Two weeks ago, Frank Rich berated persons like me because:

On the Democratic side, the left is furious at the new Congress’s failure to instantly fulfill its November mandate to end the war in Iraq. . . . It’s not exactly clear how a legislative Groundhog Day could accomplish this feat when the president’s obstinacy knows no bounds and the Democrats’ lack of a veto-proof Congressional majority poses no threat to his truculence.

Rich professed faith in John Warner to come to the rescue. This week Rich writes:

Americans and Iraqis know the truth anyway. The question now is: What will be the new new way forward? . . . Come September 2007, Mr. Bush will offer his usual false choices. We must either stay his disastrous course in eternal pursuit of "victory" or retreat to the apocalypse of "precipitous withdrawal." . . . For the Bush White House, the real definition of victory has become "anything they can get away with without taking blame for defeat," said the retired Army Gen. William Odom, a national security official in the Reagan and Carter administrations, when I spoke with him recently. The plan is to run out the Washington clock between now and Jan. 20, 2009, no matter the cost.

Who can stop them? Rich says it is up to John Warner:

Sad news today in Denver. Former Denver District Court Judge and City Attorney Larry Manzanares has died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

He was facing criminal charges over a stolen laptop. As I wrote here,

I always hate to read news about people who, having accomplished much in their lives, see their reputations in tatters and find themselves facing jail over an alleged silly act that by all accounts is out of character for them. ....I wish Mr. Manzanares good luck. The D.A.’s office sure threw the book at him.

His lawyer Gary Lozow said,

“There is no adult who has not exercised bad judgment or made a mistake in their lifetime.

His family released this statement:

"Those who knew him well will remember him as a highly respected lawyer, judge, law professor, mentor for minority youth, supporter of Hispanic organizations, board member of many women's public interest groups, author, and significant contributor to various facets of his community through his lengthy dedication to public service....The Manzanares family extends its gratitude to the multitude of people who supported Larry despite unfair and one-sided attempts to publicly try him in the press by attacking his character."

We are all greater than the sum of our misdeeds. I hope that Larry Manzanares will be remembered for the good he accomplished during his lifetime, not for the solitary, comparatively insignificant act of allegedly taking a computer that did not belong to him.

R.I.P. Judge Manzanares.

Mitt Romney is one tough talker when it comes to imprisoning suspected foreign terrorists. How does he feel about people in the United States who are suspected of breaking the law? If they happen to work for his presidential campaign, he puts them on paid leave.

The director of operations of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign will be on a paid leave of absence while the authorities investigate accusations that he impersonated a state trooper in Massachusetts and told a reporter in New Hampshire that he had run the reporter’s license plate, the campaign said Friday.

Jay Garrity is presumed innocent and, if he's charged, is entitled to a fair and speedy trial. Why does Romney believe the accused who are imprisoned at Guantanamo are entitled to anything less?

It is amazing how dumb the Media can be. Jamison Foser details one of the dumbest pieces of work I have ever seen: a report by MSNBC that shows that 116 journalists in the United States made political contributions to Democrats as compared to a mere smatterng who made contributions to Republicans. Consider how stupid the premise is - what you write is not where the bias is demonstrated, it is who you gave to. There are other obvious problems as Foser relates:

For starters, MSNBC found fewer than 150 journalists who have made political contributions. There were more than 116,000 working journalists in America as of 2002. The 144 who made contributions not only constitute a tiny fraction of American journalists, they cannot be considered a representative sample of the whole. Indeed, we know that they are un-representative of all journalists: They made reported campaign contributions, and their colleagues did not. . . . Indeed, if you look at MSNBC's list, you won't find Tim Russert or Bob Woodward or Maureen Dowd. You won't see many contributions from reporters for CNN or The New York Times or The Washington Post or ABC News. But you will find sports copy editors for the New Hampshire Union Leader and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, a sports statistician for The Boston Globe, sports columnists for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and a sports editor for the San Jose Mercury News.

Seems an obvious point no?

Senator Barack Obama gave another speech on faith and politics. I like this one, as it has been reported at least:

"Somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together and started being used to drive us apart. It got hijacked," the Democratic presidential candidate said in remarks prepared for delivery before the national meeting of the United Church of Christ.

"Part of it's because of the so-called leaders of the Christian Right, who've been all too eager to exploit what divides us," the Illinois senator said. "At every opportunity, they've told evangelical Christians that Democrats disrespect their values and dislike their church, while suggesting to the rest of the country that religious Americans care only about issues like abortion and gay marriage, school prayer and intelligent design," according to an advance copy of his speech.

"There was even a time when the Christian Coalition determined that its number one legislative priority was tax cuts for the rich," Obama said. "I don't know what Bible they're reading, but it doesn't jibe with my version."

This is the way to discuss the way the Right has exploited religion in politics. Good for Obama. More.

Plan A was:

Cheney's office has contended that it does not have to comply because the vice president serves as president of the Senate, which means that his office is not an "entity within the executive branch."

Plan B now is:

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Cheney is not obligated to submit to oversight by an office that safeguards classified information, as other members and parts of the executive branch are. . . . Cheney is not subject to the executive order, she said, "because the president gets to decide whether or not he should be treated separately, and he's decided that he should."

Of course that begs the question, WHEN did the President decide this? Cuz Cheney has not been complying since 2003. If he decided yesterday that does not excuse Cheney's non-compliance before. But what the hey, Cheney says it does not matter if the President says he has to or not, the Vice President is NOT a part of the Executive Branch so the President has no rulemaking power over him anyway.

I like Rahm Emanuel's Plan C:

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) said he plans to propose next week, as part of a spending bill for executive operations, a measure to place a hold on funds for Cheney's office and official home until he clarifies to which branch of the government he belongs.

Emanuel, WaPo says, admits his plan is "just a stunt." It should not be a stunt if it is.

Sit down. The news I am going to provide you, via the Washington Post, will shock you. The United States does not have enough troops in Iraq to carry out the mission it has been given:

. . . Retired Army Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, who in 2003 was among the first to call public attention to the relatively small size of the U.S. invasion force, said that the new operation shows how outnumbered U.S. troops remain. "Why would we think that a temporary presence of 30,000 additional combat troops in a giant city would change the dynamics of a bitter civil war?" he said in an interview yesterday. "It's a fool's errand."

An officer working in Arrowhead Ripper, the subsidiary offensive in Diyala province, said wearily, "We just do not have the forces in country right now to have the appropriate level of presence across the country."

Many counterinsurgency experts agree. Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., the director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a national security think tank, said flatly that Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, does not have enough troops. "I suspect General Petraeus is taking a risk here, but that's what commanders do," he said.

Who'da thunk it? Well, actually everyone with a brain, starting with General Eric Shinseki:

William Mercer, the U.S. Attorney for Montana, who also has been serving as the Number Three top official at DOJ has withdrawn his nomination for permanent appointment.

Mercer's confirmation hearing was set for next week. His resignation letter says he has become convinced he would not be confirmed.

He will stay on as U.S. Attorney for Montana. Mercer has been heavily criticized for neglecting his U.S. Attorney duties while serving in the higher national DOJ slot.

Among his "contributions:"

Despite reports to the contrary, the Bush Administration is not planning to close Guantanamo any time soon. Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council, issued a statement last night:

“The President has long expressed a desire to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and to do so in a responsible way,” Mr. Johndroe said. “A number of steps need to take place before that can happen such as setting up military commissions and the repatriation to their home countries of detainees who have been cleared for release. These and other steps have not been completed. No decisions on the future of Guantanamo Bay are imminent and there will not be a White House meeting tomorrow.”

Gitmo got a new prisoner this week.

More...

Conservative surgeon John Barrasso will be the Acting Senator for Wyoming, replacing Craig Thomas:

Barrasso, 54, will serve in Thomas' place until the beginning of 2009. He said on his application that he also intends to then run in a November 2008 special election to serve out the remainder of Thomas' term, which ends in 2013.

His views come as no surprise:

"I believe in limited government, lower taxes, less spending, traditional family values, local control and a strong national defense," the orthopedic surgeon and state senator from Casper wrote in his application.

He said he has "voted for prayer in schools, against gay marriage and have sponsored legislation to protect the sanctity of life."

Hilzoy writes about the Left blog reaction and it related to a post I wrote arguing for the need that the Left blogs NOT pull their punches. Hilzoy writes:

I'd also be interested in reading reactions from bloggers on the left. However, as far as I can tell, most of the left-wing bloggers have gone dark on this one. . . . [I]t is striking that when I search the 60 left blogs that are on my main bookmarks list, I found three (3) posts on this story. . . . One is from Big Tent Democrat, and concerns the fact that the story's first two paragraphs are unfair. (I agree: it's speculation, not fact, that Edwards came up with the idea of this organization as a "solution" to the "problem" of keeping his public profile alive without a campaign. I also think the larger story is worth commenting on.) . . .

The implication is that the Left Blogs, and me, shied away from the Edwards angle. I reject that charge. Since I have been arguing that the Left blogs have been pulling their punches I'll respond to this on the flip.

Conservative appeals court judge Janice Rogers Brown has dissented in a search and seizure case in the D.C. Court of Appeals today. She would have invalidated a "Terry" traffic stop. From her dissent:

It is true, of course, that as a standard “reasonable suspicion” is necessarily imprecise. But no matter how low the bar is set, generic racial descriptions devoid of distinctive individualized details cannot, without more, provide police adequate justification for a Terry stop. It is not enough to share the same racial characteristics as a suspect and be in the vicinity.

In short, Rogers Brown argues that "reasonable suspicion" has become, in effect, a license for stopping anyone who is young, black and male.

The opinion is here (pdf), her dissent begins on page 11.

[hat tip reader Emil.]