On most issues I care about, Hoyer has a far better voting record than Murtha. For example, according to Project VoteSmart, in 2006 Planned Parenthood gave Hoyer a 100 percent rating; Murtha got 0. That's pretty stark. Nearly always, that would be the end of the argument for me. And given the fact that Murtha is under an ethics cloud, one would think Hoyer would be a better choice for House Majority Leader.

And he might be, except for two issues -- Iraq and corporatism. Hoyer has undermined efforts by the Dems to form a united front against Bush's War. He also has uncomfortably close ties to big business and K Street lobbyists; last year he split with Pelosi on free-trade votes and on bankruptcy reform.

Recent U.S. intelligence analyses of North Korea's nuclear and missile programs were flawed and the lack of clarity on the issue hampered U.S. diplomatic efforts to avert the underground blast detected Sunday, according to Bush administration officials....

...The analyses in question included a National Intelligence Estimate a consensus report of all U.S. spy agencies produced several months ago and at least two other classified reports on North Korea produced by senior officials within the office of the Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday accused Bill Clinton of making "flatly false" claims that the Bush administration didn't lift a finger to stop terrorism before the 9/11
Rice hammered Clinton, who leveled his charges in a contentious weekend interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News Channel, for his claims that the Bush administration "did not try" to kill Osama bin Laden in the eight months they controlled the White House before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Malkin says progressives booed Hillary Clinton because she asked them to support the troops. And it's true that if you play the clip she linked to, you can hear people starting to boo when  talks about the troops -- something to the effect that the troops are the best we have -- but then the clip cuts off suddenly.

What Malkin cuts off is that people were shouting "BRING THEM HOME!"  

This spells trouble -- not for Bush or, in 2008, the next GOP presidential candidate, but for Democrats. The anger festering on the Democratic left will be taken out on the Democratic middle. (Watch out, Hillary!) I have seen this anger before -- back in the Vietnam War era. That's when the antiwar wing of the Democratic Party helped elect Richard Nixon. In this way, they managed to prolong the very war they so hated.

How soon they forget. Back in December 2004, Cohen was complaining that the righties were being mean to him.

Ah-HAH, you say. The immigration marches just showed you. Why can't antiwar marches get the same respect?

Good question. And I believe I have an answer.

The story thus far: This week the Office of the Director of National Intelligence began to release documents it says were captured in postwar Afghanistan and Iraq. Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard writes about this here. He and Michael Barone have been hyping these documents for the past several weeks as the potential "proof" of an Al Qaeda-Saddam Hussein link.

Yesterday John Hinderacker of Power Line published a post called "In Saddam's Archives" in which he links to and discusses one of these documents, posted on the Foreign Military Studies Office web site as "CMPC-2003-006430." And here is that document as posted on the FMSO site [PDF].

Is a fake staged photo fit to print? What if it staged in a way that makes the US forces fighting the War on Terror look cruel and ineffective? The evidence argues that yes, it can run, and in a prominent position - at least in the case of the New York Times website.

I did some detective work and learned more about where the fake staged photo came from. But first let's let Mr. Lifson rant for a while about media bias.

"[Y]ou really need to get yourself Women Who Make the World Worse to see how we got to the point where we're deploying moms to Iraq," sniffs Lopez, referring to a new book by celebrated right-wing airhead Kate O'Beirne. Lopez links to an interview with O'Beirne, who calls women serving in war zones "a disgrace."

The Mom at War is Master Sgt. Angela Hull, Anne Hull's sister-in-law.  Anne Hull writes,

Judd at Think Progress debunks the Hunt article here, but doesn't mention Ames specifically.

But this document from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence clearly says that the search of Ames's home and office was conducted in compliance with FISA --

"Under applicable Attorney General guidelines, this meant that the FBI was able to seek authority under pertinent laws and Justice Department guidelines to employ a full array of investigative techniques against Ames. For instance, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court issued orders authorizing electronic surveillance of Ames's office and residence."

It also says "The facts contained in the affidavit supporting the arrest and search warrants were summarized by representatives of the FBI."

The "something" was getting UN weapons inspectors back into Iraq. As a result of George W. Bush's saber rattling, in September 2002 Saddam Hussein had agreed to allow inspections for the first time since 1998. In August 1998 Saddam Hussein suspended cooperation with the weapons inspection teams. The inspectors left the country in December 1998 hours before the United States and United Kingdom began three days of air strikes.

In our current argument about whether "everybody was wrong" about Saddam Hussein's WMDs, there's hardly ever a mention of the weapons inspections. Considering that the UN inspectors were the ones with the most up-to-date information at the time of the invasion in March 2003, I think it's important to look at what the UN believed in the run-up to the war..

And the fact is that the UN didn't agree with Bush at all.

With no qualms about wasting taxpayer money, Harris County Assistant District Attorney Alan Curry said the case would be retried if Yates's attorney won't settle for a plea bargain.

Andrea Yates has remained in prison since the lower court overturned her conviction in January. Essentially, Yates's attorney figured that since the massively psychotic Yates is receiving psychiatric medical treatment in prison, she might as well be there as anywhere else.

I wouldn't be surprised if the husband and attorney agree to a plea bargain, in fact, because it is unlikely Yates will ever be well enough to be set free, and a trial would just be unnecessary stress as well as cost. Also, they have good reason to want her to stay in prison, explained at the end of this post. But a humane justice system would not have tried her in the first place.

This doesn't mean I trust him not to mess with Roe v. Wade, but please pass this along to the righties. Let it mess with their heads.

The case was Planned Parenthood of Central New Jersey v. Farmer. I just found this and I need to read it through to understand exactly what the problems were with this law, but here is Alito's concurrence with the decision (note the phrase, "our responsibility as a lower court):

   "I told the people on the campaign trail that I'll pick somebody who knows the difference between personal opinion and the strict interpretation of the law. You might have heard that several times. I meant what I said." -- George W. Bush

    "For now, I'll sit the Miers fight out until I know with some certainty that she's a vote for our values." -- Gary Bauer

We've known for a long time the "interpretation of the law" speech is hooey. During the Terri Schiavo episode the social conservatives made it clear they have no regard whatsoever for the constitution, federalism, separation of powers, or the rule of law. They want what they want, period, even if they have to pull on their jack boots and stomp all over democratic principles to get it.

And we've known for a long time that rightie claims of wanting judges who "don't legislate from the bench" is also hooey. Adam Cohen wrote in the New York Times (April 19, 205),

She's a great representative for the forces of sanity and says if Bush doesn't meet with her this August, she's going to take the vigil to the White House. Yes!

As Republicans were saying repeatedly - captured on Lexis-Nexis for a year before it showed up in a Frank Luntz talking-points memo in 2004 - the savages have declared war, and it's far preferable to fight them in the streets of Baghdad than in the streets of New York (where the residents would immediately surrender).

I want everyone to send Ann a sincere invitation to come to Manhattan and repeat those words, somewhere near Ground Zero.

Yet Bush will not speak with Sheehan, even though this would be an easy "fix" for the problem.

Other news sources say that Bush won't meet with Sheehan because he already met with her once before, last year. In other words, he's standing on some weird "principle" that there is a limit on how much time he owes the mother of a soldier. But historical precedent says otherwise.

I wrote on May 28--

The Moonie Times published a UPI report that King Fahd of Saudi Arabia is dead, although the rest of the news media around the globe say he is hospitalzed and gravely ill, possibly with pneumonia, but still alive. In fact, UPI itself, on its own web site, is going with the "hospitalized with pneumonia" story as I keyboard. I assume the story published in the MT is an earlier one that has been retracted.