Via Kevin Drum, conservative James Joyner has woken up to Rudy:

Otherwise, I must concur in Matt Yglesias‘ judgment: “this man is bats[**]t insane.” . . . [T]he more I learn about Giuliani, the less I like him. . . . The more I hear and read, . . ., the more I think Giuliani is either a charlatan or a simpleton. Either he’s lying to us and we therefore have no idea what his foreign policy will be or, worse, this is what he really thinks. Either way, it’s not good.

Rudy is the most dangerous person running for President by far. An insane, lying charlatan, in the words of Joyner. Good to see people are waking up to this fact.

Derrick Z. Jackson's Boston Globe column today tracks Barack Obama's record on drug sentencing, including his stance on the disparate and racially discriminatory federal crack-powder cocaine sentencing ratios and the death penalty.

Shorter version: He used to be against the harsh crack cocaine penalties but now won't commit to doing anything to fix them. It may not be worth the "political capital" it would take.

On the death penalty, while he's voted against it in some cases, he's also voted to strengthen it in others.

Details below:

Me:

Politics is not a battle for the middle. It is a battle for defining the terms of the political debate. It is a battle to be able to say what is the middle.

Laura Ingraham, via Crooks and Liars:

[N]ot to defend the Daily Kos, when you’re constantly targeting the middle or the moderates as Harold [Ford] called them…it’s pretty tough because the middle is always shifting…it’s shifting to where the left or right is more persuasive. It’s not like the moderates are an identifiable group—-identifiable positions on a number of key issues. They kinda move to either where conservatives or liberals guide them either successfully or not so…I think targeting the middle is a very risky political strategy . . .

The Republican have always known this. The DLC still has not learned this. Harold Ford and the DLC are bad at politics. But so is the Beltway Establishment, the home of Broderism.

It's so typical. When candidates are pandering for votes and struggling to keep their candidacies alive, they resort to fear mongering and proclaiming themselves to be the candidate that will be the toughest on crime. In today's world, that means being the toughest on undocumented residents and sex offenders.

Rudy Giuliani has unveiled his new plan for war on the undocumented.

Giuliani said he would require a uniform identification card for foreign workers and students and create a central database to track the legal status of visitors to the country....Giuliani wants a tamperproof ID card that includes fingerprinting for everyone entering the country and a central database to track when they leave.

For an immigrant to get a chance to stay here, he wants a confession and then the undocumented resident will "go to the back of the line." That sounds racistly reminiscent to me of "go to the back of the bus."

What's next, a Giuliani-Tancredo ticket?

Mitt Romney is going with the tried and true: declare war on sex offenders. Never mind that penalties for sex offenders are already astronomically high, Romney will raise them even higher:

[T]he Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor has proposed increased punishment for those who prey on children online -- stringent mandatory prison sentences, followed by lifetime tracking by Global Positioning System for first-time offenders who "use the Internet to sexually assault children." He calls it "One Strike, You're Ours."

Ah, the evil internets. What's next, a Mitt Romney - John Walsh ticket?

Civil libertarians provide this response to Romney's plan:

More...

The New York Times reports on the depressing statistics of Alzheimer's disease:

4.5 million people in the United States have Alzheimer’s, 1 in 10 over 65 and nearly half of those over 85. Taking care of them costs $100 billion a year, and the number of patients is expected to reach 11 million to 16 million by 2050. Experts say the disease will swamp the health system.

Researchers and drug companies aren't even close to a cure. So what's a person to do when faced with a parent or loved one with dementia or Alzheimer's?

Take a cue from those of the '60's generation: Go with the flow.

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Bump and Update: Deliberations begin Wednesday in the trial of Jose Padilla and his co-defendants.

Here are the jury instructions (pdf), made available on PACER Tuesday.

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Defense Closing Arguments in Jose Padilla Trial

Lawyers for accused terrorism supporters Jose Padilla and co-defendant Kifah Wael Jayyousi gave their closing arguments today.

Shorter version from Jose Padilla's lawyer: He was a student, not a terrorist. As to the mujahedeen form with Padilla's fingerprints:

The critical piece of prosecution evidence is a "mujahedeen data form" Padilla allegedly filled out in July 2000 to attend an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan. The form bears seven of his fingerprints, but Caruso said they are found only on the first page and the back of the final page — consistent with Padilla simply handling the form, rather than writing on it.

Of the 3,000 taped telephone calls, Padilla's voice was only on 7 of those introduced at trial.

As to the use of code words, Padilla didn't use any on the taped calls. The Government wants the jury to believe that when the other two defendants used words like "tourism" and "football" they meant "jihad" and that the words "eggplant" and "zucchini" were references to military weapons and supplies.

Bill Swor, Jaylousi's lawyer, told the jury the government was fear-mongering.

More....

Dennis Hastert, formerly Speaker of the House, now an ordinary U.S. Representative, must not be pleased with his humble new position. The Illinois Congressman is expected to announce on Friday that he won't run for reelection.

Who else will take a dive from the sinking ship?

[Rep. Ray] LaHood, who recently announced his own plan to retire, said he believed there would be additional retirement announcements from within the House GOP. “I retired because it was the right time to leave. Others will also be leaving, for their own reasons,” he said.

In April, 2007, Rep. Henry Waxman, Chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, wrote this letter (pdf) to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales about the missing RNC e-mails.

[RNC Counsel Rob] Kelner's briefing raised particular concerns about Karl Rove, who according to press reports used his RNC account for 95% of his communications. According to Mr. Kelner, although the hold started in August 2004, the RNC does not have any e-mails prior to 2005 for Mr. Rove. Mr. Kelner did not give any explanation for the e-mails missing from Mr. Rove's account, but he did acknowledge that one possible explanation is that Mr. Rove personally deleted his e-mails from the RNC server.

Mr. Kelner also explained that starting in 2005, the RNC began to treat Mr. Rove's emails in a special fashion. At some point in 2005, the RNC commenced an automatic archive policy for Mr. Rove, but not for any other White House officials. According to Mr. Kelner, this archive policy removed Mr. Rove's ability to personally delete his e-mails from the RNC server.

Mr. Kelner did not provide many details about why this special policy was adopted for Mr. Rove. But he did indicate that one factor was the presence of investigative or discovery requests or other legal concerns. It was unclear from Mr. Kelner's briefing whether the special archiving policy for Mr. Rove was consistently in effect after 2005.

The Committee's investigation page is here (pdf). Susan Ralston's 2007 deposition is here.

Jason at Truthout writes today about the RNC's claim for executive privilege. Also see Scribe's diary from April about possible implications for Rove.

More...

Link:

Four suicide bombers hit a Kurdish Yazidi community in northwest Iraq on Tuesday, killing at least 175 people and wounding 200 others, the Iraqi military said.

The bombs tore through communities near Qahataniya, 75 miles west of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, according to Iraq Army Capt. Mohammed Ahmed and Abdul-Rahman al-Shimiri, the top government official in the area.

The attack was the deadliest in Iraq since 215 people were killed Nov. 23 when mortar rounds and five car bombs devastated a Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City. Dhakil Qassim, mayor of Sinjar, a town near where the attacks occurred, said al-Qaida in Iraq was behind the attack, citing what he said were Kurdish government intelligence reports.

Bob Ney aide Will Heaton is set for sentencing in federal court on Thursday. The Boston Globe today reports he wore a wire to nab Ney and is proud to have done so.

Will Heaton let FBI agents record his telephone calls and taped a 2 1/2-hour meeting with Ney. He leaked documents and worked late into the night and on weekends to avoid arousing suspicion that he was working with the government.

"The moment I walked into my first meeting with the Justice Department, a huge weight was lifted off my chest," Heaton wrote in a letter to US District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle. "For the first time in years I felt at peace with myself and I knew I was finally making the right choice."

As to Heaton's misconduct:

Heaton pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy. He admitted accepting a golf trip to Scotland, expensive meals, and tickets to sporting events between 2002 and 2004 as payoffs for helping clients of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Heaton faces up to five years in prison. His guidelines are 18 to 24 months but he's asking for probation due to how hard he worked for the FBI.

I'd like to say Bill Richardson is refreshing for his willingness to admit when he screws up. First, at the Yearly Kos debate, he admitted he "screwed up" in saying we need more Supreme Court Justices like Byron White.

Today, he says he "screwed up" in saying at the GLBT debate that gays choose their sexual orientation.

I made a mistake. I screwed up," he said, acknowledging that the gay blogosphere is upset with him. "[The blogs] went nuts saying, you know, that I literally was a moron and that I didn't understand their struggle," he said.

But, his screw-ups are on big issues. What would happen if he were President and had the opportunity to act before someone pointed out his screw-ups to him?

Richardson says he's not running for VP but won't say he won't accept the nomination.

I also wonder whether Richardson is ready for prime-time. From today's article:

Richardson, who supports civil unions, was asked if he would veto a gay marriage bill because he believed in his heart that same-sex marriage is wrong. He replied, "I don't want to get into that. I thought you guys were going to ask me about other stuff. Don't you care about other stuff?"

He needs some media training, and fast.

In September, General David Petraeus will report to Congress that we are making real progress in Iraq and that Surge is producing evidence of success but that, of course, the jury is still out and that "it is up to the Iraqis." And Petraeus will cite evidence like this, via John Cole. But John's cite to Michael Ware makes those politicians, Republican and Democrat who buy this line, vulnerable at the end of that F.U., in March 2008:

What the U.S. troops are doing is giving a set of numbers, a series of data, a number of lowered attack figures that may give the military the political cover it needs in Washington. But at the end of the day, by cutting these deals the seeds are being sown for a much broader, more entrenched civil war that America will leave behind.

Will America be leaving it behind? Not before November 2008 if Bush and Petraeus have their way. There is something politicans always seem to forget - that elections are on Election Day. Worrying about polls or how something looks more than a year before the election is just plain stupid politics. Why do they never consider how something is going to look on Election Day. Mark my words, those pols. GOP or Dem, who support continung the Iraq Debacle on Petraeus' say so in September 2007, will pay a steep price in November 2008.