Today’s edition of quick hits.<\/p>\n
* Quote of the Day #1: Republican Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon has offered tacit support for the war in Iraq for years, but he’s done<\/a>. Smith said he is at, “the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up the same bombs, day after day. That is absurd.” he said, adding, “It may even be criminal.” Smith concluded, “I, for one, am tired of paying the price of 10 or more of our troops dying a day. So let’s cut and run or cut and walk, but let us fight the war on terror more intelligently that we have because we have fought this war in a very lamentable way.”<\/p>\n * Quote of the Day #2: House Page Board chairman John Shimkus on why he didn’t tell Page Board member Dale Kildee about the inappropriate e-mail messages Mark Foley sent to a former page: “Dale’s a nice guy, but he’s a Democrat<\/a>, and I was afraid it would be blown out of proportion.”<\/p>\n * I can’t believe William Safire<\/a> is going to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. Then again, given this president, maybe I shouldn’t be too surprised.<\/p>\n * Ruth Marcus has an amusing column<\/a> lamenting the fact that Dick Cheney’s openly gay daughter did not get pregnant during the 2004 campaign. <\/p>\n * Washington, D.C., has a ban on smoking in federal buildings and in private workplaces, but members of Congress exempted themselves from both. Nancy Pelosi, however, is currently “thinking of banishing tobacco<\/a> from the most popular smoking spot in the building: the Speaker’s Lobby outside the House chamber.”<\/p>\n * I honestly can’t figure out how Imus gets away with what sounds like transparent anti-Semitism<\/a>.<\/p>\n * The good news: Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) will spend the night in the Louisiana State Penitentiary tonight. The bad news: it’s a p.r. stunt<\/a> intended to show the benefits associated with the prison’s taxpayer-financed faith-based prison ministry. * This AP story<\/a> makes it sound as if the Senate is going to start governing more in secret. I’ve learned, however, that the report about “closed sessions” is wrong and only refers to a one-time ceremonial meeting at the beginning of the next Congress.<\/p>\n * It got lost in the shuffle, but the Iraq Study Group had some interesting things to say about the administration’s failure to properly budget<\/a> for the war in Iraq, too.<\/p>\n * Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Bill Frist<\/a>.<\/p>\n * Why are so many Massachusetts Dems urging John Kerry to run for president again? One interesting theory<\/a>: to help shake up the delegation and make room for new people to run for new offices.<\/p>\n * The AP is still fighting back<\/a> against charges from right-wingers about the story on six Iraqis who were allegedly set on fire two weeks ago.<\/p>\n * Kudos to the New York Sun’s Josh Gerstein for reading<\/a> publicly-available documents that his colleagues seem to consistently overlook.<\/p>\n * Chris Bowers makes a compelling case<\/a> that impeachment won’t be, and probably shouldn’t be, on the congressional agenda.<\/p>\n
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\n* It’s a process riddled with fits and starts, but federal voting guidelines and upcoming congressional legislation will likely lead to “sweeping changes<\/a>” in how Americans cast ballots by the 2008 presidential election, according to the NYT. “In the next two years I think we’ll see the kinds of sweeping changes that people expected to see right after the 2000 election,” said Doug Chapin, director of electionline.org, a nonpartisan election group. “The difference now is that we have moved from politics down to policies.”<\/p>\n