The Wall St. Journal (free link) reports the Justice Department is now examining whether Tom DeLay's wife got paid for a no-show job.

In the last few weeks, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents have interviewed several people at the Alexander Strategy Group lobbying firm to determine if Christine DeLay was being paid $3,200 a month -- a total of $115,000 over three years -- but not earning it. In a series of interviews last month, investigators questioned people who used to work at Alexander Strategy as well as people who worked in the same building as the now-defunct firm. "They wanted to know how often she came to the office? What did she do there? How long was she there?" said one person who was interviewed by the FBI.

This isn't suprising. TChris and I wrote about it in April. So did Christy at Firedoglake.

Will this now break DeLay and cause him to cop a plea and cooperate in exchange for saving his wife from indictment? Or is the new investigation a sign it's too late for that?

Speaking of fear-mongering (see post below), check out Huffington Post's new page, Becoming Fearless.

Among the many well-written articles on the page: Arianna's take on Bush: "Why We Need an Epidemic of Fearlessness to Counter the Fearmonger-in-Chief"

President Bush made another stop on his Fall of Fear Tour Monday, delivering a thunderingly obvious speech in which he repeatedly, strenuously, and desperately tried to convince us of something we're already convinced of -- that terrorists are not nice people. Thanks for the heads up, Mr. President. What's next, a compelling argument that fire is hot? That K-Fed can't sing? The question in 2006 isn't whether terrorists are evil; it's what is the most effective way to fight them. A hint: it isn't staying the course in Iraq.

I happened to catch some of Bush's speech Monday while waiting for my flight to take off. My response to President Bush: I'll take a chance a terrorist with a bomb is seated next to me. Stop the insane airport security measures.

I'm no statistician but I'll bet I had a one thousand time greater chance of dying in a car crash driving back from Aspen on Monday than I did of being on a flight yesterday with a terrorist onboard poised to commit mayhem.

How absurd has flying become? Let me describe my morning yesterday. I drove to the airport and headed to the departure level where Denver's nice police officers let you leave your car running at the curb while you get out and hand your bag to the skycap for checking. Normally, particularly with Frontier, there's no waiting. Monday, the line was so long there were ropes corralling people. Why? Because everyone is checking luggage now that you can't bring anything from toothpaste to shampoo on board. There was no way could I leave my car unattended at curbside so long, not to mention I'd miss my flight, so I headed to valet parking.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

The DLC needs to drop the D as long as the Dem hater and smearer Marshall Wittman remains on their payroll:

For months, the Moose has observed that if you seek anti-Semitic and anti-Israel filth on the internet, look to the left side. Comment threads and diariists regularly rant against Jews and the Jewish state. What is striking is the degree to which it is tolerated and the "respectability" these sites receive from the Democratic establishment.

Well, there has been a significant development of awareness in the Jewish community about this rancid phenomena. The Anti-Defamation League has submitted a letter to MoveOn protesting the anti-Semitic hate that was found on their site.

Of course, the bloggers will defend themselves by suggesting that they are not responsible for the comments on their site. Perhaps, just perhaps these so-called "progressives" could pause from their efforts to purge centrists and take some time to wipe their site clean of hate.

The question is why Democratic leaders continue to collude with the anti-Semitic appeasing left? This should be a time for introspection for a party that relies heavily on Jewish support.

First, Wittman, as he always does, lies. As I pointed out earlier, Move On did remove the comments 3 weeks ago.- and long before Joe Lieberman asked Abe Foxman to discredit the ADL with his misguided letter against Move On.

by TChris

Since Hillary Clinton is a lock to be reelected to her senate seat, it's difficult to understand why the GOP candidates battling for a primary win are being so vicious to each other.

[John] Spencer and [Kathleen] McFarland have engaged in one of the strangest primary campaigns the state has seen in recent years - a frothy and often torrid soap opera that has delighted New York's infamous tabloids while puzzling political observers. The contest has been dominated by tales of adultery, child sexual abuse, elitism and nepotism, with a bit of teenage shoplifting thrown in.

Is the answer that Republican candidates are so mean-spirited by nature that they can't resist being nasty, turning a meaningless primary faceoff into "a pointless exercise in personal humiliation"?

by TChris

In February 2002, the president said that there were thousands of al Qaeda terrorists "still roaming around" and "we're going to be steady and relentless until we achieve the objective of getting the al Qaeda killers and bringing them to justice." Having failed to attain that objective, the president has flip-flopped, essentially declaring victory in the war against al Qaeda.

The White House today released an updated version of its plan for combating terrorism that focused more on decentralized networks of extremists than on Al Qaeda ...

Osama bin Laden is evidently no longer a person of great interest to the president.

by TChris

A father wants his son to be free.

My son, Fawzi, was a schoolteacher in a region near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border before he was captured by bounty hunters. I'm told that he now lives alone in a cell at Guantanamo; our only contact with him consists of outdated letters with whole sections blacked out. The anguish is endless for families that have been kept in the dark for over four years while their husbands, sons and brothers suffer in a secret world.

His request is simple: if his son committed a crime, put him on trial.

My son is not a terrorist. He was, in fact, a great admirer of American political values and legal principles before he was kidnapped and sent to Guantanamo. Our family is nonetheless willing to undergo the ordeal of trial and judgment, if only the U.S. government would allow it to happen.

Corrente Wire excerpts a terrific article in Foreign Affairs that poses the rarely asked question:

If it is so easy to pull off an attack, and the terrorists are so demonically competent, why have they not done it?

Is the war on terror a scam?

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

In a contemptible manuever, the Anti-Defamation League, an organization dedicated to fighting antisemitism, cynically sacrificed its principles to enable Joe Lieberman to again falsely cry antisemitism. The Murdoch-owned New York Post was the media vehicle for this despicable ploy:

A string of anti-Semitic rants about Sen. Joe Lieberman have popped up on the liberal MoveOn.org's open forum Web site, drawing criticism from the Anti-Defamation League.

. . . "We recognize that Action Forum is an open forum intended to foster the free flow of ideas," ADL head Abraham Foxman said in a letter dated Aug. 31 to MoveOn, which supported Lamont in the Democratic primary against Lieberman. "Nevertheless, since such profoundly offensive content is appearing on a board clearly linked to MoveOn.org, we believe you should assume some responsibility to respond to this hateful content," Foxman wrote in the letter, which was forwarded by Lieberman's campaign.

Foxman's ploy was almost certainly done at the behest of the Lieberman campign. The Foxman letter came 12 days AFTER Move On had removed the comments:

Katie Couric begins her nightly newscast at CBS this evening. I'm going to tivo it as I'll probably be at the jail when it airs and won't get to see it until I return home tomorrow.

For those of you who watch tonight, what did you think?

I hope it's a success. Break a leg, Katie.

I'm off to Omaha for court. I'll be stopping in to post from the airport and hotel, but there's proably a lot going on I'll miss. Here's a place to weigh in. Happily, I think this is my only trip for the next month.

Please be patient with the comments. The site is being rebuilt as we speak, and should be complete by the end of the week. Until Friday, I'll be hand-approving comments as I have time to log in to the site.

I've always wondered why people think America is better off with Saddam Hussein out of power in Iraq. I can appreciate (although I don't accept at face value) the argument of those who think it's better for Iraqis that he is gone, but for Americans? I never have gotten the connection.

I was channel surfing very late last night in Aspen and caught Bill Maher on Larry King Live from Friday night. Even though it was way past time for bed, I listened.

KING: Are we better off with Saddam gone?

MAHER: We are not better off. We were never better off because Saddam was actually a bulwark against terrorism. He would never have allowed al Qaeda in Iraq. And I know people say oh, yes, there was al Qaeda. Yes, there was a few al Qaeda in the northern part of the country, which he did not control.

KING: He didn't like bin Laden, right?

MAHER: He hated bin Laden. So the world certainly is not better off without Saddam. And I don't know if even Iraq is better off without Saddam.

You ask the people in Iraq now. Because you know, we're running out of things that Saddam did that we don't do like torture, rape. About the only one left is mass graves. So in a lot of ways we are Saddam except for one thing, he at least had control of his country.

That sounds about right to me. Your thoughts?