It’s amazing 
how picky people are nowadays.
A big oil company whose executives have been indicted for bribing multiple Alaska politicians can’t even be in charge of renovating the state’s senior senator’s house without people making it like there’s something fishy going on.
Find out about Sen. Stevens (R-AK) latest travails.
Democratic Congressional leaders under fire over Iraq have a high-profile defender: Al Gore. That and other political news of the day in today’s Election Central Happy Hour Roundup.
The Republican National Committee, hit by a grass-roots donors’ rebellion over President Bush’s immigration policy, has fired all 65 of its telephone solicitors, Ralph Z. Hallow will report Friday in The Washington Times.
Faced with an estimated 40 percent fall-off in small-donor contributions and aging phone-bank equipment that the RNC said would cost too much to update, Anne Hathaway, the committee’s chief of staff, summoned the solicitations staff last week and told them they were out of work, effective immediately, the fired staffers told The Times.
I always come to bash Mort Kondracke far more in sorrow than glee. But the sentiments are so silly and nonsensical that I simply must soldier on. Here in Roll Call (sub.req.) Kondracke explains how President Bush’s catastrophic folly in Iraq is equally the fault of Republicans and Democrats.
The headline: “Kondracke: Bush Nears Debacle in Iraq, but Democrats Canât Be Trusted Either”
Late Update: TPM Reader KD points out you can read the whole thing sans firewall at RealClearPolitics. Let the nonsensical moral equations roll!
Fired McCain evangelical outreach campaign aides: Campaign just wanted an easy hook-up, no long term commitment.
Breaking on CNN: White House counselor Dan Bartlett resigning.
Update: More from the AP: he’s “resigning to begin a career outside of government.”
Conservative Catholics across the country organize to defeat Rudy Giuliani. That and other political news of the day in today’s Election Central Morning Roundup.
Alter on Iraq …
So why the move to permanent bases in Iraq? For years, I have been reluctant to embrace the oil theory of American policymaking in the Middle East. Iâve subscribed to the notion that oil is only part of a complex set of strategic, political and moral issues animating American interests. I still believe that in the short term. Bush and the few remaining supporters of his policy are motivated by more than oil. They want to avoid a failed state in the middle of a volatile region.
But what does that aim have to do with permanent bases? The only two reasons to station troops in the Middle East for half a century are protecting oil supplies (reflecting a pessimistic view of energy independence) outside the normal channels of trade and diplomacy, and projecting raw military power. These are the imperial aims of an empire. During the cold war, charges of U.S. imperialism in Korea and Vietnam were false. Those wars were about superpower struggles. This time, the âI word” is not a left-wing epithet but a straightforward description of policy aimsâyet another difference from those two older wars in Asia.
Today’s Must Read: back in 2001, the U.S. Army looked to the Soviets and Chinese for model interrogation techniques.
Rudy’s latest puzzling attack on Hillary: He hits her for promising to restore peace and prosperity.