Today’s edition of quick hits.<\/p>\n
* Don’t get too excited about pseudo-political breakthrough<\/a> in Baghdad: “Iraq’s political leaders emerged Thursday from three days of crisis talks with a new alliance that seeks to save the crumbling U.S.-backed government. But the reshaped power bloc included no Sunnis and immediately raised questions about its legitimacy as a unifying force.” Substantively, absolutely nothing has changed<\/a>.<\/p>\n * It needs to be done<\/a>: “In a letter today, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) asked the Justice Department’s inspector general to probe whether Alberto Gonzales has made false or misleading statements. The IG, Glenn Fine, a former prosecutor who’s respected by Democrats and Republicans alike, is already engaged in a joint probe with the Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility of the U.S. attorney firings and general politicization at the DoJ. The inspector general has the power to refer matters for a criminal investigation, but Leahy doesn’t want him to stop there.”<\/p>\n * Slate’s Fred Kaplan tears Rudy Giuliani’s Foreign Affairs article to shreds<\/a>: “Giuliani’s essay in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, laying out his ideas for a new U.S. foreign policy, is one of the shallowest articles of its kind I’ve ever read. Had it been written for a freshman course on international relations, it would deserve at best a C-minus (with a concerned note to come see the professor as soon as possible). That it was written by a man who wants to be president — and who recently said that he understands the terrorist threat ‘better than anyone else running’ — is either the stuff of high satire or cause to consider moving to, or out of, the country.”<\/p>\n * Speaking of Giuliani, his FA piece detailed his thoughts on terrorism, but managed to go 6,000 words without mentioning Pakistan<\/a> — where, you know, the terrorists are.<\/p>\n * I’m sure you’ve seen it by now, but just in case, take a look at Cheney discussing Iraq in 1994<\/a>.<\/p>\n * Markos was on The Colbert Report<\/a> last night.<\/p>\n * USAT<\/a>: “Army soldiers committed suicide last year at the highest rate in 26 years, and more than a quarter did so while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new military report.” * It’s going to be very difficult<\/a> for Republicans to claim that they’ve been expecting all along that the mid-September Iraq report will come from the White House, not Petraeus.<\/p>\n * The same goes<\/a> for the Bush gang.<\/p>\n * Salon’s Michael Scherer created<\/a> a “secret test all elite reporters must pass before they can hit the 2008 trail.” For a fun little exercise, it’s challenging and clever.<\/p>\n * Ezra has a great piece<\/a> on Bill Richardson’s economic policies. (If I hear “pro-growth Democrat” one more time….)<\/p>\n * Everything you ever wanted to know (and more) about what’s wrong with Rich Lowry’s<\/a> political analysis.<\/p>\n * Winning hearts and minds<\/a>? “[Career U.S. diplomat] Patrick Syring retired last month, about a year after he allegedly left racist and intimidating phone and e-mail messages with the Arab American Institute, but before his Wednesday indictment on federal charges of threatening and violating civil rights laws, [State Department] spokesman Sean McCormack said.” (thanks to L.M. for the heads-up)<\/p>\n * I don’t care about the marital plans of the president’s kids.<\/p>\n * The Hill<\/a>: “Eight House Republicans have called for a boycott of next year’s Olympics in Beijing in a resolution introduced just before the congressional recess. The resolution criticizes China’s human rights record and compares the 2008 Beijing Games to the 1936 Olympics in Nazi-era Berlin. Those Olympics showed that ‘the integrity of the host country is of the utmost importance so as not to stain the participating athletes or the character of the Games,’ according to the resolution.”<\/p>\n * WaPo<\/a>: “Lawyers for the Bush administration encountered a federal appeals court Wednesday that appeared deeply skeptical of a blanket claim that the government’s surveillance efforts cannot be challenged in court because the litigation might reveal state secrets. ‘The bottom line here is the government declares something is a state secret, that’s the end of it. No cases … The king can do no wrong,’ said Judge Harry Pregerson.”<\/p>\n * Fox News personality John Gibson now believes there are wars<\/a> against terror, Christmas, Christians, Easter, and himself. Someone get this guy some help.<\/p>\n * And finally, on a related note, Gibson blasted The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart yesterday, prompting Stewart to mention it briefly during a discussion with Cheney sycophant Stephen Hayes. Explaining why so many Americans feel like their patriotism has been called into question, Stewart explained<\/a>, “I myself had some idiot from Fox playing the tape of me after September 11th — very upset. And them calling me a phony … because, apparently, my grief didn’t mean acquiescence.”<\/p>\n Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today’s edition of quick hits. * Don’t get too excited about pseudo-political breakthrough in Baghdad: “Iraq’s political leaders emerged Thursday from three days of crisis talks with a new alliance that seeks to save the crumbling U.S.-backed government. But the reshaped power bloc included no Sunnis and immediately raised questions about its legitimacy as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12568\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n* Ex-Rep. Bob Ney’s (R-OH) former chief of staff, Will Heaton, was sentenced<\/a> to two years of probation today for his involvement with Ney and Jack Abramoff. Prosecutors noted that Heaton was hired at age 24 precisely because he was young and unqualified. “Ney intentionally hired and quickly promoted young, inexperienced staffers – who did not receive any formal ethics training from Congress – so that the staffers would have neither the knowledge nor the maturity to question Ney’s conduct,” prosecutors wrote.<\/p>\n