Today’s edition of quick hits.<\/p>\n
* With the House GOP caucus having announced that they will not whip tomorrow’s vote on the anti-escalation resolution, some sources indicate that as many as 60<\/a> House Republicans may break ranks and vote with Democrats in support of the measure.<\/p>\n * MSNBC has signed Keith Olbermann to a contract extension<\/a> through 2011. In addition to his nightly newscast, Olbermann will now also contribute occasional “essays” to the “Nightly News with Brian Williams” and host two “Countdown” specials a year on NBC. Asked about his show’s surging popularity, Olbermann said, “There was just a sense, last year I think, that stuff needed to be said in this country and the first 95 people who probably should have done it didn’t. I just looked around and went, ‘I guess I’m the one who has to jump into the water and try to help the guy out.’ And the response to this was just phenomenal.”<\/p>\n * Following up on the prosecutor’s-purge controversy we’ve been watching, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), speaking on the Senate floor this afternoon, vowed to “get to the bottom<\/a>” of the administration’s firings. Schumer added that if the fired U.S. Attorneys had all received positive job evaluations from the Justice Department before being sacked, “there will be real trouble.”<\/p>\n * Confirming rumored reports from earlier this month, Al Gore announced today a series of world-wide concerts<\/a> to focus attention on the threat of global climate change. The 24-hour event on July 7 is part of a campaign, Save Our Selves — The Campaign for a Climate in Crisis, that promoters hope will trigger a broad movement. More than 100 performers are scheduled to appear at the July concerts, including Red Hot Chili Peppers, Snoop Dogg, Bon Jovi, Melissa Etheridge, the Foo Fighters, Lenny Kravitz, Sheryl Crow, John Mayer, Duran Duran, Korn, Pharrell, the Black Eyed Peas, Akon, Enrique Iglesias, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw.<\/p>\n * Surviving war in the 21st century<\/a>: “Iraqis are using GoogleEarth, which provides real satellite imagery of the entire world (and which can zoom in close enough for you to see your house), to plan their travel routes in hopes of avoiding insurgents, car bombs, and other surprise attacks. Necessity is the mother of invention.”<\/p>\n * Given the awful response to the first episode of Fox News’ The 1\/2-Hour News Hour, the right-wing network is apparently not confident in the show’s future. Fox News ordered a grand total of two episodes<\/a> today. (Four would have been an insult. But two<\/em>?) * Dinesh D’Souza’s anti-American book went from being #19 on the NYT best-seller list, to out of the top 35, to #15 in three weeks. “Something seems fishy<\/a>.”<\/p>\n * Following up on last year’s GOP culture of corruption, federal prosecutors are investigating<\/a> whether Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons (R), who was a Republican congressman up until last year, accepted unreported gifts or payments from a company that was awarded secret military contracts when Gibbons served in Congress.<\/p>\n * Considering how much I enjoy Shakespeare’s Sister<\/a>, and the work I did at Americans United for Separation of Church and State<\/a>, I have to assume that I definitely<\/i> qualify as Spartacus<\/a>.<\/p>\n * Bill Clinton is the nation’s most popular<\/a> political figure. Sorry, conservatives.<\/p>\n * I think Glenn’s right<\/a>; today’s NYT article<\/a> about FireDogLake and the Libby trial is a watershed moment for the netroots.<\/p>\n * Demonstrating the kind of stupidity that’s made him famous, Rush Limbaugh suggested yesterday that Barack Obama could “renounce<\/a>” being black.<\/p>\n * And following up on an item from yesterday, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) vowed to keep smoking cigars<\/a> in his office, no matter how much smoke it produces, how badly it smells, or who it bothers. “We already have the biggest air-purifying unit you can get, and I would be happy to try to make sure that it’s even less odiferous around here, but I’m not going to stop because we still have the right to do so.” (And to clarify, Rep. Keith Ellison did not<\/em> call the cops<\/a> on Tancredo.)<\/p>\n If none of these particular items are of interest, consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today’s edition of quick hits. * With the House GOP caucus having announced that they will not whip tomorrow’s vote on the anti-escalation resolution, some sources indicate that as many as 60 House Republicans may break ranks and vote with Democrats in support of the measure. * MSNBC has signed Keith Olbermann to a contract […]<\/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-9947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9947","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=9947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9947\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n* As a sign of how little Bush wanted to work with congressional Democrats this year, Bush nominated Andrew Biggs to be deputy director of the Social Security Administration, despite the fact that Biggs has been an advocate of privatization. Yesterday, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), apparently offended by the nomination, said his panel would neither consider nor hold hearings<\/a> on the nominee.<\/p>\n