We interrupt this blog to bring you a few moments of straight talk from His Straightness, Sen. Fred Thomspon (R-TN) …

“We are going to be getting in if we get in, and of course, we are in the testing the waters phase. We’re going to be making a statement shortly that will cure all of that. But yeah, we’ll be in traditionally when people get in this race.”

Got that?

A few days ago we posted ten year old video of Rudy Giuliani admitting that there’s no way we can end illegal immigration in a country like ours without destroying our civil liberties and probably destroying the economy too. That has proved a bit difficult to reconcile with his latter-day pledge to “end illegal immigration” once and for all.

So faced with this awkward contradiction the Giuliani campaign is grasping for an explanation even more laughable and ridiculous than the original contradiction.

According to the Giuliani campaign, all Giuliani meant was that back in 1994 the technology did not yet exist to hermetically seal the gazillion mile border of the United States and end illegal immigration once and for all.

Like I said, some answers amount to such transparently ridiculous bamboozlement that they absolutely guarantee future hilarity.

What technology would it be that Rudy is talking about? The dramatic breakthroughs in electronic fence design? Google maps? Apparently he says it’s new breakthroughs in surveillance technology.

What breakthrough technology do you think Rudy’s talking about that will allow the United States to “end” illegal immigration once and for all without damaging our civil liberties or affecting our economy, which is what Rudy said it would do back in 1994?

Just this afternoon we were on Rudy Giuliani’s case for suggesting that his flipflop on the endability of illegal immigration was not a flipflop but merely a response to the breakthrough technologies that have been developed over the last decade. But is it possible Rudy’s cronyism may be a mightier sword than his bamboozlement.

It turns out that not only does Rudy have a ‘technology’ in mind but he’s been cut in on some equity in the company that makes it and by an odd coincidence he thinks the federal government should buy a whole lot of it.

TPM Reader JN pointed me to this nugget in Peter Boyer’s profile of Rudy in the current issue of The New Yorker …

As for securing the border, Giuliani proposes the construction of what he calls “a technological fence,” which he insists would be much more effective than a simple physical barrier. Giuliani’s security division is a part owner of a company that is developing such technology with the defense contractor Raytheon. The innovation is a sensor-based platform that can be launched aloft and will “see” a twenty-kilometre area, in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree panorama. “It will be able to conduct a surveillance, actually,” a person familiar with the project told me. “It can follow an individual, or follow a car, at very far distances.” Giuliani emphasized to me, “It doesn’t have to be that technology. We have no desire to have Raytheon benefit or whatever. There are a hundred other technologies similar to that, with the ability to process data and communicate.”

So to review, in 1994, Giuliani believed that with America’s ethnic diversity and long borders it simply wasn’t possible to end illegal immigration without turning the country into a police state. But now thanks to the onward march of technology that’s no longer a problem because Rudy’s company can install this ultra fence which appears to constantly spawn mini-Predator drones which will keep the illegals under active surveillance until they show up for work at your local restaurant before vaporizing them with a missile or something.

The lede in a Politico article yesterday really shows the extent to which some people have bought into the Fred Thompson hype:

When Fred Thompson finally announces his candidacy next month, it will be the closest thing to a successful draft of a presidential candidate in more than a half-century.

There are two big problems here:

1) The Thompson draft, with the image of a reluctant candidate being drawn in, was pretty much fake. And Thompson admitted as much to USA Today a few months ago:

“I can’t remember exactly the point that I said, ‘I’m going to do this,'” Thompson says, his 6-foot, 6-inch frame sprawled comfortably across a couch in a hotel suite. “But when I did, the thing that occurred to me: ‘I’m going to tell people that I am thinking about it and see what kind of reaction I get to it.'”

2) It’s not the first successful draft since Eisenhower — and we don’t have to go far back to find another. Are our attention spans and long-term recall so short that nobody remembers the Draft Clark movement? It was only four years ago.

By this point, we know all about the partisan, political briefings the White House conducted in government buildings for government employees, despite clear prohibitions by the Hatch Act. The defense from the Bush gang is that the briefings had nothing to do with political corruption; they were just informal meetings about key congressional races for the Republican Party, intended as “team building” and “morale boosting” exercises.

To hear the White House tell it, administration officials who received the briefings were never encouraged to do anything with the information; Rove & Co. just wanted officials at agencies — ranging from HHS to the State Department to NASA — to be aware of vulnerable Republican and Democratic incumbents. It was an extravagant “FYI,” intended to improve bureaucrats’ self-esteem. (“I was feeling kind of discouraged about being stuck in an ineffective and incompetent bureaucracy, but now I know that the White House is focused on Michigan’s 9th congressional district. Wow, I feel better already!”)

The reality, of course, is that these briefings were part of a legally-dubious scheme that not only violated the Hatch Act, but also led to fairly obvious abuse of federal tax dollars.

Top Commerce and Treasury Departments officials appeared with Republican candidates and doled out millions in federal money in battleground congressional districts and states after receiving White House political briefings detailing GOP election strategy.

Political appointees in the Treasury Department received at least 10 political briefings from July 2001 to August 2006, officials familiar with the meetings said. Their counterparts at the Commerce Department received at least four briefings — all in the election years of 2002, 2004 and 2006. […]

During the briefings at Treasury and Commerce, then-Bush administration political director Ken Mehlman and other White House aides detailed competitive congressional districts, battleground election states and key media markets and outlined GOP strategy for getting out the vote.

Commerce and Treasury political appointees later made numerous public appearances and grant announcements that often correlated with GOP interests, according to a review of the events by McClatchy Newspapers. The pattern raises the possibility that the events were arranged with the White House’s political guidance in mind.

Ya think?

It all ties into the Bush gang’s Kremlin-like abuses — using the power of the state as a tool of the ruling party.

In August 2001, the president read a memo titled “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.” Bush didn’t much care, telling his CIA briefer, “All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.”

In August 2007, the president read a style article in a mid-size newspaper about the clothes he wears in Crawford. About this, Bush cared very much.

What really gets George W. Bush riled up? Calling him a fashion victim.

Last week, Marques Harper of the Austin American-Statesman wrote a short piece about the president’s sartorial style on his Texas ranch, where Bush is spending a two-week vacation. The article was reprinted Tuesday in a Waco, Tex., paper, and the leader of the free world was not pleased.

Harper received a phone call that morning from White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino, who, Harper told friends, said the president read the article and was unhappy about the way he was portrayed.

First, this comes just days after Karl Rove told Rush Limbaugh about the president’s healthy, above-the-fray attitude about criticism in the media. Rove boasted, “The president is very good about saying, ‘Look, we came here for a reason. We have an obligation on the country,’ and press on by it. I’ll be hyperventilating about the latest attack on him by somebody, and he’ll say, ‘Don’t worry. History will get it right and we’ll both be dead.’ So it’s a good, healthy attitude about how to take it.” I guess that doesn’t apply to his fashion sense.

Second, the article itself was entirely benign, noting that Bush has “opted to look more like ‘Walker, Texas Ranger’ than a sweaty, tough ranch hand.” This mild remark in a brief article was enough for the spokesperson for the President of the United States to call a style reporter for a mid-size newspaper to convey the disappointment of the leader of the free world.

And third, I’ve heard rumors that George W. Bush is a charming fellow who’s easy to get along with. Policies aside, he’s supposed to be a “great guy.” I don’t buy it. Incidents like this one make the president sound temperamental and immature.

Indeed, if we take the White House pitch at face value, Bush is a tough guy, hardened by war, and unconcerned about pettiness — unless the Austin American-Statesman says something vaguely derogatory about his clothes?

Yesterday we learned that there’s a shortage of Purple Heart medals for injured veterans.

Today we learn there’s a shortage on ammunition, too.

Troops training for and fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are firing more than 1 billion bullets a year, contributing to ammunition shortages hitting police departments nationwide and preventing some officers from training with the weapons they carry on patrol.

An Associated Press review of dozens of police and sheriff’s departments found that many are struggling with delays of as long as a year for both handgun and rifle ammunition. And the shortages are resulting in prices as much as double what departments were paying just a year ago.

A thought from TPM Reader RC …

I noticed several similarities between Rudy Guiliani’s performance after the 9/11 attacks and Crandall Creek Mine owner Robert Murray’s performance after his mine caved in.

Rudy had the guts to go to Ground Zero and talk to the media while rescue workers dug through rubble in the background. Likewise, Murray had the guts to go right down into the bowels of his mine and talk to the media while rescue workers dug through rubble in the background. Both men came across as don’t-worry-everything’s-under-control-type guys. Both were very reassuring.

Here’s my question: If Guiliani’s performances in front of the media’s cameras and microphones following 9/11 were sufficient to qualify him to be our president, then didn’t Murray’s recent performances in front of the media’s cameras and microphones at least qualify him to be our vice-president?

How about a Guiliani/Murray ticket?

Just an idea.

When it comes to Democratic presidential candidates, I more or less look at single-payer healthcare the same way I look at gay marriage — it’s something the top-tier candidates should support, and probably want to support, but hold back for political reasons. The unstated position seems to be, “I like the idea, but the country’s just not there yet.”

At YearlyKos, Barack Obama went a little further than his most competitive rivals, acknowledging that if we were starting a healthcare system from scratch right now, he’d gladly support a single-payer system, but given the healthcare structure that currently exists, he doesn’t see that kind of overhaul as feasible. It’s not the ideal answer for proponents of such a plan, but at least he acknowledged the merit of the idea.

John Edwards, who, by some indications, has offered perhaps of the best healthcare plan of any candidate, has decided to take a far different approach.

Edwards is also careful to temper his progressivism with more centrist positions. Speaking to Rolling Stone, Edwards … even demonized single-payer health care: “Do you think the American people want the same people who responded to Hurricane Katrina to run their health-care system?”

I can hope Edwards was misquoted, because that’s a remarkably bad answer to an important question.

For one thing, Edwards is parroting Mitt Romney’s position, almost word for word. Romney, in the midst of blasting Democratic healthcare reform measures, told a New Hampshire audience a few weeks ago, “I don’t want the guys who ran the Katrina cleanup running my health care system.” Edwards, apparently, agrees.

This should be obvious by now, but the problem with a breakdown like Katrina is not with government; it’s with incompetent government. P. J. O’Rourke once joked, “The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work — and then they get elected and prove it.”

The point isn’t that FEMA is incapable of responding to a natural disaster. Bush helped turn the agency into a joke, but FEMA used to be extremely well run and fully capable of helping areas in need of assistance. To hear Edwards and Romney tell it, government can’t respond to a hurricane, so it certainly can’t bring access to quality healthcare to Americans. In reality, it can do both with competent, quality leadership in positions of power.

Indeed, I wonder how far Edwards and Romney are prepared to take this little comparison. Do they want the same people who responded to Katrina running Medicare and providing healthcare to seniors? How about S-CHIP and providing access for children? How about Social Security? Should all of them be privatized because the Bush administration is incapable of governing?

Maybe Edwards was misquoted. Maybe he was kidding and was taken out of context. I’d love to hear an explanation. In the meantime, when leading Democratic candidates repeat misguided Republican talking points on healthcare reform, it’s a problem.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was on CNN yesterday, positioning himself as a critic of the president’s Iraq policy.

KIRAN CHETRY: It seems you’ve been painted as being a huge supporter of the president’s Iraq strategy. Is that an inaccurate portrayal?

MCCAIN: It’s entertaining, in that I was the greatest critic of the initial four years, three and a half years. I came back from my first trip to Iraq and said, “This is going to fail.” We’ve got to change the strategy to the one we’re using now. But life isn’t fair.

Poor John McCain. All he did was support the current Iraq policy every step of the way for five years and, for some reason, foolish Americans have come to believe he supports the president’s strategy. How terribly unfair.

Look, this notion of who qualifies as a “critic” of the White House’s war policy came to a head recently when far too many news outlets falsely characterized Michael O’Hanlon and Ken Pollack as opponents of the war. Their support for Bush’s strategy was given greater weight because the media and the GOP establishment told the public they have been war “skeptics.” They’re not — O’Hanlon and Pollack supported the invasion, endorsed the so-called surge, and have consistently opposed withdrawal. (Ironically, Jon Stewart, the fake newsman, was one of the few to get this right.)

Similarly, we now see McCain characterizing himself as “the greatest critic of the initial four years.” Perhaps it’s best if we establish some kind of criteria for who counts as a “critic” and who counts as a “supporter.”

Did you:

* endorse the invasion?

* buy into the Cheney vision of a quick, easy-to-resolve conflict?

* support the administration’s position on every piece of Iraq legislation since 2002?

* consistently support the status quo? (“I’m confident we’re on the right course” — McCain, March 7, 2004)

* endorse the escalation policy?

* oppose any and all measures to include timelines, scheduled withdrawals, or enforced benchmarks?

If you’re McCain, the answer to all six questions is “yes.” With that in mind, you don’t get to call yourself “the greatest critic” of the president’s policy.