Afternoon Grab Bag

by Steve

Alberto's session with the Senate Judiciary Committee has been postponed until Thursday due to the VTech killings.

McCain says today that if elected, he’ll make the Bush tax cuts permanent and balance the budget by the end of his first term, fix Medicare and Social Security, and eliminate all pork barrel spending. He doesn’t say how he’ll do this and continue the Iraq war’s $125 billion/year drain on the treasury. In other words, he’s spewing BS to the wingers knowing they'll believe every word.

Some of you have commented that the missing email story surrounding the attorney sackings is chump change for what the emails may have been about, and the Wall Street Journal now seems to confirm that. The emails may have been “lost” not because of what they said about the attorney sackings, but rather because of what they said about a direct Abramoff-White House link.

Is California’s GOP slug and Abramoff associate John Doolittle toast?

Alberto’s Number Two Paul McNulty, he who tanked the Larry Franklin case has decided that now is a good time to head for the private sector.

As for the attorney sacking story, note that Bush may have played a direct role in the sacking of David Iglesias, and that Dick Cheney is quite willing to let Rove and Gonzales roast over this.

A plurality and near majority of the country want Congress to dictate troop levels in Iraq, and not the president. They seem to be turning off Bush’s fear mongering. John Bolton expresses typical neocon callousness to the disaster he is responsible for.

This story won Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe a Pulitzer today.

“Washington Week’s” Gwen Ifill went after her white male counterparts yesterday for being part of Don Imus’s good ole’ boys club all these years.

Nearly half of the public, 46%, “strongly disapprove” of Bush’s job performance.