Today’s edition of quick hits.
* John Edwards has become the first presidential hopeful to announce that he will not participate in a Fox News-sponsored debate in Nevada later this year. “We will not be participating in the Fox debate,” deputy campaign manager Jonathan Prince said. “We’re going to make lots of appearances in Nevada, including debates. By the end of March, we will have attended three presidential forums in Nevada – and there are already at least three proposed Nevada debates. We’re definitely going to debate in Nevada, but we don’t see why this needs to be one of them.”
* You know where impeachment is really popular? My adopted home state of Vermont.
* Two more papers have dropped Ann Coulter as a columnist…
* …but Universal Press Syndicate isn’t going to drop her.
* In a very interesting example of media accountability, Media Matters’ Simon Maloy wrote a terrific piece scrutinizing The Politico’s partisan leanings. The report ran in … The Politico. Good for them.
* Just what the Bush administration needed — another controversy to deal with: “A powerful House committee chairman released new details yesterday about a widening investigation into allegations of “improper conduct” by the chief of the U.S. General Services Administration. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), head of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said his investigators had obtained information that raises “further questions” about GSA Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan’s efforts to give a no-bid job to a longtime friend and professional associate. Waxman also revealed new allegations that Doan ‘asked GSA officials in a January teleconference how the agency could be used to help Republican candidates,’ in possible violation of federal law.”
* Harold Meyerson has a terrific op-ed today. “As conservatives tell the tale, the decline of the American family, the rise in divorce rates, the number of children born out of wedlock all can be traced to the pernicious influence of one decade in American history: the ’60s. The conservatives are right that one decade, at least in its metaphoric significance, can encapsulate the causes for the family’s decline. But they’ve misidentified the decade. It’s not the permissive ’60s. It’s the Reagan ’80s.”
* Tom Schaller: “Here’s my theory for why Mr. Giuliani is ascendant: It’s not so much because he triggers memories of the horrific day in the fall of 2001 when the terrorists attacked, but that he reminds Republicans of the fall of 2002.”
* If you haven’t seen it, the Huffington Post has an excellent feature, “Inside the Jury Room,” on the Libby trial.
* Air America 2.0 begins today.
* Obama defended McCain last week on “wasted” lives in Iraq. I guess McCain was returnig the favor today.
* It’s a tough call which of the purged prosecutors represents the biggest scandal, but let’s not forget Washington state’s John McKay.
* New Hampshire’s anti-abortion law is gone.
* And finally, hats off to 27-year-old State Rep. Dan Zwonitzer, who is both Republican and straight, but who felt compelled to take a stand against an anti-gay marriage measure in Wyoming. “Zwonitzer told the House Rules Committee on Feb. 22 that he needed to publicly oppose the measure — even if it cost him his seat — because he believed that was the right thing to do. He told the committee that gay rights were the civil rights struggle of his generation. ‘I will tell my children that when this debate went on, I stood up for basic rights for people,’ he said.” His committee ended up killing the bill.
If these items aren’t of any interest, consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.