You could devote an entire blog to Katherine Harris (someone already has) so we try to ration the Katherine Harris posts. But each day brings a new Harris temptation and, as much as you try to stay off the sauce, sometimes you fall off the wagon.

The latest installment in the soap opera that is the Harris campaign finds Harris, burned by her connection to defense contractor MZM, trying to shift the focus by claiming that her opponent, Sen. Bill Nelson, accepted illegal campaign contributions several years ago.

The problem is Harris' former campaign manager was named as a co-conspirator in that case. Oops.

The Orlando Sentinel's Jim Stratton has the details.

Careful what you wish for . . .

Over at TPMmuckraker, Paul Kiel has a rundown on the latest documents from the Secret Service showing Jack Abramoff's White House visits.

The Secret Service has been less than forthcoming about Abramoff's White House contacts, despite a lawsuit seeking to enforce FOIA.

The first batch of records released showed just two Abramoff visits. The latest batch identifies six other times when Abramoff was scheduled to be at the White House.

Jack, we hardly knew ya.

Speaking of the Geneva Conventions, the Red Cross has consistently held to its position that it should have access to those captured by the United States and held at undisclosed locations around the world.

In light of the Hamdan decision, has the Red Cross again approached U.S. officials about gaining such access? What has been the U.S. response? I haven't seen any reporting on this issue. If any TPM readers have, send me the link and I'll post a follow up.

Style note to editors/producers:

Describing those held at Guantanamo as "detainees" or "enemy combatants" is not accurate.

The Supreme Court's Hamdan decision declared them to be prisoners of war, entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, until such time as a properly constituted tribunal concludes otherwise. The thrust of the Court's decision was that the military commissions set up by the Administration did not include the basic procedural safeguards necessary to qualify as a properly constituted tribunal.

As a matter of law now, the United States is holding prisoners of war at Guantanamo Bay. That's a fact, which is obscured when journalists continue to use language first put forth by the Administration specifically to avoid the strictures of the Geneva Conventions.

Update: Nothing like giving style instructions, and being incorrect. A number of readers have correctly pointed out that the Supreme Court in Hamdan did not reach the issue of whether Hamdan was a prisoner of war. So I overstated the case when I wrote that the Supreme Court had declared his POW status. Rather, the District Court had made that determination, and the judgment of the District Court was affirmed by the Supreme Court, but on different grounds. It simply did not decide the POW issue one way or the other. I think it's fair to say that the District Court's opinion that Hamdan is a prisoner of war remains good law, but that decision does not have the imprimatur of the Supreme Court, as my post stated. My apologies for the error and thanks to the readers who caught it.

The evidence mounts.

As you know by now, New Jersey senate candidate Tom Kean, Jr. refuses to say whether he's for the Bush plan to phase out Social Security and replace it with private accounts. We're now on Day 8 trying to get a straight answer out of him.

And now we've found a second reporter whom Kean told back in 2000 that he supported the Bush plan. That was when Kean was running for a House seat in 2000. (The first was a reporter for the Westfield Leader, noted here.)

According to a May 15th 2000 Associated Press article by Laurence Arnold, Kean said that he, like the other four candidates for the GOP nomination supported "the idea of letting people invest part of their Social Security payroll taxes into a private investment account they would manage."

In other words, in 2000 Kean supported President Bush's partial phase-out plan.

One of our spies on the ground in New Jersey tells us that Kean's got his own Garden state version of the Bush bubble and isn't making appearances before non-stacked audiences (if folks in state have more details on this, let us know.) So it may be hard for TPM Readers to get a chance to ask Kean whether he still supports the Bush plan. But he's got to come out of hiding at some point.

More on the latest New York terror case, from the WP:

There were conflicting assessments among U.S. counterterrorism officials about the significance of the plot.

Two U.S. counterterrorism officials, speaking on the condition that their names and agencies not be identified because the FBI is the government's lead agency, discounted the ability of the conspirators to carry out an attack.

One said the plot was "not as far along" as described and was "more aspirational in nature." The other described the threat as "jihadi bravado," adding "somebody talks about tunnels, it lights people up," but that there was little activity to back up the talk.
. . .
Like the plot announced yesterday, the Miami group's plans were described by investigators as "aspirational."

The Miami group had a leg up on this newest bunch; its members were actually in the country.

They always say everything is bigger in Texas, but this is too much even for the Lone Star State.

Reckoning that two U.S. senators and 32 congressmen were insufficient representation in Washington (not to mention that fella in the White House), Texas created an independent state agency to advance the state's interest in Washington, the only state with such an arrangement.

But that wasn't enough, not for Texas.

Even though the Office of State-Federal Relations has its own staff and an office in Washington, it decided to hire outside lobbyists to represent the agency, signing Drew Maloney, Tom Delay's former chief of staff, and Todd Boulanger, a former member of Team Abramoff, to contracts together worth more $1 million. Some of that money made it back into GOP campaign coffers, but that's a whole other story.

The next step would be for Maloney and Boulanger to hire their own lobbyists--because, really, with things like they are in Washington these days, how can the good people of Texas compete for federal dollars without their elected representatives' agency's lobbyists' lobbyists?

Showing some of the common sense Texas prides itself on, a state advisory commission has now recommended that the Office of State-Federal Relations be abolished. Republicans in the Texas Legislature oppose the idea.

Well, turns out the Holland Tunnel wasn't the target after all, according to the NYT. But what does that matter?

Representative Peter T. King, the chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said today that even though the Holland Tunnel was not the target this time, the tunnel has been a target of terrorists before, including a plot against the Hudson River tunnels and other New York landmarks uncovered after the World Trade Center bombing in 1993.

By that logic, we'd better keep a close eye on, say, Pearl Harbor.

Think it's time to compare the number of announced terrorism cases in pre-election 2004, post-election 2005, and, now, pre-election 2006?

Ahhh, a sight to behold. Video of Joe Biden explaining his recent remarks. He was praising Indian-Americans for overcoming their historic exclusion from small retail shop ownership.

Okay, I think the folks at Bluejersey.com may be in the hunt in the Straight Answer from Tom Kean, Jr. on phasing out Social Security contest.

As we noted back on Tuesday, Tom Kean, Jr. (R) is running for the Senate in New Jersey. And even though President Bush and the Social Security chair in the House both say they'll go for Social Security phase-out again next year if they hold the Congress, Kean refuses to say whether he favors preserving Social Security in its present form or phasing it out and replacing it with private accounts.

Go to his events, call his campaign, whatever, he's keeping mum.

But this guy at bluejersey.com has dug up some info.

Turns out that back in 2000, Kean tried to run for a seat in Congress. And back then he was in favor partially phasing out Social Security and replacing the phased out part with private accounts.

Reported the Westfield Leader on May 25th, 2000 ...

Mr. Kean supports investing 2 percent of the Social Security Trust Fund in the Stock Market, in the form of personal retirement accounts that would be controlled by individuals rather than the government.

This is a little garbled. But what the reporter is referring to is taking about 18% of the money that goes to Social Security and putting it into private accounts. (2 percent refers to 2 percentage points out of the total of 12.4% of payroll that goes to Social Security.) That's the Bush plan from 2000.

In other words, back in 2000 Kean was in favor of what President Bush tried to do last year and says he'll try to do again next year. In 2000, Kean was for it. Now he refuses to say whether he's for it or not.

The contest prizes await whoever can get him to say whether he's still for it or whether he's changed his mind.

It can't be that hard. He can't stay silent forever, can he?

Ken Mehlman ...

From MSNBC, June 30th, 2006 ...

The [Justice Department IG] report also contained evidence of Abramoff's strong ties to the Bush White House. One White House political official, Leonard Rodriguez, told Fine's investigators he kept Abramoff aware of information relevant to Guam "at the behest of Ken Mehlman, the White House Political Director," the report said. There was no explanation of why Mehlman would have wanted the information shared with Abramoff.

Ken Mehlman, quoted in Vanity Fair, May 2006: "Abramoff is someone who we don't know a lot about. We know what we read in the paper"

I'm curious to hear more about this alleged plot to bomb the Holland Tunnel in New York. Unlike the ridiculousness down in Florida, this seems like it may have been a serious effort, albeit in the very early stages, and some solid inter-agency work rolling it up. Like I said, curious to hear more.

Bob Ney looks on the bright side.

Gitlin on Lieberman.

Over the last several days, TPMmuckraker.com has been reporting on the evolving allegations of plagiarism in the work of Ann Coulter. The allegations come from several different sources, including the New York Post. And a number of readers have written in to ask to see the actual alleged instances of plagiarism to evaluate the charges for themselves.

The TPMmuckraker staff spent a day working on this. And we've now compiled a comprehensive list of all the allegations we're aware of, with Coulter's text listed along with the alleged original and the party that first identified the similar passages.

To me personally, some of the examples/accusations seem strained -- simply similar statements of the same basic facts. And sometimes there are only so many ways to describe one set of facts. In other cases the similarities of the wording strike me as hard to see as a coincidence. Especially when there seem to be multiple instances of similarities in the same column coming from the same source.

In any case, we're not making judgments one way or another. But if you're interested in this story. Here's the evidence. Make your own judgment.

"We've got Aryan Nations graffitti in Baghdad. . . that's a problem." That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.

Bush on Lieberman on Larry King ...

LARRY KING: Move to politics. An unusual situation in Connecticut. Joe Lieberman is running for reelection to the Senate.

He's in the primary fight, may lose, and has said that if he loses, he might well run as an independent.

He supported you staunchly on Iraq and Iraq is the major issue in that campaign, the primary.

Would you support him if he ran as an independent?

G. BUSH: First, the Democrats have to sort out who their nominee is going to be and that's going to be up to the Democrats. And the rest of it's hypothetical.

LARRY KING: But he said he would run as an independent, if he were...

G. BUSH: He also has said he's going to win his primary.

LARRY KING: I know you like him.

G. BUSH: You're trying to get me to give him a political kiss, which may be his death.

LARRY KING: You hugged him before the State of the Union, right?

No, I know you generally...

G. BUSH: The Democrats are going to figure it out. They'll figure it out.

LARRY KING: So you would not make a decision on that.

G. BUSH: Well, I'm not going to wade into a Democratic primary in the state of Connecticut.

Coulter investigation heats up; lib schadenfreude epidemic fells thousands.