I just finished a blogger conference conference call with the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Hillary has picked up a big new endorsement: Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Joe says he has known Hillary for over a decade and has spent a lot of time discussing Iraq with her. He thinks she is the most likely to get us out of there.

During the last four years while he and Valerie went through the Republican meat-grinder process, Hillary reached out to them repeatedly to share the lessons she learned from her experience in the meat-grinder.

She has the leadership ability. She understands the political process. She has an enormous commitment to this country. She is the best equipped to fight for us.

The call then opened up for questions. Taylor Marsh, Steve Clemons, Dave Johnson, Tom Burka were among those who questioned him. Check out their blogs for their reactions.

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The Daily Kos FP on what John Yoo says and how this means President Bush can attack Iran without Congressional authorization:

[John Yoo wrote that] the AUMF is "an express affirmation of the President's constitutional authorities by Congress." Not an authorization to use force, then, but an affirmation. An affirmation of what? That the power to use military force exists independent of this (or any other) act of Congress.

John Yoo is, of course, full of it, as Yale Law Professor Bruce Ackerman explained:

BA: The president has to get another authorization for a war against Iran. It isn't up to Nancy Pelosi or the House to prevent him; he doesn't have the constitutional authority to just expand the war. He does not have the authority to unilaterally invade Iran.... Air strikes would be an invasion. It's an act of war of an unambiguous variety....On a major incursion into another large Middle Eastern country, I believe that, when push comes to shove, the president will once again request the explicit authorization of Congress. When he was contemplating the invasion of Iraq, he was in a much stronger position politically -- and he was still obliged to request authorization

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Is it time to stick the fork in yet? Looks like it's getting closer, according to ABC News.

On Monday, five McCain press aides -- including his three top communications officials -- quit en masse, just days after the campaign lost its chief strategist and campaign manager among dozens of aides being shed as part of aggressive cost-cutting measures.

The aides to resign -- communications director Brian Jones, deputy communications directors Danny Diaz and Matt David, and press aides Adam Temple and Amanda Hennenberg -- all agreed to stay on a few extra days out of loyalty to McCain, and helped him set up his weekend trip to New Hampshire.

Reasons given by the aides were loyalty to the campaign manager McCain replaced last week. But, there was also grumbling about why he bothered to have a national communications staff when he only appears to be running in three states -- New Hampshire, Iowa, and South Carolina.

The latest Newsweek poll reflects what I think is becoming a winning frame for Democrats on Iraq:

Americans remain cautious about the prospect of a hasty withdrawal from Iraq, afraid it would leave the country in chaos. Out of four possible options in the poll, 19 percent of the respondents chose immediate total withdrawal. Slightly fewer (13 percent) don't want any cutbacks at all. Nearly a quarter of all Americans (24 percent) would implement a gradual withdrawal plan that would start in the fall and extend until the spring, when the last troops would come home. Forty percent favor keeping a substantial number of troops on the ground there, but only on the condition that they fall back to their bases and focus solely on training Iraqis and targeting Al Qaeda. . . .

40% favor keeping troops in Iraq as long as they are not engaged in combat in the Iraqi civil war. This is the packaging contained in almost all of the Democratic proposals, including Reid-Feingold (the difference in Reid-Feingold to other plans is that is relies on the Spending Power, the one truly effective way for Congress to stop Bush.) Add to this the 37% who favor immediate withdrawal or withdrawal by the Spring of 2008 and it seems clear to me that the baseline position that 77% of the country has taken on Iraq is the Democratic position. More.

A major trial lawyers group held its annual meeting this week. Most of the major Democratic presidential contenders were in attendance, including Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Joe Biden and Bill Richardson. They had sharp criticism for Alberto Gonzales and recent decisions the Supreme Court. Some quotes:

Hillary called Bush an extremist:

"I would argue that his is the most radical presidency we've ever had in our country's history," she said.

Obama:

We want a president who will defend civil justice but we have one who is only listening to Alberto Gonzales justice.....People are tired of Scooter Libby justice."

Bill Richardson (the only non-lawyer amond the candidates):

"I will appoint someone who I will direct and say: 'You will be an attorney general for the people. I don't want to even see you talking to the political arm of the White House staff.'"

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The thoroughly discredited Fred Hiatt, leader of the Washington Post's Editorial Board, faces the abyss. To deny it, he attempts to argue that Senator Hillary Clinton agrees with his views but is afraid to say it loudly:

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton traveled to this crucial caucus state today to assure voters that she would keep U.S. troops in Iraq for the foreseeable future because "we cannot lose sight of our very real strategic national interests in this region." . . . [This] would have been an accurate, if incomplete, rendition of her long address on Iraq policy. That she wanted to go on the record with such a view, but didn't want voters to really hear it, says much about the current Washington bind on Iraq policy.

Actually this column, and the misleading nature of it, says much about the current bind DC Gasbags like Fred Hiatt are in. They are a discredited, much ignored group now. They strive to regain relevancy. Hiatt tries here by simply misleading his readers. More.

In a move that is sure to upset some, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has pardoned a teenage suicide bomber and sent him home to Pakistan.

The extraordinary case involved Rafiqullah, 14, a would-be suicide bomber, who was captured in May by Afghan police in the province of Khost, which borders Pakistan. He was wearing a suicide vest and riding a motorbike. His target was Arsala Jamal, the governor of the province.

He had crossed the border from South Waziristan, a troubled tribal belt in Pakistan, where he lived and had been attending a religious school. “Today we are facing a hard fact, that is, a Muslim child was sent to madrassa [religious school] to learn Islamic subjects, but the enemies of Afghanistan misled him towards suicide and prepared him to die and kill,” Mr Karzai told reporters.

Karzai issued the pardon at a formal ceremony:

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DemfromCt wrote a two-part post title the "Politics of Iraq", here and here that I think completely misreads the situation. Dem writes:

Toothless legislation attracts votes, but doesn't get the job done. Legislation with teeth doesn't attract a consensus or a working majority (at this time) because there isn't one in Congress. . . . The urgency to adjust the status quo outweighs the loyalty to the base, and far outweighs loyalty to an unpopular President, that GOP congress critters feel. The country thinks Congress is dithering. Explaining it away as "I have to keep my shrinking Republican base happy, even though they are unrealistic about the war because Fox News, Joe Lieberman and I don't tell the truth about what's happening there" is not going to fly. . . . Sure, the votes aren't there yet, but everyone in Washington in this kabuki show knows that's coming. . . . It's the GOP's war, and it's Bush's war. If they don't face up to that reality, and at least start preparing their base for the inevitable, they run the risk that 2008 will turn out to be 2006 on steroids. . . .

This, it seems to me, misses entirely the dynamic that is developing. It is the Democratic Congress whose approvals are falling, as clammyc notes. The GOP is much where they were in 2006. The Dems have dropped significantly from where they were. And the danger is of Dems offering safe harbor to those Republicans vulnerable on Iraq. More.

I have been tough on Jim Webb due to his refusal to consider using the Spending Power to end the Iraq Debacle and I will continue to be, but one thing I always have believed is that Jim Webb, like Wes Clark, conveys confidence, even arrogance, when discussing national security issues that; something Democrats desperately need as a political matter. Webb does not cower to the nonsense spewed by Republicans with their talking points. Case in point:

Matt Yglesias points to a great article by Louis Uchitelle in the NYTimes about our new Gilded Age tycoons and how they "earned it." I agree with Matt on the key quotes:

The Question of Talent

Other very wealthy men in the new Gilded Age talk of themselves as having a flair for business not unlike Derek Jeter’s “unique talent” for baseball, as Leo J. Hindery Jr. put it. “I think there are people, including myself at certain times in my career,” Mr. Hindery said, “who because of their uniqueness warrant whatever the market will bear.”

He counts himself as a talented entrepreneur, having assembled from scratch a cable television sports network, the YES Network, that he sold in 1999 for $200 million. “Jeter makes an unbelievable amount of money,” said Mr. Hindery, who now manages a private equity fund, “but you look at him and you say, ‘Wow, I cannot find another ballplayer with that same set of skills.’ ”

A handful of critics among the new elite, or close to it, are scornful of such self-appraisal. “I don’t see a relationship between the extremes of income now and the performance of the economy,” Paul A. Volcker, a former Federal Reserve Board chairman, said in an interview, challenging the contentions of the very rich that they are, more than others, the driving force of a robust economy.

(Emphasis supplied.) Hindery seems to believe he benefitted not at all from anything the government and society provided him, from infrastructure, to legal recourse, to customers who could afford what he was selling. All hail the great Hindery! Let the rest eat cake. More.

Bill Moyers' interview of Bruce Fein and impeachment proponent John Nichols is illustrative of how the impeachment movement gives short shrift to the most effective tool for checking an out of control President - the Spending Power. Nichols in particular is so hot for saying the word impeachment that he utterly ignores the most effective check on Executive Power the Founders intended and provided. Look at this exchange:

BRUCE FEIN: . . . [W]e do find this peculiarity that Congress is giving up powers voluntarily. Because there's nothing right now, Bill, that would prevent Congress from the immediate shutting down all of George Bush's and Dick Cheney's illegal programs. Simply saying there's no money to collect foreign intelligence-

BILL MOYERS: The power of the purse-

BRUCE FEIN: --the power of the purse. That is an absolute power. And yet Congress shies from it. It was utilized during the Vietnam War, you may recall, in 1973. Congress said there's no money to go and extend the war into Laos and Cambodia. And even President Nixon said okay. This was a president who at one time said, "If I do it, it's legal." So that it we do find Congress yielding the power to the executive branch. It's the very puzzle that the founding fathers would have been stunned at. They worried most over the legislative branch in, you know, usurping powers of the other branches. And--

BILL MOYERS: Well, what you just said indicts the Congress more than you're indicting George Bush and Dick Cheney.

BRUCE FEIN: In some sense, yes, because the founding fathers expected an executive to try to overreach and expected the executive would be hampered and curtailed by the legislative branch. And you're right. They have basically renounced-- walked away from their responsibility to oversee and check. It's not an option. It's an obligation when they take that oath to faithfully uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. . . .

Absolutely correct. And guess what. This is the most serious threat to the checks and balances of the Constitution. This is what we should be screaming about. This is what we should be demanding from the Congress. And guess what, if exercised by a Democratic Congress, without the support of Republicans, it will be effective. It will stop the excesses. Stop the Iraq Debacle.

But what do impeachment proponents care more about? This:

From those of us who live near Lake Michigan: thanks a heap, Indiana.

Indiana regulators exempted BP from state environmental laws to clear the way for a $3.8 billion expansion that will allow the company to refine heavier Canadian crude oil. They justified the move in part by noting the project will create 80 new jobs.

Under BP's new state water permit, the refinery—already one of the largest polluters along the Great Lakes—can release 54 percent more ammonia and 35 percent more sludge into Lake Michigan each day. Ammonia promotes algae blooms that can kill fish, while sludge is full of concentrated heavy metals.

This is not a comforting admission:

[Paul Higginbotham, chief of the water permits section at the Indiana Department of Environmental Management] said regulators still are unsure about the ecological effects of the relatively new refining process BP plans to use.