Because god knows he’s got no other “soapbox” — plus, he controls the world’s largest military — the Los Angeles Times follows up its “Look, we’ve almost grown a pair!” anti-Rummy editorial with a … guest editorial by Rumsfeld himself. MORE »

One problem in America is that we just don’t respect the elderly and insane the way we used to do, back in … the ’80s or whenever. MORE »

* White House shake-up is directed at the midterm elections; Bolten is following a five-point plan that includes an “extremely visible enforcement crackdown at the Mexican border.” Bush advisor: “If we don’t keep Congress, there won’t be a legacy.” [Time]
* Osama Bin Laden releases new audio tape; analyst says intention is to provide a global posture for al Qaeda: “Bin Laden is a master craftsman at recognizing issues and knowing how to exploit these issues for his own purposes. He’s trying to enlarge the global conflict and is trying to incite and anger the Muslim world against the West.” [WP]
* Eight American troops have been killed over the past two days in Iraq; April will likely be the deadliest month this year. [AP]
* West Wing is said to feel “really weird right now” because “people are worried about their jobs,” says a senior official; aides “are on edge.” Mark McKinnon: “Karl has more bandwidth than anyone on the planet, but with the elections coming up, we have to make sure he has the time to concentrate on the big message.” Nicole Wallace on Bolten: “It was nice to cut right to the chase. He set a very honest and direct tone. It was kind of, ‘We’re going to get through all this together, and we need to step it up.’” [Newsweek, NYT]
* White turnout in the New Orleans mayoral election was double the norm; Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu could be the city’s first white mayor in nearly three decades. [NYT, WP]
* CIA is cracking down on leaks by subjecting dozens of employees to polygraph tests; top Democrats suggest a double standard exists about leaking for political purposes. [NYT, WP]
* Los Angeles Times editorial board calls for Bush to boot Cheney: “Having changed his tune, the president should also think about changing the company he keeps — big time, as Dick Cheney would say.” [LAT]

MORE »

They did that while fisking him. Then they blogrolled him onto his stomach, and pinged him so hard, he couldn’t walk right for a week… MORE »

Word comes via e-mail today that the White House press corps is losing two favorites, Ed Chen and Warren Vieth. We hear the L.A. Times hasn

LAT runs down Duke Cunningham’s lavish lifestyle. Lavish, alternative lifestyle. The Air Force Navy veteran apparently underwent a kind of, uhm, change at some point: “Personally, his taste ran to country music and cowboy novels — which made the French antiques and Oriental rugs he took from contractors seem anomalous.” Anomalous? We think the Washington Post was more on target: Duke had “surprisingly delicate taste.” Gay taste. And, well, perhaps there’s was an element of protesting-too-much when he derided the Dems for being the ones who let “homos into the military,” let alone entertaining ladies on the Duke-stir boat all Ron Burgundy-style. The Washington Blade contends that if it walks and talks like a Duke, it’s a Duke. The paper reports that Cunningham outed himself to HRC prez Elizabeth Birch, telling her once that he’d “loved men” — on and off the battlefield. Well, he does cry like a girl.

[Lenny Ignelzi]

Cunningham’s Fall From Grace, Power [LAT]
Duke’s House of cards [Washington Blade]
Birch denies speech outed anti-gay congressman [Washington Blade]
EARLIER: Cunningham’s Gifts [Wonkette]

The LA Times today exposed U.S. military operation that pays Iraqi newspapers to run stories written by “information operations” troops about how wonderful things are going. All together now: Talk about your American-style democracy. What bothers us isn’t even that this manipulation of the press runs counter to the whole establishing-a-free-society objective that men and women are dying for — it’s that, as with the rest of the war, it doesn’t seem to be working out very well. According to the LAT, one of the advertorials placed by the military was entitled “Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism.” That is what you call your low bar. What were the competing stories? “BREAKING: Suicide Limited to Suicide Bombers.” Maybe, “Death Just One of Many Options for Iraqis.” I know: “Here, Have a Plastic Turkey on Us.” Is it propaganda if it’s as depressing as the news? MORE »

From this afternoon’s Los Angeles Times (click for full page):

The LA Times reports that Scooter Libby was epically obsessed with Joseph Wilson. Monitored his every media appearance. Encouraged the White House to “mount an aggressive public campaign against him.” And, in a particularly chilling instance of malicious fixation, “dictated the format for internal memos [regarding Wilson], including that paragraphs be indented.” MORE »

We’re sure Hotline didn’t mean anything by it, but we know the first thing that came to mind this morning upon reading these two items in a row:

• SCOTUS nominee John Roberts “conceded” he should have said he was registered to lobby on behalf of the cosmetics industry in the questionnaire he submitted to the Senate (Newsday). MORE »