Today’s edition of quick hits.
* The House isn’t buying the Bush gang’s latest executive privilege claim: “In a 7-3 ruling today, a House Judiciary subcommittee ruled that that the White House’s assertion of executive privilege to block the release of ‘documents sought in subpoenas issued to White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and the Republican National Committee was not legally valid.’ During the 20-minute hearing, Judiciary Committee John Conyers (D-MI) said that ‘the White House participated in false statements to Congress.'”
* Mitt Romney went after Barack Obama today on the ridiculous sex-ed for kindergarteners story. Besides the obvious flaw of being wrong, Romney has another problem: “It turns out, Romney himself once indicated support for the same sort of sex-ed approach — ‘age-appropriate’ — that Obama backs.”
* What is it with Alaska Republicans and corruption scandals lately? In the latest story, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) reportedly sold received some property in a sweetheart deal to from a major campaign contributor who just happens to be tied to a federal criminal investigation on corruption in Alaska.
* Speaking of Alaska, Rep. Don Young (R) had a bit of a breakdown yesterday when Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) tried to limit Young’s ability to send even more porkbarrel spending back home. “You want my money, my money,” Young stridently declared before warning conservatives that, “Those who bite me will be bitten back.” Young went on to bash New Jersey as a state, and suggest that Garrett, a fellow Republican, should be voted out of office.
* Hans von Spakovsky, almost single-handedly disenfranchised thousands of voters, and then went on to give misleading testimony about his activities under oath to the Senate. Yesterday, he revised his remarks to avoid an even bigger scandal.
* In 2005, after a rash of scandals, Senate Democrats attempted to reconvene Harry Truman’s WWII committee on war profiteering. The Republican majority immediately shot down the idea. Fortunately, Republicans aren’t in the majority anymore: “Under the 2007 version of his effort, spearheaded by Sens. Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Jim Webb of Virginia, the proposed commission would investigate the mismanagement of private contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, which has resulted in $9 billion in taxpayer dollars unaccounted for.”
* You probably heard about the pipe explosion in NYC yesterday that killed someone. Digby, in a terrific post, explains how and why this fits into the “scourge of E. coli conservatism”: ” The problem is that it is actually very bad news and not just because of the death but because it is a sign of the rapidly decaying infrastructure that has been ignored during the conservative era in favor of free-market religion and the wonder-working powers of tax cuts…. This is the legacy of the past 25 years of neglect.”
* I can’t help but marvel at the journalistic ethics that allow an NBC on-air correspondent to be paid $30,000 for a private speech, in which he attacked a prominent presidential candidate. In this case, the correspondent is Jim Miklaszewski and the candidate is John Edwards. CBS fired Gen. Batiste for appearing in a VoteVets ad, but NBC seems to have no trouble with Miklaszewski. First, what liberal media? Second, don’t these guys question the professional standards of bloggers?
* Leandro Aragoncillo, the former Marine at the center of the first case of espionage at the White House in modern history, was sentenced to 10 years in prison yesterday. As Josh Marshall recently noted, “To the best of my knowledge this is the only known case of espionage taking place within the White House. And it happened in Cheney’s operation.”
* As if the sex scandal weren’t enough, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) found himself the target of a new ethics complaint, filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Apparently, there are some kind of rules against lawmakers soliciting prostitutes.
* Bob Novak think Dems benefited from the all-night debate because it helped focus attention on the war in the way the party intended.
* By the way, the dumbest line from the debate? Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.): “We’re taking a lot of casualties in Iraq because that’s where they are killing our soldiers. That’s the reason we’re taking on casualties in Iraq, because that’s where our soldiers are.”
* Atrios makes a compelling case that the Washington Post’s Shailagh Murray is, in fact, the devil.
* Last week, Tony Snow suggested members of Iraq’s Parliament should be able to take August off because it’s hot in Baghdad in the summer. Yesterday, he backed off his comment and acknowledged he “used a dumb line.”
* In related news, ABC’s Diane Sawyer apologized, on the air, for suggesting Dems were filibustering the Defense appropriations bill: “You wrote me. You were right. I was wrong. I apologize.” Good for her.
* And finally, how many neocons does it take to screw in a light bulb? Andrew Sullivan offers one possible answer, “That’s an interesting question, one that I’m sure future historians will investigate in detail. Look, let me address this issue up front: I don’t know who’s been installing light bulbs or who hasn’t. That’s none of my business. There’s a lot of different views, there’s a range of views, and a lot of concerns, and we are working to accommodate those concerns. We know at this point that we still have some work to do and we are working very hard to address these issues. We’re not making estimates. At this point what you’ve had are some fairly — you had some dramatic testimony and comments — by the way, you can expect people to be ventilating these differing points of views in coming days. Our view is you have to have a resolution that offers a solution. And you’re going to have people — there is sometimes, you’ll be surprised to hear, a disparity between comments made in public for domestic audiences around the world, and comments made in private, as well. In short, we don’t want to comment on an ongoing investigation.”
Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.
