Ahhh. We found the part in the Wilkes indictment about Duke Cunningham’s hookers at lobbyist expense.

You come up with your own earmark joke. I won’t stoop so low.

For the highlights of Hookergate, see our Hookergate File.

You won’t want to miss this one. The GOP strategy for evading debate over escalation has now been revealed.

al Sadr kickin’ it in Tehran?

Feith: Sometimes someone’s got to stand up and be a moron.

Kevin Drum asks an excellent question: Why was Libby the only one to lie in the Plame investigation. Not once or twice but again and again, frequently under oath. Was it related to being tied to Cheney? He felt he had no choice?

Second blogger resigns from Edwards campaign.

Today’s Must Read: a new report from the European Parliament details the extent of U.S. renditions of suspected terrorists.

It never hurts to get an early start.

With nearly two years to go until Election Day 2008, the DSCC is already attacking GOP Senators up for relection with new ads faulting them for stalling debate on escalation.

Everybody should read this article in today’s Times about the new crackdown in Baghdad. The plan is basically to reverse ethnic-cleanse the city, evicting the new tenants of neighborhoods that have been already cleansed and then resettling the evictees.

Under the general’s plan, people who have illegally occupied homes will have 15 days to leave. While they are there, he said, they must protect the home, not steal from it or damage it.

“Anyone who does not follow this law will be treated according to the antiterrorism laws,” he said, adding that the government would set up committees to determine ownership.

We have a fair degree of experience at this point in how to attempt or in many cases not even to attempt such cleansing reversals in the Balkans. One almost never attempts such a plan until you’re definitely in a post-war period. Doing it in the midst of an escalating cycle of sectarian violence seems like a recipe for disaster. The Times quotes Samantha Power describing the plan “as either a public relations ploy that would never be enforced, or worse, a prelude to more sectarian cleansing and catastrophe.”

We’re just listening to the Bush press briefing today. And he’s telling reporters that he knows absolutely that the Iranian Republican Guards are responsible for sending in the weapons that are now being used against US troops. There are some delicate word games involved. But that’s what he’s saying.

He’s saying he knows as a certainty something that his own Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is not willing to say he believes.