Today’s edition of quick hits.
* I absolutely loved Speaker Pelosi’s response to Bush’s latest threat to veto funding for the war: “On this very important matter, I would extend a hand of friendship to the president, just say to him, ‘Calm down with the threats, there’s a new Congress in town. We respect your constitutional role. We want you to respect ours.’ This war must end. The American people have lost faith in the president’s conduct of the war. Let’s see how we can work together. I just wish the president would take a deep breath, recognize again that we each have our constitutional role and we should respect that in terms of each other.” Very nice.
* Remember disgraced former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.)? He’s out of rehab, but is now facing possible criminal charges for violating Florida’s tough law on Internet sexual predators. “It’s a broad statute, and it encompasses a lot of activity,” said Maureen Horkan, the director of the Child Predator CyberCrime Unit in the Florida Attorney General’s office.
* As part of their ongoing, good-faith efforts to strike some kind of compromise, the Democratic chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees wrote a letter to White House counsel Fred Fielding today, exploring possibilities for Rove’s and Miers’ testimony. “[W]e have not heard from you” since last week, the two write. Leahy and Conyers make clear that the current White House offer is a non-starter.
* On a related note, Leahy and Conyers note that the White House will not hand over “internal” emails, but the Judiciary Committees would now also like to see all of those emails from White House staffers using alternate addresses. “[W]e trust that you will be collecting and producing emails and documents from all email accounts, addresses and domains and that you are not artificially limiting your production to the official White House email and document retention system,” the chairmen said.
* An overlooked purge email: “Thanks for everything,” Domenici chief of staff Steve Bell wrote Rove and two other White House officials, including Rove’s political deputy, Scott Jennings, in a Jan. 8, 2007 e-mail that forwarded the name of a candidate to replace Iglesias…. “This absolutely corroborates what I’ve been saying all along—this is a political matter, not a performance matter,” Iglesias said when a Newsweek reporter read him the e-mail today. “What is he thanking him [Rove] for? It’s thanking him for getting Dave out of the picture.”
* Following a fact-finding trip to Iraq, retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey released a new report, which describing the situation in Iraq as a “low grade civil war” that has “worsened to catastrophic levels.” I guess he hasn’t chatted with John McCain lately.
* For the second time in just one month, someone has broken into the Democrats’ headquarters in St. Paul, Minn. Both times, a computer was stolen. Odd.
* Here’s a wild one, by way of reader A.W.: “Poorly written Justice Department documents cost the federal government more than $100 million in what was supposed to have been the crowning moment of the biggest tax prosecution ever.” Apparently, a federal judge wanted to order a tax cheat to repay up to $175 million, but couldn’t because Justice Department’s binding plea agreement with defendant listed the wrong statute. As Corrente Wire’s Ruth added, ” Seems the DoJ has too much on its mind what with calling up acting U.S. Attorneys to tell them not to enforce the laws. But at that level, to write court filings this poorly sure does seem to indicate that it’s okay to be really dumb, as long as you leave the GOP criminals alone.”
* For reasons that are not altogether clear, leaders of Saudi Arabia and Jordan don’t want to hang out at the White House. Interesting.
* Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) plans to do everything within his power to block organizers from using the Capitol for a July concert intended to bring awareness to climate change. (It’s possible there’s a more repugnant member of the Senate, but I can’t think of one.)
* Good NYT editorial on Pat Tillman’s death: “[T]he family believes the Pentagon public relations machine is behind the distortions and wants a Congressional inquiry. Congress should provide it.”
* And PoliticsTV has put together the Top 10 political web videos of all time. It’s a pretty good list, and helps highlight the ways in which the medium has evolved.
Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.