by Last Night in Little Rock

I was in Chicago doing a CLE for the Federal Defenders of Northern and Central Illinois and the Illinois Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers on computer searches. I was picked up Thursday night by a friend in Chicago on the NACDL Board who took me out for real Chicago pizza. The conversation: Chicago politics. Always fascinating. It ran the gamit from the former Governor Ryan trial (not going well for the Government) to Mayor Dailey tearing up the downtown airport runway in violation of a court order in the name of national security, to Barack Obama and Keyes ("inevitable Obama"; when will Obama run for President? '12?), what the 2005 gubernatorial races mean for Republicans, to 2006 for Illinois Republicans.

And this bombshell: The only Republican that stands out in Illinois is Patrick Fitzgerald, because of what he is doing in Washington.

Does Fitzgerald have any political ambition? I doubt it. He wouldn't have taken on the Special Counsel's job if he did. If there are rumors of his political viability, it is the people saying it, not him, and not his handlers, because he doesn't have any handlers.

by TChris

Not funny:

"Today when most of the country thinks of who controls Massachusetts, I think the modern-day KKK comes to mind - the Kennedy-Kerry Klan."

Gerald Walpin, a Federalist Society board member, made the remark while introducing Gov. Mitt Romney. Although Romney “laughed along with the audience and thanked Walpin for ‘a very generous introduction,’” Romney later came to his senses, acknowledging in a press interview that the comments were "ill-advised":

"It's not appropriate to joke about the Ku Klux Klan," Romney said.

No kidding.

The New York Times reports that White House staffers think Karl Rove is not going to be indicted because he's back to his normal self, down to the spring in his step.

Rove gave his lecture at the Federalist society tonight. Not surpisingly, his theme was the need to stop what he called "judicial imperialism."

Among the decisions he criticized: a Supreme Court ruling that forbade the death penalty for murderers under 18, saying it "ignored the fact that at the time, the peoples' representatives in 20 states had permitted the death penalty for killers under 18."

In a week in which we have seen the Bush Administration pressure Congress to (1) exempt the CIA from an anti-torture amendment, (2) overrule a Supreme Court decision allowing those declared enemy combatents solely on the word of the Executive branch to challenge their detention in court; and (3) increase the power of the FBI to spy on Americans and others without judicial oversight or accountability to Congress, this hardly seems like a recipe for success.

A new Wall St. Journal- NBC poll (free link)shows Bush's ratings have slipped to their lowest level yet.

Just 38% of Americans now approve Bush's job performance, while 57% disapprove, the poll shows....Fully 79% of respondents call the case "a serious matter." Americans now view Vice President Dick Cheney negatively 49%-27%, his worst-ever showing and a significant deterioration since January....53% of Americans overall, including 23% of Republicans, say he is facing a longer-term setback "from which things are unlikely to get better."

....Nearly six in 10 Americans say they believe President Bush "deliberately misled people" about the case for war to oust Saddam Hussein from power. A comparable number say it's time to reduce the level of U.S. troops there.

What can Bush do about it? I think the first thing he has to do is clean house. Libby's resignation is not going to be enough. Bush has to prove to Republicans that he is still a leader by delivering the honor and ethics in his Administration he promised voters when he ran for re-election.

Who will go first? My money's on Karl Rove.

It looks like President Bush officially begins his lame duck status this morning.

The New York Times:

...everyone from political consultants to the leaders of countries in the remote corners of Asia and Africa are going to assume the same thing from the results of yesterday's balloting: Mr. Bush's political capital has turned into a deficit.....

The issue right now is a national fear that the White House has no plan, and no capacity to carry one out even if it existed.

Associated Press:

by TChris

The teaching of science in Kansas is no longer dictated by science. Responding to demands that science classes reflect religious belief in addition to conclusions drawn from scientific evidence, the Kansas Board of Education voted to require science teachers to tell high school students "that aspects of widely accepted evolutionary theory are controversial." That the controversy was created by religious groups, not from any debate raging within the scientific community, doesn't seem to matter. The first fact that teachers impart to students in compliance with the directive should be this: the "controvery" is grounded in politics, not science.

Some Board members were realistic about the image the Board created of Kansas:

by TChris

Golden rule days:

President George W. Bush's chief of staff Andrew Card and other top White House officials started attending classes on ethics and the handling of classified information on Tuesday in response to the indictment of a top aide in the CIA leak investigation.

Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, was expected to attend one of the classes scheduled for Wednesday.

Cheney's new chief of staff, David Addington, was also scheduled to attend, the White House said.

Bush and Cheney seem to be cutting class.

James Carroll does an excellent job of eviscerating Dick Cheney in today's Boston Globe.

At world-shaping moments across a generation, Cheney reacted with an instinctive, This is war! He helped turn the War on Poverty into a war on the poor. He helped keep the Cold War going longer than it had to, and when it ended (because of initiatives taken by the other side), Cheney refused to believe it. To keep the US war machine up and running, he found a new justification just in time. With Gulf War I, Cheney ignited Osama bin Laden's burning purpose. Responding to 9/11, Cheney fulfilled bin Laden's purpose by joining him in the war-of-civilizations. Iraq, therefore (including the prewar deceit for which Scooter Libby takes the fall), is simply the last link in the chain of disaster which is the public career of Richard Cheney.

[Via Atrios, who also points us to this excellent Digby post.]

Because this vicious attack on a Senate Staffer may be work related, the FBI has joined the investigation:

The FBI and Capitol Police are investigating the vicious attack of a top Senate staffer at her home last week amid concerns that the assault might be related to her work on the Finance Committee.

Emilia DiSanto, chief investigator for committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), arrived at her suburban Virginia home after work Wednesday about 6:30 p.m. As she was unloading belongings from her car, a 6-foot-1-inch white man dressed in black struck her repeatedly with an unidentified object believed to be a baseball bat.

Did you know that Rudy Guiliani's law firm is representing Tom DeLay -- and that it has received more money from DeLay's legal defense fund than Dick DeGuerin, who is DeLay's lawyer in the criminal case? According to the Houston Chronicle:

Dick DeGuerin, DeLay's lawyer in that case, was paid $25,000 from the fund in the past three months.

Other attorneys and law firms received $235,000 during the same period, with the largest share, $100,000, going to the Houston law firm of Bracewell & Giuliani. The payments to Bracewell & Giuliani, which has offices in several cities and a lobbying component in Washington, triggered conflict of interest protests from a public interest group.

John Amato of Crooks and Liars has posted his interview Gen. Wesley Clark recorded last week. It focuses on torture and the moral high ground. Here's a partial transcript.

by TChris

President Bush was greeted by protestors when he arrived in Argentina to attend the Summit of the Americas.

Around 10,000 protesters chanted "Get out Bush!" today on the streets of the Argentinean resort which is hosting the Summit of the Americas. Celebrities including the Argentinean soccer legend Diego Maradona are among the demonstrators who have gathered at the resort of Mar Del Plata, where the two-day summit starts later today.