Yesterday we told you about new Post blogger Ben Domenech’s dad, Doug, who was and I think still is the White House’s liaison to the Department of Interior.

We printed excerpts from a piece that appeared in the Denver Post, which made Domenech seem like an Abramoff puppet, or rather a puppet by proxy through Italia Federici.

Now, a reader wrote in to tell me about another piece in the Washington Post which gives a somewhat different version of events, generally and in relation to Doug Domenech.

I’m not in a position to say which piece is more accurate. But if you’re interested in the topic, certainly check out the WaPo piece too.

This might even qualify as a legitimate use of the word ‘balance’.

Author, former Secretary of the Navy and now Democratic candidate for Senate from Virginia, Jim Webb, has just posted a guest post over at TPMCafe on Reagan Democrats and how to bring them back to the Democratic Party. He’ll be online for the next hour (6-7 PM Eastern time) responding to reader comments. So if you’re interested in this topic, and especially if you’d like to ask a question, definitely stop by now.

You won’t want to miss this.

Our special correspondent in the field takes photos of the loot at the government’s auction of Duke Cunningham’s bribe loot. Get down to Compton tomorrow if you want to put in any bids.

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TPM Reader AT on John McCain finally getting asked about why he hired a new ‘senior advisor’ who’s implicated in two of the biggest campaign corruption scandals of recent years …

Actually the saddest thing about the whole Nelson thing is that it took a random person calling into a talk-show in Seattle before someone actually asked [McCain] about the whole thing. How many times has he been interviewed or questioned since he hired Nelson? And how many times has the press asked these types of questions? Zero. Where’s Tim Russert? Oh that’s right, fawning over Mr. Straight-talk.

Agreed.

One paper stole our story and ran it as their own. Aside from that though this pretty obvious bit of hypocrisy hasn’t garnered much attention.

Late Update: Just to keep everyone in the loop, here’s the exchange the Seattle caller had with Sen. McCain …

CALLER: Thanks, I had a question for the senator. For a reformer, I’m kind of curious why he would hire a guy like Terry Nelson as a senior advisor.
Here’s a guy who was actually in the indictment of DeLay on his money laundering charges. When he was at the RNC, he agreed to take the corporate contributions from DeLay’s PAC and then recycle them back into the Republican congressional races.

And he was also, this guy Nelson was also the supervisor of James Tobin, who was the guy convicted last year for helping jam the Democratic get-out-the-vote lines in New England a couple years ago.

So I’m curious why would you hire someone with such a shady background?

MCCAIN: None of those charges are true.

CALLER: You don’t believe what was actually written in the indictment from Texas?

MCCAIN: No.

CARLSON: All right.

[nervous laughter]

MCCAIN: I will check it out. But I’ve never heard of such a thing. I know that he was a grassroots organizer for President Bush year 2000 and 2004, and had a very important job in the Bush campaign as late as 2004, but the other charges I will go and look and see if any of them are true, but I’ve never heard of them before.

Needless to say, what the caller said was precisely true, as you can see demonstrated in this post about the DeLay case and this one about the phone-jamming case.

I’m curious to learn what the senator’s investigation turns up about his new right hand.

This afternoon, Jim Webb, Democratic Senate candidate from Virginia and former Reagan administration Navy Secretary, visited TPMCafe to take questions from readers. I jumped into the comments section and asked his opinion on the perennial question of how Democrats deal with their perceived weakness on national security issues. Call it weakness, lack of credibility, however you want to describe it.

Here’s a link to his answer.

Ralph Reed looking strong in the race to sink Georgia Republicans this November. That and other news of the day in today’s Daily Muck.

Wag the Dog, Italy edition (from AFP)…

A security alert for American citizens in Italy issued by the US State Department has angered Italian opposition leader Romano Prodi, who accused Washington of causing “unnecessary fear and anxiety” ahead of next month’s bitterly-contested polls.

Prodi, a former EU Commission president, said he had been shocked by the alert and had demanded an explanation from US Ambassador Ronald Spogli.

“He explained that it was accepted practice, but I am still shocked, because a move like that, with elections so close, can cause an unnecessary sense of fear and anxiety,” Prodi said in a radio interview.

But his comments drew a sharp rebuke from Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who has previously accused Prodi’s disparate centre-left — which runs the full gamut of the political spectrum from Catholic to communist parties — of harbouring “shock troops” bent on violently breaking up government election rallies.

“The US has every right” to alert its own citizens about Italian demonstrations, protested Berlusconi, a staunch ally of US President George W. Bush.

Our new export.

Great moments in earmarks.

The Houston Chronicle reports this morning that the donation Barbara Bush made to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund was ‘earmarked’ for the educational software company Ignite!

As some of you probably know that’s the junk company owned by her ne’er-do-well son Neil Bush.

Actually, though, it’s way better, or worse, depending on your turn of mind.

Ignite!’s has a unique business model, which works like this. Neil goes around the world finding international statesmen, bigwigs and criminals who want to ‘invest’ in Ignite! as a way to curry favor with the brother in the White House.

A couple years ago when I was at Salon I wrote about the craze for investment in Ignite! then taking hold among Red Sea oil magnates and progeny of the rulers of the People’s Republic of China (See this article as well about the craze for investing in Ignite! in the United Arab Emirates and specifically in Dubai). Now, Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky has awakened to the wonders of investing in Ignite!

Texas GOPers git freaky — start cutting off each others’ ‘lobbyist’ slush funds.