The Daily Muck

Rudolph Giuliani has resigned as head of Giuliani Partners, a position that earned him $4 million last year. Rudolph claims that “everything I did at Giuliani Partners was totally legal, totally ethical,” yet just yesterday the New York Times “identified one client as the Persian Gulf country of Qatar, which was accused of sheltering suspected Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.” (Boston Globe)

Guantanamo Bay has its own perverted sense of innocence. Shortly after a 19-year old German was taken from Pakistan to Guantanamo Bay in 2002, American officials determined that he was not a terrorist. But over the next four years, “two U.S. military tribunals that were responsible for determining whether Guantanamo Bay detainees were enemy fighters declared him a dangerous al-Qaeda ally who should remain in prison.” (Washington Post)

Meanwhile, as prisoners as Guantanamo Bay wait for the Supreme Court to weigh in on the legitimacy of military tribunals today, a prisoner cut his throat with his own fingernail so severely that it caused a substantial loss of blood. Those concerned about the detainees say that such acts are not unusual. (New York Times)

Current and former intelligence officials say much of the 2005 Iran report is solid, but they acknowledge that some of its conclusions appear to have been thinly sourced and were based on less rigorous methods that were later revised. The 2005 report said Iran’s leaders were working tirelessly to acquire a nuclear weapon, a claim that is contradicted by the 2007 version of the report released yesterday. The 2005 Iran report was also written by some of the same team that had produced key parts of the overstated Iraq threat estimate, which was similarly acknowledged to have been wrong in one of its main conclusions. (New York Times)

Mike Huckabee, surging in the polls, has faced his Willie Horton moment. Murray Waas reports that confidential Arkansas state government records show that as Governor of Arkansas, Huckabee aggressively pushed for the early release of a rapist who went on to rape and murder again. (Huffington Post)

Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.) has accepted what could turn out to be thousands of dollars worth of free flight time (sub. req.) in a vintage airplane owned by a contracting firm in his district that also is a major source of funds for Graves, contributing more than $200,000 to his campaigns at the state and federal levels.Ethics experts say Graves’ failure to disclose the flights as a gift may be a violation of House ethics rules. (Roll Call)

House Democratic and Republican leaders will be called to testify before a committee that is investigating (sub. req.) an August vote (on an agricultural bill) that is in dispute. Republicans say the vote count announced by the Democratic majority was inaccurate and that the motion had in fact passed. (Roll Call)

Mitt Romney has fired the landscaper at his suburban Boston home “after learning for a second time about undocumented workers laboring on the property.” Romney has made the war on illegal immigration a “core theme” in his campaign so it is probably a good idea that he has his own house in order. (AP)

It must be the war on Christmas that Fox has been following for a couple of years now. New congressional ethics rules mean that many members of Congress and their staffers will decline invites to holiday parties because “Someone could get nailed for two beers and a bacon wrap.” Meanwhile, lobbyists are nervous too but will employ the “personal friendship” loophole and host intimate parties at their homes instead. (Politico)