Matt Yglesias revisits the points he and I made yesterday about the emptiness of the Lugar/Voinovich "opposition" to Bush's Iraq policy:

When Republicans want to . . . vote to override Bush's veto, then they'll be breaking with Bush on Iraq. Until then, both the ones talking a good game and the ones talking bad one are, in fact, backing the president. What's more, it seems to me that we're well passed the point where any political purpose is advanced in a useful way by deliberately exaggerating the extent of intra-GOP disagreement. Before the 2004 election was a good time to hear about Republican dissent. Before the 2006 election, even. But folks who wait until after an electoral drubbing to start distancing themselves from their party's leaders don't deserve to be hailed as great independent thinkers.

Two points. First, the legislation Bush vetoed did not even have BINDING timelines. Second, when Matt writes "both the ones talking a good game and the ones talking a bad one are, in fact, backing the president," that applies to Democrats too.

The day job beckons and it's time for an open thread. What's going on in your world today and which items in the news and on the blogs have caught your attention?

Are any of you buying Apple's hyped i-Phone which hits the stores Friday? If so, why? What makes it so special?

Three important wrongful convictions bills has passed the state Senate and now been cleared by the Assembly Public Safety Committee in California:

One bill, aimed at reducing the number of false confessions, would mandate electronic recording of interrogations of suspects in homicides and violent felonies who are in police custody. Another would require corroborating evidence for the testimony of jailhouse informants, who have been shown to lie sometimes to receive reduced sentences or other benefits. A third bill calls on the California attorney general, in consultation with other key stakeholders in the criminal justice system, to develop new guidelines for lineups presented to eyewitnesses to see if they can identify suspects.

All three are desperately needed. Releasing the innocent imprisoned makes it easier to find the guilty perpetrator. So, will Gov. Schwarzenegger come up with some new excuse to veto the bills if they pass, or will he finally see the light of day and sign them into law?

Similar measures passed both houses last year, but were vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Since then, the legislation has been modified to address the governor's concerns, said Gerald Uelmen, a Santa Clara University law professor who is executive director of the justice reform commission.

According to a new New York Times/CBS News/MTV poll, young Americans are leaning left.

Young Americans are more likely than the general public to favor a government-run universal health care insurance system, an open-door policy on immigration and the legalization of gay marriage, according to a New York Times/CBS News/MTV poll. The poll also found that they are more likely to say the war in Iraq is heading to a successful conclusion.

More good news:

Substantially more Americans ages 17 to 29 than four years ago are paying attention to the presidential race.

....More than half of Americans ages 17 to 29 — 54 percent — say they intend to vote for a Democrat for president in 2008. They share with the public at large a negative view of President Bush, who has a 28 percent approval rating with this group, and of the Republican Party. They hold a markedly more positive view of Democrats than they do of Republicans.

It gets better. More below.

From the fourth installment of WaPo's Cheney series:

In Oregon, a battleground state that the Bush-Cheney ticket had lost by less than half of 1 percent, drought-stricken farmers and ranchers were about to be cut off from the irrigation water that kept their cropland and pastures green. Federal biologists said the Endangered Species Act left the government no choice: The survival of two imperiled species of fish was at stake. Law and science seemed to be on the side of the fish. Then the vice president stepped in.

. . . Smith [knew] Cheney . . . as a man of the West who didn't take kindly to federal bureaucrats meddling with private use of public land. "He saw, as every other person did, what a ridiculous disaster shutting off the water was," Smith said. . . . [Interior Secretary Gail] Norton flew to Klamath Falls in March to open the head gate as farmers chanted "Let the water flow!"

. . . Months later, the first of an estimated 77,000 dead salmon began washing up on the banks of the warm, slow-moving river. Not only were threatened coho dying -- so were chinook salmon, the staple of commercial fishing in Oregon and Northern California. State and federal biologists soon concluded that the diversion of water to farms was at least partly responsible.

. . . Last summer, the federal government declared a "commercial fishery failure" on the West Coast after several years of poor chinook returns virtually shut down the industry, opening the way for Congress to approve more than $60 million in disaster aid to help fishermen recover their losses. That came on top of the $15 million that the government has paid Klamath farmers since 2002 not to farm, in order to reduce demand.

Nice work Dick.

Via FDL, and just to prove there is some intelligent and wry life in the Media:

Silver Spring, Md.: I think Copernicus, Galileo and the modern astronomy community are all wrong about the sun-centered solar system. I don’t have any data, or any particular expertise in the field. All I know is that it bothers me to have people saying we orbit the sun, when I can clearly see it moving across the sky. Plus it is scaring the children to hear people talk about it. Could you tell me how to get an [o]p-ed piece published at The Post? I hear they have no standards for this anymore. Thank you!

Eugene Robinson: I think there must be a Bush administration science panel that has a spot for you!

Heh.

So was titled a piece by Time's John Cloud a few months ago:

. . . Coulter wants to make people laugh more than anything; she is, as I have argued here, a right-wing ironist and comedienne as much as she is a political commentator. . . . We don't read her body language the way we normally do because the words she is uttering are so peremptory and shocking. If we did, we would put her in the same league as Bill Maher or Jackie Mason, not the dry policy analysts who are sometimes pitted against her on cable-news shows.

Of course Coulter was Time's cover girl 2 years ago. Boehlert skewered:

April 19, 2005 | When Time magazine named Ann Coulter among its 100 "most influential people" last week, alongside such heavyweights as Ariel Sharon, Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela, Kim Jong Il and the Dalai Lama, the choice produced guffaws online. Plugging the issue on Fox News last week, Time executive editor Priscilla Painton insisted it was Coulter's use of "humor" that made her so influential, stopping just short of suggesting that Coulter is the conservative Jon Stewart. . . . At least now we know where Time magazine was going with its choice. Turns out Coulter's inclusion was just a warm-up -- a justification -- for this week's fawning Time cover story, "Ms. Right." . . .

But Time's Joe Klein is concerned about the coarsening of the discourse by blogs:

Elizabeth Edwards called in to Hardball this afternoon to tell off the She-Pundit with Long Blond Hair.

Shorter version: Elizabeth rocked, the she-pundit did not.

Crooks and Liars (of course) and Think Progress have the video. From Think Progress:

During an hour-long interview with Coulter today on MSNBC, host Chris Matthews announced that Elizabeth Edwards was on the line. Edwards referenced the attacks above, saying, “I’m the mother of that boy who died. These young people behind you…you’re asking them to participate in a dialogue that is based on hatefulness and ugliness instead of on the issues, and I don’t think that’s serving them or this country very well.” The live audience cheered.

When her first two attempts to spin the situation faulted, Coulter then launched into another baseless, personal attack, accusing John Edwards of “bankrupting doctors by giving a shyster Las Vegas routine in front of juries…doing these psychic routines in front of illiterate juries to bankrupt doctors who now can’t deliver babies.”

Think Progress also has the transcript, reprinted here below the fold:

Bump and Update: The Supreme Court has denied the request for a stay. The execution has taken place. Bland was declared dead at 6:19 pm. I hope for his sake they started late -- 19 minutes is a long time.

**********

I can only imagine how the civilized world will view this story. Jimmy Dale Bland is set to be executed at 6pm tonight in Oklahoma.

Bland has advanced lung cancer which has spread to his hip and brain. He's terminally ill and will die soon on his own.

The Oklahoma state and federal courts have denied a stay, insisting the state has the right to kill him before he expires on his own.

In a dissenting opinion, Judge Charles Chapel of Tulsa said a stay should be granted to protect "the dignity of society itself from the barbarity of exacting mindless vengeance."

A last-minute decision from the Supreme Court is expected any time now.

More...

Former Interior Deputy Secretary J.Steven Griles was sentenced to 10 months in federal prison today for lying to the Senate about his contacts with Jack Abramoff.

The Government recommended a split sentence (5 months in prison, 5 on home detention) but the Judge got angry Griles was still in denial about his crimes so she gave him a straight ten months in jail. Since good time doesn't kick in on sentences of less than 12 months and a day, he'll have to do the whole thing.

The Justice Department's press release is here.

Italia Federici, who also pleaded guilty and is cooperating, will be sentenced in November. It was Federici, with whom Griles had an intimate relationship, who introduced Griles to Abramoff. (DOJ says he also lied about their relationship.)

The total Abramoff-related conviction count is now at 12.

It is tempting for those of us who wish for an end to the US's Iraq Debacle to make much of statements like this:

Ohio Senator George Voinovich says the US should begin pulling troops out of Iraq and make greater use of diplomacy. . . . His remarks come on the heels of similar comments yesterday from Indiana Senator Richard Lugar. The two say they're still not ready to insist on a timetable for withdrawal. But both are making it clear their patience is gone.

The temptation must be resisted. What this position stakes out is the view that it is acceptable to SAY you oppose President Bush's Iraq policy without actually doing anything about it. Forget for a moment the policy fact that saying you oppose the President's policy and then voting to fund it will effect no change in policy. Consider the crass politics of the situation. If the Lugar/Voinovich/Smith/Hagel position is treated as politically acceptable, even admirable, Democrats will be creating a political safe harbor for Republicans to avoid having to run on supporting Bush's Iraq Debacle. More.

Nancy Grace, age 47, got married secretly in April and is expecting twins. She will make the announcement on her show today.

Grace married David Linch -an Atlanta investment banker she has known since they attended Mercer College together in the late 1970s.

"We've been in touch all these years and a lot of time we were separated by geography and time," she says. "It was a spur-of-the-moment decision to get married. I told my family only two days before [the wedding].

The photo shows her in her wedding dress and from the description of her vows, the music, the veil and her reading selection at the ceremony, it sure seems like it would have taken more than two days to put together. But, whatever.

Ever the good girl, Nancy says of her good fortune: