Today’s edition of quick hits.
* This ought to be interesting: “Harry Reid just spoke on the Senate floor, revealing that he’ll allow a vote this week on the Feingold-Reid amendment, which would cut off funding for the war by March 31, 2008. This is a big deal for war opponents — it’s the first vote in the Senate on a measure of this kind. ‘This is a vote that folks have been clamoring for for some time now,’ enthuses a staffer who works for a Senator favoring the approach.” I think everyone would agree it’s a long-shot, but at a minimum, it forces everyone in the chamber to take a stand.
* CNN: “Expressing dismay over the Republican Party’s trajectory, Sen. Chuck Hagel said Sunday that an independent presidential bid would be good for the nation. And Hagel, R-Nebraska, did not rule out the possibility that he might be the one to do it, perhaps in alliance with New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg.” Hagel said on Face the Nation, “I am not happy with the Republican Party today.” (If the GOP thinks it’ll be tough to win with one Republican facing one Democrat, imagine two Republicans facing one Democrat…)
* Former CIA Director George Tenet has agreed to testify before Henry Waxman’s House Oversight Committee, on the issue of hyped pre-war intelligence. It’s bound to be entertaining — mark your calendars for June 19.
* For all the talk on the right about largely non-existent “voter fraud,” I find it rather amusing that a real instance of voter fraud appears to have occurred with Rep. Patrick McHenry’s (R-N.C.) former field coordinator, who allegedly voted illegally for McHenry in 2004.
* Sebastian Mallaby does quite a number on the Wolfowitz/World Bank scandal in his column today: “The scandal over his girlfriend’s pay is the final nail in Wolfowitz’s anti-corruption efforts. It has created a situation in which the bank can’t publicize its new anti-corruption manual, ‘The Many Faces of Corruption,’ because doing so would invite ridicule. Things have reached the point where anyone who believes in Wolfowitz’s anti-corruption agenda should be rooting for his departure. Surely even Wolfowitz himself can see that?”
* First the Pentagon pulled the troops’ blogs. Now the Pentagon is pulling their YouTube and MySpace access, too.
* The story about Rudy Giuliani snubbing those low-income family farmers is finally starting to catch on. The AP picked up on the controversy, as has ABC News’ website.
* Muckraker: “On her last day in the Civil Rights Division’s voting rights section, an African-American 33-year veteran of the Justice Department wanted to send her colleagues a message: ‘I leave with fond memories of the Voting Section I once knew,’ she wrote, ‘and I am gladly escaping the ‘Plantation’ it has become. For my colleagues still under the ‘whip’, hold on – ‘The Times They are A Changing.'”
* Read Kevin Drum on Pakistan.
* Those Alaskan lawmakers just can’t help themselves: “Another Bridge, Another Part of Nowhere.”
* Media Matters’ latest report on the Sunday-morning shows: “Not only are the Sunday morning talk shows on the broadcast networks dominated by conservative opinion and commentary, the four programs — NBC’s Meet the Press, ABC’s This Week, CBS’ Face the Nation, and Fox Broadcasting Co.’s Fox News Sunday — feature guest lists that are overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male. And the top-rated Sunday show — Meet the Press — shows the least diversity of all. The NBC program is the most male and nearly the most white (Face the Nation beats it out by 1 percentage point), and it has the highest proportion of white males to all other guests.”
* In April, the Bush administration resettled exactly one Iraqi refugee in the United States. Not 100, just one. “The total since the fiscal year started Oct. 1 is 69. At this rate, far from resettling 7,000, the State Department will be lucky to match last year’s total of 202.”
* Remember when CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux suggested Nancy Pelosi is “on her way to becoming the most controversial” House Speaker in history? That hasn’t exactly happened.
* And finally, Frank Rich seems to believe corruption has ruined the Republican brand: “Wrongdoing of this magnitude does not happen by accident, but it is not necessarily instigated by a Watergate-style criminal conspiracy. When corruption is this pervasive, it can also be a byproduct of a governing philosophy. That’s the case here. That Bush-Rove style of governance, the common denominator of all the administration scandals, is the Frankenstein creature that stalks the G.O.P. as it faces 2008. It has become the Republican brand and will remain so, even after this president goes, until courageous Republicans disown it and eradicate it.”
Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.