I agree.

Did anyone catch Bill Clinton's interview last month on what he'd be like as First Gentleman?

From the interview with CNBC's Maria Bartiromo:

Bartiromo: Can you compare yourself to any other first partner or first lady as it would be?

Clinton: Not exactly. Because I was president it will be different. But I don't think will be any different in some ways then she or Eleanor Roosevelt. They both went over the world there were the two most-active ones I think. But in the sense that they didn't make policy, they just give their advice when they were asked for I think that is what I should do. But I can probably do more to help simply because of the life that I have had.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/20997452/site/14081545/page/3/

Brownback is actually out of the mainstream (and definitely out of the Republican mainstream) on Iraq. He's campaigned with Joe Biden to back proposals for partitioning Iraq but retaining a smaller, decentralized government. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) also backs this plan.

But he waffles (at best) on the death penalty:

I believe America must establish a culture of life. If use of the death penalty is contrary to promoting a culture of life, we need to have a national dialogue and hear both sides of the issue.

What? Executing a person is most certainly taking a life. And even the notion that it saves other lives doesn't hold because Brownback is against embryonic stem-cell research that could save other lives because it destroys a life. So, to be more specific, Brownback is concerned with protecting innocent life in all of its stages.

And maybe not even that: he's voted to limit appeals for death row inmates. Heaven forbid we should do everything we can to keep from executing an innocent person.

In any event, the chances of Giuliani getting Brownback's endorsement are about as good as Brownback getting pregnant out of wedlock and aborting it to harvest embryonic stem cells.

Was that too much?

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http://brownback.senate.gov/pressapp/record.cfm?id=251041

http://www.ontheissues.org/Domestic/Sam_Brownback_Crime.htm

I could believe Craig didn't contact his lawyer.

He worked with Billy Martin (one of the top lawyers in DC) when he wanted to deal with the already-public issue of the articles in the Idaho Statesman. But once he got in trouble again, he wanted to keep it as quite as possible (hence the guilty plea). Once the story became public, he contacted his power-lawyer again to help him withdraw his guilty plea.

[snark]If nothing else, Larry Craig is a man of discretion.[/snark]

Aside: Billy Martin also represents Michael Vick. Can you imagine what a dinner party with all of Martin's clients would be like?

Well said.

Just my own addenda: Brownback was raised Methodist, became more evangelical over the past decade (when he discovered a melanoma) and converted to Catholicism in 2002. He joined through an Opus Dei priest but is not himself a member.

Brownback is not a mainstream Catholic but is, rather, part of the growing coalition of super conservative Catholics that work with Evangelicals.

On a related note, I really don't get this Catholic-Evangelical marriage. Evangelicals are all about the direct connection with God and reading the Bible directly, whereas hierarchy and intermediaries are more the Catholic way (in the broadest sense).

Shays wants us out of Iraq as soon as possible.

• He introduced HR 1837 to push the President for dates certain for withdrawal.
• He introduced HR 3178 to limit deployment tours for Reservists.
• He voted for HR 3159 to give soldiers more time home between deployments.
• He proposed a bill amendment for combat troop withdrawal by December 2008, but "regretfully, the Democrat-controlled Congress -- like the Republican-controlled Congress before it -- did not allow any amendments."

Chris Shays is frustrated with Congressional Democrats. But he was and is frustrated by Congressional Republicans, too. Shays is not the enemy. He's the sort of bi-partisan leaning Republican that Democrats need to end the war.

Note: but Shays totally distorted/misremembered Clyburn's words.

http://www.house.gov/shays/hot/Iraq/index.htm

I will however say that the man walks hand in hand with W on humane treatment of the English language.

I'm still chuckling. I keep imagining some sort of humanitarian aid foundation or the ASPCA for "humane treatment of the English language."

I hope you didn't take my "Before we villify Shays completely..." as a dig at you. I started typing before I even saw your post. I intended it more as pre-emptive "Shays is a Moderate not a Right-Wing Devil" type of posting.

And this is bizarre and wrong: "Now I've seen what happened in Abu Ghraib, and Abu Ghraib was not torture. It was outrageous, outrageous involvement of National Guard troops from (Maryland) who were involved in a sex ring and they took pictures of soldiers who were naked. And they did other things that were just outrageous. But it wasn't torture." Uh, perhaps not torture for the sake of getting information. Just torture and sexual humiliation for its own sake.

On the issue of flip-flopping for political gain: That's pretty much what Arnold Schwarznegger has done in California, and it's been working pretty well for the state. One person's flip-flop is another person's "fulfilling the will of the people." I guess it's largely about how you present yourself and if you're just talk or actually implement policies.

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http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8KNQR8G0&show_article=1

Uh, don't FEMA staffers have something else they should be doing besides playing reporter?

This is grotesque. If FEMA merely wanted to address the questions they'd already gotten from numerous reporters (as they hint at), they didn't need to plant their own "reporters." They could merely have said, "we've been asked these questions repeatedly thus far and here are the answers."

Oh, FEMA, as competent as ever. Or, sadly, more competent now than it's been the entire Bush Administration.