Today’s edition of quick hits.
* Reuters: “Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Tuesday defied mounting pressure from both inside and outside Africa to call off Friday’s presidential election, saying he had a legal obligation to go ahead.”
* Bloodshed in Sadr City: “Two U.S. soldiers and two American civilians working for the U.S. government were killed in an explosion Tuesday morning in Sadr City, a vast Shiite slum where security had improved dramatically in recent weeks, U.S. officials said.”
* Bloodshed in Iraq: “Two U.S. soldiers were killed and three were wounded Monday when a council member opened fire on them after a meeting in a small town south of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.”
* On a related note, what’s the post-surge plan? “The administration lacks an updated and comprehensive Iraq strategy to move beyond the ‘surge’ of combat troops President Bush launched in January 2007 as an 18-month effort to curtail violence and build Iraqi democracy, government investigators said yesterday.”
* A filibuster to look forward to: “Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Russ Feingold (D-WI) released the following statement today in response to the announcement that the Senate this week will consider the compromise legislation that would reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).”
* Speaker Pelosi may have allowed the “compromise” FISA bill to move, but now she’ll be rooting for a Senate filibuster from afar. (thanks to J.B. for the heads-up)
* This had to feel good: “Talk about rolling out the red carpet. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s much-hyped return to the Senate after dropping out of the presidential race included a crowd of adoring interns, a phalanx of Senate staff, hugs from Democratic colleagues and an ovation from a closed luncheon of Democratic senators.”
* Rick Perlstein vs Pat Buchanan. An unusually entertaining nine minutes of television.
* Tom Ridge’s reluctance to register his foreign lobbying work sure does seem strange.
* This really would be a great move: “In a deal that environmental groups said would be the largest ecological restoration in the country’s history, a plan for the state to buy the nation’s largest producer of cane sugar was announced Tuesday by the governor and officials of U.S. Sugar Corporation. The intention is to restore the Everglades by restoring the water flow from Lake Okeechobee, in the heart of the state, south to Florida Bay. That flow had been interrupted by commercial farming and the Everglades have suffered as a result.”
* Interesting: “A former top official in the White House’s faith-based office was awarded a lucrative Department of Justice grant under pressure from two senior Bush administration appointees, according to current and former DOJ staff members and a review of internal DOJ documents and emails. The $1.2 million grant was jointly awarded to a consulting firm run by Lisa Trevino Cummins who previously headed Hispanic outreach efforts for the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, and a California evangelical group, Victory Outreach.”
* Shelby Steele doesn’t believe the title of his own anti-Obama book.
* The day’s wildest news story: “The House oversight committee is holding hearings today on those 20-something Florida arms dealers (I could write that phrase a 100 times and take no less pleasure in it). According to evidence obtained by the committee, government contracting officials had complained that their company, AEY, was delivering ‘poor quality,’ ‘damaged goods,’ ‘junk’ weapons, and other equipment in ‘the reject category.’ And that was before the Pentagon awarded AEY that $300 million contract to supply ammo to the Afghan Army.”
* Fascinating: “Judges and jurors who must decide whether sexually explicit material is obscene are asked to use a local yardstick: does the material violate community standards? That is often a tricky question because there is no simple, concrete way to gauge a community’s tastes and values. The Internet may be changing that. In a novel approach, the defense in an obscenity trial in Florida plans to use publicly accessible Google search data to try to persuade jurors that their neighbors have broader interests than they might have thought.”
* Everyone’s been linking to this “Map of the Political Blogosphere.” I’m not quite sure if I understand it, but The Carpetbagger Report is in there, upper middle left, right by AmericaBlog.
* And finally, Fox News’ Bob Beckel, ostensibly one of the Republican network’s “liberals,” explained his vision for Iraq to Bill O’Reilly last night: “OK, now, what we ought to do is get Iraq to give us 100 year lease on their unexplored — they’re the second largest source of oil in the world. Known reserves. Give the United States oil companies 100 year leases. Let us explore.” As TP noted, Beckel justified giving U.S. oil companies a century of business in Iraq by claiming, “The Iraqis owe us, Bill. We ought to take it.”
Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.