Yesterday in 100 Seconds: Papal Friday

Has Krauthammer been driven off the deep end by his hatred of Obama. Jacob Heilbrunn peruses the evidence.

David Brooks describes how an unnamed GOP senator fondled Brooks' well-rounded thigh.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

The latest GOP angle on attacking Obama's health care reform effort. Say we never should have founded Medicare.

I never fail to be amazed and amused that many right-wingers and Palinatics genuinely believe that everyone who thinks Palin is a grifter or a clown is actually afraid of her. As in when Bill Kristol recently wrote that Palin's critics "tend not only to dislike and disdain Palin, they also want to bury her chances now as a presidential possibility. What are they so scared of?"

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Is Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) running for the Senate in 2010 or not?

Spencer Ackerman is plowing through the joint IGs' report on domestic surveillance that was just released. Among the conclusions he's finding in the report: most leads secured by the secret surveillance program were determined not to have any connection to terrorism and -- surprise!--then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' July 2007 testimony to Congress about the surveillance program was "confusing, inaccurate, and ... had the effect of misleading."

In addition to detailing how the White House (read: Cheney) basically turned John Yoo into a one-man OLC, the report also explains how the White House (Cheney again?) directed the CIA to provide the factual underpinnings to the President's "legal" authorizations. Again no surprise, but let's note for the record that this whole operation was run from the very top.

Late Update: Another aspect of this also has Cheney's fingerprints all over it: Once DOJ began objecting to the program (that is, once anyone beyond Yoo at DOJ learned of it), those objections were kept from President Bush by White House staff, at least according to Bush.

In an interview with TPMDC, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) says a number of Democrats, himself included, would have "great difficulty" voting for a health care reform bill without a public option.

Slideshow: The Obamas meet the Pope

We've had to go back and revise and extend our comprehensive timeline of Les Affaires Ensign to account for all the new revelations.

There's one thing that Sarah Palin and Roland Burris can agree on. Watch.

TPM Reader BD:

Remember how during the 2008 campaign a lot of people suggested that Obama could prove to be an excellent role model for African-American men who have often been deemed less than responsible as husbands and fathers? Wouldn't it be great if white Evangelical Republican men could come up with a role model like that too?

A neighbor of the Dem donor whose fundraiser was raided by the San Diego sheriff wants to make sure everyone knows she didn't make the derogatory comments about gays and call police about the event: "We're liberal Democrats -- we have a Buddha on our table."

Bush Administration domestic surveillance programs much broader than previously known. Spencer Ackerman has more. Here's the joint report from the inspectors general.

We're going through the report now, but for a frame of reference let me refer you back to this TPMmuckraker report by Paul Kiel and Spencer Ackerman from two Julys ago. I dare say we were on to something.

Late Update: Fair question from a reader:

Confused, could you clarify-- I've been seeing headlines at TPM and elsewhere for a couple weeks saying things something like "CIA report delayed, AGAIN". Is the IG report with the revelations of previously unknown Bush lawbreaking that you're currently flashing the "breaking" notice for the same one that people were recently upset about the failure to release? Or is there ANOTHER report of this sort with yet more revelations still pending?

The report released today was compiled at the request (demand, really) of Congress by the IGs of the various entities that make up the intelligence community. This is a different report from the still-classified 2004 CIA report on the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of torture whose release has been delayed several times and is still pending.

Senate Republicans have quite the line up of opposition witnesses set to go next week during the Sotomayor confirmation hearings, including Frank Ricci, the New Haven firefighter who just won his reverse discrimination case after taking it all the way to the Supreme Court.

What I didn't know is that, as Brian Beutler explains at TPMDC, Ricci landed a job with the fire department back in 1997 as part of a settlement of his own regular old discrimination suit (he has dyslexia). Not exactly the guy you would expect the GOP to make a poster boy for all of us "oppressed" white men.

Our latest Obama White House slideshow.

Yes, I know that's pretty bold billing given the recent news out about Sen. Ensign (R-NV). But beyond all the salacious detail there's a picture emerging of the man -- who, remember, is a high-profile senator and had been considered a serious presidential candidate -- that combines deeply manipulative traits with an almost childlike approach to those in authority around him.

Ensign is a member of something called the C Street group, which is part of a highly secretive religious outfit called 'The Family'. It's a combo religious fellowship and Capitol Hill group home where a number of Republican members of Congress live. And it's run by a guy named Doug Coe. (Because the comedy never stops, remember that Gov. Sanford too is a member of the C Street group/Family.) In one of the more surreal episodes in this whole drama, while folks from 'The Family', including Sen. Coburn (R-OK), were trying to get Ensign to end his relationship with the girlfriend and write her and her husband a big check.

So Ensign agrees to do this. But the members of his fellowship had so little trust he could follow through that they had him write out a letter to the mistress that he was ending the relationship and then drove him to the local Fedex office to make sure he actually dropped the letter in the box. So he does that. But then after he shakes them loos he calls the mistress to tell her his friends made him write the letter and to ignore it.

It makes having his parents pay the couple off sound far less out of character.

And this was a man who was going to run for president.

The President this morning: "I want to be very careful -- Africa is a continent, not a country."