Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:<\/p>\n
* Jerome Hauer, who served as Rudy Giuliani’s emergency management director in NYC, is criticizing<\/a> his former boss’ presidential ambitions. “Rudy would make a terrible president and that is why I am speaking now,” Hauer said. He based much of his criticisms on Giuliani’s decision to ignore warnings and locate his crisis control room in the World Trade Center complex, despite a pervious attack at the site.<\/p>\n * Jonathan Martin<\/a>: “Mitt Romney engaged in a heated discussion about his Mormon faith with a prominent Des Moines talk show host off the air on Thursday morning. The contentious back-and-forth between Romney and WHO’s Jan Mickelson began on the air (video link courtesy Breitbart.tv) when the former governor appeared on the popular program that has become a regular stop for GOP presidential hopefuls. But the conversation spilled over to a commercial break and went on after the program ended, where a visibly annoyed Romney spoke in much greater detail about his church’s doctrines than he is comfortable doing so in public.”<\/p>\n * Though the senator is still keeping his plans close to his chest, Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) is expected not to seek re-election next year, at least as far as the Virginia GOP establishment is concerned. Bob Novak reported<\/a> that the state’s Republican leaders now expect Rep. Tom Davis (R) and former Gov. Mark Warner (D) to face off, with Warner as the favorite.<\/p>\n * Barack Obama took some heat last week over his foreign policy positions, but the senator isn’t backing down<\/a>: “‘I made a simple proposition that I’d like anybody here to challenge me on,’ Obama said of his Wednesday speech in which he said that he would use military force in Pakistan, a U.S. ally, if necessary to root out terrorists…. ‘Everybody knows that you’d use conventional weapons in those circumstances,’ he said. ‘Every military expert knows that you’d never use nuclear weapons in that situation.'”<\/p>\n