OK, so Monica Goodling is the first Justice Department official in history to remain in office while invoking her Fifth Amendment privilege. But the Democrats just won’t leave her alone.

In the Senate, they want to know whether she’ll cooperate with an internal Justice Department investigation into the U.S. attorney firings. If she does or she doesn’t, it’s pretty clear she ought to be fired.

And in the House, they’re not convinced by her lawyer’s justification for taking the Fifth. So they want to have her come over and explain it herself.

Hilarious. So far, to the best of my knowledge, the only photos of John McCain’s heavily armored, guarded “stroll” through that Baghdad market have come from a US Army photographer. See the photo below. But apparently he let a CBS 60 Minutes crew tag along to shoot some B roll footage. IraqSlogger has more.

Did the Bush administration privately help arrange a trip to Syria by GOP members of Congress even as it bashed Nancy Pelosi for making the same trip?

Pelosi and Israelis coordinate on actually accomplishing something while Bush flails.

McCain camp finds solution to campaign ills: embrace big money donors and give Iraq speech.

Today’s Must Read: House Republicans don’t believe Gonzales’ story for the U.S. attorney firings, either.

Astounding. Obama rakes in $25 million, nearly tying Hillary’s record haul.

Update: Obama received contributions from over 100,000 individuals.

Late update: Obama had more donors online than Hillary had in total.

Later update: One hidden moral of today’s fundraising story: Maybe Matt Drudge doesn’t rule our world, after all.

We’ve got some interesting responses to DLC Chair Harold Ford, Jr.’s call for an intra-Democratic truce.

Max Sawicky welcomes the idea on the grounds of political necessity, but still makes a list of “rotten ideas that follow from DLC doctrine.” Ed Kilgore echoes Ford’s call to get past the bad blood to the policy questions at hand. Jo-Ann Mort sees value in the DLC’s effort to make the party “competitive and majoritarian” again, but rejects the conservative wonk rhetoric it employs. And Nathan Newman sees common ground only on the one issue where Ford is willing to call for employer responsibility: work/family issues.

Ford will be responding later today. Stay tuned…

Late update: Reader RA makes an interesting argument that reminds me of the Care Crisis conversation we hosted a few weeks ago:

The DLC wants to identify itself as “pro-family” but also “pro-business.” There’s two problems here. One is that we already have a pro-business party–the Republicans–and we don’t need another one; rather, we need one that is dedicated to restraining business’ excessive power. The other is that “pro-family” and “pro-business” is inherently contradictory, at least at this point in time. Business policies are probably the biggest single factor negatively affecting families these days (inadequate leave, long hours, downsizing, shrinking health care coverage, stagnant to dropping wages). The Dems need to be an effective counterbalance to business, not another “Republican lite” handmaiden to it.

It all comes back around.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) continues to pursue the White House on their use of RNC email addresses. Today he requested a batch of emails from the RNC.

Dem Presidential candidates outraise GOP counterparts by over $25 million.