Wonkette

According to deep background sources (our commenter “Serolf Divad”), the printing-press laborer who wrote that terrific op-ed about Obama being a Muslim Fundamentalist who will piss on the graves of Ground Zero might really be NYT star Bill Kristol. Think about it.

• Michael Scanlon, partner to Jack Abramoff, pleads guilty to conspiring to bribe a lawmaker and other officials as part of a plea deal with prosecutors. [WP, NYT, WSJ, LAT]
• Cheney at the AEI: “Any suggestion that prewar information was distorted, hyped, fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false.” William Kristol: “His numbers have dropped and he is probably not the best messenger to independents and swing voters, but in terms of managing an argument, he is good at it and his style lends itself to it.” [WP, NYT, LAT, WT, USAT]
• Cheney managed to celebrate “debate and criticism while declaring that a key element of that debate — whether the administration exaggerated prewar intelligence about Iraq — is off-limits.” [WP]
• Mongolia thrills Bush: “I’m here on an important international mission. Secretary Rumsfeld asked me to check on his horse.” [NYT, WSJ, , USAT]

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• Attorneys for Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee express “uniform disappointment” with Miers and are “pushing back against her.” Said one lawyer, “Everybody is hoping that something will happen on Miers, either that the president would withdraw her or she would realize she is not up to it and pull out while she has some dignity intact.” [NYT]
• Dobson says Rove assured him that Miers is a conservative evangelical Christian, though Roe v. Wade “was never part of our discussion”; Rove reportedly explained that alternative candidates removed their names “because the process has become so vicious and so vitriolic and so bitter.” [LAT, WT]
• Judith Miller will testify for a second day today; prosecutors are investigating earlier conversations between administration officials and journalists. [WP, NYT, WSJ]
• Laura says criticisms of Miers might be sexist. William Kristol: “It is striking to me they are spending less time explaining the merits of Harriet Miers and more time. . . using liberal talking points to criticize the critics. I think it is going to backfire.” [WP, NYT, WT]
• White House strategy shifts focus to Miers‘ religious credibility. [USAT]
• Bush in New Orleans: “Out of this rubble is going to come some good; out of the devastation is going to come new cities and new hope.” [NYT]
• Milbank on Bush’s “Today” interview: “The president was a blur of blinks, taps, jiggles, pivots and shifts. Bush has always been an active man, but standing with Lauer and the serene, steady first lady, he had the body language of a man wishing urgently to be elsewhere.” [WP]
• DeLay remains a go-to, agenda-setting congressman. [NYT]
• McCain advances his own agenda ahead of the White House and the Republican leadership. McCain: “Do I want to be president? Sure. Do I want to run for president? That’s the question.” [WSJ]

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• Bush nominates Harriet E. Miers to the Supreme Court; seen as “a woman who broke barriers in the male-dominated Texas legal world but brings no judicial experience or constitutional background to her new assignment.” Bush: “I know her heart. I know her character.” [WP, NYT, LAT, WSJ, WT]
• Miers likely to avoid partisan fight. Kristol: “It’s hard to explain why Harriet Miers is the right pick unless you’re trying to avoid a fight about someone who has expressed a conservative constitutional philosophy… it’s demoralizing for the president to pass over a host of publicly identified conservative constitutionalists.” [WP, NYT]
• DeLay is indicted for alleged money laundering; former majority leader says prosecutor “is trying to pull the legal equivalent of a ‘do-over’ since he knows very well that the charges he brought against me last week are totally manufactured and illegitimate.” Punishment for money laundering can be life in prison. [WP, NYT, LAT, WSJ, USAT]
• Many conservatives express skepticism, disappointment about Miers; responses range “from hostility to silence to praise.” [WP, LAT, NYT, WT, USAT, USAT]
• Nomination viewed as “more like a bunt than a bid for a home run,” writes Ron Brownstein. Bush “has no appetite, at a time when he and his party are besieged by problems, for an all-out ideological fight,” suspects Richard Stevenson. [LAT, NYT]
• Critics allege cronyism, the perception of which “is especially risky because it comes at a time when the White House has been accused of putting under-qualified political associates in top positions throughout the government.” [LAT, USAT]

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