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01.15.08 -- 3:51PM // link | recommend

This is a big nice test

This is a test. What I want to know is whether or not I can just turn comments on for anyone to see it.

We'll see if it works!

--Andrew Golis

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12.20.07 -- 11:29AM // link | recommend (4)

Today's Must Read

Are DOJ and CIA really waving the white flag in agreeing to cooperate with the House investigation into the torture tapes--or is this just designed to take a little heat off, keep GOP members in line, and buy time until after the holidays?

--Andrew Golis

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12.20.07 -- 11:29AM // link | recommend (2)

Ace in the Hole Out the Door

When Rudy Giuliani's soft lead in the national polls evaporates, suddenly he'll be just another GOP hopeful lining up to get his head sliced off in the first big primary and caucus contests. And we seem to be there.

If you look at the trendline graphs created by Professor Charles Franklin for Pollster.com, the Huckabee line has finally converged with the Rudy's.

Those numbers were from polls as of December 16th. And the exact numbers are actually Rudy 22.6% and Huckabee 22.2%. So there's still a hair's breadth of distance between. But the trend line is awfully clear.

And this is borne out by two new polls just out this evening.

The new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll out tonight has Mitt Romney and Rudy tied at 20% with Mike Huckabee at 17%. That's close to a three-way tie for first with Rudy.

Then there's a Zogby phone poll out this evening which has Rudy at 23%, Huckabee at 22% and Romney at 16%. The details are different, especially for Huckabee and Romney. But the big picture is clear: Rudy's lost his nationwide lead wide.

And the downward momentum will probably push him still further too.. With dismal numbers in the early races and lukewarm numbers nationwide, what's his political strategy again? Is there any rationale for still calling him the frontrunner?

--Andrew Golis

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12.07.07 -- 10:28AM // link | recommend (3)

Senate Minority Mitch McConnell (R-KY), on U.S. casualties in Iraq: "Nobody is happy about losing lives but remember these are not draftees, these are full-time professional soldiers."

--David Kurtz

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12.07.07 -- 10:25AM // link | recommend (1)

Heads Up

We've got our Official TPM Shag Fund Timeline (aka ShagLine) coming up a little later today.

--Josh Marshall

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12.07.07 -- 9:53AM // link | recommend (1)

Today's Must Read

The day's blockbuster is the NYT scoop on the existence and destruction of videotapes of the interrogations of two al Qaeda suspects. Spencer Ackerman analyzes the implications of this revelation.

--David Kurtz

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12.07.07 -- 9:32AM // link | recommend

Air Out of the Balloon

Rudy Giuliani's poll numbers are slipping nationally and in the key primary states. So this weekend he's heading to Russert's show to try to stop the decline before he tumbles into free-fall.

--Josh Marshall

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12.07.07 -- 8:59AM // link | recommend (1)

Shag-ier and Shag-ier

Imagine that. Rudy's caught in another lie about the tax-payer funded valet service he had New York City provide for Judi Nathan while she was still his mistress. Up until yesterday Team Rudy had claimed that the NYPD only started providing Nathan with an around-the-clock security detail after December 2000, after their adulterous relationship became public. This was in response to a never-disclosed "threat" Nathan received on a street corner near her home. There's never been any details or evidence that the threat existed. But then-Police commissioner Bernie Kerik said it checked out. So please stop asking any more questions.

Here's Rudy, shortly after the security/valet story broke back in 2001 telling reporters that anyone who asked about it should be "ashamed of themselves."

Kerik and Giuliani have previously insisted that there was no security detail or valet service prior to December 2000.

But now it turns out that that's not true. Yesterday Giuliani aides conceded that in fact Nathan had been received the valet service and security detail "sporadically" from early 2000 in response to yet more undisclosed, undetailed and unconfirmed "threats".

"Sporadically" is Team Rudy's word. Witnesses and a law enforcement source now say she got a full-time NYPD valet service for months before the affair went public.

Bear in mind, this is now well before anyone knew anyone knew the two were having an affair and thus before anyone knew who Judi Nathan was. So why would she be receiving 'threats' at all?

--Josh Marshall

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12.07.07 -- 2:30AM // link | recommend

In Case You Missed It

Let's be honest. You don't want to suffer through all the bamboozling ads the GOP presidential candidates are pasting the airwaves with. But you still want to be up on the latest bamboozlement and schmalz. So here, prepared specially for you the TPM Reader, is the whole GOP field boiled to a tight, licketysplit and almost tolerable 3:30.

Watch, if you're man person enough to face the bamboozlement!

Watch this episode on Blip.

--Josh Marshall

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12.07.07 -- 12:14AM // link | recommend

Read the Book

If you're curious why Mike Huckabee even got on the topic of pardoning, commuting the sentence of, paroling -- whatever -- serial rapist and murderer Wayne Dumond, you have to understand that during the 90s the right-wing whackjobosphere had managed to convince themselves that DuMond was some sort of Ozarks Ruben Carter -- a victim of Bill Clinton and the corrupt regime he ran in Arkansas in the 1980s.

Most of our staff at TPM are in their twenties. And we had a moment today when it occurred to me that if you weren't politically aware in the 1990s, it's difficult to get a sense of how much a series of seriously deranged conspiracy theories became almost mainstream.

In any case, there's actually a book, Unequal Justice, that seems to be the bible of DuMond lionization and hagiography. What's so damning about Huckabee is that whatever version of events you believe, it seems undisputed that Huckabee either bought into this craziness or pushed for the release of a serial rapist to pander to those who did.

--Josh Marshall

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12.07.07 -- 12:03AM // link | recommend

Huckabee lashes out at Huffpo; Arianna smacks him back.

--Josh Marshall

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12.06.07 -- 8:09PM // link | recommend

State's Golden Boy

McClatchy's Warren Strobel reports:

A State Department project manager banished from Iraq by the U.S. ambassador and under scrutiny by the Justice Department continues to oversee the construction of the much-delayed new American embassy in Baghdad from nearby Kuwait, State Department officials disclosed Thursday.

James L. Golden, a contract employee, is still managing the $740 million project, said Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy, the department's top management official.

--David Kurtz

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12.06.07 -- 6:50PM // link | recommend

Dana Perino takes a beating on the new Iran NIE in today's White House press briefing:

--David Kurtz

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12.06.07 -- 6:06PM // link | recommend

Fringe Party

Here are the first two grafs of an article in today's Los Angeles Times ...

One-third of Americans want to deny social services, including public schooling and emergency room healthcare, to illegal immigrants, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found.

Still, in a sign of ambivalence among voters about the emotionally charged issue, a strong bipartisan majority -- 60% -- favors allowing illegal immigrants who have not committed crimes to become citizens if they pay fines, learn English and meet other requirements.

That second number is a pretty striking statistic when you think of all the media we see about how everybody's fed up with illegals, wants them all marched back out of the country and then have the whole place surrounded by a hundred foot fence.

What I think says pretty clearly is that the kind of rabid hostility to illegal immigration and illegal immigrants -- which is in most cases, I believe, just a fig leaf for hostility to all immigrants in generall -- just isn't a majority position in this country.

It's definitely an issue which creates tensions and conflicts within the Democratic coalition. But fundamentally the anti-immigrant rage of the GOP is a minority position. And it's one that I suspect will do the GOP vast damage over the coming years as hispanics swing heavily back toward the Democratic party.

--Josh Marshall

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12.06.07 -- 3:43PM // link | recommend

TPMtv: GOP Adstravaganza!

Let's be honest. You don't want to suffer through all the bamboozling ads the GOP presidential candidates are pasting the airwaves with. But you still want to be up on the latest bamboozlement and schmalz. So here, prepared specially for you the TPM Reader, is the whole GOP field boiled to a tight, licketysplit and almost tolerable 3:30.

Watch, if you're man person enough to face the bamboozlement!

Watch this episode on Blip.

--Josh Marshall

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12.06.07 -- 3:21PM // link | recommend

What ever happened to the Krongard v. Krongard showdown that was supposed to happen in front of Henry Waxman's committee?

--David Kurtz

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12.06.07 -- 1:56PM // link | recommend

Golden Dukeys

I've noticed that in the nominations readers are sending in for the Golden Duke awards (nomination instructions and details here) not a lot of people are stepping up to make nominations for the signature prize -- Best Scandal -- General Interest. Lots of good nominations for best sex scandal, best local scandal, best testimonial trainwreck, etc. But it seems there's a little reluctance to try to climb this one mountain.

To some I guess the US Attorney scandal is too much of a shoo-in for the Best Scandal Dukey. But remember, the Dukey in each category has to be awarded to an individual person. And there were so many crooks and bamboozlers in the US Attorney scandal that a lot of honor gets spread around.

On the other hand you've got solo scandals like Sen. Ted Stevens, the senate's maestro of pork getting caught with miscellaneous sweetheart bribes, freebie home renovation and the like. So, just speaking for myself, I think Sen. Stevens is a strong contender?

Who else do you think should be in the running?

--Josh Marshall

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12.06.07 -- 1:19PM // link | recommend

By George, I Think He's ...

As I set forth below, as a practical matter, I think Huckabee's defense on DuMond is so damning as to be almost indistinguishable from the charges leveled by his critics. But TPM Reader MR has a speculative but fairly convincing explanation of what may actually have happened ...

In your “Glass Half Full! No, Half Empty!” post I think you have missed what is likely the real story of what happened at the parole board meeting in question. I believe what went down is that Gov. Huckabee told the parole board that if they didn’t grant parole to Dumond, then he would commute his sentence. That is how he forced their hand on the parole, and it explains the statement that you included from “Team Huck.” This statement is a typical case of careful parsing, it is technically true, but misses the real point of what the meeting was about. I have no doubt that Mr. Chastain tried to talk Huck out of granting clemency, but he almost certainly didn’t want to grant parole to Dumond. He did it because they thought it better to have this man on parole and monitored then to have him released as a free man.

--Josh Marshall

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12.06.07 -- 12:35PM // link | recommend

Too Much Freud From a Guy Named Dick

From Vice President Cheney's interview with The Politico:

Most striking were his virtually taunting remarks of two men he described as friends from his own days in the House: Democratic Reps. John Dingell (Mich.) and John P. Murtha (Pa.).

In a 40-minute interview with Politico, he scoffed at the idea of two men who spent years accruing power showing so much deference to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in the big spending and energy debates of the year.

Murtha “and the other senior leaders … march to the tune of Nancy Pelosi to an extent I had not seen, frankly, with any previous speaker,” Cheney said. “I’m trying to think how to say all of this in a gentlemanly fashion, but [in] the Congress I served in, that wouldn’t have happened.”

But his implication was clear: When asked if these men had lost their spines, he responded, “They are not carrying the big sticks I would have expected.”

--David Kurtz

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12.06.07 -- 11:34AM // link | recommend

Most of the MSM (but to its credit, not CNN) punts on Bush's Iran intel lie.

--David Kurtz