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.]

Via Yglesias, this from LATimes:

Rejecting Moore's prescription on healthcare could alienate liberal activists, who will play a big role in choosing the party's next standard-bearer. However, his proposal — wiping out private health insurance and replacing it with a massive federal program — could be political poison with the larger electorate.

Michael Moore, Kingmaker? Where does the Media get this stuff? This is not Free Republic, but the news section of the LATimes! This is just pathetic. But if you think about it, it offers a great Sistah Souljah moment for all of the Dem candidates - they can say they stood up to Michael Moore!

In what should have been a good, hard hitting and relevant story about something John Edwards should explain, his employment of political operatives in his non-profit poverty organization, Leslie Wayne of the New York Times breaches the most important rule of journalism - report facts as facts, not the reporter's opinions as facts. Wayne's lede is simply intolerable:

John Edwards ended 2004 with a problem: how to keep alive his public profile without the benefit of a presidential campaign that could finance his travels and pay for his political staff. Mr. Edwards, who reported this year that he had assets of nearly $30 million, came up with a novel solution, creating a nonprofit organization with the stated mission of fighting poverty. . .

(Emphasis supplied.) That is Wayne's opinion, not a reported fact. Wayne does not have Edwards saying it nor any evidence to point to other than her own opinion of Edwards' motivations. This is simply unacceptable journalism. Instead of reporting the facts, which do require explanation, Wayne instead basically states AS A FACT that John Edwards committed a crime. Tax fraud.

It is appalling. And now the irresponsible work of Wayne should become a story, along with Edwards' practices. Shame on the New York Times, Leslie Wayne and the editor who let this through.

At every possible opportunity I love to point out I am a centrist. Today, in seeming response to silliness like this from ABC, E. J. Dionne points out:

. . . Whenever you use the word "left" in American politics, you feel almost compelled to add quotation marks. Today's left is not talking about nationalizing industry, abolishing capitalism or destroying the rich. What passes for "left" in American politics is quite moderate by historical standards.

Still, cliches die hard, so you hear such 20-year-old questions as: "Are Democrats moving too far to the left?" or "Will Democrats abandon the center?" This approach is about abstractions, not concrete political problems, and it misses the dynamic in American public life, which is the move away from the right and a discrediting of the conservative era. The political "center" of today is not where the "center" was even five years ago.

. . . [T]he "good ideas" that voters are demanding mostly have to do with problems that have been framed by the left, not the right: the need to disengage from Iraq, to create health security, to ease economic inequalities. It's time to update our sense of where the political center lies and to adjust our view of "the left" accordingly.

Hear, hear!

I thought after 2006, the species would have become extinct, but the "Sell Out on Choice" Dems still chasing those elusive "values voters" live! Paul Waldman has the best fisking of this ridiculous Times Op-Ed by Melinda Hennenberger, who argues, I think, that Dems should drop their pro-choice position, for political reasons apparently.

But I loved this part for its irony:

What would it take to win them back? Respect, for starters — and not only on the night of the candidate forum on faith. As it turns out, you cannot call people extremists and expect them to vote for you. . . .

Us "fringe," "idiot liberals" get that point very well. Drop a line to Rep. David Obey and all the others attacking the Dem base for being angry about not ending the Iraq war on that one Melinda.

If you believe the testimony he gave Thursday, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty was "largely out of the loop in the Justice Department's firings of U.S. attorneys." What, then, to make of Monica Goodling's testimony that "there were a number of things that I did brief him on and that that information wasn't fully -- wasn't fully revealed" when McNulty appeared before Congress.

GOODLING: I'm just saying that I didn't believe he was fully candid.

And the point that I was trying to make is that I did give him some information, I didn't withhold information, I gave him a lot of information, and he had some of that information and didn't use of all of it.

NADLER:Although, in fact, he stated things directly contrary to what your written statement says he knew to be true.

GOODLING:Those would be conclusions for others to draw.

As Monica invites, feel free to draw your own conclusions about McNulty. Gonzales also claims to have been absent from the loop. Perhaps there was no loop. Perhaps the Justice Department is loopless. Or perhaps the strategy is to point fingers in every direction (except inward) with the hope that confusion reigns until it's time to move on.