, (and) now getting rid of John Bolton? That's going to solve the problem?"
He said he felt Gates is not "up to the task."
Santorum was one of two no votes against Gates' nomination this evening.
--Josh Marshall
I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you ...
From Jonathan Landay at McClatchy ...
The Bush administration routinely has underreported the level of violence in Iraq in order to disguise its policy failings, the Iraq Study Group report said Wednesday....
On page 94 of its report, the Iraq Study Group found that there had been "significant under-reporting of the violence in Iraq." The reason, the group said, was because the tracking system was designed in a way that minimized the deaths of Iraqis.
"The standard for recording attacks acts a filter to keep events out of reports and databases," the report said. "A murder of an Iraqi is not necessarily counted as an attack. If we cannot determine the source of a sectarian attack, that assault does not make it into the database. A roadside bomb or a rocket or mortar attack that doesn't hurt U.S. personnel doesn't count."
How much time do we put into determining the 'sectarian source' behind the death of every individual Iraqi?
--Josh Marshall
Tony Snow today on the U.S.'s chronic lack of Arabic speakers, a problem highlighted by the ISG: "You don't snap your fingers and have the Arabic speakers you need overnight."
--Paul Kiel
TPM Reader TD gives it to the president straight ...
Reading your post on the North Korea about face, and the string of statements from various policy makers on the ISG report—both situations which unarguably constitute unmitigated international disasters—it is quite clear that Bush’s status as the worst president in US history is already cemented. I saw a comment from an of-course unnamed administration official a few days ago that they’re not worried about the president’s legacy, give it 50 years or some such, but truly, is any of this going to look better in 50 years?
With the shifting priorities and knowledge of the future it's never truly possible to know how our descendents will judge us or our time. But, as past history as shown, some presidents just blow. And people can see it no matter how much time goes by. There's no renaissance of Harding studies. And he didn't even really break anything or have any epochal catastrophes on his watch.
--Josh Marshall
Iraq Study Group: if not enough federal employees volunteer to go to Iraq, force them to.
--Paul Kiel
Prager seven years late in stopping the fall of the American republic. Muslim ambassador sworn in on Koran back in '99.
--Josh Marshall
Murtha on the ISG report ...
"On November 7th, 2006 the American public sent a message on Iraq and as the new Democratic majority, we must respond with decisive action. Staying in Iraq is not an option politically, militarily or fiscally. The American people understand this. Today there is near consensus that there is no U.S. military solution and we must disengage our military from Iraq. The ISG recommended that we begin a withdrawal of U.S. troops by early 2008, depending on conditions on the ground. This is no different than the current policy. We must do what is best for America and insist on a responsible plan for redeployment. Iraq is plagued by a growing civil war and only the Iraqis can solve it."
--Josh Marshall
Republican presidential contender makes news, announces he doesn't hate Mexicans.
--Josh Marshall
Doh!
Remember how the whole premise of Bush administration North Korea policy was that we shouldn't be offering 'pay-offs' to the North Koreans in exchange for them giving up their nuclear program?
From today's Times ...
The United States has offered a detailed package of economic and energy assistance in exchange for North Korea’s giving up nuclear weapons and technology, American officials said Tuesday.
So after six long years of incompetence, arrogance, dithering and disaster, in which the president allowed the NKs to waltz into the nuclear club unimpeded, they're now back to the same policy they insisted on ditching in the first place. Only now with a hand infinitely weaker than it was in 2000 since back then the NKs didn't have the bomb.
--Josh Marshall
Republican Vern Buchanan on Hannity & Colmes: Christine Jennings is "destroying democracy" by contesting the election in Florida's 13th.
--Paul Kiel
Why would we expect anything different?
From the WSJ ...
Like a retreating army, Republicans are tearing up railroad track and planting legislative land mines to make it harder for Democrats to govern when they take power in Congress next month.Already, the Republican leadership has moved to saddle the new Democratic majority with responsibility for resolving $463 billion in spending bills for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. And the departing chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Bill Thomas (R., Calif.), has been demanding that the Democrat-crafted 2008 budget absorb most of the $13 billion in costs incurred from a decision now to protect physician reimbursements under Medicare, the federal health-care program for the elderly and disabled.
The unstated goal is to disrupt the Democratic agenda and make it harder for the new majority to meet its promise to reinstitute "pay-as-you-go" budget rules, under which new costs or tax cuts must be offset to protect the deficit from growing.
"I think we're trying to get an accommodation," said Speaker Dennis Hastert (R., Ill.) last evening. "You're digging a hole now and filling up with money from '08," he said of Mr. Thomas's demands. "He says he's trying to move away from that."
So doing with the nation's finances on a small scale what they did on a large scale for the last six years.
--Josh Marshall
Congressional Black Caucus grumbles about muck double standard among Democrats.
--Paul Kiel
Keeping the audience in mind?
Not having had a chance to read the thing yet, one thing that strikes me about the ISG report is that the thing's actually pretty short. Don't get me wrong: brevity is the great undiscovered country of commission reports. They should all be short and sweet. But my recollection is that these sorts of reports often run hundreds of pages. The PDF I have runs 160 pages. And after about a hundred pages it's all maps and pictures and commissoner bios.
Late Update: MJ Rosenberg says three cheers for the report's section on Israel-Palestine.
--Josh Marshall
Hillary hosting private dinners with top Dems from key primary states.
And she tells a fellow New York pol that she can win a "bunch" more states than John Kerry.
--Greg Sargent
Okay, ISG report day mini-contest. I've always enjoyed one of the unwritten conventions of news photography, particularly online and on the TV shows. When the story is bad for the president you find a picture of him caught off guard, embarrassed, looking stupid, whatever. Frequently, the picture is totally unconnected to the story at hand. You just need one that shows the guy expressing the emotion the editors think he must be experiencing because of the story they're publishing. Back during the days of Monica, I first noticed how on CNN, whenever they were reporting news that was bad for Clinton they had a stock 'sad' Clinton picture, with a sort of 'man, am I bummin' look on his face. I think the picture I first posted below was CNN's best effort so far to communicate in a photograph what the editors maybe couldn't say in the text.
But there must be better ones. Send in your best entry.
--Josh Marshall
Sen. Reid (D-NV) on the Iraq Study Group report ...
“The Iraq Study Group has done a tremendous and historic service to the American people and to the troops serving in harm’s way in Iraq. Their report underscores the message the American people sent one month ago: there must be change in Iraq, and there is no time to lose. It is time for the Iraqis to build and secure their nation, and it is time for American combat troops to be redeployed. “Each day the situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate. Yesterday, Defense Secretary Nominee Robert Gates said ‘we’re not winning.’ Today, the Iraq Study Group said Iraq is ‘grave and deteriorating.’ Like the Iraq Study Group, I urge the President to change course. He will find Congress ready and willing to work with him. The Senate will do its part next year and conduct strong oversight to ensure the President carries out an effective change in policy. Our troops in Iraq, including hundreds of Nevadans, have sacrificed so much. It is time for President Bush to reward their effort by bringing the country together around a new way forward.”
--Josh Marshall
Pelosi on Iraq Study Group report ...
"The bipartisan Iraq Study Group has concluded that the President's Iraq policy has failed and must be changed. As the November elections clearly demonstrated, that is an assessment shared by the American people."Months ago, House and Senate Democratic leaders suggested to the President that he implement one of the Study Group's chief recommendations - to change the primary mission of U.S. troops in Iraq from combat to training and support, which would enable the redeployment of U.S. forces to begin. Now that the Study Group has endorsed this proposal, I hope that the President will recognize that he must take our policy in Iraq in a new direction.
"If the President is serious about the need for change in Iraq, he will find Democrats ready to work with him in a bipartisan fashion to find a way to end the war as quickly as possible. We are committed to ensuring that the ideas of the Iraq Study Group, as well as the ideas of other thoughtful people inside and outside of government, are given full consideration in that process."
More to come.
--Josh Marshall
So many instances where it's hard to distinguish the real news from the stuff that shows up in The Onion. From the Post, new Congress to shelve old two day work week for a five day work week. No, not makin' this up.
Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) -- one of the worst from the old GOP Congress -- on why working for a living is against family values: "Keeping us up here eats away at families. Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families -- that's what this says."
Late Update: An anonymous TPM Reader responds to Rep. Kingston: "As an active duty military member I’m pretty offended by members of congress crying about working a 5 day work week. And for Rep Kingston’s comments about families, give me a break! How about the thousands of military marriages that have ended because of husbands and wives being deployed for a year multiple times?"
--Josh Marshall
When you've got a picture like this, who really needs a caption, right?
As I wrote in the Digest this morning, the clearest sense of how bleak a state we're in is the fact that all this report really does is state the obvious (the Iraq's a disaster and we can't stay there forever) in a quasi-public forum.
One other point we shouldn't go too long without restating. With his policy of no troop increases and no troop decreases, let's all understand that President Bush's real policy is stasis -- no 'winning' or 'losing' or escalating or withdrawing. It's about fighting any fight, carrying any burden to keep kicking this can down the alley until January 2009 so he can say the disaster he created is someone else's fault. That's not hyperbole or trash talk. That's really the policy.
--Josh Marshall
Bush: "country is tired of pure political bickering" on Iraq.
Can't make this stuff up.
--Josh Marshall
Florida's 13th District post-election battle is heading to the House. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Paul Kiel
Okay, I can't help it. Just a bit more on Dennis Prager. MJ Rosenberg calls Prager and self-hating Jew. I wouldn't argue with that for a moment. But somehow that phrase just doesn't do Prager justice.
Here's a Jew who says that no Jew should be able to serve in the US Congress unless he or she is willing to have a copy of the New Testament on hand when they take the oath of office. I'm not sure if one can appreciate this without having the context of Prager's general sanctimony and cloying ethnic self-abnegation. But it's hard for me not to imagine Prager as one of Jews in the Medieval Europe arguing that living in the Ghetto and maybe wearing these funny hats might actually be a good thing after all. I'll refrain from invoking the toxic parallels of more recent vintage.
I can't help but wonder, deep down, what he's trying to prove to whom.
Maybe he so hates and is so frightened of Muslims that he's willing to sell out his religion and Jewishness, to slap on a yellow badge of second class status, in the hopes that the Christians will protect him.
The guy gives Uncle Toms a bad name.
--Josh Marshall
As I mentioned a couple days ago, in a former incarnation radio yacker Dennis Prager was fairly sane. Now that he's on his own crusade to force every member of Congress to hold a bible when they take their oath of office, I was glancing over some of his recent columns. Here's a particularly fun one.
According to Prager, the threat of radical Islam (or, you get the sense from Prager, just plain old Islam) is greater than that of Nazism and Communism combined.
So the threat that Nazi Germany would control the European continent and from that sturdy perch dominate the world was just a warm up for the threat of al Qaida and its deracinated Jihadis.
Any respect for, or recognition of, what transpired in the ideological wars of the 20th century seems now to be collateral damage in the endlessly hyperbole that seems intrinsic to the mindset of War on Terror whackjobs.
--Josh Marshall
Newsweek: "In a surprise twist in the debate over Iraq, Rep. Silvestre Reyes, the soon-to-be chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said he wants to see an increase of 20,000 to 30,000 U.S. troops as part of a stepped up effort to 'dismantle the militias.' The soft-spoken Texas Democrat was an early opponent of the Iraq war and voted against the October 2002 resolution authorizing President Bush to invade that country. That dovish record got prominently cited last week when Speaker designate Nancy Pelosi chose Reyes as the new head of the intelligence panel."
--Josh Marshall
Let's party.
From The Hill ...
President Bush has invited leaders of the conservative Blue Dog and New Democrat coalitions to the White House Friday to discuss areas of “mutual cooperation” in the words of one Democratic Congressional aide.The outreach comes at a time when Bush’s image on Capitol Hill and around the country has taken a serious beating. The meeting is scheduled just two days after the Iraq Study Group is scheduled to release its findings and one day after the Senate Armed Services Committee plans to hold hearings on them.
Reps. Alan Boyd (Fla.), Dennis Moore (Kan.) and Mike Ross (Ark.) will represent the Blue Dogs, a coalition of usually southern, conservative-leaning Democrats and Reps. Joe Crowley (N.Y.), Artur Davis (Ala.), Ron Kind (Wis.), Adam Smith (Wash.) and Ellen Tauscher (Calif.) are set to represent the New Democrats, a group of business-friendly centrists, at the meeting, which the president is expected to attend.
--Josh Marshall
That was quick. Armed Services Committee approves Gates unanimously for Sec Def.
--Josh Marshall
Follow-up from Dennis Prager: I've never even hinted there should be a religious test for federal office, only that a Christian bible should be present whenever anyone takes the oath of office.
More Prager: Ellison can bring the Koran to his sweaing in too, as long as he also brings a Christian bible.
Even More Prager: I'm a victim of a secularist witchhunt.
Still More Prager: I have one of the most pretentious and pompous sounding voices in America.
(ed.note: Okay, I made up the last one. But one, two and three are all in his new column.)
Late Update: As Thinkprogress points out, Prager's one of President Bush's appointees to the Holocaust Memorial Museum board.
--Josh Marshall
Paul mentioned this in the post below. But I'd like to focus in on this point a bit. A big part of what Dems were after in the mid-terms was oversight and investigations. So how many folks know that the chief investigations and oversight guy in the Senate is Joe Lieberman?
--Josh Marshall
More in our continuing series profiling the investigators who'll be making headlines in the new Congress (at least, most of them will).
In this edition, it's the inexhaustible Henry Waxman (D-CA) and the not-so-inexhaustible Joe Lieberman (D-CT).
--Paul Kiel
Andrew Sullivan writes that we may be on the brink of a regional conflagration in the Middle East in which the states of the region begin acting much as the nation-states of Europe did in the 16th and 17th centuries. This brings me back to a thought I've had again and again ever since we decided to take a hands on role in the religio-cultural evolution of the Arab Middle East and the Muslim world just after 9/11. As I have, you've probably read a hundred times from this and that pundit that what Islam needs is its own Reformation along the lines of the Reformation in Europe that took up, in one sense or another, the better part of two centuries.
But if what you care about is geopolitical stability, less religious extremism in the political realm, or just fewer people being sawed in half or burned alive, then you can really only say this if you know little or nothing about what the Reformation actually was. Or, perhaps better to say, that it was actually a pretty rough ride for something like 150 years.
In the Muslim world, we don't have the break out of an entirely novel schism in the dominant religious culture. But in other respects, let's go down the list: renewal of eschatalogical enthusiasm, check; heightened sectarian identification and inter-sectarian violence, check; breakdown of established mechanisms of state and social authority, check. I'd say we, or rather they, may be about set to have their Reformation. Or they may already be in thick of it.
Not to worry, though. By 2146 or so, after a century or so of bloodletting, there may be a broad political and ideological consensus in favor or relegating religion to the private sphere and leaving the whole thing to personal conscience.
--Josh Marshall
The Los Angeles Times yesterday raised questions about Robert Gates' financial ties. Over at TPMmuckraker, we've obtained a copy of his 24-page Financial Disclosure Report. Take a look.
--Paul Kiel
Ahh, the last refuge. Corrupt Rep. Bill Jefferson (D-LA) is in a run-off battle with fellow Dem Karen Carter in Louisiana's 2nd district. He's just hit the airwaves with an ad attacking her for being pro-gay marriage, pro-abortion rights and pro-stem cell research.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, yet another list update. We've now subdivided our list of corrupt administration officials into those who were indicted for crimes (9), those who resigned amidst ethics/corruption investigations (13), and those who were too crooked or ethically compromised to get confirmed by t