I too was shocked by the 97-0 vote on Lieberman's war-mongering amendment. I would urge everyone to contact both Senators from your home state and send them a copy of the LA Times article from yesterday which points out that the largest percentage of foreign fighters in Iraq comes from Saudi Arabia. Iran didn't even make the top five:

About 45% of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and security forces are from Saudi Arabia; 15% are from Syria and Lebanon; and 10% are from North Africa, according to official U.S. military figures made available to The Times by the senior officer.

http://tinyurl.com/25r6pp

Armed with the facts of this report, we need to urge the Senate to repeal the Iran amendment and spend some time looking into the actions of our "allies" in the Middle East, especially the Saudis who seem to export the deadliest terrorists to Iraq (and the US) and the Pakistanis, who provide a safe haven for Osama bin Laden by withdrawing forces from the border regions.

On a separate note, can Glenn or a commenter shed some light on the apparent nuclear proliferation breakthroughs with North Korea shutting down its reactor and Iran making moves toward inspection? I suppose Iran could be partially explained given the reception Lieberman's amendment got in the Senate and the overall batsh*t crazy behavior by the Bushies putting Iran at the top of their list. North Korea, however, hasn't been a particular object of scorn recently, so is it possible they were simply done in by the "quaint" process of sanctions?

I just don't have the stomach to watch Faux News, so I don't know how common this is, but the transcript Glenn provides is truly capable of inducing severe porcelain worship. In a courtroom, Hannity would be shut down very quickly for "leading the witness".

Was Sean concerned that Rudy hadn't done all of his homework on the talking points? In this exchange, Hannity speaks five times. There are two question marks. One is the hopeless "Have the Democrats become the party of surrender in the war?" and falls into the the other "questions" which are merely other RWNM talking points he lists for Rudy to expand upon. The only "open-ended" question, "But how would you deal with that if you're president?" is merely asking for further expansion on the party of surrender comments.

Bottom line--Rudy can't be trusted to make real comments or answer real questions, he can only be brought out as an attack mannequin.

His column in the Miami Herald from yesterday (not run in my local paper until today), has this:

It's official: Charlie Crist is the un-Jeb.

''We're on this planet together, so we should work to protect it,'' he told The St. Petersburg Times, ``and Florida ought to be a leader in that.''

That kind of Gore-speak is heresy to some hard-liners in the GOP, but they're missing the big picture. Regardless of party affiliation, people want their children and grandchildren to have breathable air and drinkable water -- and they'll support candidates who feel the same way.

The Republicans will never rebound nationally without moderates such as Crist and California's Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a featured speaker at the two-day summit in Miami.

Carl has always come from an incredibly strong environmental position, so I suppose he can be forgiven some excitement over Crist suddenly discovering the environment.

Another point Crist has discovered is the concept of open government. Florida has had the tradition of "Government in the Sunshine", but Jeb spent a lot of time and effort fighting this tradition. Crist announced the formation of the Office of Open Government prior to his inauguration (http://www.sptimes.com/2006/12/13/State/Crist__Sunshine_Law_i.shtml).

However, lest anyone decide that at least one Republican has returned to the land of reality, rest assured that Charlie is right in the middle of our lovely state's efforts to commit revenue suicide by gutting the property tax in a state that has no income tax (http://www.sptimes.com/2007/06/23/State/Support_for_tax_refer.shtml).

So while Hiaasen sees some hope for Republicans rediscovering the environment and others of us welcome Crist's rediscovery of open government, the nearly thirty year Republican devotion to voodoo economics lives on, even among the party's newly found "moderates".

Writing today in the Washington Post, Mohsin Hamid, who was born in Pakistan but lived in the US from ages 3 to 9 and then moved back to Pakistan in 1980 to experience the US's support of jihad against the Soviets, summarizes the current situation in the Middle East very clearly:

The challenge that the United States faces today boils down to a choice. It can insist on its primacy as a superpower, or it can accept the universality of its values. If it chooses the former, it will heighten the resentment of foreigners and increase the likelihood of visiting disaster upon distant populations -- and vice versa. If it chooses the latter, it will discover something it appears to have forgotten: that the world is full of potential allies.

Clearly, in his mindless support of the Bush plan du Jour, Bond is far removed from those universal values Hamid describes.

Patrick Fitzgerald had copies of Rove's email in the Plame leak investigation. Shouldn't those copies still exist? The timeline may end too soon for some of the juiciest bits, but you can bet ol' Turdblossom has been working the attorney case a long, long time in conjunction with his "voter fraud" work.

Of course, the other place to look for the emails is with our friends in DOJ who are capturing everything on the intertubes.