Today’s edition of quick hits.
* In a beautiful instance of irony, a bipartisan bill expanding the Freedom of Information Act was cruising towards passing the Senate easily — right up until a GOP senator placed an anonymous hold on the legislation. “Some Republican senator called the Minority Leader’s office and objected to a vote on the bill, but asked for anonymity and did not publicly state the reason for the hold.” Classic.
* Patrick Fitzgerald wants more than a slap on the wrist for Scooter Libby: “Former White House aide I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby betrayed the public’s trust and deserves to spend 2 1/2 to 3 years in prison for obstructing the CIA leak investigation, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said Friday…. U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton has broad discretion over Libby’s fate. Walton faces two important questions: whether to send Libby to prison and, if so, whether to delay the sentence until his appeals have run out.”
* Twice during yesterday’s press conference, Bush told reporters that terrorists are targeting their children. (In one of the instances, the reporter in question has no children.) Slate’s John Dickerson responded with an interesting piece: if Bush is going to use reporters’ kids to deliver an emotional point, maybe reporters should be able to ask more questions about Bush’s kids.
* Thanks in large part to Monica Goodling’s testimony, the Justice Department’s internal investigation is poised to get bigger, as the inspector general and Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility explore who “improperly took into account political considerations in hiring employees” and how often. The LAT explained, “The internal Justice Department investigation, although focused on Goodling, could turn up embarrassing information about Gonzales’ management practices and what, if anything, he knew about the role that politics played in hiring employees protected by civil service laws.”
* On a related note, Paul Kiel has a fascinating item on the Justice Department’s politicization of immigration judges. “As a story in The Legal Times last year explained, immigration judges are different from other federal judges in that they’re civil service employees — meaning that there’s a formal application process with the Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review. But, Jason McLure reported, ‘Acording to an immigration-judge hiring policy released by the Justice Department, the attorney general also has the option to pre-empt the formal vetting process and directly hire a judge of his choosing.'” You can imagine how that went.
* Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) believes immigration can “create cultural problems that wouldn’t occur if it was a little slower.” He didn’t elaborate.
* On a related note, former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson takes GOP nativism to task in a WaPo op-ed: “[T]he real passion in this debate is not political, it is cultural — a fear that American identity is being diluted by Latino migration.” Sen. Sessions, I think he’s talking to you.
* House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) sent a letter to Attorney General Gonzales “formally requesting that Deputy Attorney General McNulty and Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Moschella be made available promptly for questioning by the Committee, particularly in light of the testimony this week by Monica Goodling.” Should be interesting.
* You know, relieving the lead officer of a Navy ship of command is fairly unusual. Relieving six lead officers of six Navy ships in just six weeks seems completely bizarre. I hope someone is looking into this — because it looks pretty bad.
* Leahy and Specter haven’t forgotten about Rove’s missing emails. Today, they asked Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, to turn over emails from Rove’s RNC account related to the U.S. Attorney scandal.
* MM: “In his May 23 online column, ‘The Upside of Anger,’ Newsweek chief political correspondent Howard Fineman wrote that he ‘can’t blame’ Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) for his propensity toward angry outbursts because ‘his courage forever is being tested by his bad luck.’ Fineman lauded the 24-year Capitol Hill veteran as an ‘outsider’ and furthered the baseless media narrative that McCain is a different type of candidate, writing that McCain ‘seems uncomfortable’ pandering or ‘overcompensates by being too enthusiastic.'” These guys are trying to drive me crazy, aren’t they.
* Speaking of McCain, his campaign and Barack Obama’s have been trading shots all afternoon. It’s getting ugly.
* And finally, remember the bird that relieved itself on the president during his press conference yesterday? Leave it to Rick Perlstein to make the Shakespearean connection: “There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.” – Hamlet, Act V, Scene ii.
Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.