Wonkette

• Ed Peck, chief of the U.S. mission to Iraq under Jimmy Carter, defends Hezbollah. [Hot Air]
• Talking Points Memo launches new sub-site called Election Central. [TPM's Election Central]
• CNN this AM: “In keeping with her mood and to reflect the world crises she tackles daily, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice plans to play a somber piece of music to her Asian colleagues in Malaysia this week. ‘It is not a time that is frivolous. It is a serious time. I will play something that is in accordance with my serious mood,’ said Rice, who had just attended a conference in Rome aimed at helping resolve the Lebanon crisis.” [Crooks and Liars]
• “‘Malice’ has several definitions, but the legal definition that applies to homicide is ‘the intention or desire to cause harm to another through an unlawful or wrongful act without justification or excuse.’ It’s intent that’s at issue here, not evil motives. And there’s no question that doctors who perform abortions or harvest stem cells have intent aplenty.” [Political Animal]

• New bipartisan congressional report shows that the Homeland Security Department abuses no-bid deals, poorly trains managers. “32 Homeland Security Department contracts worth a total of $34 billion have ‘experienced significant overcharges, wasteful spending, or mismanagement.’” [WP]

• Bush’s draft bill for putting terror-detainees on trial excludes defendants from their own legal proceedings, unlike Rwanda and Yugoslav tribunals. [NYT]
• Bush presses Senate Foreign Relations committee to make U.N. Ambassador John R. Bolton permanent. [WP]
• In NSA Senate testimony yesterday, civil liberties advocate James X. Dempsey said “he would prefer to see no legislation at all, allowing the National Security Agency to continue wiretapping Americans without warrants, than Congressional approval of procedures outside the scope of the 1978 law that created the secret court.” [NYT]
• Rice: “I am a student of history, so perhaps I have a little bit more patience with the enormous change in the international system and the complete shifting of tectonic plates, and I don’t expect it to happen in a few days or even a year,” [USAT]

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