A Senate committee has found evidence that top medical researchers have failed to disclose outside income they’ve received, including from drug companies, in possible violation of rules governing government funding for such research.
Hillary Clinton finally conceded over the weekend, marking the official end of the presidential primaries. Is she now angling for the VP slot? And as the general election fight kicks off, is there any way McCain can claim to be the actual change candidate?
High-res version at Veracifier.com.
Henry Waxman’s committee has a preliminary report (.pdf) out this morning detailing the contacts between the White House and Jack Abramoff and his lobbying team.
We’re going through it at TPMmuckraker. Looks like a number of White House officials, including Karl Rove and a current economics adviser to John McCain’s campaign, got some of the ticket freebies that Team Abramoff regularly doled out to grease the skids.
Late Update: The McCain campaign says the economics adviser in question is no longer with the campaign.
TPM Election Central reports on the Obama team’s effort to woo Hillary’s biggest donors to a sit-down in mid-town Manhattan later this week.
Sometimes the national political conversation lapses so far into nonsense that it’s necessary to restate the obvious to get things back on track. And that is the case with the debate over whether to hold negotiations or high-level meetings with our enemies without pre-conditions. As you’ve seen, Sen. McCain is making a big ruckus about Sen. Obama’s willingness to do so, even going so far as to run new ads questioning his willingness to meet “unconditionally” — a loaded reference to the phrase ‘unconditional surrender’.
But let’s remember what this issue is really about. The Bush administration (and to a much less but still significant degree, the Clinton administration) has held to a policy of refusing to hold any negotiations with rogue states on the theory that we gained by not providing them the prestige of holding direct negotiations with the US. It wasn’t framed that way precisely. We were willing to meet as long as certain preconditions were met. So in the case of Cuba, this would mean, changing the form of government, releasing political prisoners, giving an atomic wedgy to Hugo Chavez, etc.; or with Iran, ending their nuclear program, changing their political system, cutting off funding to Hamas and Hezbollah, etc. Laudable aims in most cases, but also ones that amount to demanding that bad-guy country X give in to our maximal demands of a potential bilateral relationship in advance of even saying hello — something that’s obviously not going to happen.
So the question is, are we willing to have negotiations and high-level meetings (even at the presidential level) with hostile powers to discuss our differences (do whatever risks there may be outweigh the possible benefits?) or do we think the current freeze-out approach is serving us well?
This week at TPMCafe Book Club we’re discussing Arianna Huffington’s new book Right is Wrong. To discuss the book she’ll be joined by Jared Bernstein, Gary Hart, George Lakoff, David Sirota, and Jane Smiley.
This is a special treat since Arianna and I have been comparing blogospheric notes for some time and thinking about ways to work together.
Arianna kicks the conversation off here with her first post. Take a look.
If you’re going to pick one year to go to the annual Personal Democracy Forum conference this is the year to do it given just how much focus there is on the role the web is playing in this year’s election.
It’s June 23rd and 24th at Lincoln Center here in New York City (see the program here). The Internet Directors for six of the presidential campaigns will be there — including those for Clinton, McCain and Obama. And I’ll be speaking on a panel about online political videos.
If all that weren’t enough, the first ten people to email conference at personaldemocracy dot com and mention TPM in your email will get a special $100 discount. So check out the program and I’ll see you there.
Former White House Secretary Scott McClellan accepts Rep. John Conyers’ (D-MI) invitation to testify before the House Judiciary Committee about the Plame leak.
Notwithstanding today’s news, the Abramoff scandal is mainly fading off into the past as we head into the thick of the 2008 campaign season. But it seems that Jack will make at least one cameo appearance. According to a motion filed today in the case, it seems likely that Abramoff will finally be sentenced in early September, just after the Democratic and Republican conventions.