Just out from the Times …

The Bush administration will assert in the next few days that progress in carrying out the new American strategy in Iraq has been satisfactory on nearly half of the 18 benchmarks set by Congress, according to several administration officials.

But it will qualify some verdicts by saying that even when the political performance of the Iraqi government has been unsatisfactory, it is too early to make final judgments, the officials said.

The administration’s decision to qualify many of the political benchmarks will enable it to present a more optimistic assessment than if it had provided the pass-fail judgment sought by Congress when it approved funding for the war this spring.

Harriet Miers blows off Congress, appropriately enough, with the help of the Justice Department.

TPM Reader TS raises a good point I’ve been wondering a lot about. I can’t figure it out …

There seems to be no mention in the press of the current use of the threat of filibuster by Senate Republicans. In the previous Congress, as I recall, there was much criticism of Democrats for suggesting that they might filibuster Bush’s Court appointments. Am I wrong in thinking that Republicans have stopped ordinary legislation at least twice in the last week by threatening extended debate? But where’s the mention of it in the press? In the NYT story this morning about the amendment to give troops more time at home, the f-word only appears in the second to last paragraph. shouldn’t they be called on this?

If anything it’s worse than this as Senate Republicans have been filibustering just about everything. Everything on Iraq certainly. And this is the sense of ‘filibuster’ as it has been used more or less continuously for a decade.

The Dems are idiots on this. Reporters should note it, yes. But it’s not really their job.

Bush: We’ll do what the generals want, not what the people want.

Of course, the generals were pretty much to a man against the surge. But Bush fired them and got some generals that agreed. So there …

If you complacent liberal freaks knew what Fox News’ Neil Cavuto was doing to keep you safe from the terrorist threat of universal health care you’d thank him.

Watch this round-up of Neil’s work in today’s episode of TPMtv and learn something for a change.

A very revealing moment. For the first time the president was asked, now that all the legal stuff is over and there’s nothing more pending, whether he was disappointed in the fact that a number of his top advisors were responsible for revealing the name of a covert CIA operative.

He couldn’t even manage a perfunctory statement of disappointment or regret. He managed to slip in a dig at Rich Armitage, a general statement that the whole thing had been very rough on the White House staff and that now “we’re” moving on.

Needless to say, the president was involved from day one. He was always in favor of doing it. And he basically said so again today. Truly a shameful man. Will have the video momentarily.

Late Update: Here’s the clip:

Some highlights from the House Judiciary Committee hearing this morning, where Democrats took the first step towards citing Harriet Miers with contempt.

As the president told us again today, he’ll veto any bill that will tie his hands on doing whatever he wants in Iraq. We know that. But not many people seemed to notice that he also told Congress he’d veto any measure that would limit his ability to take military action of any sort in Iran.

Biden: “This progress report is like the guy who’s falling from a 100-story building and says half-way down that ‘everything’s fine.’”

“When you stand up and are arrested, and the Hindu is allowed to go free, this country has gone upside-down.” That’s what Rev. Flip Benham, the guy behind today’s incident in the senate, told TPM’s Eric Kleefeld when he interviewed him this afternoon. See the rest here.