If you're into reading the tea leaves to determine if the rumors of OBL's death are true, this UPI report will give you plenty to play with, including the significance of the paper chosen to receive the leak.
--David Kurtz
Important bit of context on the detainee legislation and the associated debate in Congress, from the Boston Globe:
As lawmakers prepare to debate the CIA's special interrogation program for terrorism suspects, fewer than 10 percent of the members of Congress have been told which interrogation techniques have been used in the past, and none of them know which ones would be permissible under proposed changes to the War Crimes Act.
But that doesn't stop the esteemed gentleman from Alabama: "I don't know what the CIA has been doing, nor should I know," said Senator Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican.
The piece points out that the Army Field Manual spells out in detail which interrogation techniques are acceptable and which are prohibited, which undermines the Administration's contention that the details of its interrogation techniques should remain classified.
It sort of fits that the same folks who let the Administration keep them constantly in the dark don't see anything wrong with keeping alleged terrorists in the dark about the evidence against them.
--David Kurtz
Wild Bill lets loose on Fox News and lets Chris Wallace have it.
CLINTON: You set this meeting up because you were going to get a lot of criticism from your viewers because Rupert Murdoch is going to get a lot of criticism from your viewers for supporting my work on climate change. And you came here under false pretenses and said that you’d spend half the time talking about…WALLACE: [laughs]
CLINTON: You said you’d spend half the time talking about what we did out there to raise $7 billion dollars plus over three days from 215 different commitments. And you don’t care.
It's about time. But does this mean I have to watch Fox News Sunday?
Update: Just to be clear, the meat of the exchange and the catalyst for the sparring comes when Wallace mouths the spin of "The Path to 9/11," asserting that Clinton did not do enough to get al Qaeda.
Late update: Earlier, Fox was teasing the interview on its website with the headline, "Clinton Gets Crazed." They have now changed it to "Strong Reaction."
--David Kurtz
The reports on the possible death of Osama bin Laden are not surprisingly very contradictory at this point. Time is now reporting that, according to a Saudi source, bin Laden is ill and may have already died:
The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, says that Saudi officials have received multiple credible reports over the last several weeks that Bin Laden has been suffering from a water-borne illness. The source believes that there is a "high probability" that Bin Laden has already died from the disease, but stressed that Saudi officials have thus far received no concrete evidence of Bin Laden's death."This is not a rumor," says the source. "He is very ill. He got a water-related sickness and it could be terminal. There are a lot of serious facts about things that have actually happened. There is a lot to it. But we don't have any concrete information to say that he is dead."
Given the number of times his death has been reported, there's no point in speculating on which reports are accurate. We'll just have to let this one play out. I will say that typhoid is not exactly my idea of a deserved death for the man.
--David Kurtz
The NRCC has spent more than $1 million trying to hold on to Indiana's 8th District, a seat currently held by Rep. John Hostettler (R-IN). How tough is the race against Democrat Brad Ellsworth? Put it this way, Hostettler keeps a binder of opposition research in his office labeled with the name of Ellsworth's 19-year-old daughter.
--David Kurtz
TPM, across all its platforms, is making a concerted effort to track the various shadow groups involved in congressional campaigns nationwide. The 527 groups, which played such a huge role in the 2004 presidential campaign, are back with a vengeance.
While technically the 527s that take soft money are prohibited from coordinating their activities with candidates and parties, you can't fully understand the strategies and tactics of the national campaigns being waged by either party without understanding where the 527s fit into the mix.
The prohibition on coordination is one of those fine legal distinctions that makes the campaign finance laws such a mess.
Take for instance "Softer Voices," a 527 group supporting Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) in his re-election campaign against Bob Casey. Until this past week, the contact person and custodian of records for Softer Voices--the person who signed their IRS filings--was Cleta Mitchell, a partner at the DC firm of Foley & Lardner LLP and . . . wait for it . . . legal counsel to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
All of Softer Voices's contributions so far in 2006 came this past week, with $650,000 raised from just two contributors. The group turned around and spent more than $750,000, all of it on the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate race, according to the group's FEC filing. In between the recipt of the contributions and the ad buy, the group filed an amended IRS report in which Cleta Mitchell is no longer listed as contact person for the group.
You may recall the controversy that erupted in the 2004 elections when it was learned that GOP power lawyer Ben Ginsberg was representing both the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Ginsberg resigned from the Bush campaign, but his firm, Patton Boggs, still represents the Swift Boaters, collecting more than $275,000 in fees from the group since June 2005. Meanwhile, according to his bio, Ginsberg represents the RNC, NRSC, NRCC and the Republican Governors Association.
As I said, these are very fine legal distinctions.
--David Kurtz
Bob J. Perry is no longer the sole financial backer of the Economic Freedom Fund, the 527 group that reunites the Swift Boat crowd and is making a splash this year with hard-hitting ads and pernicious robo-calls in key congressional races.
It appears another GOP financial heavyweight is getting in on the fun. Carl H. Lindner, part owner of the Cincinnati Reds and No. 133 on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans, has ponied up $50,000 to EFF. More precisely, EFF has recorded a $50,000 donation from the same address as Lindner uses in other FEC reports. For whatever reason, the FEC website is not showing the names of EFF's most recent contributors, just their addresses.
A mere $50,000 is a small fraction of the $5 million Perry has contributed to the group, but it suggests other big-money Republican donors may be climbing aboard Swift Boat 2.0. Lindner's contributions to President Bush's 2004 re-election campaign qualified him as a "Ranger."
EFF's most recent filings show it spending another $120,000 against John Barrow (D-GA); $105,000 against Alan Mollohan (D-WV); and $75,000 against Jim Marshall (D-GA). This is in addition to several hundred thouand dollars already spent by EFF collectively in those districts.
--David Kurtz
Osama bin Laden dead? I don't want to make too big a deal of this--yet. But according to a regional French newspaper that obtained a classified French secret service report, the Saudis are convinced bin Laden died of typhoid in August in Pakistan.
The newspaper printed what it said was a copy of the report dated September 21 and said it was shown to President Jacques Chirac, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and France's interior and defense ministers on the same day."According to a usually reliable source, the Saudi services are now convinced that Osama bin Laden is dead," the document said.
"The information gathered by the Saudis indicates that the head of al Qaeda was a victim while he was in Pakistan on August 23, 2006, of a very serious case of typhoid which led to a partial paralysis of his internal organs."
The report, which was stamped with a "confidential defense" label and the initials of the French secret service, said Saudi Arabia first heard the information on September 4 and that it was waiting for more details before making an official announcement.
A senior official in Pakistan said no foreign government had shared information with Pakistan that would back up the report of bin Laden's death.
Now, reports of bin Laden's death have been exaggerated before. What makes this report particularly interesting is that the French Defense Ministry has essentially confirmed the existence of the secret service report, saying publicly that while it cannot confirm that bin Laden is dead, it will launch an inquiry into the leak of the secret document and seek criminal charges against the leaker.
Late update: U.S. government unable to confirm bin Laden death report.
Later update: Not dead yet, according to CNN source.
Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has a water-borne illness, a Saudi intelligence source told CNN on Saturday, knocking down a report in a French newspaper that the man who has been hunted by the United States for the past five years is dead.The Saudi intelligence source told CNN's Nic Robertson that there have been credible reports for the past several weeks that bin Laden is ill, but there has been no word of his death.
--David Kurtz
Lovely. The Swift Boat 2.0 Group set up by Texas GOP moneyman Bob Perry is now suing the state of Indiana for infringing on the group's constitutional right to bombard the state's residents with smear-laden push-polls. Actually, to be precise, the robo-call chop shop they hired to do the push-polls -- the oddly named FreeEats.com -- is suing on their behalf. It's, well, all very complicated.
--Josh Marshall
Oh Boy. Macaca's back with a vengeance. And Wonkette's got the get.
Remember, George Allen said he just made up 'Macaca', right?
Well, that's not what he told Marvin Olasky's World Magazine, a widely read evangelical weekly, a few weeks ago.
Here's what he told them ...
Allen actually had a pretty credible defense for what he said. No one—including The Washington Post, which featured the story repeatedly for several weeks—ever demonstrated that "macaca" really has such murky racial connotations in any language. But in northern Italy, where Allen's mother had close family connections, "macaca" does seem to mean "clown" or "buffoon." Allen says now that's what he was trying to communicate.
So it's a word he picked up from his mom and it means buffoon.
Or he made it up.
Or he didn't make it up and it's a slur for dark-skinned people like Webb's campaign volunteer S.R. Sidarth.
(ed.note: The article is behind World's subscription wall. The link goes to a version with only the first few paragraphs. The section I quoted is further down. But in our never-ending quest to scale the highest mountains of bamboozlement, the TPM treasury chipped in $5 for the online subscription. And we've confirmed the passage above.)
--Josh Marshall
Okay, it's late on a Friday afternoon. Even evening here on the East Coast. But you've got to set aside a few moments for this one.
Here's the story of a wingnut House candidate from Colorado literally getting down on bended knee to beg for forgiveness for his youthful indiscretions trying to phase out Social Security. Just go look. It'll start you off on a good weekend.
--Josh Marshall
Not sure if I buy it, but this is TPM Reader AB's view ...
It may not be as bad as it appears because it may not pass before Congress adjourns.Rove and his allies waited to present this issue until he thought the election time was right but he did not figure on an intra- party debate to delay the bill by more than a week. So, now time is short.
Meanwhile, I am guessing that Reid made the smart decision to keep the Dems out of the "negotiations". Why should they invest what little access to media they have on a bill without details, without knowing the dimensions of the constitutional issues. He saved our little powder until now we can see how bad the bill is but it may be easier to slow down the legislative mechanism enough to get us past adjournment, especially if we get a little help from Duncan Hunter and his buddies in the House.
So, let's not panic. Reid may be playing our cards right and, if so, this accounts for the silence of Feingold and Durbin and the others we would have thought to have been breathing fire.
I've never known this crew for being much for procedural proprieties, let alone the rule of law all that other fussiness when an election is on the line. But who knows?
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader ZN with a follow up ...
I think DOK is taking some liberties in summarizing the torture article in the Atlantic. It actually came to the conclusion that systemic and routine torture don't work. If there is a definite time constraint, and the admissibility isn't an issue, i.e. stopping a ticking bomb, then torture may help get the information. The author thinks torture should remain illegal because if it is legalized even in this specific situation the possibility of abuse is to great. If it is illegal and the men and women who would commit it know that then they have to decide that the benefit is worth the possible penalty before they do it. If it is ever legal then stretching and interpretation of the situation come into play. If it is never legal then jury nullification or prosecutorial discretion is the only defense.
I think ZN's take on the relationship between the rule of law, the wrongness of torture and the role of the far-fetched hypothetical that is often introduced into the debate is the closest to my own.
It's a point I discussed at some length in this post in June 2004.
TPM Reader BC has this follow up ...
Besides prosecutorial discretion and jury nullification, there is always the presidential pardon option. To me, this demonstrates that Bush doesn’t have in mind rare cases of torture- which, if proved vital, or event useful, could be pardoned. He wants it to be a regular procedure, for which pardons would be unwieldy given the number of people needing them.
I think that's it exactly.
--Josh Marshall
Paul Kiel has been at work trying to trace back the call numbers of the push-polls being funded by Swift Boat kingpin Bob Perry. Oddly enough, the trail led him back to an escort service. But they weren't available to speak with him. Find out the latest on our continuing hunt for the truth here.
--Josh Marshall
Terrorism expert and former DOJ official Juliette Kayyem gives us her take on the torture bill deal.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader DOK ...
Reading this debate gives me the same sick feeling in my stomach that I got when I read the Atlantic Monthly article that came to the same conclusion as your previous commenter: torture doesn’t work, but we should do it any way and pretend we don’t. Like most Americans, I used to buy into this kind of cynicism. Government secrecy is the fuel that feeds all conspiracy theories. What changed my mind was watching the people who have stood up against torture. It has not been humanitarian organizations, movie stars or bleeding heart liberals, but the military and CIA.
Like all macho Hollywood clichés that this administration has put into practice, reality has a way of not following the script. The Democrats were no where to be seen. There was no public outcry on which to ride, no Democrats making a fuss, and no media wanting to give their opposition much play, but they did it anyway. Why is it the very people our President demands have the authority to engage in torture are the only ones willing to stand up and resist these policies, even when they know their protests will fall on deaf ears?
Because there views on torture were not formed in multiplexes, but on the ground, pursuing real bad guys. Because it doesn’t work. Because they know better than anybody this policy will not help us, but hurt us. It tells me that even in the back rooms, in secret, under the radar with no oversight or accountability, our government would not do what our country is now willing to embrace out in the open under President Bush.
Let us know what you think?
--Josh Marshall
JC adds his two cents ...
One other aspect of this:Right now, CIA are the bad guys. As far as I know, military interrogators were not using "coercive techniques."
However, if this bill passes, military interrogators will not only be ALLOWED to use them, they will be EXPECTED to use them.
Which is one reason so many military people have come out against it. Before Hamdan, they were expected to leave the room before the CIA guy got started. Now, they'll be expected to stay - and help.
But that CIA guy is never going to be out on the street patrolling, subject to capture. The military guy is.
Think about it.
I'm thinking.
--Josh Marshall
Dem Diane Farrell hits Rep. Chris Shays (R-CT) for his support of the war in Iraq.
--Paul Kiel
At some level I almost have to admire the in-your-face, out in public and entirely brazen sort of payback the Bush White House metes out to those who are so villainous as to break the Bush code of silence. You can see it now in an almost comical mendacity about whether Dick Armitage was somehow off the reservation when he threatened to bomb Pakistan back to the stone age if the country didn't get religion, shall we say, on rooting out the Taliban in the days after 9/11.
Here's an out-take on Bush's reaction today from the Post ...
Asked at the news briefing in the East Room whether the United States would have actually attacked Pakistan if Musharraf had not agreed to cooperate in the war on terrorism, Bush said, "The first I've heard of this is when I read it in the newspaper today. You know, I was -- I guess I was taken aback by the harshness of the words." He said then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell informed him shortly after Sept. 11 that Musharraf "understands the stakes, and he wants to join and help root out an enemy that has come and killed 3,000 of our citizens."
Leave it to that friggin' Dick Armitage to get us cross-wise with allies.
(I guess the president missed all those news reports at the time that bragged on our 'with us or against us' speech to Pakistan.)
And wasn't it Powell who made the UN speech on WMD? I'm seeing a pattern here.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader JO responds ...
ZH's analysis is way off base, Josh. True, torture has always gone on "in the shadows," but understanding the old status quo is as simple as watching Mission Impossible. What is the secret agent always told? If you are captured or killed, the government will deny all knowledge of your existance. Why? Because everyone knows that torture is illegal. So if our spooks tortured, we'd deny all knowledge. That was the pre-Bush status quo. The McCain bill legalizes the stuff the government used to "deny all knowledge" of. It makes legal interrogation techniques that rest of the world calls torture. ZH misses this glaring distinction: t hese techniques may still be "in the shadows" insofar that they are "classfied," but they are no longer "in the shadows" in terms of legality. When the bill becomes law, it will be America's official policy for professional CIA interrogators to use torture. And it will be perfectly legal. Period. We are not even remotely returning to the status quo.
Makes sense to me.
--Josh Marshall
Nearly 7,000 Iraqis killed in sectarian violence over the last two months.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader ZH on the torture bill compromise ...
This compromise basically returns us to the status quo as far as torture goes. We likely tortured captured spies throughout the cold war to extract information (or at least went beyond Common Artice 3 standards in any case) and probably did so in secret to try and prevent various ticking-time-bomb scenarios like those that have been described in gruesome detail by various pro-torture voices in the past weeks. Bush tried to take these actions out of the darker corners of the government and grant interrogators official cover for their actions. Beyond that, he coupled this with a law to rig courts where information gathered from torturing both the defendent and quasi-anonymous witnesses can be used to hang someone. That's one motive for legalizing torture. Another is that this president is, for one reason or another, more vulnerable than most to whistle-blowing despite his gather-the-wagons attitude. Lastly, there's the obvious tactic that including certain odious factors in the bill (specifics about no trial rights, torture, etc) will make it impossible for most Dems to vote for this wedge.The compromise does little to help Dems on the last prong of Bush's strategy, but provides cover for the anti-torture GOP members by sending torture back to the shadows. Evidence obtained with torture probably won't be used in courts, and torture probably won't be made public again so long as the CIA does a better job than the military at keeping digital cameras out of its agents' hands. The compromise does to quite a bit in terms of saving our collective face and ensuring that the right to torture without penalty isn't enshrined in our laws, but anyone who actually opposes torture (as opposed to just opposing decriminalyzing it) should stand up, and probably should've asked a few more questions about our tactics several years ago before the first pictures came out as well.
Thoughts?
--Josh Marshall
Scooter Libby scores a win in court. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
A bit earlier this evening, in the comments section at TPMCafe, I said that from what I could tell the torture compromise is that we agreed not to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, only to continue violating them. The Post now has its editorial out. And they appear to have to come to something like the same conclusion. (Can't wait to hear the Dean's verdict.) The senate won't formally reinterpret the Geneva Convention or explicitly sanction the president's torture policies. But they'll allow him to keep using them.
That's the compromise.
The Senate, in this dance, becomes the United States 'rendering' prisoners to the executive for illicit torture much as the US renders folks to Syria and Egypt when we really want them to get the treatment.
Or maybe it's like Pilate washing his hands?
--Josh Marshall
I must confess that I am simply dying to hear what Dean David Broder has to say about this torture compromise. In yesterday's paper he was positively rhapsodic about his prized Republican moderates channeling Thomas Jefferson and standing up to President Bush's lawless presidency. He even managed to get in a few digs against the only people who've actually opposed this lawless chief exeecutive. So where does he come out now that his 'independence party' has conceded most of the points of contention, folded abjectly and basically given up?
(ed.note: I'm reserving some judgment on the ultimate questions here, because the legal terrain is one in which I need to defer to others with more expertise and because the language of the compromise, as far as I can see, has yet to be made public. But it looks pretty bad from everything I've seen so far.)
--Josh Marshall
Lovely. White House already trying to wriggle out of even the feeble concessions the three amigos won in the torture compromise.
--Josh Marshall
Count me as semi-mystified. I've read Justin's review of the torture deal at Muckraker. And now I've read the Post's run-down too. And I still don't think I understand precisely what the deal is and who gave what. The point about trials I think I understand. The prosecution must give summaries or redacted versions of classified evidence rather than the raw intel. On the torture front, it's less clear to me.
Let's make this the question of the evening. Do you understand the deal? What are your thoughts?
We're discussing it here over at TPMCafe.
Late Update: I tend to follow Marty Lederman on this stuff. And he thinks the three amigos folded utterly.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader JB on the Allen Oprah moment ...
Honestly, I feel sorry, deeply sorry for his mother. Him, not so much. Webb needs to be very careful that this doesn't become a Shakespearean tragedy with this undeserving putz at the center.I'm fascinated with the operatic dimension of the story, which has built like the best melodramas do.
--Josh Marshall
I suspect this Allen interview might help him since he's really laying it on pretty thick. But it's cool that he's dedicating the rest of life to the fight against discrimination of all sorts. That'll be interesting to watch. I guess it was too much for Wolf Blitzer to bring up Allen's history with white supremacist groups. That wouldn't have been nice.
--Josh Marshall
House Ethics committee clears Rep. Lewis aide Shockey on $2 million 'buyout' deal.
--Josh Marshall
Apparently CNN just taped a lengthy interview with Sen. Allen on the whole Jewish mother mishigas. I hear they're running it next hour.
--Josh Marshall
Well, get ready for it. Word coming off the wires is that the White House and those GOP senators are about to announce a torture/trial 'compromise'.
--Josh Marshall
Sigh. It's a dirty business but somebody's got to do it. You've probably seen that picture of George Allen hanging out with his friends at the white supremacist group, the CCC. Well, Justin Rood caught up with Gordon Baum of the CCC to find out what he thinks of the latest antics in the Virginia senate campaign.
--Josh Marshall
Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) discusses his definitions of torture (and choice of social clubs) ...
Pressed on whether that means he supports torture, he said, "What's torture? Torture is many things to many people ... people have different breaking points."Asked whether he would support using electric shocks, he said, "Electric shocks are given to people during initiations to different clubs ... Is that torture? I don't know."
Asked about beatings, he said, "Are you talking about tying his hands behind his back and beating him in the head? No, I'm not for that."
See the rest here.
--Josh Marshall
AG Gonzales: We don't send people abroad to be tortured. DHS handles that now.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader JL on George Allen ...
I think that you're getting at something in your reading of the WaPost article about Etty Allen, but you're still a bit off.Yes, this is a story about a lie, but the most important lie is not the one George Allen may have told the public, but the one that his mother told for years and years. What comes through most clearly to me is her deep shame at being Jewish. Why else would she fear that once she revealed the truth to her son that he wouldn't love her anymore? Why would she insist that he not tell his siblings? Reading between the lines, she married into a deeply anti-semitic family and decided at that point that she had to hide her origins. Family secrets like these are toxic. I would expect that George Felix Allen both knew and not-knew, the way a child will know and not-know about any family secret, because it's something that no one in the family will ever talk about directly. The story here isn't so much what did GFA know about his mother and when did he know it so much as it is the family's shame at being Jewish. I mean, this is not, "Hey mom, you never told me that you were a championship tennis player when you were young!" This is something that all of them were ashamed of. Think of poor old Felix Lumbroso, coming to the U.S. for his daughter's wedding, and having to hide that he was Jewish. Think of Etty's fear that he, or some other family member or friend, might spill the beans. Think of little George Felix, growing up in such a household and what he internalized. There is nothing in his behavior or speech, now or in the past, that suggests that he's not ashamed that his mother is Jewish.
Amen.
--Josh Marshall
House GOP reveals: We were for the White House's detainee treatment bill before we voted against it. Before we re-voted in favor of it. What's your problem? That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
The Post has a follow-up in Thursday's paper on the Allen 'I didn't know I was Jewish' saga.
Staff writer Michael D. Shear interviews Allen's mom, Henrietta "Etty" Allen nee Lumbroso.
Not to be overly cynical but it reads as what you might call a sort of feel-good tale of hidden identities and toxic family secrets.
Lumbroso was raised as a Jew in Tunisia. But when she came to the US and married George's dad she pretended to be a Christian because she didn't think her husband's family would accept her and also because she didn't want her family to experience what she experienced in World War II. So she never told her family, until George confronted her about it last month. She admitted it was true. She said she was afraid he didn't love her anymore. But no, he said, "Mom, I respect you more than ever."
Okay, look, I'm doing my best to walk you through the narrative, okay?
Said Allen's mother: "The fact this is such an issue justifies my actions, and my behavior."
At the debate a few days ago Allen said "My mother's French-Italian with a little Spanish blood in her. And I was raised as she was, as far as I know, raised as a Christian." That wasn't true of course. She'd already told him she was raised as a Jew. But that's okay because she'd sworn him to secrecy after the conversation in August.
Some more texturey details come through even in the carmelized narrative. As Shear writes "She said that she and the senator's father, famed former Redskins coach George Allen, had wanted [keep her Jewish ancestry a secret] to protect their children from living with the fear that she had experienced during World War II."
Further down, there's a slightly different explanation, or at least another layer of it. Speaking of Allen's father, she says, "He didn't want me to tell his mother. At that time, that was a no-no, to marry outside the church."
Even with a major helping of charity, I think this sounds like the more plausible explanation, rather than her desire to spare George persecution as a Jew in the United States.
One of my failings as a reporter, when I was doing that as my full time gig, was my lack of sufficient cynicism: I remember back in 2001 sitting in the home of a retired ambassador and having him lie to my face. Of course, I didn't realize it then. I couldn't get my head around the idea he was just straight out lying to me. (He'd artfully bamboozled me by refusing to talk on the phone or have of conversation recorded -- only to insist that what I was asking about had simply never happened.) I found out a month or so later when a major paper broke the story I'd been working on with most of the same information I'd known months before. That reporter finally got the ambassador to 'fess up.
That said, I might be willing to believe that Allen's mother never told him her family was Jewish. I'm not silly enough to believe he didn't know. I've learned a few lessons.
--Josh Marshall
The campaign contributions in the final stretch are going to make a very, very big difference. Read this article in the Times.
--Josh Marshall
Shorter David Broder: Bush is a lawless president at war with the constitution. Also, Gore and Kerry, who opposed him, are know-it-alls I don't like. Hopefully Republican moderates and Lieberman can all get reelected so the country can be saved.
--Josh Marshall
It's hard to know where to begin in trying to disentangle the knot of jingoism, recklessness, bad faith and bamboozlement that is President Bush's latest boast that if he had good intelligence on bin Laden's whereabouts he would send US troops into Pakistan to catch him whether the Pakistanis agreed or not.
On Friday he suggested that he wouldn't because "Pakistan is a sovereign nation." And, yes, not invading other countries is a good rule of thumb in most 
cases, if one this president has tended to honor in the breach. But I think that given the unique history, most presidents and most Americans would be willing to violate another country's sovereignty if they had actionable intelligence that gave a good chance of successfully capturing OBL.
So on nabbing bin Laden in Pakistan it sounds like the president was against it before he was for it. And as Peter Bergen notes, one of the reasons we don't have good actionable intelligence on where bin Laden is is that US troops aren't allowed to operate in Pakistan.
But why debate hypotheticals?
Why do we think President Bush would send troops into Pakistan to get bin Laden without permission when he wouldn't keep troops in Afghanistan (a country then wholly under American occupation) when we had bin Laden cornered at Tora Bora? The Bush-Cheney campaign was able to bamboozle its way through that net in 2004. But all the information that's come up over the last two years has confirmed as tightly as it ever can be confirmed that US intelligence knew bin Laden was at Tora Bora trying to make his escape into Pakistan but that President Bush didn't commit the necessary US manpower to the search because he was shifting priorities and resources to Iraq.
Then, now, before 9/11, it's always been about Iraq. bin Laden was just a way to get in.
--Josh Marshall
Time to hit the Diebold panic button?
From the latest poll from the New York Times ...
The Times/CBS News poll also found that President Bush did not improve his own or his party’s standing through the intense campaign of speeches he made and events he attended surrounding the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The speeches were at the heart of a Republican strategy to thrust national security to the forefront in the fall elections.Mr. Bush’s job approval rating was 37 percent, virtually unchanged from the last Times/CBS News poll, which was conducted in August. On the issue that has been a bulwark for Mr. Bush, 54 percent said they approve of the way he is managing the effort to combat terrorists, again unchanged from last month, though up from earlier this spring.
Republicans continue to hold a slight edge over Democrats on which party is better at dealing with terrorism, though that edge did not grow since last month despite Mr. Bush’s flurry of speeches on national security, including one from the Oval Office on the night of the Sept. 11 anniversary.
...
In the poll, 50 percent of voters said they would support a Democrat in the fall Congressional election, compared with 35 percent who said they would support a Republican. But the poll found that Democrats continued to struggle to offer a case for control of government to be turned over to them; only 38 percent of all respondents said the Democrats have a clear plan for how they would run the country, compared with 45 percent who said the Republicans had offered a clear plan.
So the public is saying, yes, we know what the Republican plan is. But please, please make it end!
--Josh Marshall
Defeat breeds more defeat. House Judiciary Committee rejects White House torture bill.
--Josh Marshall
Your GOP racial gaffe of the day, courtesy of Rep. John Kline's (R-MN) political director.
--Paul Kiel
Another holdup for the Bush administration: Arlen Specter says he wants his Judiciary Committee to vote on torture legislation before it goes before the full Senate.
--Justin Rood
TPM Reader DT on whether Allen's heritage is fair game ...
Of course, it's fair game. Allen has been talking about "heritage" the whole campaign, if not his whole career. He's used "heritage" as an excuse for his prior (?) worship of the Confederate flag. Even if you believe the nonsense that "macaca" was just some random syllables he bunched together on the stump and that he wasn't trying to single out the only non-white in attendance, then his only argument is that he was trying to say he was more authentically Virginian than Webb, which is an argument of heritage. Of course, he's also wrong on that count, but he can’t say he hasn't introduced heritage into the campaign.
I would say that the whole line of questioning is reasonable for reasons I noted here last night. But this is part of the mix too.
--Josh Marshall
This may really be a race again. The last two polls of the Lieberman-Lamont race (one out today, another yesterday) show a neck and neck battle -- both showing Lieberman up by only two points.
--Josh Marshall
Sen. Allen (R-VA): I'm not a crypto-Jew and I'll prove it right now!
From The Richmond Times-Dispatch ...
Speaking with The Times-Dispatch, Allen said the disclosure is "just an interesting nuance to my background." He added, "I still had a ham sandwich for lunch. And my mother made great pork chops."
Can someone pass on to Sen. Allen that we hope this isn't the first of several physical demonstrations of his non-Jewishness?
(ed.note: Special thanks to TPM Reader NM for the catch.)
--Josh Marshall
Burns, Frist, Santorum top CREW's new bipartisan list of most corrupt members of Congress.
--Josh Marshall
Trivia question: When admitted felon Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) heads off to prison, how many former lawmakers will he join behind bars? That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
The Times and the Post both have stories in Wednesday's paper on the evolving legislative battle over the President's push for legislation legitimizing the use of torture for accused terrorist detainees. But the stories they tell are sharply divergent.
I've been on Justin Rood's case to find me more information about the state of the negotiations over the president's torture bill. But the Times piece left me inclined to cut him some slack since the Times reporters don't seem to have any idea what's going on either. The Times reporters couldn't get much sense of how much the president has 
conceded in the on-going negotiations or whether the events of the last 36 hours makes a compromise more or less likely.
The Post, on the other hand, paints a decidely bleaker picture for the White House. While noting that an agreement could come at any moment, the Post portrays a legislative clock rapidly running out on the president's plan to ram through torture and tribunal legislation to bludgeon the Democrats with in time for the November election. "Yesterday's actions significantly dimmed prospects that Congress can complete its national security agenda before adjournment." The paper also reports the rebellion moving to the House.
The Post piece even includes the telling and somehow touchingly feeble threat from Bill Frist that he, the Senate Majority Leader, may lead a filibuster against the Warner-McCain-Graham bill in the Senate.
I guess he'll show them who's boss.
--Josh Marshall
Santorum body armor ad drops tomorrow. It's a rejiggered version of the one they ran against George Allen last week in Virginia. Both voted against the same bill.
--Josh Marshall
Hosni Mubarak's son and heir-apparent, Gamal Mubarak, proposes an Egyptian nuclear program.
--Josh Marshall
Was it fair for the reporter to bring up Allen's mother?
We've already devoted a lot of space to this. But let's not forget one thing: Allen's campaign started its downward spiral when he called one of Jim Webb's Indian-American campaign workers "Macaca". In Colonial-era North Africa, particularly the Francophone areas, 'Macaca' is a rough equivalent of 'N-ger'.
That's a seemingly distant connection, except when you consider that Allen's mother happens to be from the then-French colony of Tunisia, a fact that in itself pretty much puts the lie to Allen's clumsy fib.
This whole brouhaha, including the question that set Allen off, got rolling because of Allen's preposterous claim and the reporter's question about whether he'd learned the word from his mother.
It may not be pretty. But it's all the fruit of Allen's lies.
--Josh Marshall
The Post has a lengthy piece up tonight on the Allen "I didn't know gramps was Jewish" story. A lot of it is as you'd expect, a lot of the same facts we've discussed on the site this evening, if in a more measured tone. But one new fun detail is the pointed effusion of malarkey from Allen's campaign manager Dick Waddhams, a joker we had to deal with a few years back when he was working for then-candidate John Thune.
Yesterday, Wadhams accused Webb's campaign and liberal bloggers of anti-Semitism for raising the issue of the senator's religious background.Bloggers, some of whom are on Webb's staff, spent yesterday writing furiously about the debate question and Allen's answer. "What does Allen have against Jews?" one headline read on a national liberal blog.
"Introducing religion at all into the debate was inappropriate. It makes no difference what anybody's religion is," Wadhams said.
Wadhams also accused Webb's campaign of mailing an anti-Semitic flier to Virginia voters during the state's Democratic primary this year. That flier depicted Webb's Jewish opponent, Harris Miller, with money coming out of his pockets.
"They have been continuing that anti-Semitic strategy through their paid bloggers," Wadhams said.
I should have known this was coming when I started getting wingnut emails a couple days ago getting on my case for not calling the Webb campaign out for its "blatantly anti-semitic stereotyping" in the said flyer.
In any case, here's the flyer in question (click on it for a full view) ...
Now, I'm not sure where to start here exactly. But I'm just not seeing it. Yes, as the Allen flacks point out, Webb's primary opponent Miller is depicted as a money-bags corporate lobbyist with an unnatural love of outshoring jobs. But the deal breaker here on the anti-Semitism charge has to be the fact that Miller doesn't have an obviously Jewish name. That, I guess, and the lack of any clear signs of anti-Semitic stereotyping in the whole thing.
As I say, I don't see it. But by all means, click on the image and judge for yourself.
But this is where the Allen campaign is at the moment: the guy who hangs out with white supremacist groups, randomly comes up with syllable combinations that happen to also be racial slurs when he wants to call out brown people and has some real issue with his Jewish ancestry that makes him come up with ridiculous fibs to the effect that he was the last one to discover his grandfather was Jewish - that guy is calling out his opponent for using anti-Semitism as a tool of his campaign.
--Josh Marshall
Controversy over that bullet proof vest ad Vote Vets is running against George Allen in Virginia. Is it "left over from the Vietnam war" or an "80s era kevlar PASGT flak vest."
We report; you decide. (But whenever they're from they don't seem to work that well.)
--Josh Marshall
Deval Patrick easily takes Democratic nomination for governor in Massachusetts.
--Josh Marshall
I'll be shocked if I wake up November 8th to find that Sen. Jon Kyl has lost his battle for reelection. But look at this new SurveysUSA poll out on the Arizona senate race. SUSA has Kyl at 48% and Pederson (D) at 43%. I'm not holding my breath on this one. But it's looking like a real race.
--Josh Marshall
Tart words from TPM Reader NF ...
Josh, It is clear to me and should be to others that George Allen is lying when he claims that he just found out about his Jewish ancestry from a "recent" news article. I think this revelation may actually go a long way in explaining Mr. Allen's public persona. He apparently believes that he must over compensate with the good 'ol white boy routine for what he obviously seems to think is an unfortunate fact about his parentage. He stated during the debate that his mother had some "Spanish" in her background. I think this was his own code word for "Sephardic," as in Jews from Spain. His comments are even more laughable when he claims he was taught to abhor bigotry. People who abhor bigotry do not place confederate flags on their vehicles or hang nooses in their offices. This guy is a self-hating head case. And that is what makes him dangerous as a public office holder.
This is a fairly rough take on the matter. But I don't see any other interpretation of Allen's claim that he just found out his mother's family was Jewish. Many non-Jews were imprisoned in German concentration and death camps during World War II. But given that Allen has long known that his grandfather (after whom he's named) spent part of World War II in a Nazi concentration camp (or as Allen rather distantly phrases it, "was incarcerated by the Nazis"), it really does strain credulity to believe that the idea that he might be Jewish never crossed his mind.
Late Update: A reader helpfully reminded me of this post from August by TNR's Ryan Lizza. Bob Gibson, a veteran columnist for the Charlottesville