A majority of likely voters--52%--would support a U.S. military strike to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon, and 53% believe it is likely that the U.S. will be involved in a military strike against Iran before the next presidential election, a new Zogby America telephone poll shows....

Democrats (63%) are most likely to believe a U.S. military strike against Iran could take place in the relatively near future, but independents (51%) and Republicans (44%) are less likely to agree. Republicans, however, are much more likely to be supportive of a strike (71%), than Democrats (41%) or independents (44%). Younger likely voters are more likely than those who are older to say a strike is likely to happen before the election and women (58%) are more likely than men (48%) to say the same--but there is little difference in support for a U.S. strike against Iran among these groups.

It's interesting that more Dems than Republicans suspect George W. Bush and Cheney are about to bomb Iran. Obviously, they're thinking wag-the-dog.

My hunch is that Cheney and the Cheney-bots in the administration want to take care of Iran--so to speak--before January 20, 2009. And I doubt that polling means much to the veep and his henchmen and henchwomen. Cheney probably cares little about public opinion and likely believes he will be judged favorably by historians down the road. (Otherwise, how can he get up in the mornings?) But if Bush et. al. are contemplating a strike against Iran, polls such as these certainly don't make the decision any tougher.

There was also good news in the poll for Hillary Clinton:

When asked which presidential candidate would be best equipped to deal with Iran--regardless of whether or not they expected the U.S. to attack Iran --21% would most like to see New York U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton leading the country, while 15% would prefer former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and 14% would want Arizona U.S. Sen. John McCain in charge. Another 10% said Illinois Sen. Barack Obama would be best equipped to deal with Iran, while Republican Fred Thompson (5%), Democrat John Edwards (4%) and Republican Mitt Romney (3%) were less likely to be viewed as the best leaders to help the U.S. deal with Iran....

Clinton leads strongly among Democrats on the issue, with 35% saying she is best equipped to deal with Iran, while 17% would prefer Obama and 7% view John Edwards as the best choice. Giuliani is the top choice of Republicans (28%), followed by McCain (21%) and Fred Thompson (9%). One in five independents chose Clinton (21%) over McCain (16%) and Giuliani (11%).

Clinton better able to handle Iran than Giuliani? Now, that's reassuring for the Clinton campaign and discouraging for the Obama campaign. If this poll is a reliable indicator, it seems that Clinton is projecting strength as a candidate. That's indeed what the first serious female presidential candidate must do. Judging from this poll, much of the public might be happy to see Cheney (and Bush) hit Iran--and then want to see Clinton come in to clean up the mess. Talk about a new take on the cliche that the Republicans are the Daddy Party and the Democrats are the Mommy Party.

HEAD'S UP. If all goes as planned, this blog tomorrow will become part of the new-and-improved CQ.com site. Watch this space for details.

It's time to tell the truth. And, the truth is the system in Washington is corrupt. It is rigged by the powerful special interests to benefit they very few at the expense of the many. And, as a result, the American people have lost faith in our broken system in Washington, and believe it no longer works for ordinary Americans. They're right.

I believe you cannot be for change and take money from the lobbyists who prevent change. You cannot take on the entrenched interests in Washington if you choose to defend the broken system. It will not work. And I believe that, if Americans have a choice, any candidate who takes their money--Democrat or Republican--will lose this election.

Edwards is obviously talking about Clinton, whose campaign is fueled by lobbyist money and is run by political strategists who also work for corporate clients. (See Mark Penn.) But the question is whether Edwards' attack on the system can serve (in political terms) as an effective attack on Hillary Clinton. There are indeed progressive Democratic voters who see HRC as an establishment-friendly Democrat and harbor suspicions of her. But that meme hasn't yet--as far as I can discern--come to infect the Democratic body politic. It is, I'm afraid to say, a boutique critique of Clinton.

So my hunch is that Edwards will have to be more explicit in tying Clinton to the sleaze of Washington to have any chance with this line of attack. Ditto for Obama. (And I'll get to his new anti-Hillary initiative soon.) So when the full text of Edwards speech is publicly available, here's what to look for: a direct slam on Clinton. If it's not there, Edwards might be spinning his wheels.

MORE ON THOMSPON'S DISTORTED VIEW OF 20-SOMETHINGS IN IRAQ. As I noted several weeks ago, Thompson has a stump speech line about Iraq that is...well, pretty dumb. He likes to say

Every day, our troops in Iraq demonstrate a heroic resolve to win. I wish Democrats in Washington would dedicate as much time and energy to winning as they do on how to surrender the fight. The average 20 year-old serving in Iraq apparently knows more about national security than many of the 20 year-political veterans serving in Congress.

So what does Thompson think when he reads pieces like the The Washington Post front-pager on Saturday that notes that the experience of soldiers in Iraq

has left many of them deeply discouraged, by both the unabated hatred between rival sectarian fighters and the questionable will of the Iraqi government to work toward peaceful solutions.

Asked if the American endeavor here was worth their sacrifice -- 20 soldiers from [his] battalion have been killed in Baghdad -- [Sgt. Victor] Alarcon said no: "I don't think this place is worth another soldier's life."

The article focused on Alarcon's battalion's efforts in Sadiyah, a neighborhood in Baghdad and noted he mission there has been a flop:

American soldiers estimate that since violence intensified this year, half of the families in Sadiyah have fled, leaving approximately 100,000 people. After they left, insurgents and militiamen used their abandoned homes to hold meetings and store weapons. The neighborhood deteriorated so quickly that many residents came to believe neither U.S. nor Iraqi security forces could stop it happening.

"It's just a slow, somewhat government-supported sectarian cleansing," said Maj. Eric Timmerman, the battalion's operations officer.

That sure doesn't sound like the progress George W. Bush and David Petraeus hail. According to the Post, the battalion commander, Lt. Col. George Glaze, says that

his soldiers are playing the role of a bouncer caught between brawling customers. Alone, they can restrain the fighters, keep them off balance, but they cannot stop the melee until the house lights come on -- that is, until the Iraqi government steps in.

"I'm frustrated. After 14 months, I've got a lot of thoughts in my head. Do they fundamentally get giving up individual rights and power for the greater good?" Glaze said. "I'm going to leave here being skeptical of everything."

And the piece ends:

The American people don't fully realize what's going on, said Staff Sgt. Richard McClary, 27, a section leader from Buffalo.

"They just know back there what the higher-ups here tell them. But the higher-ups don't go anywhere, and actually they only go to the safe places, places with a little bit of gunfire," he said. "They don't ever [expletive] see what we see on the ground."

So it seems to me that Thompson ought to get his backside over to Iraq and spend two weeks with the 20-something soldiers of 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, before he says anything else about this war.

Is that what Iraq is about? The mighty American military versus kids with IEDs? Such a view leaves out all the sectarian and geopolitical rivalries and complexities driving the conflict. Thompson fans like to say that he has a bit of Reagan in him when it comes to details--meaning, he's a big picture guy who can articulate larger themes without getting bogged down in policy wonkery. But at least Ronald Reagan read Reader's Digest. Thompson just seems to pop off. For instance, he talks about reforming Social Security without knowing the specifics of the last policy debate on Social Security.

Given the demands that will be placed on the next president (thanks to the actions of this president), a candidate who can tell you what he thinks about policy matters (in folksy fashion, of course) without being able to talk about the details might not be the appropriate fella for the job.

WHAT'S SO FUNNY? Last night, Elvis Costello played at the birthday-bash-fundraiser for Hillary Clinton, and one number he chose to feature was "(What's So Funny About) Peace, Love and Understanding?" This for a woman who voted to give George W. Bush the authority to invade Iraq on his own say-so, and who then stuck by the war...until she saw that her potential competitors in the Democratic presidential contest could run as antiwar candidates against her. She then slowly changed her position, from resisting timetables for disengagement to vowing to the end the war ASAP. In the strategic play of the campaign, she managed to make sure there was little daylight between her and Barack Obama or John Edwards on the number-one issue of the election. What's so funny about that? Not much.

WATCHING THE WATCHDOG. In her take on BloggingHeads.tv hitting it big with The New York Times, Huffington Post's Rachel Sklar writes of the PinkerCorn diavlog featured by the Times,

Fun fact: Today's vid is billed as "A Discussion of Baseball, Politics and God" which Corn launches by inveighing against sportswriters who invoke God to explain the outcome of athletic events--which is ironic, because I, too, have mocked a sportswriter in print for so wondering "how else to explain" the White Sox victory two years ago. Where is the irony, you ask? In the sportswriter: It was Tyler Kepner...of the New York Times! What a coincidence! God must totally have made it happen.

A correction, if I may. I never inveighed against sportswriters for citing divine intervention. I inveighed against the general manager of the Colorado Rockies for telling USA Today--in all seriousness--that God had a hand in the Rockies' success on the playing field. I thought I was clear on that point.

Meanwhile, in our continuing God Is Great feature, let us note that last night the Red Sox beat the God-is-on-our-side Rockies, 2 to 1, and took a 2 to 0 lead in the World Series. I know, I know--this is all a setup for the coming Rockies' resurrection. God likes a good show.

You can see it for yourself here, at 12:40 or so.

Fred Thompson will discuss immigration on The Laura Ingraham Show this morning, Thursday, October 25th.

Bill Bennett, Sean Hannity (with no Alan Colmes), Laura Ingraham--Thompson is obviously not afraid to tangle with the hard-hitting media.  

The Times' editors chose a slice of our most recent taping during which we considered this critical question: is God backing the Colorado Rockies in the World Series? Several of the Rockies wear their Christianity on their baseball gloves and have suggested that their impressive success on the field is payback for their faith. We teed off on a remark that the team's general manager, Dan O'Dowd, made to USA Today:

You look at some of the moves we made and didn't make. You look at some of the games we're winning. Those aren't just a coincidence. God has definitely had a hand in this.

I observed that such statements strike me as arrogant. Does God--if there is a God--really care about strikes and balls in sports stadiums across the country? Pinkerton poked at atheists and agnostics for being peeved by the Rockies' public display of Christianity. I pressed Pinkerton: do you believe God controls pitches in baseball games? He could if he wanted to, Pinkerton replied. "Well, I would hope so," I replied. "Otherwise, what's the good of God?" We then proceeded with a theologically minded discussion of religious and politics.

Unfortunately, New York Times visitors missed the setup to this conversation. Earlier in our diavlog, Pinkerton and I had a fierce debate over an article he has in The American Conservative--a magazine founded by Pat Buchanan and other paleocons--in which he argues that the West should adopt as a guiding principle the revival of "Christendom." By this he means, we gotta stop the Islamic hordes that are poised and eager to overrun Western civilization. Literally. They will destroy us, unless we keep them back. I was surprised by Pinkerton's pro-Christendom extremism and his equation of all Islam with Islamic fundamentalism. To see that debate over fundamentals, you can watch our entire diavlog here.

By the way, the Boston Red Sox clobbered the Rockies in the first game of the World Series last night, 13 to 1. I'm sure God arranged that loss only to make the Rockies' inevitable comeback even more glorious. After all, wouldn't you expect God to have a sense of the dramatic?

So I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.

The remark got some attention--mostly for Bush's reference to World War III. Appearing on NPR's The Diane Rehm Show the following day, Tony Blankley, the conservative columnist who until recently ran the editorial page of The Washington Times, noted that it was inadvisable for a president ever to refer to a possible Third World War.

But what struck me was how Bush appeared to lower the bar for an attack on Iran. He asserted that Iran had to be prevented from obtaining the knowledge needed to build nuclear weapons--not the capacity to produce such weapons. Yet that knowledge is already freely available and presumably already in the hands of scientists and engineers in Iran--as well as in most countries of the world. Remember that in 1979, The Progressive magazine published the design for a hydrogen bomb. So if Bush wants to make knowledge the standard for blasting Iran, Iran is toast.

Of course, Bush probably did not mean what he said, and he has no intention of attacking Iran if he can prove that a yellowing copy of The Progressive is in a government filing cabinet somewhere. But, in a way, this makes his statement worse. It shows how sloppy Bush can be. And if he wants to convince the world he is a serious and somber-minded leader--particularly when it comes to matters of war--this is not the way to do so.

Careless rhetoric can be read as an indicator of careless thinking or careless policy. Bush has already persuaded much of the globe that he is not to be trusted, that he prefers war to diplomacy, that he does not understand (or care about) the complexities of the world. Saying that he is willing to attack Iran if it has the "knowledge" to build nuclear weapons (and he said it twice at the press conference) was an act of profound neglect. It showed the U.S. commander in chief is willing to rattle a saber without paying mindful attention to the facts. Bush is lucky the U.S. media quickly moved on. Imagine if a remark such as this one was truly allowed to sink in.

Four and a half years ago, after reading the Robert Novak column that outed Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA operative specializing in counter-proliferation work, I wrote an article in this space noting that this particular leak from Bush administration officials might have been a violation of a federal law prohibiting government officials from disclosing information about clandestine intelligence officers and (perhaps worse) might have harmed national security by exposing anti-WMD operations. That piece was the first to identify the leak as a possible White House crime and the first to characterize the leak as evidence that within the Bush administration political expedience trumped national security.

The column drew about 100,000 visitors to this website in a day or so. And--fairly or not--it's been cited by some as the event that triggered the Plame hullabaloo. I doubt that the column prompted the investigation eventually conducted by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, for I assume that had my column not appeared the CIA still would have asked the Justice Department to investigate the leak as a possible crime. But now that Fitzgerald's investigation is long done, the Scooter Libby spin-off is over (thanks to George W. Bush's total commutation of Libby's sentence), and Valerie Wilson has finally published her account, it seems a good time to say, I was right. And to add, where's the apology?

From the start, neocons and conservative backers of the war dismissed the Plame leak and subsequent scandal as a big nothing. Some even claimed that somehow former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and I had cooked up the episode to ensnare the White House. (Oh, to be so devilishly clever--and to be so competent.) But these attempts to belittle the affair (and to belittle Valerie Wilson) were based on nothing but baseless spin. As was--no coincidence--the Iraq war. In fact, the Wilson imbroglio was something of a proxy war for the debate over the war itself. In the summer of 2003, when the Plame affair broke, those in and out of government who had misled the nation into the war saw the need to spin their way out of the Wilson controversy in order to protect the false sales pitch they had used to win public support for the invasion of Iraq.

First they attacked Joe Wilson when he disclosed that he had gone to Niger in February 2002 for the CIA and had reported back that the allegation Saddam Hussein had been uranium-shopping there was highly dubious. Then when Valerie Wilson's CIA identity was exposed during the get-Wilson campaign, they pooh-poohed the leak. They subsequently spent years doing so. Here's a brief list of Plame attacks I've published before:

* On September 29, 2003, former Republican Party spokesman Clifford May wrote that the July 14, 2003 Robert Novak column that disclosed Valerie Wilson's CIA connection "wasn't news to me. I had been told that--but not by anyone working in the White House. Rather, I learned it from someone who formerly worked in the government and he mentioned it in an offhand manner, leading me to infer it was something that insiders were well aware of."

* On September 30, 2003, National Review writer Jonah Goldberg huffed, "Wilson's wife is a desk jockey and much of the Washington cocktail circuit knew that already."

* On October 1, 2003, Novak wrote, "How big a secret was it? It was well known around Washington that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA....[A]n unofficial source at the agency says she has been an analyst, not in covert operations."

* On July 17, 2005, Republican Representative Roy Blunt, then the House majority leader, said on Face the Nation, "This was a job that the ambassador's wife had that she went to every day. It was a desk job. I think many people in Washington understood that her employment was at the CIA, and she went to that office every day."

* On February 18, 2007, as the Libby trial was under way, Republican lawyer/operative Victoria Toensing asserted in The Washington Post, "Plame was not covert."

* In his recently published memoirs, Novak wrote of Valerie Wilson, "She was not involved in clandestine activities. Instead, each day she went to CIA headquarters in Langley where she worked on arms proliferation."

A year ago, in our book, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, Michael Isikoff and I disclosed for the first time that Valerie Wilson was operations chief at the Joint Task Force on Iraq of the Counterproliferation Division of the CIA's clandestine operations directorate. She was no paper-pusher or analyst, as Novak and others had said. She was in charge of covert operations on a critical front. (Isikoff and I detailed some of her work in the book.) As part of her job, she traveled overseas under cover. CBS News recently reported that it had confirmed she had also worked on operations designed to prevent Iran from obtaining or developing nuclear weapons. Ironic? Ask Dick Cheney.

And Valerie Wilson was not known about Washington as a spy. Though Cliff May has made this argument, in the years since the Novak column appeared, no one in Washington has come forward to say, "Oh yes, I knew about her before Novak outed her." In fact, Valerie Wilson was a mid-level, career CIA officer--there must be hundreds, if not thousands--and such people are (to be frank) not usually on the radar screen of Washington insiders. They are not known regulars on the D.C. cocktail circuit, such as it is. Ask Sally Quinn.

For her part, Valerie Wilson, who left the CIA at the end of 2005, has only recently been able to challenge the purposefully misleading descriptions of her CIA tenure. Appearing before the House government oversight and reform committee in March, she testified the she was a "covert officer" who had helped to "manage and run operations." She said that prior to the Iraq invasion she had "raced to discover intelligence" on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. "I also traveled to foreign countries on secret missions," she said under oath, "to find vital intelligence." She noted that she could "count on one hand" the number of people outside the CIA who knew of her spy work.

On Sunday, as she launched her new book, Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House, she appeared on 60 Minutes and repeated her case. Though the CIA has absurdly prevented her from acknowledging that she worked for the agency prior to 2002--she started there in 1985--Wilson told Katie Couric, "Our mission was to make sure that the bad guys basically did not get nuclear weapons." After her name appeared in the Novak column, she said, "I can tell you, all the intelligence services in the world that morning were running my name through their databases to see, 'Did anyone by this name come in the country? When? Do we know anything about it? Where did she stay? Well, who did she see?'...It puts in danger, if not shuts down, the operations that I had worked on."

What damage was actually done by the leak remains a secret. On 60 Minutes, Valerie Wilson said a damage assessment was conducted by the CIA but that she never saw it. She added, "I certainly didn't reach out to my old assets and ask them how they're doing, although I would have liked to have." That damage report has not been leaked. Nor has it been a subject of congressional interest--as far as one can publicly tell. in 2003, the Democrats in Congress who cared about the Plame leak were obsessed with calling for the appointment of a special prosecutor. That fixation proved to be a mistake. A special prosecutor could only focus on criminal matters and could only disclose information necessary for a prosecution--rules that Patrick Fitzgerald would stick by. The Democrats never pushed for a congressional investigation that could have examined (and perhaps made public, even if in a limited fashion) key issues in the case, such as the consequences of the leak. Valerie Wilson said to Couric that the damage was "serious." The public ought to know if this is so. (When I once asked Senator Jay Rockefeller, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, if he had any intention of probing the Plame leak, he said he no interest in doing so.)

In trying to spin their way out of the CIA leak mess, the neocon gang made much of the fact (again, first revealed by Isikoff and me) that Richard Armitage, who was the No. 2 at the State Department and a neocon-hating Iraq war skeptic, was the administration official who initially told Novak that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. But the Plamegate deniers often ignore the inconvenient truth that White House aide Karl Rove--during the White House campaign to undermine Joe Wilson--confirmed this classified information for Novak and also passed the same leak to Matt Cooper, then of Time. (It was only because Cooper's editors at the newsmagazine did not care about Wilson's wife that Novak published the leak first.) Libby and White House press secretary Ari Fleischer also shared information about Wilson's wife and her CIA connection with reporters. This was all part of the White House effort to tarnish Wilson by making it seem as if his trip to Niger had been nothing but a nepotistic junket. And as testimony and documents presented at the Libby trial showed, Vice President Cheney had been driving the pushback effort and had early on learned about Valerie Wilson's CIA employment and then conveyed that information to Libby.

Yes, this was a case of putting politics (getting Joe Wilson) ahead of national security concerns (such as protecting the identity and operations of a CIA officer working the WMD beat).

It is true that at the end of the day, no one was charged with a crime for leaking information on Valerie Wilson. Patrick Fitzgerald decided that he could not prove in court--as he would have to under the law--that the leakers knew that Valerie Wilson was a covert officer. But Fitzgerald did pursue Libby and Rove for possibly lying to FBI agents and the grand jury investigating the leak. He nabbed Libby but, after much consideration, opted not to indict Rove.

Still, Rove was caught in a lie. Toward the start of the Plame affair, the White House declared that Rove was not involved in the leak, and Bush indicated that anyone who had leaked classified information would be dismissed. But the White House statement regarding Rove was false (probably because Rove had misled White House press secretary Scott McClellan). Bush's promise was false, too, for Rove remained Bush's master strategist even after Isikoff published an email showing that Rove had leaked classified information about Valerie Wilson to Cooper.

The bottom line: this episode demonstrated that the Bush White House was not honest (the vice president's chief of staff was even convicted of lying to law enforcement officials), that top Bush officials had risked national security for partisan gain, and that White House champions outside the government would eagerly hurl false accusations to defend the administration.

So is anyone apologizing? For ruining Valerie Wilson's career? For perhaps endangering operations and agents? For lying about the leak? For misleading the public about Rove's role? For placing spin above the truth? Armitage did apologize (via a media interview) to the Wilsons. But no one else involved has. And no one--not Bush, not Cheney, not their aides, not their neocon confederates--has admitted any wrongdoing in this saga.

It's like the war: false statements, false cover stories, and failure to concede the errors in judgment and action that have caused harm to national security. But the meta-narrative of Bush and his neoconservative allies is one of no apology, no surrender. They say and do what they must to shield themselves from the consequences of their actions. Reality be damned. What matters is what they can get away with. In the case of Valerie Plame Wilson, they did escape retribution. In the larger case of the Iraq war, they are still hoping to.

The president is not putting somebody above the law; the president is putting somebody within the law. The president doesn't stand above the law. But the law emphatically includes the Constitution.

Can you understand this? It's hard to follow, but it seems that Mukasey is back to the ol' Nixon standard that Gonzales was pushing for Bush: if the president does it, it's legal.

For another sharp look at some of what Mukasey said, check out my friend Marty Lederman's observations. He whacks Mukasey for being unable--or is that unwilling?--to say that waterboarding is torture. As Lederman notes,

But really,did we have reason to expect any better -- to think that Judge Mukasey would opine that his new boss has been violating the law?

Perhaps the bottom line is that anyone willing to be Bush's A.G. is suspect.

WHAT'S SO FUNNY? On Wednesday night, I was a candidate in the Funniest Celebrity in Washington Contest, held at the Improv comedy club. I didn't win, but today's Reliable Source column in The Washington Posthas a write-up on the show--which was a benefit for music education programs--and I'm featured in it:

What's there to laugh about in Washington? Seems everyone was trying to figure it out Wednesday night.

At the Funniest Celebrity in Washington Contest, the first to raise the obvious question was contestant David Corn. "Washington must be in hard times if I'm a celebrity," the Mother Jones editor riffed during his stand-up routine. "What, was Harriet Miers busy?" Time.com pundit Ana Marie Cox wondered why Rick Santorum wasn't competing in the charity fundraiser. "Then I realized by 'funniest' they didn't mean unintentionally funny. And by 'celebrity,' they didn't mean anything at all." Cox took third place, while Sen. Arlen Specter won second for deftly deadpanning every terrible joke you've ever heard. ( Please, no, not the paraplegic-rings-the-doorbell one!) As it turned out, the Funniest Celebrity in Washington...was neither: Joseph Randazzo, assistant editor of the Onion. Who lives in N.Y.C. Funny, though. (Full disclosure: We helped judge.)

One of my gags from the night:

In recent days, Laura Bush has been a forceful advocate for human rights in Burma. In fact, she has vowed that Burma will soon be a functioning democracy.

In related news, millions of Iraqis...have moved to Burma.

Ba-da-boom. You had to be there.

Today Rudy Giuliani's campaign sent out a press release proudly declaring that Jeb Bush Jr.--son of the former Florida governor, nephew of the current president of the United States--has become chairman of Florida Young Professionals for Rudy. Here's how the announcement describes the younger Jeb Bush:

Bush grew up in South Florida and currently resides in Miami, where he works in the commercial real estate industry with Fairchild Partners. Bush is a 2005 graduate of the University of Texas at Austin. He is involved in a variety of civic organizations including St. Jude's Hospital and After School All Stars. Bush worked on his father's 2002 gubernatorial reelection campaign.

Here's what I wrote about Jebby Bush two years ago in a piece on the Bush dynasty:

John Ellis Bush, aka Jebby, age 21. This past weekend, he was arrested by Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission agents on Sixth Street in Austin, Texas. He was stopped when the agents suspected he was drunk. He then, it seems, did not cooperate with these public servants, for he was arrested on two charges: public intoxication and resisting arrest. In the scuffle, Jebby received a chin injury and was treated at a hospital. He was released on a $2,500 bond. (Question: given George W. Bush's DWI charge and Barbara's and Jenna's underage imbibing issues, is getting into legal trouble over alcohol considered a family rite of passage?)

This was not Jebby's first encounter with the police. Five years ago--a month before the 2000 election--he was caught by security guards while in the act with a 17-year-old female in a Jeep Cherokee parked in a Tallahassee mall. Both were naked from the waist down, except Jebby was wearing his socks. The security guards called in the cops. A police officer arrived on the scene and investigated a possible crime of "sexual misconduct." In the subsequent police report, the officer wrote, "I became aware of the political ties" of the suspect. He then "contacted the watch commander...to inform him of the incident." After one of the security guards talked to Jebby's father--who happened to be the governor of the state--this guard told the on-the-scene cop that he believed that his own supervisor would "pull" the preliminary report. The cop replied that he would still have to complete an incident report. And a report was written. Nothing happened after that. The incident did not become public until two days before the presidential election, when this police report was leaked to the local media and a London newspaper. (Only the London paper went with the story.) According to Artie Brown, one of the two security guards who nabbed Jebby that night, the young Bush spoke to his father after being caught and then remarked, "My dad will fix it."

It's reassuring that a young man with such respect for the law is joining the campaign of Giuliani, who as NYC mayor adopted a zero tolerance approach toward such law-and-order matters as public drinking and disorderly conduct. You can see a copy of that police report here. And for a photograph of Jeb Bush Jr. showing his concern for the future of America, click here.

That picture is from today's ceremony in the Capitol where George W. Bush awarded the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal....By the way, the Dalai Lama had this to say about the Iraq war a week before Bush launched it:

The Iraq issue is becoming very critical now....Unfortunately, although we are in the 21st century, we still have not been able to get rid of the habit of our older generations. I am talking about the belief or confidence that we can solve our problems with arms. It is because of this notion that the world continues to be dogged by all kinds of problems.

But what can we do? What can we do when big powers have already made up their minds? All we can do is to pray for a gradual end to the tradition of wars. Of course, the militaristic tradition may not end easily. But, let us think of this. If there were bloodshed, people in positions of power, or those who are responsible, will find safe places; they will escape the consequent hardship. They will find safety for themselves, one way or the other. But what about the poor people, the defenseless people, the children, the old and infirm. They are the ones who will have to bear the brunt of devastation....Therefore, the real losers will be the poor and defenseless, ones who are completely innocent, and those who lead a hand-to-mouth existence.

Today, as the Dalai Lama called for peace, urged action to stop global warming, and graciously thanked Bush and members of Congress for supporting Tibet, he said nothing about powerful leaders who unleash war upon others and escape its direct consequences. I wonder whom he had in mind.

Apparently not. Now, it's certainly possible that once the race is clear--when the Dems have picked their man or woman and the Republicans have picked their fiscal fearmonger--Republican fat cats will come late to the party and shower the GOP nominee with dino-dollars. But it's interesting that the scare tactics being used by the Republican contenders have not yet motivated the financial heart of the party. While the Democratic presidential aspirants have drawn $223 million in contributions, the poor GOPers have taken in but a measly $150 million. The gap of $73 million is, of course, not insignificant. But given historical trends, one could expect the Republicans in a race with no incumbent on either side to draw 50 to 100 percent more than the Democrats, not one-third less.

From the Post piece:

"The Republican brand is not selling very well," said Christine Todd Whitman, a former New Jersey governor, Bush Cabinet member and 2004 Ranger. "There are a lot of frustrated people. They are not seeing anybody who has sent them over the top."

"I have opted out for all the well-documented reasons that disaffected Republicans use," Carpenter said. "I'm not sure which primary I'll vote in. At the moment I will say I'm keeping my powder dry. It's the first time I'm really a bit confused about what I should be doing, or where the country should be headed."

Poor guy. It's so confusing.

For years--decades, actually--the Republicans have used the tax club to whack Democrats. But it's pretty clear these days that--despite what McRomsoniani says--the Democrats are not looking to add to the tax burdens of most Americans and that the rich in America (who are doing better than ever) do not need relief and can perhaps even afford to pay more of the nation's bill. (After all, aren't we at war and facing other fundamental challenges?) Still, the GOP contestants--in the debates and on the stump--keep deploying the same-old/same-old tax issue in their tired-sounding attempts to bash the Dems. (At one recent debate, Giuliani accused Hillary Clinton of purposefully wanting to limit the nation's economic growth.) But if the traditional GOP funders aren't buying this junk, who will?

But in her published interview with Thomas, Weymouth does not ask him about this evidence and testimony. She just lets him play the victim one more time:

Along the road from Pin Point, Ga., to the Supreme Court, why did you not give up during difficult times?

Yes, throughout the hearings, the summer, everything....I asked my wife, "Why? I just disagree with them. I don't even know if I disagree with them on specific issues." [But] I cannot carry around bitterness and at the same time carry around a positive message for young kids and for people who still need help. My goal is I will never treat anybody the way I was treated in this city. I also will never do my job as poorly as people did their jobs when I was at their mercy.

The op-ed page of the Post is indeed supposed to give voice to a diversity of views. Still, this interview was striking in its obsequiousness. But Weymouth, a onetime leftist who turned rightward years ago, is a regular contributor to the Post op-ed page. For some reason, she's allowed to use the Post as a platform. By the way, she was born Elizabeth Morris Graham and is the only daughter of Philip Graham and Katharine Graham, the late (and great) publisher of The Washington Post. Her brother is Donald Graham, the CEO of the Post.

BABY POLITICS. Tired of the usual cheap-shot political discourse that's more concerned with scoring points than debating policy? Yeah, I know you are. So take a look at my pal Reid Cramer's piece on the so-called baby bonds. A few weeks back, Hillary Clinton referred positively to the idea of awarding a chunk of money to each newborn American--funds that could later be used for education, home-buying or retirement. She mentioned a figure of $5000, though a similar proposal in Congress only called for $500. She probably slipped up on the number, since she had previously called for a $500 endowment. But her campaign, true to form, would not admit she had made a mistake.

Of course, Clinton was immediately pummeled by her foes on the right for championing a big-spending social program. Rudy Giuliani, in particular, pounced on her. Clinton turned tail and threw the baby bonds into the bathwater. So much for informed discussion about social policy. Defending baby bonds, Cramer, research director at the New America Foundation, writes,

Access to even a modest pool of assets can provide an essential element of economic security, helping people weather income shocks and take advantage of strategic opportunities.

If we engage in a dialogue that goes beyond headlines, the merits of baby bonds could garner support from progressives and social conservatives alike. That's because, at its core, this policy is about ownership and opportunity, offering a little something for everyone.

Gee, social policy that combines the values of progressives and social conservatives? We don't want any of that. Instead, we get mud balls and calculating and self-serving politicians. The babies of America ought to be really angry.

Writing in the Chicago Tribune, Robert Bateman a U.S. Army officer who served in Iraq, recounts an encounter with a Blackwater convoy, during which Blackwater guards fired their guns and drove Iraqi cars onto the sidewalk. He recalls,

It enraged me...and Blackwater is, at least nominally, on our side.

Iraq operates on the basis of an honor culture. Honor is, arguably, more important than Islam. Being dishonored, in word or deed, or even by implication, is enough to set the average Iraqi man to plotting his revenge. This is a culture in which political assassinations (usually based on honor issues) are not an abstraction but an everyday occurrence. Every time one of those Blackwater convoys drives an Iraqi civilian off the road because the most important thing in the world is the protection of their "principal," they make a new enemy for the United States. Every time they ram another car to clear the way (and, yes, I've seen them do that), so that they could maintain their own speed and thereby minimize their exposure to "improvised explosive devices," they make another enemy. Every time they kill innocent civilians, or wound them, they make whole families of new enemies.

Talking to CBS News, Adam Hobson, a former political aide at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, discussed the tragedy that occurred on May 12, when a Blackwater guard protecting him shot at two men in a cab. One of the men was killed. After Blackwater and the State Department investigated and found the guard had not followed appropriate procedures, he was sent home. There was no other punishment. Here's a piece of the CBS interview with Hobson:

CBS: How did having this aggressive security detail affect your work in Iraq?

Hobson: Yes. I think about it every day. That's when I really understood. I went to a meeting and somebody died because of it. It made meetings in the future a lot less important. In fact, I never left the [Embassy] compound again.

Blackwater is really a metaphor (or fall guy) for the bigger mess in Iraq--a war that a former commander calls a "nightmare." For years, U.S. policy and actions have alienated the Iraqi population (and, not coincidentally, much of the rest of the world). Ignorance and arrogance--did someone say hubris?--has been animating the Bush administration's approach to Iraq from before the invasion until now. Though Blackwater deserves investigation and punishment, it is a convenient heavy. It's only the muscle for a crew that doesn't know what it's doing.