Denver civil rights lawyer David Lane intends to subpoena Dick Cheney in the civil rights lawsuit he brought against Cheney's secret service detail. Details of the incident and lawsuit are here.

Steven Howards and his son were walking by a Dick Cheney event this summer in Beaver Creek, on their way to a piano lesson. Howards told Cheney he didn’t approve of his war policy. When Howards walked back from the lesson, passing the site again, he was arrested. Charges later were dropped.

The New York Times had a feature article on the case yesterday. What's become the big story in the case is that the Secret Service agents are accusing each other of making stuff up. [More...]

Speaking for me only.

In what I can only term an absurd post, Markos writes that Democrats have had no ideas, it has been the GOP with the new ideas.

Setting aside whether "new" ideas for the sake of having something new means anything, it simply is false. "The new GOP idea`was the old GOP idea - cut taxes and strangle the government. Oh, and the most important GOP idea? Stop anything that comes from Dems, be it old ideas like Social Security and Medicare (see the 1995 government shutdown) to new ideas like universal health care and addressing climate change. Or how about the Earned Income Tax Credit? The largest tax reduction for the the poor working class ever given. Or raising the top tax rate on the richest Americans in order to balance the budget? How about those new ideas that the Republicans fought fiercely? Does Kos NOT know about those?

Because I have news for you -- those are the ideas that form the centerpiece of the Democratic agenda this election. They are not new ideas from Obama, Edwards or Clinton. These are Democratic ideas. Formulated in the last 15 years. By Democrats.

Kos has always said he does not pay much attention to policy. In this post, he proved it. And he does a great disservice to the Democratic Party when he buys the nonsense David Brooks is selling.

On January 30, 2008, Attorney General Michael Mukasey will testify at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on "Oversight of the Department of Justice."

Politico reports that waterboarding could be a topic and that the hearing will concern "the Justice Department's inquiry into the CIA's destruction of secret interrogation tapes."

Idaho Senators Larry Craig and Michael Crapo are blocking President Bush's choice to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

The nominee is Massachussetts U.S. Attorney Michael J. Sullivan, whom Bush nominated a year ago and who has been serving as Acting Director of the agency.

Crapo's spokesman, Lindsay Nothern, said the senator has heard from a number of gun dealers, gn owners and others in Idaho who "have concerns about ATF policies regarding gun sales and even ownership. Maybe the federal government is getting a little too aggressive with people who haven't done anything wrong."

Members of Second Amendment Groups are not happy with Sullivan:

More...

The Times Online has a feature article on how wealthy Al Gore has become in the past seven years. When he lost the 2000 election, his net worth was about $2 million, consisting of his two homes and an investment in an oil company.

Now, he's worth $100 million, earned through stock options in Google and Apple to book advances and speeches to investment firm holdings and investments in green and other tech ventures.

No wonder he doesn't want to be President.

Bump and Update: Larry Craig denies the new allegations.

There are now a total of 8 accusers. (ABC News report here, but see McJoan's comment below.) Where's Larry Craig this week? Heading to Bali.

****
Original Post: 12/2/07

The Idaho Statesman has new allegations against Larry Craig.

Vice President Dick Cheney will enter the hospital Monday to get evaluated for an irregular heart beat. He's expected to return home Monday night.

Cheney visited his doctors because of a lingering cough from a cold and during the examination he was found to have an irregular heartbeat, which on further testing was determined to be "atrial fibrillation, an abnormal rhythm involving the upper chambers of the heart," said Megan Mitchell, spokeswoman for Cheney.

....Cheney will undergo further evaluation on Monday and if required he will have an electric impulse to the heart delivered, which is standard treatment for this diagnosis, Mitchell said. He would be put under sedation.

Update: Cheney got an electrical shock and is okay.

Miss. Senator Trent Lott has announced his intention to resign his Senate seat by the end of this year.

"It's time for us to do something else," Lott said, speaking for himself and his wife Tricia at a news conference. Lott, 66, said he had notified President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour on Sunday about his plans. Barbour, a Republican, will name someone to temporarily replace Lott.

"There are no problems. I feel fine," Lott said.

His term ends in 2012.

He said he doesn't have a new job lined up and that new restrictions on lobbying that take effect after Dec. 31, 2007 "didn't have a big role" in his decision to retire. The regulations extend the "cooling off" period for lobbying by former members of Congress from one to two years.

He may feel fine, but this is awfully short notice. Is there more to the story or is it just about money? Jerome and Todd at MyDD have some details on the replacement process.

Free trade is good. Does anyone disagree? Even "fair traders" agree today. We do not hear about nakedly protectionist domestic content legislation anymore. The "fair traders" argue instead for the need for a "fair playing field" on issues like environmental and labor standards.

But is this new emphasis on equal labor and environmental standards really about anything but protectionism? Is there really an expectation of that countries like Peru, Mexico and the Central American countries (not to mention China and India) will meet US labor and environmental standards? the irony is of course that this would be a form of erstwhile globalization - an attempt to impost US standards on the Thrid World - if it were sincere. It is not. It is just a new way of defending an old idea - protectionism.

I think the evidence of this is obvious - in no other context do we see a drive for higher labor and environmental standards in the Third World. Consider the issue of climate change:

The hot affair between LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and television news reporter Mirthala Salinas is kaput. I'm sure they thought it was true love at the time, but what a price they paid.

Villaraigosa's political standing was affected, and his wife has filed for divorce. Salinas was suspended, then left her job at Telemundo.

Can Villaraigosa recover politically? Or will he always be the Mayor who left his wife for a tv reporter who covered city affairs?

A front page post at Daily Kos declares:

we should honor our vision of a people not acting as selfish individuals, but pursuing individual goals in a broader society bound with a sense of solidarity, a sense of shared benefits and shared sacrifice, the sense that "we’re all in this together" that Michael Tomasky evoked last year when he succinctly declared "The Democrats need to become the party of the common good."

It is true that Tomasky wrote that. But it was at Daily Kos, in my interview with Rep. Jim McDermott, that I first heard the phrase "Common Good." Of course, McDermott has used this phrase prior to that, for example, in this 2004 speech.

Credit for Tomasky for running with McDermott's phrase, but it bothers me no end that he continues to be credited for an articulation that was originated by Jim McDermott. Daily Kos especially should not be furthering that injustice. Give Jim McDermott his due please.

Via Atrios. An interesting phenomenon has emerged - taking on Krugman is not a smart thing for a public pundit to do. First, Krugman is usually right. Second, Krugman does a great job of defending his positions, usually making his critic look foolish (see Brooks, David.) And now a new reason, Krugman's views gets defended by a lot of smart people. Today, Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post discovers this:

Ruth Marcus shows two things in her commentary today, "Krugman vs. Krugman". First, she hasn't a clue about Social Security financing. Second, she has no problem at all presenting a distorted picture to rationalize her clueless position.

. . . [H]ad Ruth Marcus included this quote from Paul Krugman's 2005 piece in her editorial (or quotes from other pieces of the vast amount Krugman has written about Social Security after 2001), it would have changed the interpretation of the quotes she includes in her article. Here, Paul Krugman explains why the future of Social Security was at issue at that time:

Four years ago, I and many other economists urged policymakers to think about the future cost of Social Security benefits, not because we thought there was anything wrong with Social Security itself, but because we regarded the future costs as a compelling reason not to cut taxes even if the overall budget was in surplus.

Keep that quote in mind, i.e. that the worry was that the Bush tax cuts would eat away at the accumulated Social Security surplus, as they did, as you read Ruth Marcus' desperate attempt to justify her doom and gloom about the future of Social Security . . .

MORE.