One of Hillary’s top fundraisers reacts to the news of Obama’s big haul.
And one other number: Obama had more individual donors than Hillary Clinton and John Edwards combined.
You knew it was coming. Justice Department official Monica Goodling’s lawyer hits back against Democrats seeking her testimony, even throwing in a reference to Joe McCarthy.
Boy, you know it’s bad for the Justice Department when even their cover stories lead to investigations.
Far too bleak for snark. From the Times of London …
A newborn baby was one of at least 14 children and adults killed when a suicide bomber detonated a lorry laden with explosives close to a primary school in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk yesterday.
The latest massacre of Iraqi children came as 21 Shia market workers were ambushed, bound and shot dead north of the capital. The victims came from the Baghdad market visited the previous day by John McCain, the US presidential candidate, who said that an American security plan in the capital was starting to show signs of progress.
CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux: Because of Syria trip, Nancy Pelosi may be on her way to becoming “the most controversial Speaker yet.”
There are all sorts of things you can say about the brouhaha about Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Syria — most of which boil down to it’s stupid that there’s a brouhaha in the first place. We’ve already gone over the standard points — the administration is sending people to Damascus, Republican congressmen are going to Damascus, the Baker-Hamilton 
Commission went to Damascus, the Israelis thanked Pelosi for going to Damascus because she took an important diplomatic message with her from the Israelis when she went. On and on.
A better question than ‘why is it such a brouhaha’ is ‘why is the White House making it such a brouhaha’?
At one level, just to score points domestically. We all understand that. But more broadly the whole episode comes down to a commentary on Bush’s irrelevance.
The president has been despised abroad for years. But that’s not a bad thing for an American president — at least judged in domestic political terms. Now, however, he is also wildly unpopular in his own country. And all his initiatives on the world stage are seen at home and abroad as unmitigated disasters.
In response, the president has withdrawn into a cocoon of his fantasies, ignoring most of the stuff that’s actually happening in the world, most of the drivers that will be affecting our lives for years into the future.
The Israelis use of Pelosi as a go-between between them and the Syrians tells not only the specific but the larger tale. Isn’t this what the US — or whatever country has the pretense of being the great power in the region — is supposed to do?
Here’s what the message was about. As often seems to happen between these countries, the Israelis had been picking up hints that the Syrians thought the Israelis were going to attack this summer. And the Israelis worried that the Syrians would preemptively attack on the Golan Heights to get a jump on the Israelis. But the Israelis say that they’re not planning anything like that. So they asked Pelosi to convey this message to Damascus — to prevent a possible chain of misunderstandings leading to war.
This seems of a piece with February’s news that the Bush administration was insisting that the Israelis not pursue exploratory talks with the Syrians about a potential peace deal.
Pelosi’s trip is an embarrassment for the president because it shows an American actually involving herself in realities on the world stage rather than stuck in denial and fantasy. That may sound a bit starry-eyed. But think about it and I’ll think you’ll see that that’s a lot of what this is about.
Late Update: TPM Reader YK points to this article that says the Prime Minister’s Office is now saying that Pelosi carried no message from the Israelis. But look at the sourcing on the Ha’aretz article linked above.
Earlier today I posted this clip from the Times of London that reported that “21 Shia market workers [from the market John McCain visited the day before] were ambushed, bound and shot dead.”
Now, we know that people get killed in Iraq every day. And there are inter-sectarian murders for various retaliatory, symbolic or terroristic reasons. But 21 workers from this same market attacked, bound and shot in what sound like execution style killings? Right after McCain was there the day before in a walkaround to demonstrate the success of the surge?
This hadn’t occurred to me until I saw this email from TPM Reader KT who wrote. “Do we know whether the ambushed market workers were the ones who had done business with McCain’s group, and therefore with the US military? I really hope not.”
I don’t know if claims of collaboration would have to be the issue. It could be as simple as sending a counter-message.
Before going any further, let me say clearly that I don’t know anything about this particular market. How big it is. Whether things like this happen there routinely or whether this incident stands out in a particular way. More local knowledge could quickly show these two events are totally unrelated. But if the Times report is accurate, I think this bears more scrutiny.
TPM Reader PM on the McCain campaign event …
I just wanted to provide a comment regarding McCain’s Iraq trip from a slightly different perspective that I don’t believe has been considered by many. U.S. government officials including elected representatives have regularly visited Iraq for a host of reasons and, of course, all have been provided with necessary protection by our servicemen. This is all completely reasonable under most circumstances and indeed part and parcel of the military’s responsibilities in Iraq. However, is it still justified to use our military, both men and machines, in such an overwhelming way to simply provide McCain with what amounts to a political ad for a presidential campaign? McCain’s intent was to demonstrate the wisdom of a surge he fully supported and provide the electorate proof of his good judgment. Unfortunately, the only way to fulfill this illusion was with the use of heavy military cover. Since all military operations involve some risk, I ask: Was it reasonable to risk the lives of our soldiers for a staged photo-opportunity?
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, caught in a comical lie about fired US Attorney Carol Lam.
Take a moment and follow the link and read what it says. It’s fascinating and should be the kind of embarrassment Hatch should never live down.
Late Update: For those of you who are interested, here’s the exact text of what Hatch said (emphasis added) …
Take Carol Lam, for instance. Carol Lam was raised on your program, Tim, by Schumer. Carol Lam, it’s amazing to me she wasn’t fired earlier because for three years members of the Congress had complained that there had been all kinds of border patrol capture of these people but hardly any prosecutions. She was a former law professor, no prosecutorial experience, and the former campaign manager in Southern California for Clinton, and they’re trying to say that this administration appoints people politically? Of course they do. That’s what these positions are. But politically they’ve appointed people who have been approved by the Justice Department–the Judiciary Committee, in most cases, who have served well, are strong people and, and, frankly, these, these seven were really mishandled.