On the McCain/Gramm/UBS front (noted in yesterday evenings posts), it seems that not only is Sen. McCain’s top economics advisor, fmr Sen. Gramm, lobby and work for UBS, but according to today’s Financial Times the company is advising members of its private banking team not to step foot in the United States in order to avoid indictment.

(ed.note: In cases like this, I want to make a distinction between the particulars of the legal troubles UBS may or may not be in and the political implications for Sen. McCain. Anything tied to a big international banking concern is necessarily highly complex. And we’re digging in to try to find you more on that. But as a political matter, for McCain, having your top economics advisor be the vice chairman and (until recently) lobbyist for a company telling a class of its employees to get out of the country for fear of being indicted is simply not a good thing. As I said, we’re digging in on this story. But for the moment, I would caution readers to keep this distinction in mind.)

Can we hear more about that meeting between Karl Rove and Scooter Libby during the heat of the Plame investigation that Scott McClellan describes in his new tell-all?

AdStravaganza fans, rejoice! If you liked our presidential AdStravaganzas then you’ll love our down-ballot congressional campaign AdStravaganza. Many more candidates, much less quality!

High-res version at Veracifier.com.

Maybe a little premature (then again, maybe not), but we’ve set up a discussion thread at TPMCafe on who the Democratic VP nominee should be.

Here’s the statement released by White House spokesperson Dana Perino on her predecessor’s new book:

Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White
House. For those of us who fully supported him, before, during and after
he was press secretary, we are puzzled. It is sad – this is not the
Scott we knew.

The book, as reported by the press, has been described to the President.
I do not expect a comment from him on it – he has more pressing matters
than to spend time commenting on books by former staffers.

Last I checked, about 77 percent of Americans are “disgruntled.”

In honor of Scott McClellan’s new book, we thought we’d do a highlight reel of his time as White House press secretary for tomorrow’s episode of TPMtv.

So what are you favorite Scottie moments captured on camera? So much to choose from: Iraq, Katrina, Plame, among others. What jumps out to you? What have we forgotten?

Send us an email at the “Send Comments and News Tips” address at the top of the page, with the subject line: “Scottie Reel.” Please include as much of a description as possible, especially the approximate date, so we can track down the video. Thanks in advance.

TPM Media is announcing a job opening for a news editor working in our New York City office. The news editor has primary responsibility for running and updating the news section on the front page of Talking Points Memo (TPM), working closely with the site’s managing editor. Key responsibilities include staying on top of breaking news, finding current news items, working with our reporters to find which TPM stories to feature, writing headlines and story descriptions, as well as selecting news photos and video to complement our front page news coverage. Applicants must be inveterate news and politics junkies and be able to work in a fast paced news environment every day. Their job is to make sure our front page is always on top of everything and putting everything in front of our readers’ eyes from a witty, TPM perspective.

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The right is in a bit of a snit today over Scott McClellan’s book. Take this post at The Corner, by Seth Leibsohn, responding to McClellan’s charges that the White House undertook a “propaganda campaign” to tout the Iraq War and that the press was too soft on Bush during that period:

The evidence I’ve seen does in fact show that the administration had different justifications for the liberation of Iraq — but we saw them plainly and in the open before as well as after the invasion. The president, the secretary of state, the VP, and many others gave lots of reasons for the invasion of Iraq. There were international legal cases, there were public policy cases, there were national security cases all to be made. And they were. The idea that the press didn’t do its job and was too soft on the president — as McClellan writes — is, frankly, laughable. Raise your hand if you have any evidence that the press was too soft on the administration.

Raise your hand indeed.

[Thanks to TPM Reader JU for the link.]

If you want to see my talk this evening in Palo Alto, the details are here. Free and open to the public.

William Hartung, on John McCain’s plan for nuclear disarmament.