Today’s edition of quick hits.
* Confirming earlier reports: “Iraq and the U.S. have reached preliminary agreement to withdraw American forces from Iraqi cities by next June, six years into the increasingly unpopular war, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Thursday after meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.”
* Russia isn’t in any hurry: “Washington demanded on Friday that Russia pull its troops out of Georgia ‘now
,’ but Moscow said it would be another 10 days before the bulk of its force left Georgian soil.”
* What a terrible shame: “Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, a key figure in Ohio Democratic politics and the chairman of the House ethics committee, died yesterday at a Cleveland hospital after suffering a brain hemorrhage.”
* Taliban wreaks havoc: “At least 60 people were killed and 100 injured in coordinated suicide bombings on the country’s largest army munitions factory here Thursday, the latest in a series of Taliban attacks against Pakistani government targets.”
* He won’t say who
, but Barack Obama has, in fact, decided on a running mate. “I won’t comment on anything else until I introduce our running mate to the world,” he said. “That’s all you’re going to get out of me.” Obama also wouldn’t say if he’s informed his pick yet.
* Harry Reid acknowledged, on the record, that he “can’t stand” John McCain. I can’t say I blame him.
* Tensions with Russia sent oil prices higher today.
* I’m starting to get the impression that Rush Limbaugh has a problem with black people.
* No, really, I’m starting to get the impression that Rush Limbaugh has a problem with black people.
* One of the more depressing scandals of the Bush administration is how routine this gang has made corruption: “Medicare’s top officials said in 2006 that they had reduced the number of fraudulent and improper claims paid by the agency, keeping billions of dollars out of the hands of people trying to game the system. But according to a confidential draft of a federal inspector general’s report , those claims of success, which earned Medicare wide praise from lawmakers, were misleading.”
* Are the Olympics over yet?
* When it comes to the 1922 Colorado River compact, just because McCain says he wants to renegotiate the deal doesn’t mean that McCain wants to renegotiate the deal. Remember, McCain doesn’t always speak for the McCain campaign.
* And the Bush White House sure is clumsy: “The White House is missing as many as 225 days of e-mail dating back to 2003, and there is little likelihood that a recovery effort will be completed by the time President Bush leaves office
, according to an internal White House draft document obtained by the Associated Press…. The draft document outlines a process in which private contractors would attempt to retrieve lost e-mail from 35,000 disaster recovery backup tapes dating to October 2003, a period covering such events as growing violence in Iraq, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the criminal inquiry into the disclosure that Valerie Plame, wife of an administration critic, worked for the CIA.”
Anything to add? Consider this the last end-of-the-day open thread we’ll have at The Carpetbagger Report.