Bump and Update: Tancredo's out of the race and gives his support to Mitt Romney.

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Tom Tancredo Might Withdraw from Presidential Race

Update: Not so fast. His wife says he's first going to meet with other Republican candidates and will withdraw only if he can support one of them on immigration.

Jackie Tancredo said the situation has “changed hourly,” and on Wednesday night there still was a “slim” chance that her husband would continue his uphill battle, which now finds him near the bottom of the polls in Iowa and nationally.

Tancredo confirms an announcement is coming and says he wouldn't hold a presser without something important to say. Will it be just a withdrawal or a withdrawal and declaration of support for another candidate? Or, is it a stunt where he says he's staying in because all the other Republican candidates are too soft on immigration? Tomorrow, by the way, Tancredo turns 62.

More....

Kevin Drum and his Beltway correspondent have very bad memories:

A member in (extremely good) standing of the VSP community emails to suggest a delicate topic for the liberal blogosphere to take a second look at:

One thing you might write about — if only because nobody else has, I think — is how that whole dust-up over the O'Hanlon/Pollack op-ed looks in retrospect. I mean, clearly they were on to something — the relative quieting down of stuff that has taken place in Iraq over the last several months, etc. -- it's not like the caricature of them put forth in the blogosphere at the time . . . holds up, does it?

Hmmm. Yes.

Hmm, no. O'Hanlon and Pollock were ripped for LYING that they were critics of the Iraq War and Surge. I wrote this:

[G]ive [Congressman Brian] Baird his due, he is not lying when he says he was a war and Surge critic. Michael O'Hanlon IS lying when he says he was an Iraq war and Surge critic. One argument merits respect. It is not the one made by the dishonest Michael O'Hanlon.

Kevin Drum and his Beltway friend have very poor memories. On the merits of course, they are also wrong. But I will leave that for another post.

When I last checked in on Kenneth Richey, the British citizen was 40 years old and had been imprisoned in Ohio since he was 22. He had just had his death sentence overturned but not been released, even though not only did he not commit the crime, it is likely there was no crime and the fire he was accused of setting was accidentally started.

Amnesty International visited Richey on death row and said he was treated like a rabid animal. Amnesty described Richey's case as “one of the most compelling cases of apparent innocence that human rights campaigners have ever seen.”

The Government appealed to the Supreme Court which remanded the case for reconsideration of procedural issues. In August, 2007, his conviction was set aside again. The 6th Circuit opinion is here (pdf).

Yesterday, the TimesOnLine reported Richey is about to be released. He'll be home for Christmas. In a "no contest" plea bargain, Richey will get time served.

“The State wanted him to plead guilty and he would not do that. They have agreed to drop murder, to drop the arson and took the most basic minor face-saving deal of no contest. There was nothing left for them to fight about.”

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Last month I chronicled the adventures of FBI informant and Bernie Kerik pal Larry Ray. I ended the last post with,

A lingering question is, what did Rudy know about Ray and Bernie (not just Interstate and Bernie) and when did he know it?

The Washington Post addressed that question yesterday. Larry Ray, who is now in jail on a probation violation, contacted WaPo reporters and shared Berie's e-mails (pdfs), photos of himself and Gorbachev in Rudy's office when Rudy was Mayor, as well as other documents previously shared with the feds when he cooperated against Bernie.

More...

Katie Couric asked the major presidential candidates about whether marital infidelity should impact voters and when was the last time they lost their tempers and why.

The videos are here. I thought the temper one was very interesting....take a look. Who do you think was fudging and who told the truth? Which one was the most likeable? Or, put another way, which one would you feel most comfortable chatting with, say over dinner? And who would have you looking at your watch, counting down the minutes till you could leave?

I thought Obama, Giuliani, Biden and Hillary were the least genuine. I thought Edwards and Huckabee were the most affable and truthful. Romney started off in denial and then changed horses and ended up pretty likeable. Thompson was honest but very boring. McCain was genuine in that "your father's oldsmobile" kind of way. Richardson was a toss-up to me, I wanted to believe him, but his example was a stretch of the imagination.

Jane at Firedoglake asks whether Huckabee is fibbing about not having a gastric bypass.

I wondered the same thing months ago, but after reviewing all of his statements on his weight loss, concluded he didn't because he's been so vocal in his denials and it would be too easily uncovered if he were lying.

But, I do suspect he may have had a lapband wrapped around his stomach.

Via Meteor Blades, the Dems proved themselves liars when they said they would not fund the war without timelines:

Congress approved $70 billion Wednesday for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, a bitter finish for majority Democrats who tried to force a change in President Bush's war policy.

The House's 272-142 vote also sent the president a $555 billion catchall spending bill that combines the war money with money for 14 Cabinet departments.

Bush and his Senate GOP allies forced the Iraq money upon anti-war Democrats as the price for permitting the year-end budget deal to pass and be signed. But other Democrats were eager to avoid being seen as not supporting troops who are in harm's way — and avoid weeks of bashing by Bush for failing to provide that money.

"This is a blank check," complained Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass. "The new money in this bill represents one cave-in too many. It is an endorsement of George Bush's policy of endless war.

Steny and Rahmbo have their wish - Iraq is officially no longer a campaign issue for 2008.

Personally, I will not be working to elect Dems in Congress this cycle. It is obvious that the only office that matters now for ending the war is the Presidency.

Rubber Stamp Democrats. Pelosi and Reid are now on my ignore list. You will not be hearing about them from me anymore.

Last week, Matt Yglesias wrote what I found to be a silly post in which he argued:

I have to say that I find the idea that Hillary Clinton has been "vetted" and thus we can expect "no surprises" in terms of damaging campaign information to be pretty unconvincing. . . [T]his almost seems like a calculated effort to bait me in bringing up things I really don't want to bring up. . . . There's tawdry BS to be dragged up on everyone -- she's no exception and shouldn't be pretending that she is.

Ridiculous to believe that there has not been concerted efforts to bring up everything about the Clintons in the past two decades. And the Obama campaign makes a similarly silly argument (though I can see why they do politically), as Josh Marshall notes:

I really hope the Obama camp is kidding when they say Barack is the most scrutinized candidate in the race. If they're not, they're living in a fantasy world that makes me question whether they're up to the rigors of a national campaign.

Josh is right of course but I think it underplays a very important advantage Barack Obama has - he is a Media darling. Before Obama supporters complain, they should realize this is a VERY good thing. Obama is almost certain to get better coverage than the other two leading Dem candidates, Clinton and Edwards, in a general election campaign. This is no small thing. Furthermore, if when the GOP Swift boaters go on the attack, Obama's status with the Media will put him in a much better position to fend off those attacks than any Dem candidate I can remember. This, to me, is a very strong argument for supporting Obama for the nomination.

Paul Krugman points to a September Boston Globe article on Barack Obama's work on healthcare in the Illinois legislature. Krugman writes:

This story gives a lot of context to the debate over health reform now. Obama clearly sees himself playing the same role as president that he did as a state legislator — as a broker among groups, including the insurance industry, as someone who can find a compromise solution that’s acceptable to a wide range of opinion.

My thoughts: being president isn’t at all like being a state legislator, Illinois Republicans aren’t like the national Republican party, 2009 won’t be 2003, and the insurance industry’s opposition to national health reform — which must, if it is to mean anything, strike deep at the industry’s fundamental business — will be much harsher than its opposition to a basically quite mild state-level reform effort.

. . . My worries about Obama are that he doesn’t seem to understand this — that he thinks that in 2009, as president, he can broker a national health care reform the same way that as a state legislator, in 2003, he brokered a deal that mollified the insurance industry. That’s a recipe for getting nowhere.

Good points from Krugman.

Matt Bai writes:

Some Democrats, though, and especially those who are apt to call themselves “progressives,” offer a more complicated and less charitable explanation. In their view, Clinton failed to seize his moment and create a more enduring, more progressive legacy . . . because his centrist, “third way” political strategy, his strategy of “triangulating” to find some middle point in every argument, sapped the party of its core principles. . . .

David Brooks wrote a glowing piece on Barack Obama. The piece was an obvious swipe at Paul Krugman's evaluation of Obama. Some, like Matt Yglesias saw Krugman as engaging in payback, demonstrating that they have not been reading Krugman at all on this issue). Here is part of what Brooks wrote:

[Obama] has a worldview that precedes political positions. Some Americans (Republican or Democrat) believe that the country’s future can only be shaped through a remorseless civil war between the children of light and the children of darkness. . . . But Obama does not ratchet up hostilities; he restrains them. He does not lash out at perceived enemies, but is aloof from them. . . . This is a worldview that detests anger as a motivating force, that distrusts easy dichotomies between the parties of good and evil, believing instead that the crucial dichotomy runs between the good and bad within each individual.

A post-politics "Third Way" has been Obama's message. His message is the most like the 1992 message of Bill Clinton. The question is is that the right one for this political climate? Are Democrats, are progressives, is the country, where they were in 1992? On Hardball yesterday, John Edwards said:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Harry Truman [and Hillary Clinton] said they were going to bring healthcare to the people, what was wrong with them? JOHN EDWARDS: First of all, they were living in a different environment . . . If you look at what is happening to healthcare today as opposed to when Senator Clinton was addressing it, the health care system has gotten much worse. . . . I think we are in a place where the American People are ripe for change. We just need a leader who will stand up.

So the question is do we want and need the Clinton Third Way political approach of the 90s?

It's a travel day for me which means another open thread for you. Here's what I read in the past hour or two. I'll be back to regular blogging tonight.

• U.S. executions at lowest number in 13 years
• WaPo-ABC News Poll: Clinton tied with Obama in Iowa, Edwards in third place. Another poll has Edwards ahead.
• Edwards in the homestretch, his star is rising in Iowa
• Military Commission Applies Geneva Conventions to Guantánamo Detainee -- ACLU Says It's Six Years too late
• Judge Orders Hearing in CIA Tape Destruction
• Senate Adds $70 Billion for Iraq War in Funding Bill
• DEA Trying New Tactic Against Calif. Pot Clubs

More from around the blogosphere:

Via The Termite, Speaker Pelosi said yesterday that:

. . . [S]he had underestimated the willingness of Republicans to stand behind President Bush’s Iraq policy despite the drubbing the GOP took in the polls in 2006. "The assumption I made was that the Republicans would soon see the light," she said. Instead, the minority stuck to the president’s war policy in the face of unrelenting pressure from congressional Democrats and powerful lobbying campaigns by anti-war groups. "That was a revelation to me, because I felt the American peoples' voices were so strong and still are in this regard that I hoped that with some compromise and reaching out there might be some change in direction," Pelosi said. "But they are sticking with the president on this."

No kidding. Who would have predicted that?. But do not feel bad Madame Speaker, you had good company waiting for the Godot Republicans. Frank Rich, liberal bloggers and the much vaunted Move On. None of us has much to be proud about in all this. The question is have we learned our lesson? Are Dems in Congress ready to not fund the Iraq Debacle? I hope so. Then again, perhaps I am as naive about the Democrats as Speaker Pelosi has been about the Republicans.