On Sirius Satellite Radio, you can listen to progressive talk shows on a dedicated station. It's called "Sirius Left."

Listeners can also tune into a dedicated station for conservative talk radio. It's called "Sirius Patriot."

Rick Perlstein suggests there's something wrong with the labeling here. It's a good point.

And then there were ... still a whole lot.

Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore ended his long-shot campaign for the presidency today, saying he has been unable to raise enough money to compete for the Republican nomination.

Gilmore blamed his fundraising problems on his late entry into the race. He said he did not begin organizing his campaign until January, while most of the GOP frontrunners had been preparing to run for years.

The announcement doesn't come as too big a surprise. Gilmore only raised about $380,000 during the first half of 2007, and of late, hasn't even been hitting the campaign trail with any enthusiasm. He'd show up for the debates, but delivered lackluster performances. (Michael Crowley once labeled him the "Memento candidate" because, "As soon as he stops talking I forget everything he said.")

I'm reluctant to kick a guy when he's down, but the truth is, Gilmore's presidential ambitions were always difficult to understand. He was a wildly unsuccessful governor, which preceded an equally unsuccessful tenure running the Republican National Committee (Karl Rove reportedly fired him).

Nevertheless, with Gilmore's departure, the Republican field winnows to nine declared candidates, 10 if you include Fred Thompson. With Gingrich and Hagel still mulling bids, the already-enormous field could still get bigger.

As for today, so long, Jim; we hardly knew you. And in this case, we mean that literally.

In recent years, Pat Tillman's death in Afghanistan has gone from being tragic to suspicious to scandalous. As you probably know, Tillman, a former NFL star who retired from football to become an Army Ranger, was killed in Afghanistan in 2004 and his death was quickly seized upon for public relations purposes. In fact, the Army said Tillman was killed by enemy gunfire when he led his team to help another group of ambushed soldiers.

That wasn't true -- Tillman died as a result of friendly fire. The Pentagon knew better, but was reluctant to say so. In March, we learned, "Just seven days after Pat Tillman's death, a top general warned there were strong indications that it was friendly fire and President Bush might embarrass himself if he said the NFL star-turned-soldier died in an ambush.... The memo reinforces suspicions that the Pentagon was more concerned with sparing officials from embarrassment than with leveling with Tillman's family."

What's more, it took five weeks for Tillman's family to learn about the incident, in part because, "within hours of Pat Tillman's death, the Army went into information-lockdown mode, cutting off phone and Internet connections at a base in Afghanistan, posting guards on a wounded platoon mate, and ordering a sergeant to burn Tillman's uniform."

In April, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing on the issue, and heard U.S. Army Spc. Bryan O'Neal explain that he was told by a higher-up to conceal information. It led the committee to request materials from the White House and the Pentagon describing how and when the administration learned the circumstances of Tillman's death.

Yesterday, the Bush gang delivered its answer: No.

The White House has refused to give Congress documents about the death of former NFL player Pat Tillman, with White House counsel Fred F. Fielding saying that certain papers relating to discussion of the friendly-fire shooting "implicate Executive Branch confidentiality interests."

Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), the leading members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, objected to the refusal yesterday in letters to the White House and the Defense Department.

Waxman and Davis are clearly annoyed by the developments. They've scheduled another hearing for Aug. 1, after which, they'll probably consider subpoenas. (In their letter to Fred Fielding, Waxman and Davis said, "We would like to avoid a confrontation over these documents, if possible, but cannot accept the deficient production the White House has provided to the Committee.")

Stay tuned.

There was some talk in the spring that the Iraqi Parliament, barely able to function anyway, would break for the summer. The reaction was overwhelmingly negative in the U.S., even among White House allies, and soon after the talk disappeared.

Yesterday, Tony Snow acknowledged what the administration would prefer not to talk about: Iraqis lawmakers are scheduled to do what Bush likes to do: take August off.

The White House's defense is straightforward enough: it doesn't matter when Iraqi lawmakers are in session; what matters is what they're accomplishing. That might even be a persuasive spin -- if there was any political progress in Iraq at all.

With that in mind, I'm curious how congressional Republicans are going to deal with the news. In early May, war supporters were surprisingly livid about the prospects of a parliamentary vacation.

* Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.): "If they go off on vacation for two months while our troops fight -- that would be the outrage of outrages."

* Sen. John Warner (R-Va.): "That is not acceptable. An action of that consequence would send a very bad signal to the world that they don't have the resolve that matches the resolve of the brave troops that are fighting in the battle today."

* Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.): "I certainly hope they're not going to take any sort of recess when the question is whether they're going to make any progress."

On May 8, 11 nervous House Republicans had an "unvarnished" conversation with the president about Iraq policy. One congressman said, "How can our sons and daughters spill their blood while the Iraqi government goes on vacation?" The president responded, "The vice president is over there to tell them, 'Do not go on vacation.'"

And now they're apparently poised to go on vacation.

From Bob Novak's Q&A with the New York Times Magazine:

NYT: Your betrayal of [Valerie Plame's] identity appalled not only Democrats but also some of your former conservative friends, like Bill Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, who called your conduct reprehensible. Did that sting on a personal level?

Novak: I think it did. I really enjoyed Bill's company, but Bill is an ideologue, much more than I am, and I think it was very hard for him to maintain a relationship with me when I took positions on the Iraq war and on the Middle East which were so far different from his.

Isn't Novak calling someone an "ideologue" a bit like Dick Cheney calling someone "secretive"?

Obama slams Hillary's Iraq authorization proposal as "convoluted." That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Saturday Roundup.

Not surprisingly, nearly the entire Republican establishment has been silent on Sen. David Vitter's (R-La.) sex scandal. Not that I blame them; it's a tough one to spin away.

But as reader D.K. noted, some Vitter allies are starting to speak up.

"We all think that we're not vulnerable to something like that happening," [Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.)] said, "but the fact is this can be a very lonely and isolating place to be away from your family. So I'm certainly not going to judge him because I don't want that kind of pressure on me."

Is that a confession?

Well, no, probably not, but it was a strikingly odd thing to say. Here we have another very conservative senator from a very conservative state, who ran on a "family values" platform. He doesn't want to condemn Vitter's personal failings? Fine, no problem. He's steering clear of the scandal because he thinks he might be "vulnerable to something like that happening" to him? Like I said, odd.

As for DeMint's substantive point, I'm not sure why Vitter would find DC such a "lonely" place, but either way, it wouldn't explain his related appetites back in Louisiana.

The estimable Bill Moyers explored the "I" word on PBS last night, discussing George W. Bush's "unique" approach to the presidency with conservative attorney Bruce Fein, Associate Deputy Attorney General under President Reagan, and The Nation's John Nichols.

Here's the money quote from the clip:

"[Bush's crimes are more] worrisome than Clinton's because he is seeking more institutionally to cripple checks and balances and the authority of Congress and the judiciary to superintend his assertions of power. He has claimed the authority to tell Congress they don't have any right to know what he's doing with relation to spying on American citizens, using that information in any way that he wants in contradiction to a federal statute called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He's claimed authority to say he can kidnap people, throw them into dungeons abroad, dump them out into Siberia without any political or legal accountability. These are standards that are totally anathema to a democratic society devoted to the rule of law."

As war supporters see it, U.S. troops need to stay in Iraq for the indefinite future in order to provide some semblance of security in the country.

Today, Nouri al Maliki effectively said our presence is no longer necessary.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Saturday that the Iraqi army and police are capable of keeping security in the country when American troops leave "any time they want," though he acknowledged the forces need further weapons and training.

The embattled prime minister sought to show confidence at a time when congressional pressure is growing for a withdrawal and the Bush administration reported little progress had been made on the most vital of a series of political benchmarks it wants al-Maliki to carry out.

Al-Maliki said difficulty in enacting the measures was "natural" given Iraq's turmoil.

But one of his top aides, Hassan al-Suneid, rankled at the assessment, saying the U.S. was treating Iraq like "an experiment in an American laboratory." He sharply criticized the U.S. military, saying it was committing human rights violations, embarrassing the Iraqi government with its tactics and cooperating with "gangs of killers" in its campaign against al-Qaida in Iraq.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told reporters earlier this week that a U.S. withdrawal would make Iraq's chaos worse, but Maliki dismissed his concerns, saying, "We say in full confidence that we are able, God willing, to take the responsibility completely in running the security file if the international forces withdraw at any time they want." In other words, "We can take it from here."

Kevin Drum noted the other day, "Both the American public and the Iraqi public want us to leave Iraq. However, both the American government and the Iraqi government want us to stay. So we're staying. This is called 'democracy promotion.'"

In light of today's comments, however, it's even more tilted. Americans and Iraqis want to see a withdrawal, and the Iraqi government is indifferent to our ongoing presence.

Any chance this might change a few Republican votes on the Hill?

During yesterday's entertaining White House press briefing, Tony Snow rolled out an oldie but a goodie.

"[T]he al Qaeda that exists today is not the al Qaeda that existed September 11, 2001. That is an al Qaeda that was a more traditional, top-down organization where you had bin Laden and a series of lieutenants and he issued orders and they carried them out.

"That organization was smashed. Three-quarters of its leadership -- or, I guess, two-thirds of its leadership has either been killed or captured."

The White House hasn't used this line in quite a while, and for good reason -- it's a made-up number.

White House and U.S. intelligence officials declined to provide any back-up data for how they developed the new number -- or even to explain the methodology that was used, which they said was classified. The absence of any explanation, as well as the timing, prompted some counterterrorism experts to deride the figure as "meaningless" and predict the revision could fuel allegations that the administration is massaging terrorism data for political purposes.

"It's like a shell game," said Vince Cannistraro, a former top CIA counterterrorism official. "This kind of thing is susceptible to all kinds of manipulation."

An official with the recently disbanded 9/11 commission also dismissed the new number, noting that it was impossible to get a firm handle on precisely the number of Al Qaeda "leaders" that were in place at the time of the September 11 attacks -- the definition that the CIA says it used as its baseline for the estimate.

"It was meaningless when they said two thirds and it's meaningless when they said three fourths," said the official, who asked not to be identified. "This sounds like it was pulled out of somebody's orifice."

Hmmm. Something we should know?

Over the last three months, Alaska Representative Don Young (R) has paid close to a quarter million dollars for "legal services" to Akin Gump Strauss & Hauer. (Exact figure -- $242,306.27)

That's a decent amount of money, even in the DC defense counsel world.

Tony Snow explains the Iraqi parliament's decision to take August off ...

Times Journalist, 23 year old Khalid Hassan, killed in Iraq.

Romney blows through $20 million in campaign expenditures in one quarter. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Happy Hour Roundup.

Bush appointee judge doesn't think much of the president's jurisprudence ...

A lawyer who admitted leaking grand jury transcripts about athletes' steroid use to The Chronicle was sentenced to 21/2 years in prison Thursday by a federal judge who upbraided President Bush for commuting the sentence of Lewis "Scooter'' Libby, the former vice presidential aide who faced an identical prison term on nearly identical charges.

"Under the president's reasoning, any white-collar defendant should receive no jail time, regardless of the reprehensibility of the crime," U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White, a Bush appointee, said before sentencing attorney Troy Ellerman to prison.

Ellerman's lawyer, in seeking a lesser sentence, had cited Bush's July 2 decision to commute the prison sentence for Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff. Libby was convicted of lying to federal agents and a grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA operative's identity.

Perhaps there's some appropriateness, in as much as that in the decision that put the president in office -- Bush v. Gore -- the Supreme Court said that decision was a one-off reasoning which shouldn't be held to have applicability in any other cases. Same with Scooter justice.

Ahhhh, yet more evidence the New York Times is committed to forcing the filibuster back into the closet.

Senate Narrowly Backs Bush in Rejecting Debate on Increasing Time Between Deployments, July 12, 2007

Democrats Block a Vote on Bolton for the Second Time, June 21, 2005

C'mon. This one isn't even close, folks. Please stop spinning this to obscure what's actually happening.

Just say it: 'Filibuster'. It gets easier every time.

(ed.note: Special thanks to this guy for doing the legwork.)

Okay, I don't like to make a habit of giving space to cornball neologisms that one campaign comes up with as part of its spin against another. But I'll make an exception for Mitt-Amorphosis, which comes to us courtesy of the Brownback campaign.

Why? Because some people are such transparent and craven phoneys that they deserve their own words.

Hadn't thought of it that way, but, yeah, good point from TPM Reader JM ...

I may have missed any commentary on this, but no one seems to be pointing out that Bush spent the whole press conference say we are fighting Al Queda, then concluded by disagreeing that Al Queda is stronger then it was in 2001. In 2001, they highjacked four airliners using box cutters and today, according to administration spin, they have the entire United States Army bogged down! How do people sit there and not start laughing, I don't know.

Here we have a headline from the New York Times ...

Senate Narrowly Backs Bush in Rejecting Debate on Increasing Time Between Deployments

Well, no, I'm sorry. That's not right. The vote was 56 to 41. A solid majority of senators supported increasing time between deployments.

Republicans blocked a vote on the bill. Say it again: They blocked a vote. They filibustered it.

Don't mistake me. I support the right of the minority party in the senate to do this, just as I did in the previous Congress when Democrats were in the minority. And I would completely oppose any effort to changes the rules, as Republicans effectively threatened to do in the previous Congress. But you can entirely support the right to filibuster, as the Republicans are now consistently doing, while also insisting that the party in question be held to account for exercising the power.

It's about accountability. Inaccurate reporting undermines accountability.

All the big press outlets seem to suddenly have forgotten how this works. The headline is Republicans block the vote. That's not spin. That's what happened.