Today’s edition of quick hits.
* The aftermath in Pakistan: “Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, her return from exile shattered by a suicide attack that killed up to 136 people, blamed militants Friday for trying to kill her and said she would not “surrender our great nation” to them…. ‘There was one suicide squad from the Taliban elements, one suicide squad from al-Qaida, one suicide squad from Pakistani Taliban and a fourth group, I believe, from Karachi,’ she in a news conference.”
* This ought to be interesting: “A U.S. magistrate on Friday rejected arguments by the Bush administration and urged a federal judge to order the White House to preserve copies of all its e-mails. U.S. Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola said it is necessary to hold out the threat of a contempt-of-court citation to ensure that White House personnel safeguard backup tapes of electronic messages that may have been deleted. Whether to issue the order is up to U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy. The Bush administration has 10 days to say why Kennedy should not order preservation of electronic communications by White House officials and aides.”
* Chris Dodd says he will filibuster the FISA bill, if it reaches the floor with telecom immunity, and if the Senate leadership moves forward with the bill despite his plan to put a hold on the legislation.
* I’ll have plenty on the Values Voter Summit tomorrow, but in the meantime, this seems newsworthy: “At the FRC gathering today, Fred Thompson approvingly quoted the words of one Andrew Roberts, a right-wing British historian who has been hosted at the White House by President Bush and has dined with Vice President Cheney and Karl Rove — and whose writings are quite literally an apologia for 19th and early 20th-century imperialism, concentration camps, and massacres of indigenous peoples.”
* I’m glad to see Obama stepping up on this: “In a letter today, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) urged the acting attorney general to fire voting rights section chief John Tanner. Citing Tanner’s remarks earlier this month that ‘minorities don’t become elderly the way white people do: They die first,’ Obama wrote that ‘Through his inexcusable comments, Mr. Tanner has clearly demonstrated that he possesses neither the character nor the judgment to be heading the Voting Rights Section.’ He concluded: ‘For that reason, I respectfully request that you remove him from his position.'”
* The Pentagon is still trying to explain why several nuclear warheads were recently transported across the country by mistake.
* The stock market looked pretty scary today.
* The GOP hissy fit notwithstanding, Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) isn’t going to apologize: “I may have dishonored the commander in chief, but I think he’s done pretty well to dishonor himself without any help from me…. The fact is that I do support the troops in Iraq. They’re there fighting to protect our children here. I think (Republicans) owe the troops in Iraq an apology for not protecting the children that those troops left behind.”
* Rush Limbaugh apparently doesn’t listen to his own show.
* The punishment isn’t as severe as I’d like, but the FCC did come down on Armstrong Williams and Sinclair: “The Federal Communications Commission issued a citation on Thursday against a conservative commentator for promoting the Bush administration’s education plan without disclosing that he had been paid to do so. The commentator, Armstrong Williams, whose firm was also cited, was not subject to any fines for a first violation of F.C.C. rules, because he and his company are not broadcasters. But the agency said it had fined two broadcasting companies, including the Sinclair Broadcast Group, for putting on the air programs distributed by Mr. Williams and his company, the Graham Williams group, without properly disclosing who had sponsored them.”
* Henry Waxman isn’t done with Blackwater yet.
* It sounds like something out of a science fiction movie: “[M]any advanced military weapons are essentially robotic — picking targets out automatically, slewing into position, and waiting only for a human to pull the trigger. Most of the time. Once in a while, though, these machines start firing mysteriously on their own. The South African National Defence Force ‘is probing whether a software glitch led to an antiaircraft cannon malfunction that killed nine soldiers and seriously injured 14 others during a shooting exercise on Friday.'”
* Oh my: “James D. Watson, who shared the 1962 Nobel prize for deciphering the double-helix of DNA, apologized ‘unreservedly’ yesterday for comments reported this week suggesting that black people, over all, are not as intelligent as whites. In an interview published Sunday in The Times of London, Dr. Watson is quoted as saying that while ‘there are many people of color who are very talented,” he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa.’ … ‘All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really.'” Watson apologized, but would not say whether he was misquoted.
* For every instance that the right doesn’t question our patriotism, there’s an example of the right questioning our patriotism.
* And finally, if you’re like me, you’ll be pleased to know that Comedy Central has extended Jon Stewart’s contract, and the host of The Daily Show will be on for at least another three years. For a fake-news show, it’s the most informative thing on TV.
Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.