Georgia10 asks why the Democratic Presidential candidates, who all proclaim a desire to end the Iraq Debacle, are not supporting the Reid-Feingold bill. She discusses Barack Obama in particular, but it applies to ALL the candidates except Senator Chris Dodd (who I am supporting):

To Obama (and Clinton, Biden, and Edwards, [and Richardson, Kucinich, Gravel] for that matter), I ask this: how can we believe you words, your claims that you are the president who will end this war, when you refuse to take the one step that best evidences your dedication to that cause? Either you want the war to end in March 2008 (as so many of their bills claim), or you don't. It is fundamentally inconsistent--and frankly, disrespectful to the American voter--to on the one hand boldly proclaim that it should be the policy of the United States to have all or most troops out of Iraq by March 2008, but then refuse to sign on to legislation that would truly effectuate that policy.

Hear, hear! Hurray for Georgia and the other daily kos FPers who are speaking up on this. Oh by the way, where is Move On and the rest of the Netroots on this? I hear crickets.

Hurray also to Jerome Armstrong, who adds great political analysis on how Obama is putting himself in a corner.

Through a Freedom of Information Act request, the ACLU has obtained hundreds of files on damage claims brought by family members of civilians killed or injured by Coalition Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yesterday, it released the files.

The files made public today are claims submitted to the U.S. Foreign Claims Commissions by surviving Iraqi and Afghan family members of civilians said to have been killed or injured or to have suffered property damages due to actions by Coalition Forces. The ACLU released a total of 496 files: 479 from Iraq and 17 from Afghanistan.

You can view the files here.

Some of the stories that show the human cost of war -- and the toll on innocent civilians:

More...

Here are Paul Wolfowitz' remarks at the World Bank Forum yesterday. He eats some crow and admits making a mistake in pushing the promotion and giving of a huge pay raise to his girlfriend.

In hindsight, I wish I had trusted my original instincts and kept myself out of the negotiations. I made a mistake for which I am sorry.

But let me also ask for some understanding. Not only was this a painful personal dilemma, but I had to deal with it when I was new to this institution, and I was trying to navigate in uncharted waters. The situation was unprecedented and exceptional. This was an involuntary reassignment, and I believed there was a legal risk to the institution if it was not solved by mutual agreement. I take full responsibility for the details of the agreement, and I did not attempt to hide my actions or to make anyone else responsible.

He may be fired, forced to resign or just severely rebuked.

More...

This is not to be believed:

Now that Democrats are also demanding access to the political e-mail, the White House took steps on Thursday to use those latest demands as leverage to force Democrats to accept the White House’s conditions for making Mr. Rove and the others available.

In a letter to Mr. Leahy and Representative John Conyers Jr., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Mr. Fielding, the White House counsel, said the administration was prepared to produce e-mail from the national committee, but only as part of a “carefully and thoughtfully considered package of accommodations” — in other words, only as part of the offer for Mr. Rove and the others to appear in private.

Mr. Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, issued a tart reply: “The White House position seems to be that executive privilege not only applies in the Oval Office, but to the R.N.C. as well. There is absolutely no basis in law or fact for such a claim.”

Send good thoughts to New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine. He was critically injured (but expected to live) following a car accident tonight while his motorcade was en route to a meeting between Don Imus and the Rutgers' womens basketball team.

Corzine had a broken sternum, a broken collarbone, a slight fracture of his lower vertebrae, a broken left leg and six broken ribs on each side, Ross said. He also had a laceration on his head, Ross said.

State Senate President Richard Codey will take over as acting Governor while Gov. Corzine is in the hospital.

My friend Ed Kilgore writes an interesting piece that is marred by one of the sillier pieces of poliitical analysis I have seen in a while:

When you boil it all down, our last two presidential nominees, Al Gore and John Kerry, were rich in policy proposals and Shrumian "fighting" rhetoric, but largely bereft of any overarching message (Gore, to be more precise, had several messages, but couldn't settle on one for any length of time). Nobody needs Bob Shrum any more to convey an intention to "fight" Republicans. Obama is all message (the same message of beyond-polarization and reform that John Kerry rejected and Wesley Clark botched in 2004), and part of his early appeal is that he scratches a long-standing itch among message-starved Democratic and independent voters. It also enables him to simultaneously run to the left and right of his main rivals.

You see what Kilgore is saying? Kerry (and Gore I guess) lost because of rejection of the DLC message of "beyond polarization and reform." To which I say hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! You must be joking. Kerry lost because he was viewed as not standing for anything. "Voted for it before I voted against it defined Kerry."

Via Digby, a wonderful blast from the past from the late great Lars-Erik Nelson:

Daily News (New York)

September 22, 1995, Friday

POLS WHO TALK NICE AND ACT NAUGHTY

BYLINE: BY LARS-ERIK NELSON

Washington Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) came to the Senate floor with a look of sad concern on his face. He was deeply troubled, he said, at the vulgar, morally repugnant content of the new TV season. "We are lowering the standards of what is acceptable in our society and we are sending a message to our children," he said. He denounced an "acceptance of rude language, foul imagery and gross behavior in the entertainment mainstream."

. . . Funny thing: The previous morning, Lieberman had been a guest, as is his regular custom, on the Don Imus radio show on WFAN, a program that seems to get the bulk of its yuks from penis references.

. . . Lieberman worries, on the Senate floor, that the increasing vulgarity of network TV "is lowering the standards of what we accept on television, particularly in what used to be family programing hours."

But he's talking out of both sides of his mouth. This week's moments of supposed humor on Imus, broadcast at an hour when children are rising for school, included a reference to Attorney General Janet Reno in crotchless pantyhose, an interview with Screw Magazine's Al Goldstein and a drunken woman saying "s---" over the air. Teehee.

I miss Lars Erik Nelson.

The plot thickens:

We have also been advised that there may be RNC e-mail traffic relating to Republican Party concerns about the United States Attorney in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, prior to his announcing, on the eve of the hotly contested 2006 gubernatorial election, that he was indicting an official in the incumbent Democratic governor's administration.

TPM is killing on this story. Can a blog get a Pulitzer?

You know what bugs me about Al Sharpton in this whole Imus mess? Why doesn't he fight against rapper lyrics? Oh wait:

Aired March 9, 2005 - 07:30 ET

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome back, everybody. It's just about half past the hour on this AMERICAN MORNING. In just a few minutes, a new battle plan in the rap wars. The Reverend Al Sharpton is our guest. He's got a new hard-line proposal to make artists quit using violence to sell records. Is it going to work? That's ahead.

O'BRIEN: Well, he is known as a straight shooter. Now, the Reverend Al Sharpton is taking direct aim at rap music, the FCC and also major advertisers. In just a moment, we're going to talk with the former presidential candidate about his new campaign, one that he hopes will prevent artists from cashing in on a culture of violence.

Ooops, never mind.

Brian Williams is a uniter, bringing Dean Barnett of Hugh Hewitt's blog, Andrew Sullivan, Atrios and now me together. Here is why:

"You're going to be up against people who have an opinion, a modem, and a bathrobe. All of my life, developing credentials to cover my field of work, and now I'm up against a guy named Vinny in an efficiency apartment in the Bronx who hasn't left the efficiency apartment in two years" -- Brian Williams, anchor of the "NBC Nightly News," speaking before New York University journalism students on the challenges traditional journalism faces from online media.

He opened the credentials door and Barnett walked right through:

How unbelievably rich is that? . . .[T]his Catholic University drop-out still thinks the blogosphere consists of shut-in half-wits. Perhaps Williams would enjoy matching résumés with Hugh to prove his point. I especially enjoy the risible self-regard of a guy who refers to his tireless development of “credentials to cover my field of work” when said “field of work” primarily consists of reading words off a teleprompter.

For the record, I graduated from college AND law school. Also did a bit in the Media. No teleprompter reading I'll grant you. Williams has me there.

This is pretty darn shocking:

According to Mr. Kelner [RNC counsel] . . . as a result of unspecified legal inquiries [Fitz probably], a "hold" was placed on this e-mail destruction policy for the accounts of White House officials in August 2004. Mr. Kelner was uncertain whether the hold was consistently maintained from August 2004 to the present, but he asserted that for this period, the RNC does have alarge volume of White House e-mails. According to Mr. Kelner, the hold would not have prevented individual White House officials from deleting their e-mail from the RNC server after August 2004.

Mr. Kelner's briefing raised particular concems 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.

Holy crap! Um, Fitz, you got any questions about this?

I am seeing this announced on TV. Reporting by AP. More in a moment.

AP:

CBS announced Thursday that it has fired Don Imus from his radio program, following a week of uproar over the radio host's racist comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team. "There has been much discussion of the effect language like this has on our young people, particularly young women of color trying to make their way in this society," CBS President and Chief Executive Officer Leslie Moonves said in announcing the decision. "That consideration has weighed most heavily on our minds as we made our decision."

Quick thoughts. This was a business decision for CBS and NBC's prior move put CBS on the spot. Let's face it, while this last outrage from Imus was especially appalling, his track record was plenty for deciding to get rid of him.