Politics

Judicial Watch is now identifying itself as a “ conservative public interest group (original).” This is a change from their previous branding as a “ nonpartisan public interest group.” This change comes as they call on Republican Tom DeLay to step down. I don’t know if they’ve decided to generally admit that they’re conservative and partisan (which is not a dirty word), or if they just think they’ll have more weight in this instance because they’re calling on someone who’s theoretically a fellow traveller to step down. Either way, good for them.

Josh Marshall reports that House Republicans are trying to bring Charlie Rangel’s draft bill to a vote. Well, uh, good for them. Using the bill to fuel the draft rumor is dirty politics. (Pointing out that Bush’s policies may well require a draft is legitimate; it’s the fear tactics I abhor.)

Jim Lehrer: “And if any of you audience people yak during the debate, I am going to come down there and whip your ass.” Or something like that. {{ double-space-with-newline }}

On CNN, they’re citing unnamed conservative blogs as feeling Bush had a mixed performance. It’s amusing to watch blogs get co-opted into the spin. General feeling of positive for Kerry from the CNN talking heads. Maybe the Corner; they’re pretty dubious about how Bush did. CNN thinks Bush looks annoyed. Fox is not calling either man the winner. Fox picked up on how tired Bush looked and how much he sighed. Not to mention annoyed. They don’t know if it was effective or not, but Ceci Connelly is calling the expression sour. They’re admitting that Bush looked shorter due to the framing. Spin is fun.

One reason I’m fairly confident Kerry will win: he has the best ground game (original). I’ve been assuming that get out the vote efforts were a major component of the DNC’s strategy this election for a few reasons; most obviously, I’ve just seen a lot of activity oriented towards getting people to the polls this year. More importantly, though, I watched John Kerry win in Iowa because of an absolutely perfect get out the vote operation run by Michael Whouley (original). Any campaign with Whouley at the center is going to be one that has a good ground game, regardless of anything else. ...

The Green Party is floating an interesting scenario (original) for the California recall election. It’s possible that the Republican candidates will split the vote among them, and that the Democrats will hold firm behind Davis and not field another candidate. In that case, Peter Camejo, the Green candidate, picks up the Democratic vote and waltzes into the Governor’s office. I don’t think it happens, because there are too many things that have to fall the right way. If Camejo becomes accepted as an alternative to the Republicans, the Democrats lose any advantage they have by not running a candidate, so they go ahead and get Feinstein to run. Also, you have to assume the Republicans don’t pull together behind Riordan. ...

Followup: the Navy turned down (original) Judicial Watch’s request for an investigation of Kerry’s medals. This came after an examination of the available evidence.

Not that this will convince anyone, but Lt. Col. Killian’s secretary says she didn’t believe in the CBS documents (original). She says, as has been hypothesized, that she would have typed the documents for him and that she doesn’t remember doing so. She was very specific about the typewriters she had available. She also verified the content of the memos, and said that they accurately reflected Killian’s opinions about Bush. This all jibes pretty well with the theory that Bill Burkett (original) was the source of the memos. He believes he saw Bush’s records being purged (original) back in 1997. He’s highly pissed off about the whole thing. I’m ready to believe that he made a stupid mistake, and that he recreated (or perhaps simply retyped) memos that summarize how Killian felt at the time. ...

This line from a CNN story on the explosion in North Korea amused me: “The White House insists diplomacy is still the best strategy, although officials say the president never takes military action off the table.” So I have this image of aides patiently explaining that Canada has been an ally for a long long time, and that it really doesn’t make sense to invade them just because they won’t send troops to Iraq, and Bush is looking all stalwart and determined. “I just don’t think we should take military action off the table. You never know.”

You know what? This document was not created in 1973. Maybe it’s a transcription, but that’s Times New Roman, and those are curly apostrophes, and there’s just no way. Also, it’s a lousy CYA memo, since it’s just claims with no backing evidence. CBS needs to provide an evidence trail for those memos, or give up on their authenticity.