Today’s edition of quick hits.
* MSNBC has obtained an audio recording of Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) being interviewed by police shortly after his arrest in Minneapolis in June. Investigative Sgt. Dave Karsnia, whose foot Craig touched between stalls, is heard telling Craig, “You are sitting here lying to a police officer. People vote for you. Unbelievable.” All in all, Craig doesn’t sound good on the tape.
* Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has added his name to the list of Republicans who would like to see Craig go away. Though he stopped short of calling for Craig to resign, Ensign said, “I wouldn’t put myself hopefully in that kind of position, but if I was in a position like that, that’s what I would do.”
* Reps. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.), Ginny Brown-Waite (R-Fla.), Bobby Jindal (R-La,), and Ron Lewis (R-Ken.) all urged Craig to step down today.
* Based on the request of the GOP Senate leadership, the Senate Ethics Committee is prepared to start investigating Craig, but is unsure how best to proceed — they’re not sure which, if any, rules Craig may have violated. “I am not aware of any case in which a Senator was investigated [by the Ethics Committee] because he or she was alleged to have violated a law and there was no nexus between the conduct and the Senator’s Senate service,” said Wilson Abney, who worked for the panel as both counsel and staff director from 1980 to 1992. As Roll Call explained, “Most scandal-plagued Members have resigned before pleading or being found guilty of felonies or offenses related to their service in Congress.”
* TPMM: “The busiest employee of the Department of Justice by far must be the inspector general, Glenn Fine. A couple of weeks ago, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) asked Fine to investigate whether outgoing-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had misled the Congress and press on a number of occasions. Fine, in a letter sent today (you can read it here), has responded that he’s already looking into it.”
* It’s not just the GAO; the left-leaning National Security Network believes the Bush administration is manufacturing evidence of non-existent progress in Iraq. “US officials have recently claimed that violence is down and specifically civilian deaths in Iraq have decreased,” the group said in a letter to lawmakers. “No evidence has been provided to the public that supports this claim.”
* Gen. David Petraeus said he, not the president’s team, will be writing his report to Congress in a couple of weeks. That’s not what the White House said 10 days ago.
* McClatchy: “In a sign that top commanders are divided over what course to pursue in Iraq, the Pentagon said Wednesday that it won’t make a single, unified recommendation to President Bush during next month’s strategy assessment, but instead will allow top commanders to make individual presentations…. Military analysts called the move unusual for an institution that ordinarily does not air its differences in public, especially while its troops are deployed in combat.”
* Politico: “California Rep. Ellen Tauscher suggested fellow Democratic Rep. Brian Baird of Washington was overcome by “Green Zone Fog” during the recent trip to Iraq that prompted him to advocate maintaining the current troop levels on the ground. In an interview with ThinkProgress.org following her own fourth trip to Iraq, Tauscher said, ‘I will tell you that when you get in the Green Zone, there is a physiological phenomenon I think called Green Zone fog…. It’s death by powerpoint…. It’s always that their argument is winning.'”
* The WaPo’s David Ignatius is confused about Iraq’s leadership. Again.
* Jonah Goldberg is confused about agricultural subsidies.
* At least for the time being, the White House is playing nice, and asking Democratic senators for input on the next Attorney General nominee. “In the past,” Chuck Schumer said in an interview, “the White House has talked about consultation, but they were the most wooden conversations I ever had. This was the first time there was a real back and forth.”
* MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson issued a statement explaining his bathroom incident that generated so much interest yesterday: “In the mid-1980s, while I was a high school student, a man physically grabbed me in a men’s room in Washington, DC. I yelled, pulled away from him and ran out of the room. Twenty-five minutes later, a friend of mine and I returned to the men’s room. The man was still there, presumably waiting to do to someone else what he had done to me. My friend and I seized the man and held him until a security guard arrived. Several bloggers have characterized this is a sort of gay bashing. That’s absurd, and an insult to anybody who has fought back against an unsolicited sexual attack. I wasn’t angry with the man because he was gay. I was angry because he assaulted me.” That story seems a little different than the one he told on the air.
* Nice to see VoteVets’ Jon Soltz getting some well-deserved publicity. “Jon Soltz seems to be exactly what progressives need,” Paul Begala said. “He has a pair of fists, and he knows how to use them.”
* James Dobson’s Focus on the Family produced this video to bash social programs that combat poverty. It’s not only bizarre, it troubles me to think anyone might find such nonsense persuasive.
* And finally, Fox News has apparently decided to attack CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric for reporting from Iraq next week. During one segment, Neil Cavuto prompted Janice Crouse to characterized Couric’s trip as “a clear act of desperation” by a single mother whose “priorities [are] so determined by her ambition rather than her children’s welfare.” There are thousands of soldiers who are also mothers who are serving in Iraq right now. Does FNC believe they should all come home? Or that they’re wrong to volunteer?
Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.