Former FEMA Director Michael “Heckuva Job” Brown is touting himself as “available for interviews” about the California wildfires.

Podhoretz, who says war against Iran is a necessity, on Rudy …

“I was asked to come in and give him a briefing on the war, World War IV. As far as I can tell there is very little difference in how he sees the war and how I see it.”

Christopher Hitchens steps forward to defend the neologism “Islamofascism” and Andrew Sullivan skeptically reviews his attempt.

Setting aside our on-going coverage of the Horowitz buffoonery, here’s my answer to this question.

Why not call it Islamotarianism? Or Islamozism? We say there’s a lot in a name. But many names come into existence and stick for no particularly good reason whatsoever. Actual students of fascism find it pretty hard to tie the term even to many of the European movements which carried the title during fascism’s heyday between WWI and WWII, let alone would-be post-war imitators in Latin America and elsewhere. Certainly we needn’t constrain ourselves by the professional literature in deciding how to frame the public debate. But all violent and illiberal movements have parallels of one sort or another, pretty much by definition. And it’s dubious whether the label makes sense for movements from a different century and culture. Fascism’s racism and general irreligion would seem to create some hurdles to its use as well.

Presumably we’re talking about various forms of violent religious extremism within Islam. Radical Islam, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Muslim extremism all seem like serviceable enough terms.

But let’s be crystal clear about their real inadequacy. They don’t fill the key need of inflating the political egos and intellectual pretensions of those who most push for its use. The battle against fascism and then later communism were not only by most measures the greatest battles and dangers the United States has ever faced. They were also the greatest mixes of military struggle and intellectual engagement. For people who make their livings with pens and keyboards especially that combination is simply intoxicating. That is, among other reasons, what is behind the very deserved reputation of George Orwell.

But this isn’t 1938 or 1948. A bummer perhaps if you’re aiming to write a political essay for the ages. But not a bad thing if you’re trying to live a life, raise a family or a bunch other things. If the War on Terror is on par with the struggle against fascism and communism, or far graver as some claim, the case can be made with fact and argument. The craze for ‘Islamofascism’ is just an effort at verbal bamboozlement, flipping the volume up to 11, a hedge against the evident losing of the argument on the merits. Orwell wouldn’t be amused.

Elizabeth Warren at TPMCafe: “Phone Sex and Mortgage Servicing.”

In response to progressives grumbling that Barack Obama was hedging on telecom immunity, his campaign has given Election Central a statement confirming that he will support a filibuster of any bill with telecom immunity.

First State Department resignation over Blackwater scandal.

From the AP:

The White House on Wednesday denied that it had “watered down” the congressional testimony that Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had given the day before to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

But a draft of the testimony submitted for White House review shows that six pages of details about specific disease and other health problems that might flourish if the Earth warms were not delivered at the hearing.

. . .

Referring to the draft, one CDC official familiar with both versions, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the review process, said that “it was eviscerated.”

White House press secretary Dana Perino said the prepared testimony went through an interagency review process and the Office of Science and Technology Policy did not believe that the science in the testimony matched the science that was in a report by the International Panel on Climate Change.

“She testified yesterday. Her spokesperson said that she was able to say everything she wanted to say,” Perino said. “It was not watered down in terms of its science. It wasn’t watered down in terms of the concerns that climate change raises for public health.”

If you missed TPMmuckraker’s coverage yesterday of the House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the politicization of the Justice Department, take a look at a couple of the videos we’ve put together. The first is a summary of former Republican Attorney General Dick Thornburgh’s testimony about the “apparent political prosecution” of his client, a local Democratic coronor in Pennsylvania. The second is a rundown of some of the testimony about the best-known of the suspect prosecutions, the case against former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman.

After some boiler plate discussion of the Southern California fires, Dana Perino responds to charges the White House “eviscerated” CDC Director Gerberding’s testimony on global warming. Listen in for the discussing of the cool health benefits of global warming …

State investigation finds University of Florida police were justified in using taser in that much-publicized incident during a John Kerry speech.