As we mentioned earlier today, the New York Times has thrown its support to Ned Lamont in an editorial appearing in Sunday's paper. The editorial board, which has long favored Joe Lieberman, pulled no punches as it withdrew its support, calling Lieberman's well-known accommodations of the Bush Administration a "warped version of bipartisanship."

If Mr. Lieberman had once stood up and taken the lead in saying that there were some places a president had no right to take his country even during a time of war, neither he nor this page would be where we are today. But by suggesting that there is no principled space for that kind of opposition, he has forfeited his role as a conscience of his party, and has forfeited our support.

The significance of newspaper editorials is vastly overrated. But in withdrawing its longtime support of Lieberman and backing Lamont, a virtual unknown until just a few weeks ago, The Times has given Lamont all of the boost that an editorial can deliver. It validates a challenge that until very recently many observers considered more notable for Lamont's national support from liberal blogs than for the possibility that the incumbent might actually be unseated in his own party's primary.

There must be at least a few people close to Lieberman who are wondering tonight whether he ought to step aside in favor of Lamont, rather than end his political career with a humiliating defeat.

Is it unspeakable?

You probably know that Mel Gibson was picked up last night on a DUI arrest outside LA.

Earlier today a number of readers sent me this story at TMZ.com which alleges that Gibson resisted arrest and among other things went on tirade against Jews. From the site ...

Once inside the car, a source directly connected with the case says Gibson began banging himself against the seat. The report says Gibson told the deputy, "You mother f****r. I'm going to f*** you." The report also says "Gibson almost continually [sic] threatened me saying he 'owns Malibu' and will spend all of his money to 'get even' with me."

The report says Gibson then launched into a barrage of anti-Semitic statements: "F*****g Jews... The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." Gibson then asked the deputy, "Are you a Jew?"

Now, I wasn't familiar with this site. So I didn't know what to make of it. What the site alleges is that the arresting officer wrote up a detailed report from which the alleged quotes above come. But the police brass thought its contents were too inflammatory. And a sanitized version of the police report was then prepared. The site published what it claims is the original suppressed report here.

Now, as I said above, I'm not familiar with the site. But this evening TPM Reader EG sent in this AP story reporting that Gibson's publicist has now released a statement in which Gibson says, inter alios, "I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested and said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable."

What the AP doesn't give any clue about is what these "despicable" statements might have been.

And you have to ask, why? Given what we know now, and now Gibson's cryptic apology, it really sounds like the TMZ story is probably on the mark. So why won't the AP touch that part of the story? CNN doesn't mention it either. People do say all sort of things when they're crazy drunk. But with Gibson, there's a history.

Mission accomplished?

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah declared victory on Saturday after Israel announced it was withdrawing its forces from the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbail where Israeli troops found unexpected difficulty in dislodging the guerrilla group from its strongholds.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev defended the decision to pull troops from Bint Jbeil, saying Israel had never intended to occupy the town, but Nasrallah's quick declaration of victory underscored the propaganda gains Hezbollah is reaping across the Muslim world as it battles Israel to a stalemate.

The last time I recall the U.S. seeming this ineffectual was following Jimmy Carter's failed attempt to rescue the American hostages in Tehran in 1980.

For those MZM-oholics among you, here's video of the grand opening of the MZM facility in Martinsville, Va., less than two years ago, complete with remarks from Richard Berglund, Rep. Virgil Goode, and Mitchell Wade himself. Oh, the heady days of ribbon-cuttings and campaign contributions. The MZM facility shuts its doors for good on Monday.

In a sign of election year desperation, the GOP House early today passed a $2.10 increase (over three years) in the minimum wage. But not to be completely outdone, they tacked on an estate tax cut to the same bill, along with some other tax reduction goodies.

As Kevin Drum noted, dryly: "Clearly, the Republican Party is the party of common sense. After all, if you give a few hundred dollars a month to the poorest of the working poor, it's only fair that you also give several million dollars to the richest of the idle rich."

“You have seen us outfox you on this issue tonight,” crowed Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN) to Democrats on the House floor.

Those clever House Republicans. What will they think of next?

NYT endorses Ned Lamont . . .

More at TPMCafe's Election Central.

And here's how The Times first dropped the bombshell, in a straight news piece on the Lamont-Lieberman race:

[The New York Times, in an editorial published on Sunday, endorsed Mr. Lamont over Mr. Lieberman, arguing that the senator had offered the nation a “warped version of bipartisanship” in his dealings with President Bush on national security.]

After my post last Saturday trumpeting Floyd Landis' amazing performance in the Tour de France, I can't exactly ignore his failed drug test this week, as much as I'd like to ignore the test, the Tour, and the entire sport from this point forward.

There are those, including Landis himself, warning against a rush to judgment. Fine. We'll wait and see, though Landis himself expects his B sample to show the same elevated ratio of testosterone, at which point he will be stripped of his win in the Tour. As I understand it, the definitive test will be an analysis of whether the testosterone in his system was natural or synthetic, a test which may not be completed for some time.

Yeah, that's what I love about the Tour: alpine vistas, fields of lavender, and carbon isotope ratios.

I think I'll dull my pain with something French and authentic, like a bottle of Pernod.

Lieberman stares into the political abyss.

I try to ignore these things. But yesterday Glenn Reynolds falsely claimed I said something I simply never did. And since what he claimed I did was call for the mass and indiscriminate killing of civilians at the outset of the Iraq War, it was more than the average lapse. In fact, unless Glenn simply never read what I actually wrote, I think there is no explanation for this other than that Glenn is being willfully dishonest and quite consciously lying. I don't even want to discuss this more since it's so dark and shameful. But here is the March 2003 column Glenn refers to. And here are two posts at other sites -- one short and another in the context of a broader argument -- which explain the nature of Glenn's false claim and dishonest intent.

Former CIA hand Ray Close, via Larry Johnson:

My source confirmed in detail the fact that intelligence being produced for the Bush Administration by the Pentagon strongly supports the thesis that Hizballah operations are directly controlled and closely managed from Teheran. My source considers this an exaggerated picture of the real situation. He believes that this assessment contributes to an unhealthy and even dangerous mindset in Washington, leading to potentially serious miscalculations and errors of judgment by President Bush and his closest advisors at this very critical time.

Reuters: "Israel will not demand the immediate disarming of Hizbollah as part of a deal to end the current fighting in Lebanon, a senior Israeli foreign ministry official said on Saturday."

Time for some context on the current turmoil in and around Israel. This passage from Ron Suskind's The Price of Loyalty has special resonance given current events. The scene is the White House Situation Room in January 2001, where Bush is meeting for the first time with his National Security Council, 10 days after taking the oath of office. Bush has just asked who in the room has met Ariel Sharon:

He'd met Sharon briefly, Bush said, when they had flown over Israel in a helicopter on a visit in December 1998. "Just saw him that one time. We flew over the Palestinian camps," Bush said sourly. "Looked real bad down there. I don't see much we can do over there at this point. I think it's time to pull out of that situation."

And that was it, according to [Paul] O'Neill and several other people in the room. The Arab-Israeli conflict was a mess, and the United States would disengage. The combatants would have to work it out on their own.

[Colin] Powell said such a move might be hasty. He remarked on the violence on the West Bank and Gaza and on its roots. He stressed that a pullback by the United States would unleash Sharon and Israeli army. "The consequences of that could be dire," he said, "especially for the Palestinians."

Bush shrugged. "Maybe that's the best way to get some things back in balance."

Powell seemed startled.

"Sometimes a show of strength by one side can really clarify things," Bush said.

With that, the rest of the meeting was devoted to Iraq.

Hezbollah agrees to proposed peace plan?

The Lebanese cease-fire plan, reached at a meeting on Friday night, calls for an immediate cease-fire, the release of Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails and the return of two Israeli soldiers held by Hezbollah.

The plan also calls for the return of displaced Lebanese to their homes, negotiations between Israel and Lebanon concerning the disputed Sheeba farms now under Israeli control, the disclosure of maps showing Israeli minefields near the Lebanese border, the deployment and strengthening of the Lebanese army and the expansion of the U.N. force in the south.

While Hezbollah agreed to a cease-fire with Israel and an increased international presence in southern Lebanon, the group objected to "a robust force" of international peacekeepers in the region, the sources said.

Hezbollah did not specifically agree to disarm, as Israel has demanded, the sources said. The plan does, however, call for the Lebanese military to take control of southern Lebanon, along with the U.N. force, which implies that the Hezbollah militia would not operate there.

It also calls for the implementation of the Taef accords -- which ended the Lebanese civil war in 1990 -- which includes the disarming of all militias, the sources said.

Hezbollah representatives told the cabinet it had reservations about the nature of an expanded international presence in the south, the source said.

Hezbollah wants only an expansion of the current UNIFIL mission with the same mandate.

They don't want a "robust force," the source said.

"The force must be more robust, otherwise there's no sense in it," one of the high-ranking Lebanese officials told CNN.

The question of what to do about the two Israeli soldiers being held by Hezbollah was not discussed at the cabinet meeting, the sources said.

The proposal, developed by Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, is the official position of the Lebanese government and is intended to be presented to Rice on her arrival in the region.

Rice told reporters on her plane early Saturday that she has only read news reports about the proposal but it appeared to have "some very good elements." She called it a "positive step."

Developing . . .

Jack Abramoff's old firm, Greenberg Traurig, is reportedly "deep into settlement talks" with the Alabama-Coushatta, one of the Indian tribes Abramoff bilked. The Alabama-Coushatta did not name Greenberg Traurig as a defendant in a civil RICO lawsuit it filed earlier this month in Texas against Abramoff, Ralph Reed, and others, but that could change if a settlement isn't worked out.

The lawsuit also provides fresh evidence of a closer connection between Greenberg Traurig and Michael Scanlon than the law firm has ever acknowledged. Scanlon was Abramoff's close partner in many widely criticized lobbying practices. He pleaded guilty last year to bribing a congressman.

Greenberg has always maintained that Scanlon, who ran a Washington-based public relations company called Capital Strategies, was not a Greenberg employee. But, according to the suit, internal Greenberg e-mails showed that Scanlon "billed hours to tribal clients through Greenberg and that members of the law firm, including attorneys Kevin Ring, Shawn Vasell, Stephanie Leger, Todd Boulanger and others, fabricated hours and time entries for Scanlon."

I would imagine that no law firm accused of civil racketeering wants to take the case all the way to trial, regardless of the merits.

Headline of the Day: 'Stenholm lobbying for horse-meat industry'

I didn't even know there was a horse-meat industry. All you horse-meat lovers can eat well this weekend 'cause Charlie Stenholm's got your back.

McClatchy's Strobel:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President Bush say they're not pressing for a quick cease-fire in Lebanon because they want a lasting peace instead.

However, the administration's fundamental assumptions - that it's impossible to get both a quick end to the killings and a durable peace, and that a cease-fire would be a step away from real peace rather than toward it - are open to question.

The logic, such as it is, employed by Bush and Condi is that since cease-fires have been broken in the past, it is the cease-fires themselves that are the impediment to peace. No cease-fires ergo no broken cease-fires. It's sort of like saying that red lights are the reason drivers run red lights. Remove the traffic lights and, presto, drivers aren't running red lights anymore. Just ignore the carnage at intersections.

Man walks into Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle building, announces "I'm a Muslim American; I'm angry at Israel," then opens fire.

1 dead. At least 5 wounded.

Late Update: The emails we get. This one from GS: "Yes Josh. And in 1994 Barush Goldstein assassinated 27 innocent people while they were praying. Were you making a point or helping to keep score? You disappoint me."

Later Update: The AP is now reportedly disputing the quote. I'll update when I hear more.

Even Later Update: AP now saying the quote is verified.

Late, Late Update: Police news conference to be streamed here at 11 PM Eastern.

Haaretz: "Israel finds itself in an odd position - hesitating in Lebanon as the U.S. pushes for more."

From Haaretz ...

Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, underwent a series of tests at a Tel Aviv hospital on Friday after complaining of abdominal pain.

The IDF chief was later declared healthy and allowed to go home, the army said.

An IDF spokesman said Halutz had been taken to hospital with stomach pains and had undergone tests. He was released later on Friday after doctors found nothing wrong with him.

"There is nothing wrong with his health," the spokesman said earlier.

TV reports said the 58-year-old Halutz, who has been leading Israel's 17-day war against Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, was also complaining of exhaustion.

Officials at Tel Aviv's Ichilov Hospital said he was sent home after several hours with a recommdentation that he rest and eat properly. The military said Halutz was given a clean bill of health.