Today’s edition of quick hits.
* The news in the Midwest is not good: “Water spilled over two levees on the Mississippi River on Wednesday, surging into west-central Illinois, covering fertile farmland and pushing residents from their homes, officials said. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for the Mississippi Valley said water flowed over the top of one levee, but local officials had a different account, reporting that the levee — near Meyer, Illinois — breached in two places about 6:20 a.m., pouring water into Hancock and Adams counties. ‘It’s kind of a sad day,’ Sheriff John Jefferson of Hancock County said. ‘People put in a lot of manpower [to build up the levees], and all was lost.'”
* Rush Limbaugh has decide to use the flooding as an excuse to trash the people of New Orleans: “I look at Iowa, I look at Illinois — I want to see the murders. I want to see the looting. I want to see all the stuff that happened in New Orleans. I see devastation in Iowa and Illinois that dwarfs what happened in New Orleans. I see people working together. I see people trying to save their property… I don’t see a bunch of people running around waving guns at helicopters, I don’t see a bunch of people running shooting cops. I don’t see a bunch of people raping people on the street. I don’t see a bunch of people doing everything they can…whining and moaning, where’s FEMA?”
* Progress? “Israel offered on Wednesday to start direct peace talks with Lebanon, saying all issues would be negotiable, including a tiny piece of Israeli-held land on the countries’ border that Israel has long argued does not belong to Lebanon but that the Lebanese say is theirs.”
* An untraditional White House strategy: “Bush could have taken a bolder step by overturning a 10-year-old executive order that bans drilling off most U.S. shores. But he said he wouldn’t do that because he wanted Congress to act first.” Since when does Bush care what Congress wants?
* And speaking of separation of powers, the Bush gang is still working on a long-term security agreement with Iraq, hoping to shape it in such a way as to make congressional approval unnecessary. (The president is probably unfamiliar with the constitutional measures about “treaties.”)
* Funeral services for Tim Russert were today. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) decided to exploit Russert’s death, saying the NBC journalist would have supported Republican efforts for additional domestic oil drilling. Darrel Issa is a pathetic joke.
* Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) apologized today for equating gay marriage with polygamy. It was a very odd thing to say.
* Good move: “The Texas Republican Party is distancing itself from a vendor who sold campaign buttons at last weekend’s state convention that asked, ‘If Obama is president … will we still call it The White House?’ The state GOP party said Wednesday that it will donate the $1,500 rent it collected from the vendor, Republicanmarket.com, to Midwestern flood victims.”
* Some Obama campaign volunteers asked two Muslim women, seated behind the candidate’s stage, to remove their head scarves before the event began. A campaign spokesperson responded today, “This is of course not the policy of the campaign. It is offensive and counter to Obama’s commitment to bring Americans together and simply not the kind of campaign we run. We sincerely apologize for the behavior of these volunteers.”
* I get the sense Chris Dodd’s chances of making the ticket just got smaller: “Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut said Tuesday that he was aware that Countrywide Financial Corporation had assigned him to a V.I.P. program in 2003 when he refinanced mortgages on his homes in Connecticut and Washington but that he and his wife ‘assumed’ that ‘it was more of a courtesy thing.'”
* I didn’t watch Michelle Obama host “The View,” but it apparently went well.
* The McCain campaign wants Obama to denounce the DNC’s attack against McCain’s wife. There’s just one problem: the DNC didn’t attack McCain’s wife.
* I can’t help but wonder what rock Larry Sinclair crawled out from under. I also can’t help but wonder how foolish one would have to be to take him seriously.
* Tired of the insane email smears of Obama? Christopher Beam has a new idea — start a new email chain with an alternate message.
* Concrete evidence of China’s importance.
* The AP clearly didn’t think this through: “[The AP has] done the impossible: They’ve united liberal and conservative bloggers, political and tech bloggers and sports bloggers and gossip bloggers and all other kind of bloggers against them. In an election year. Is Michael Brown running the AP? Because they’re doing a heck of a job.”
* And finally, have you heard about Bill O’Reilly soon-to-be-published memoir? The title is, “A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity.” Seriously, that’s actually the name.
Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.