Month: April 2006

Odd and Ends

by digby

Ugh, what a day. No blogging for my poor neglected Hullabaloo until tomorrow, but I have a wee contribution to firedoglake’s otherwise great series on the bigotsphere, if you care to check it out.

And here’s a truly fabulous review of Crashing the Gate with an overview of the blogopshere in the New York Review of Books. People are gettin’ it.

For those of you who missed Jack Cafferty’s bid to beat Lou Dobbs for “the angriest middle aged white male on the planet” award today here’s the transcript:

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, Wolf. Once again, the streets of our country were taken over today by people who don’t belong here.

In the wake of Congress failing to pass immigration legislation last week, America’s cities once again were clogged with protesters today. Taxpayers who have surrendered highways, parks, sidewalks and a lot of television news time on all these cable news networks to mobs of illegal aliens are not happy about it.

With every concession by the Bush administration, and the ever- growing demands of Mexican president Vicente Fox, America’s illegal aliens are becoming ever bolder. March through our streets and demand your rights. Excuse me? You have no rights here, and that includes the right to tie up our towns and cities and block our streets. At some point this could all turn very violent as Americans become fed up with the failure of their government to address the most pressing domestic issue of our time.

Here’s the question: What effect will the immigration protests have?

E-mail your thoughts to caffertyfile@CNN.com or go to CNN.com/caffertyfile — Wolf.

BLITZER: A lot of these demonstrators, you know, Jack, are legal. And many of them are citizens of the United States. They’re not all illegal immigrants, the people protesting.

CAFFERTY: How do you know?

BLITZER: Because I as out on the streets. I saw.

CAFFERTY: Well, where’s the immigration service? Why don’t they pull the buses up and start asking these people to show their green cards? And the ones that don’t have them, put them on the buses and send them home.

BLITZER: There’s a — well, that’s an expensive proposition, as you know — 12 million — 12 million of them.

CAFFERTY: As opposed to the cost we’re enduring by having 12 million of these people running around the country.

BLITZER: Jack, much more coming up. We have a debate. Lou Dobbs is standing by as well.

Isn’t that awesome? Assuming the “taxpayers” don’t rise up to defend their streets against you, all you protestors who aren’t carrying green cards would get a ride “home” — kind of the way they deported anyone who “looked” Mexican during “Operation Wetback,” one of the earlier incarnations of anti-Latino immigration fever that erupts with depressing and predictable regularity in this country. Over and over again we bounce between tolerance and intolerance of the migration pattern that’s been here forever.

I have a sneaking little suspicion that CNN is finding this nativist ranting by both Lou and Jack on Dubai and immigration an appealing way out of the partisan cage. It’s a ratings grabber if not good journalism.

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The Future Of The United States Part Two

by tristero

Read it all. Here’s an excerpt:

In the event that the woman’s illegal abortion went badly and the doctors have to perform a hysterectomy, then the uterus is sent to the Forensic Institute, where the government’s doctors analyze it and retain custody of her uterus as evidence against her.

That’s right, in El Salvador, a woman’s uterus can be seized as evidence of a crime. Not figuratively. Literally. And if the fetus is deemed viable? The woman stands to get 30 to 50 years.

Welcome to the future of America.

But I Said I Was Sorry

by digby

Francis Fukuyama writes a WATB essay in today’s LA Times about how mean everybody is being to him now that he’s changed his mind about Iraq. He names Charles Krauthamer as being a mean rightie for saying he’s “an opportunistic traitor to the neoconservative cause — and a coward to boot,” but fails to name any of the mean lefties. He just claims we say stuff like he has “blood on his hands” for having initially favored toppling Saddam Hussein and that his “apology” won’t be accepted. Now that’s mean.

He goes on to decry the awful polarization of our politics and wrings his tiny hankie about how counterproductive it all is. (I don’t recall Francis taking a stand against partisan blowjob impeachments but perhaps he was too busy documenting the end of history to notice.)

But what I really like is this paragraph in which Fukuyama illustrates how both parties are equally to blame:

This kind of polarization affects a range of other complex issues as well: You can’t be a good Republican if you think there may be something to global warming, or a good Democrat if you support school choice or private Social Security accounts. Political debate has become a spectator sport in which people root for their team and cheer when it scores points, without asking whether they chose the right side. Instead of trying to defend sharply polarized positions taken more than three years ago, it would be far better if people could actually take aboard new information and think about how their earlier commitments, honestly undertaken, actually jibe with reality — even if this does on occasion require changing your mind.

Did you notice what I noticed? The example he cites has the Republican being called a “bad” Republican if he refuses to deny reality. The Democrat is called “bad” for disagreeing with the long standing policy positions of the Party. Can we all see the difference between those two things? I knew that you could.

Get ready to hear a lot of this whining now that the Republicans may be at the end of their looting spree. They made their money, got their judges, their tax cuts and their wars. Now it’s time to put the past behind us and make nice nice. We’re supposed to end to all this nastiness and forgive and forget. For the good of the country, of course.

I have written this before, and I’m sure everyone is tired of reading it, but the Republicans must be held accountable for their actions or they will come back like the undead and do this again. We failed as a country to properly discipline this corrupt rogue faction when they tried this executive power grab in the 70’s and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and others came back to try it again. We need to drive a figurative stake through the heart of this pernicious philosophy.

Fukuyama plaintively admits:

…I believe that the neoconservative movement, with which I was associated, has become indelibly associated with a failed policy, and that unilateralism and coercive regime change cannot be the basis for an effective American foreign policy. I changed my mind as part of a necessary adjustment to reality.

That’s nice. But I don’t think we should take a chance that this nonsense will raise its ugly head in another 30 years. These people have proven they can’t be trusted to tell the truth or follow the laws. We need to make sure they get the message this time.

Oh, and by the way. If you don’t think this resurgence of victimized whining has a purpose, think again. I heard Karl Rove speaking to the Republican Lawyers Association on Friday (via C-Span) and he was going on and on and on about how the Democrats are cheating in elections. He cited “case” after “case” in which Democrats are disenfranchising Republicans all over the country. It’s shocking: the voter fraud, the throwing out of Republicans absentee ballots, the partisan vote count manipulation. He’s very worried about the integrity of our elections and thinks Republicans will be at a permanent disadvantage is something isn’t done. I kid you not. Get ready for the cries of disenfranchised Christians. It’s coming.

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Hiatt Held Hostage?

by digby

Jane gives Fred Hiatt a righteous fisking for his surreal editorial in the Washington Post today and I am appalled at her insensitivity.

Has it occurred to any of these critics that Hiatt may have been taken hostage by Bushian insurgents? The discordant almost drunken tone can only lead one to the conclusion that this editorial was coerced. It wanders so far from the facts that you have to figure that some sort of dark forces were at work in producing such an bizarre and disconcerting cataloging of lies and misapprehensions. Indeed, you would almost think that Hiatt went out of his way to signal that he was writing this editorial under duress — kind of like that POW who blinked morse code in that North Vietnamese propaganda film. He had to know that discerning readers would guess that he couldn’t be serious considering that the very day it was published his own paper was reporting the facts entirely differently. He’s actually quite fiendishly clever.

Still, although Hiatt’s abduction and strongarmed editorial may be patently obvious to you and I, like many members of the leftist fever swamp, Josh Marshall also unfairly takes the Post editorial board at face value without even granting that they might have been forced by their Republican captors to write what they wrote:

For whatever reason, the Post has chosen to throw in its lot with the flurry of mendacious rhetoric and the white-washed investigations, all of which amount to a grand pen and paper and word game truss barely holding together the body of official lies that is still barely governing the capital.

They’ve made their deal with power. They should justify it on those grounds rather than choosing to mislead their readers.

Sure. Jump to that conclusion with nothing to go on except the facts. Can’t he see that this ludicrous editorial can only be the result of a villianous threat of violence?

I understand that some readers are complaining to the Post directly. One hates to so to see the unwashed public take their betters to task like that. I certainly hope that they start deleting comments right away. These people have no sense of decorum. Let’s hope Howie Kurtz and Deborah Howell can teach these barbarians a little something about showing a little sensitivity to those brave souls who go out to Pennsylvania Avenue to get the good news —- and never come back.

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Libby’s Can Of Worms

by digby

So William Kristol has reluctantly come to the conclusion that Fitzgerald is on a partisan witch hunt because if Libby told the Grand Jury that Cheney instructed him to selectively leak the NIE to Judy Miller that means the rest of his testimony must have been true. Video from Crooks and Liars, transcript via Think Progress:

KRISTOL: In fact, we don’t know she was a covert operative, and Patrick Fitzgerald won’t even claim that. Patrick Fitzgerald isn’t investigating the actual source of the leak of Mrs. Wilson’s name, which was the Bob Novak column. We still don’t know who told Robert Novak, apparently Scooter Libby didn’t. You know, the leak story is absurd, but I now think the whole prosecution is absurd. And I have hesitated to say this, because I have friends who respect Fitzgerald, but I now think it’s a politically motivated attempt to wound the Bush administration. Why did Fitzgerald release — I mean, the theory of Fitzgerald’s perjury case against Libby, which is the only crime that’s alleged here, perjury and related crimes…obstruction of justice through perjury, really, for misleading the FBI or the grand jury. The theory of that case is Libby didn’t tell the truth, he didn’t say that Cheney had told him to do this, he blamed it on reporters, because he wanted to protect the Vice President or the President. Now it turns out that Libby, in testifying to the grand jury, carefully explained that he was authorized to go ahead and discuss the National Intelligence Estimate by the Vice President and the President.

Even Brit Hume recognizes that this misses the point:

HUME: But not Valerie Plame, necessarily.

Exactly. Libby was not charged with perjury for things he didn’t lie about. I would think that would be perfectly obvious. Kristol realizes that at this point, so he starts to spin like a dervish:

KRISTOL: But not Valerie Plame, which was tangential, and which came up toward the end, apparently, of the conversation with Judy Miller. It was never central in those two or three weeks. It seems to me that Fitzgerald’s case is crumbling. He’s refusing to close his investigation of Karl Rove and other people. If you read his 39-page rebuttal to Libby, he focuses now on Cheney. He is now out to discredit the Bush administration. He has bought the argument that there is something improper about the Bush administration responding to Joe Wilson’s charges, and that’s the real meaning of what’s happened these last few days, which is very dangerous for the Bush administration. They now have a special prosecutor out not to convict Scooter Libby, but out to discredit the administration.

That’s nonsense, but it signals that we are finally going to get the pushback we’ve been expecting. This thing is escalating, Bush himself has been implicated, and this is their final fallback position.

For those of you who (like me) get a headache when you read things like Kristol’s spin, let me explain in simple terms what it appears Fitz was actually doing. There’s no proof he’s focusing on Cheney, but Cheney has become important in this discovery process because of Libby’s blanket requests for documents:

• Libby hopes to show that he and others in the White House thought the Plame matter was no big deal and therefore it is reasonable to assume that he just forgot he had earlier told a number of people who she was when he testified to the grand jury that he first learned of Plame’s identity from Tim Russert.
• Libby has asked to review numerous documents that Fitzgerald does not believe are germane to the case, but which Libby claims will bolster this defense. One of the claims is that he needs to review certain documents that will show the “context” of the leaks.
• Fitzgerald is obligated to show why these documents need not be produced and he makes a number of legal arguments to that effect.
• As to the “context” Fitz makes the argument that the “context” actually proves that Libby would not have forgotten these particular details of a high level operation which Libby admitted in his testimony was quite unusual. The odd and unprecedented selective declassification of the NIE, the instructions that Scooter speak on “deep backround” to Judith Miller, the fact that he was tasked with this job rather than Cathie Martin, Cheney’s press secretary, all speak to the fact that this was a special job. The overt acts of cover-up show that he knew exactly what he was doing.

Kristol should probably look a little closer to his own circle if he thinks someone is trying to harm the administration with this investigation. After all, none of this would have come out if Libby hadn’t first lied, and now requested that Fitzgerald allow him to rummage willy nilly through government files under the specious claim that it would help him prove that he forgot the unforgettable.

He and his lawyers know very well that his massive document “context” request would likely result in Fitzgerald presenting the court with his evidence that Bush had declassified the document. You can’t blame him. He’s making Fitzgerald lay out some of his case for his own purposes. But let’s not blame the prosecutor for that. Libby’s doing what’s necessary to save his own skin. And Fitzgerald is using what he has to squeeze others who are in his sights. They both are playing an inside and an outside game.

But make no mistake. This is Libby’s doing all the way (and I suspect that certain high level white house officials are rueing the day they ever met him.) He and Rove lied, crudely and stupidly, undoubtedly under the impression that they could not be caught because the reporters would never testify against him. Rove was a little slipperier and it remains to be seen if he’s been caught. But Libby lost that gamble and now he may take the administration down with him. Fitzgerald is only the instrument of Bush’s problems; Libby is the cause.

I think perhaps Kristol is getting Fitz confused with partisan hack Ken Starr, the man who leaked volumes of disparaging information about Bill Clinton to the press during the Lewinsky investigation. He and his prosecutors actually cooperated secretly with a political lynch mob to try to get the president to resign in disgrace. You can understand why Kristol would get the wrong idea. He, like most conservatives, erroneously believes that all prosecutors are obligated by God to be partisan Republicans. He feels disappointed and betrayed that Fitzgerald is playing it straight so he’s lashing out. Poor baby.

Update: It’s interesting that Fitz says he won’t be calling Rove as a witness and refuses to allow Libby to see the documentation on him. After all, when you’re talking about context of the “concerted effort” to smear Wilson you would certainly be interested in seeing the Grand Jury testimony in which Rove reportedly says this (from Murray Waas way back in March of 2004):

President Bush’s chief political adviser, Karl Rove, told the FBI in an interview last October that he circulated and discussed damaging information regarding CIA operative Valerie Plame with others in the White House, outside political consultants, and journalists, according to a government official and an attorney familiar with the ongoing special counsel’s investigation of the matter.

But Rove also adamantly insisted to the FBI that he was not the administration official who leaked the information that Plame was a covert CIA operative to conservative columnist Robert Novak last July. Rather, Rove insisted, he had only circulated information about Plame after it had appeared in Novak’s column. He also told the FBI, the same sources said, that circulating the information was a legitimate means to counter what he claimed was politically motivated criticism of the Bush administration by Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Rove and other White House officials described to the FBI what sources characterized as an aggressive campaign to discredit Wilson through the leaking and disseminating of derogatory information regarding him and his wife to the press, utilizing proxies such as conservative interest groups and the Republican National Committee to achieve those ends, and distributing talking points to allies of the administration on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. Rove is said to have named at least six other administration officials who were involved in the effort to discredit Wilson.

Rove seems to have given detailed testimony about the “concerted effort. Why ever do you suppose Fitzgerald isn’t planning to call him as a witness?

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The Reducing Of “Irreducible Complexity”

by tristero

One of the fundamental tenets of “Intelligent Design” creationism dies an ignominious death.

By reconstructing ancient genes from long-extinct animals, scientists have for the first time demonstrated the step-by-step progression of how evolution created a new piece of molecular machinery by reusing and modifying existing parts.

The researchers say the findings, published today in the journal Science, offer a counterargument to doubters of evolution who question how a progression of small changes could produce the intricate mechanisms found in living cells.

“The evolution of complexity is a longstanding issue in evolutionary biology,” said Joseph W. Thornton, professor of biology at the University of Oregon and lead author of the paper. “We wanted to understand how this system evolved at the molecular level. There’s no scientific controversy over whether this system evolved. The question for scientists is how it evolved, and that’s what our study showed.”

Charles Darwin wrote in The Origin of Species, “If it would be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”

Discoveries like that announced this week of a fish with limblike fins have filled in the transitions between species. New molecular biology techniques let scientists begin to reconstruct how the processes inside a cell evolved over millions of years.

Details then follow. The article is very good until the final few paragraphs which provide Michael Behe, the scientist who propounded the bogus theory of “irreducible complexity” to lie through his teeth about the importance of the study. What the article fails to mention is that Behe’s definition of science is so broad he considers astrology to be a scientific theory. Worse, the Times piece doesn’t mention that at Dover, when shown dozens of articles relevant to the issues raised by “irreducible complexity,” and which debunk Behe’s theory, Behe deployed the famous Austin Powers “That’s Not My Swedish Penis Enlarger!” tactic. He merely asserted that all those studies weren’t enough evidence against “irreducible complexity” without offering anything support his position (at this link, there is a link to a pdf of the full transcript of Behe’s testimony).

As Krugman rightly says, “Shape of Earth: Views Differ” is not responsible journalism. Behe’s 15 minutes is up, Mr. Keller.

Fingerprints

by digby

Many more qualified bloggers than I have been poring over the Fitzgerald filing and examining its every nuance, so I’m not even going to go there. I will just make one observation that I haven’t read anyone else bring up.

The filing says:

“At some point after the publication of the July 6, 2003, OpEd by Wilson, Vice President Cheney, defendant’s immediate superior, expressed concerns to defendant regarding whether Mr. Wilson’s trip was legitimate or whether it was in effect a junket set up by Mr. Wilson’s wife. And in considering ‘context,’ there was press reporting that the vice president had dispatched Mr. Wilson on the trip (which in fact was not accurate). Disclosing the belief that Mr. Wilson’s wife sent him on the Niger trip was one way for defendant to contradict the assertion that the vice president had done so, while at the same time undercutting Mr. Wilson’s credibility if Mr. Wilson was perceived to have received the assignment on account of nepotism.”

Big Time could certainly have come up with this nasty little smear about the trip being a nepotistic “junket” (or boondoggle as earlier reports called it.) He’s a nasty little fellow. But this is a page right out of Karl Rove’s smear portfolio: he always attempts to emasculate the opponent.

Perhaps Karl only got the “plan” after the fact and dutifully set about doing Cheney’s dirty work like a good boy. But I doubt it. It’s got the mark of Rove all over it. I think Cheney got it from him.

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Ask McClellan: Will Bush Start A Nuclear War?

by tristero

This should surprise no one. What’s the point of building nukes today if you’re not going to use them? Or building more unless you plan on replacing ones that will be used? And yet, even though I’ve been expecting to hear about this from a reputable source since 2002, actually reading about it is enough to make me vomit from horror.

George Bush seems to be planning to start a nuclear war. My God.

McClellan must be asked on Monday to state whether plans have been drawn up for George Bush to start a nuclear war. With Iran, certainly, but also against any other country. Because if Hersh is right – and so far, he has been very right – then…oh my God.

These maniacs cannot be permitted to get away with this, or even seriously contemplate getting away with it. No, that’s not enough. If this country so much as opens the question to serious consideration “whether first-strike nukes are justified in the present world,” then we are already halfway down the path to a nuclear holocaust. All it will take to tip it over is one more major terrorist attack, and Bush will guarantee the nukes will fall. And if you don’t think there will be another major terrorist attack in America, either a real one or one faked by this administration, you have not been paying attention to what has been going on. Bush’s nuclear policy is quite clear: from the start he’s wanted to be the first president since Truman to drop a nuclear bomb.

On Monday, someone must ask McClellan: Is George Bush planning to start a nuclear war?

[UPDATE: A few commentators have called into question the possibility mentioned above that the administration might fake a terrorist attack as a pretext to use nuclear weapons in Iran, saying I went to far. I hope you are right, but I had Operation Northwoods in mind. Let us not forget that the people in charge of the country right now are precisely the kind of people who would propose and approve of Northwoods.]

Faux Codpiece

by digby

The “liberal” makeover of Bush continues apace. Calling All Wingnuts catches Rush saying:

“I have never been under any illusion that George Bush is Ronald Reagan. Reagan, with every speech that he gave … was also leading the conservative movement. He was defining it and people rallied to that. When you listen to Bush … he’s who he is, he does not look at himself as leading a movement, he has a job as president and he’s not governed by any conservative movement.”

Now, Ronald Reagan raised taxes, he negotiated with terrorists — he even negotiated with Democrats! Government grew under his watch and he even defied the hardline conservatives by seeking out Gorbachev. (Limbaugh himself was so outraged he derisively called the ensuing media love fest a “gorbasm.”)

One could make any number of arguments saying Reagan was not leading a true conservative movement any more than Bush is. But there is one big difference between the two. Reagan was popular and Bush isn’t. When Bush’s approval rating was in the 60’s, you couldn’t find a conservative who didn’t revere him as William F. Buckley’s wet dream. He was the uber-conservative. Now that he’s down in the 30% approval area, not so much.

According to Rush Limbaugh, George W. Bush has never been a leader of the conservative movement. I guess that means he isn’t a leader of the movement that believes:

* We are confident in our principles and energetic about openly advancing them. We believe in individual liberty, limited government, capitalism, the rule of law, faith, a color-blind society and national security.

* We support school choice, enterprise zones, tax cuts, welfare reform, faith-based initiatives, political speech, homeowner rights and the war on terrorism.

* And at our core we embrace and celebrate the most magnificent governing document ever ratified by any nation — the U.S. Constitution.

* Along with the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes our God-given natural right to be free, it is the foundation on which our government is built and has enabled us to flourish as a people.

* We conservatives are never stronger than when we are advancing our principles.

From American Conservatism: A Crackdown, Not a ‘Crackup’ Wall Street Journal op-ed October 17, 2005

Yes indeed, George W. Bush must be a liberal. Otherwise he would be “defining conservatism and people would rally to it” like St Ronnie did — or Rush himself in that piece. Republican losers are always eventually revealed as liberal sheep in conservative clothing. How could it be otherwise? Conservatism cannot lose. It is perfect.

Of course, if Bush decides to nuke Iran, they might reconsider. For a while. There’s nothing like a good bloodbath to bring true believers back into the fold.

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“Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.”

I suppose it was inevitable. The Bush Doctrine of illegal preventive war has never ruled out the use of an unprovoked nuclear attack. So why wouldn’t they use it?

US considers use of nuclear weapons against Iran

The administration of President George W. Bush is planning a massive bombing campaign against Iran, including use of bunker-buster nuclear bombs to destroy a key Iranian suspected nuclear weapons facility, The New Yorker magazine has reported in its April 17 issue.

The article by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said that Bush and others in the White House have come to view Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a potential Adolf Hitler.

“That’s the name they’re using,” the report quoted a former senior intelligence official as saying.

A senior unnamed Pentagon adviser is quoted in the article as saying that “this White House believes that the only way to solve the problem is to change the power structure in Iran, and that means war.”

The former intelligence officials depicts planning as “enormous,” “hectic” and “operational,” Hersh writes.

One former defense official said the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government,” The New Yorker pointed out.

In recent weeks, the president has quietly initiated a series of talks on plans for Iran with a few key senators and members of the House of Representatives, including at least one Democrat, the report said.

One of the options under consideration involves the possible use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, to insure the destruction of Iran’s main centrifuge plant at Natanz, Hersh writes.

But the former senior intelligence official said the attention given to the nuclear option has created serious misgivings inside the military, and some officers have talked about resigning after an attempt to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans in Iran failed, according to the report.

“There are very strong sentiments within the military against brandishing nuclear weapons against other countries,” the magazine quotes the Pentagon adviser as saying.

The adviser warned that bombing Iran could provoke “a chain reaction” of attacks on American facilities and citizens throughout the world and might also reignite Hezbollah.

“If we go, the southern half of Iraq will light up like a candle,” the adviser is quoted as telling The New Yorker.

It’s hard to believe they think that they have the political latitude to do this. But then it was hard to believe they thought they had the political latitude to govern as if they had won landslide elections or that they could survive the 2004 election if no WMD were found in Iraq. But they did. In fact, they’ve had their biggest successes by pushing the envelope beyond the point anyone would have imagined. I do not put it past them to believe that they can do this and somehow revive their flagging popularity.

Update: I wonder which top Democrat whose name sounds like Schlieberman the administration has been talking to?

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