McCain blogger/spokesman Michael Goldfarb on ex-colleague who just signed on to work for Al Gore: He’s “dead to me.”
Scenes from Saturday night’s White House Correspondents Dinner (special Wanda Sykes/Terrorist First Bump edition.)
From the WSJ …
Mr. Gates’s decision to ask for Gen. McKiernan’s resignation came after a behind-the-scenes campaign by an influential group of current and former military officers, many of whom played key roles developing and backing the Bush administration’s troop “surge” in Iraq.
“It’s been a long, slow boil,” said a senior Pentagon official familiar with internal debates over Gen. McKiernan’s future.
Mr. Gates said he had made the decision with Adm. Mullen and Gen. David Petraeus, who runs the Central Command and was Gen. McKiernan’s boss.
Specter: “There are a few bumps in the road. But I’ve got good shock absorption.”
TPM Reader JB flags the news that the final margin of victory in the NY-20 special election will be 726 votes. Razor thin, yes, but many more than the total was through much of the recount. And it suggests that almost all the challenged ballots turned out to be Murphy votes.
More than a touch intrigued by the Iraq ‘evidence’/torture nexus. From TPM Reader RW …
Several interesting things just connected in my mind. Saw Jon Stewart show a clip of Cheney saying that Bush “basically approved” of the interrogation program. His answer was as woozy as it gets. Then on the replay of Hardball, watched Lawrence O’Donnell answer Chris Matthew’s musings on a Cheney prosection by suggesting it would be for “usurping” Bush on the issue.
Really, where the torture scandal could break open is the exact nexus of who actually authorized the program and Cheney’s frantic efforts to get information linking Saddam Hussein to the Iraq war. Wherever Iraq touches the torture question is going to be the flashpoint–it undercuts the “ticking time bomb” rationale for the program. Its also where politicals are going to have their deepest interactions with the program. That’s where people need to look. Somebody needs to superimpose the timeline of the Iraq run-up over what we know about the timeline of the torture program. Anywhere Cheney, Iraq and torture meet is going to be radioactive.
Sens. Boxer and Snowe: Hey, how about a female SCOTUS nominee? That and the day’s other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.
Liz Cheney still out flogging the Jack Bauer timebomb scenario — and claiming waterboarding was a last resort. (Why didn’t Eugene Robinson mention the 83 separate waterboardings of Abu Zubaydah to refute both points?)
Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) lets slip why Republicans are not just content but thrilled to have Norm Coleman drag out the legal process in Minnesota and beyond.