Bizarre.

In its coverage of Bush’s presser today The New York Times fails to report Bush’s acknowledgment that Republican House members visited Syria. Instead, the paper only reports Bush’s criticism of Pelosi’s trip.

I knew as a general matter that the White House was just bamboozling the press with this Pelosi-in-Syria malarkey since plenty of Republicans from Congress have recently gone there too. But I didn’t know the precise details. In addition to recent trips by other Congressional Republicans there’s actually a GOP House delegation in Syria right now, according to ThinkProgress. And in March a senior State Department official held talks in Damascus about flow of Iraqi refugees.

So which member of the White House press corps or which cable network host has directly asked an administration official why they’re only concerned when prominent Democrats visit Damascus and not Republicans? Wolf Blitzer, whatever hack they’ve got on the air at the moment on Fox, MSNBC? Whichever. Someone let me know when someone puts a question like this directly to an administration official.

Late Update: Ask and ye shall receive. Sometimes even before you asked. From today’s White House briefing …

Q Thanks. The Speaker said in Beirut today that — first of all, she’s criticizing the White House for what she says is ignoring other Republican lawmakers who have made trips to Syria in recent days. And, also, she said she thinks it’s a good idea to establish facts and to try to build confidence with Syria. Why is that not a good idea? And how is that just a photo op?

MS. PERINO: Let me unpack that a little bit. First of all, last week when I was asked about her specific trip, I said in my comments that, in general, we discourage members from going to the region. And that is true. In fact, I looked back, when Tony Snow was asked at this podium months ago, when Senator Nelson made a similar trip, he said the same, that this was a blanket policy — but I was asked a specific question about Speaker Pelosi, which is why I said that.

Speaker Pelosi is a high-ranking United States official. Nothing changes — nothing has changed in Syria’s behavior over the years when high-ranking U.S. officials go to see them. We sent Secretary Powell early on; the behavior doesn’t change. Syria uses these opportunities to flaunt photo opportunities around its country and around the region and around the world, to say that they aren’t isolated, that they don’t need to change their behavior, and it alleviates the pressure that we are trying to put on them to change their behavior.

And by changing their behavior I mean as in, stop undermining the democratically elected government of Lebanon; stop allowing foreign fighters to flow from Syria into Iraq, in which they are then killing American soldiers and innocent Iraqis and Iraqi soldiers. They are state sponsors of terrorism, of both Hezbollah and Hamas, and they support Palestinian terrorism.

And so that was the reason that we said that we discouraged her from going. But that policy applies to all. So I think that maybe she wasn’t able to see my exact comments, so I won’t judge her on that. But the policy applies everywhere.

…

Q I want to clarify on the — you’re saying it was a bad idea, then, for Speaker Pelosi to go for all these various reasons to Syria. It’s a bad idea, then, for Jim Baker to have gone, a bad idea for Frank Wolf to go as well, right?

MS. PERINO: We think that it is not a good idea for U.S. officials to go and meet with Assad, because it alleviates that pressure, and also because meetings haven’t produced anything. They’ve been meeting just to meet, and he doesn’t change his behavior. In fact, he uses those meetings as a reason to say that he doesn’t need to do anything.

Q When you don’t meet with him, he doesn’t change his behavior either.

MS. PERINO: Well, we’ll see.

Unless I’m a lot more dense than I think, neither of those was an answer. So it stands: Republicans visiting Damascus, Okay. Democrats, visiting, Hurts America.

As Greg notes here, the president said today that he doesn’t like Republicans or Democrats visiting Syria. But he only gets his press office to make a stink when it’s a Democrat.

Enough on this one. A bunch of reporters got played on this one. And now they’re too embarrassed to retrace their steps.

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.