RESTORING HONOR AND DIGNITY....About a year ago, Paul Mirengoff at Powerline admitted to having a poor memory. "I may be missing someone," Mirengoff said, "but the only high-profile administration offical [sic] I can think of who has faced criminal charges or had to resign in the face of scandal is Scooter Libby, who worked for the Vice President and who is not accused of corruption."

This, of course, prompted my friends at TPM to put together a handy, dandy list of all the administration officials who have faced credible accusations of corruption; and/or resigned in the midst of a scandal.

Of course, that was a whole year ago, and there have been plenty of scandals since. Fortunately, Paul Kiel has released a revised version.

Since a complete catalog of administration officials who've been accused of some form of corruption or abuse of power would be endless, we tried to maintain a high standard for inclusion. Most of those below were the subjects of criminal probes, but we also included officials who were credibly accused of acts that, if not criminal, were a corruption of office (like the U.S. attorney scandal). And even then, such officials were only included if their accusers had them dead to rights (which is why Karl Rove didn't make the cut). We also limited ourselves to officials who were either political appointees or whose actions were so political that they were effectively political appointees (like John Tanner).

It's quite a list, broken up by categories: "Indicted/Convicted/Pled Guilty" (10 Bush administration officials); "Resigned Due to Investigation, Pending Investigation or Allegations of Impropriety" (24 officials); Nomination Failed Due to Scandal (five officials); and "Under Investigation But Still in Office" (three officials).

Not too long ago, it was George W. Bush who promised Americans, "We will ask not only what is legal, but what is right; not what the lawyers allow, but what the public deserves." It was part of his vow to "restore honor and dignity" to the White House.

In retrospect, his assurances are almost quaint.

MCCAIN'S LOBBYIST ARMY....John McCain's website tells visitors, "Too often the special interest lobbyists with the fattest wallets and best access carry the day." It sounds like a compelling sentiment from a one-time reformer, and might even be impressive, just so long as you don't peek behind the curtain.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) took a break from the presidential campaign trail in March to fly to a posh Utah ski resort, where he mingled with hundreds of top corporate executives assembled by J.P. Morgan Chase for its annual leadership conference.

McCain's appearance at the Deer Valley event, arranged by J.P. Morgan Vice Chairman James B. Lee Jr., a top McCain fundraiser, put him in a room with the chief executives of companies such as General Electric, Xerox and Sony. It was, Lee said, "a chance for him to let them see him for who he is and possibly decide to support him." The effort paid off: J.P. Morgan executives have donated $56,250 to McCain's campaign, two-thirds of which came after his Utah appearance. And his visit there was quickly followed up by dozens of smaller private meetings with corporate executives in New York City arranged by leading Wall Street figures. [...]

As a presidential candidate this year, McCain has found himself assiduously courting both lobbyists and their wealthy clients, offering them private audiences as part of his fundraising. He also counts more than 30 lobbyists among his chief fundraisers, more than any other presidential contender.

It's certainly an awkward disconnect, isn't it? McCain is a "reformer," who rails against "special interests" and their "undue influence." Ever since that Keating 5 unpleasantness a while back, McCain has positioned himself as the Republicans' leading advocate of campaign-finance reform, denouncing colleagues who offer special access to donors in order to fill their campaign coffers.

And yet, there's McCain, giving powerful corporate lobbyists and their clients high-priced private schmooze sessions at exclusive retreats.

For that matter, let's also not forget that McCain not only surrounds himself with lobbyist fundraisers; he's also surrounded himself with more lobbyist staffers than any other candidate -- and more than most of the field combined.

If McCain's persona was in line with his conduct, he'd probably be a more impressive candidate.

HUCKABEE'S MELTDOWN?....I wasn't planning to do yet another post about Mike Huckabee, but this one's too good to pass up.

There's been quite a bit of buzz today about Huckabee unveiling an important, hard-hitting ad at an Iowa press conference, which ostensibly would curtail Mitt Romney's momentum in the closing days before the caucuses.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the smackdown. Marc Cooper reports from Des Moines:

In what is likely to be remembered as one of the more bizarre moments of this campaign season, embattled GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee renounced negative campaigning today by unveiling an attack ad to a ballroom full of reporters and dozens of TV cameras.

Standing before a banner reading "Enough is Enough" and flanked by five large charts attacking the record of rival Mitt Romney, a haggard-looking Huckabee said that the fight to win Thursday's Republican caucus had gotten "out of hand" and "out of control" and that he would refrain from any more negative campaigning.

Huckabee told the assembled crowd of reporters, which I've been told was pretty big, that he and his campaign had already finished the attack ad, sent it local TV stations, and announced the press conference to unveil it ... and then Huckabee had an epiphany. "From now we will run only ads that say why I should be president not why Mitt Romney shouldn't be president," he said.

At which point, Huckabee showed the reporters the attack ad anyway, prompting what Cooper said was "loud gasps and laughter from the more than 150 reporters on hand."

Marc Ambinder noted that Huckabee is presumably "hoping that gullible news executives will run the ad that Huckabee is too much of a saint for not airing -- for free." Of course, given the reported laughter in the room, that seems unlikely.

We've all seen some very cheap stunts over the years, but they're not usually this cheap and not this transparent. Reporters covering the campaign aren't idiots, and Huckabee just insulted their intelligence.

Joe Klein concluded, "That sound you hear rumbling out of Des Moines appears to be a monumental implosion."

OBAMA AND 'RE-BRANDING'....This came up quite a bit a couple of weeks ago, after the annoying Bob Kerrey brouhaha, but it's also been a part of the campaign debate for months: would Barack Obama's ethnic and racial background help improve the United States' image internationally, if he's elected?

Reza Aslan argues that the "chattering classes" who are encouraged by Obama's potential impact around the world are mistaken.

[I]n the words of the French foreign policy analyst Dominique Moisi, "The very moment he appears on the world's television screens, victorious and smiling, America's image and soft power would experience something like a Copernican revolution."

As someone who once was that young Muslim boy everyone seems to be imagining (albeit in Iran rather than Egypt), I'll let you in on a secret: He could not care less who the president of the United States is.

Aslan's point seems incontrovertible: U.S. critics internationally care about the president's policies, not the president's ethnicity. If there's a competition between image and substance, the result isn't even close. "That is how the post-Bush 'war on terror' must be handled," Aslan wrote. "Not by 're-branding' the mess George W. Bush has made, but by actually fixing it."

And while this is obviously true, I think there are a couple of angles to this that make Aslan's thesis less persuasive.

First, Aslan argued from personal experience, growing up in Iran, that a young Muslim critic of the United States living in the Middle East "couldn't name three U.S. presidents if he tried." But I'm curious, hasn't the proliferation of the modern media changed this equation a bit from Aslan's youth?

I'm reminded of this recent piece from Slate's Fred Kaplan, who encouraged readers to send him suggestions for improving America's reputation on the global stage. Most of the responses came from foreigners or from Americans living abroad, and this was the most common recommendation:

Several readers emphasize that many foreigners, even those with high levels of education, have no concept of American life. They don't know that most Americans are religious people. They don't know that most of us aren't wildly rich. They're skeptical of reports that many black people live here -- or dismiss them as not "real Americans."....And so the most prominent suggestion on how to improve America's face in the world -- a suggestion made by well over half of those who wrote me -- is to send the world more American faces and to bring more of the world's faces into America.

....An American exchange student in Jordan writes of the foreigners he's met: "Once they see Americans -- blacks, Jews, Asians, and 'real' Americans, as they call blonde-haired Caucasians -- and hear their diverse opinions on issues from the War in Iraq to pop music, then people realize how much diversity there is in our country."

Are we to believe, given this, that electing a black man as president of the United States would have no effect on international perceptions? Granted, this would not exactly produce "epiphanies" for jihadists throughout the region -- but no one's saying it would. We're just talking about a modest step towards improving the nation's reputation, in the context of "soft power," not "hard power."

Second, Aslan's argument seems to be criticism of Obama, but it need not be. As far as I can tell, Obama has never said that his background would improve America's standing in the world. Indeed, Aslan's piece didn't cite any examples -- it instead criticized Andrew Sullivan and the Boston Globe's editorial board for making the arguments.

I've been watching Obama pretty closely for a year, and he's not talking about "re-branding"; he's been fairly specific about policy -- in several speeches and in his Foreign Affairs article -- detailing how he would change (read: improve) U.S. foreign policy. One can agree or disagree with his vision, but Aslan's criticism seems to be directed at Obama supporters, not Obama himself.

I think the point Obama backers have tried to make in this discussion is that his background might help, and that seems to be a fair point. It's not the be-all, end-all to a successful counter-terrorism campaign; it won't end al Qaeda recruiting; and it won't suddenly make the United States popular in the Middle East. The impact, in all likelihood, would be modest.

But it'd be something positive. As Kevin recently put it, "[I]n the long run, the only way to defeat the hardcore jihadists is to dry up their support in the surrounding Muslim world. And on that score, a president with black skin, a Muslim father, and a middle name of Hussein, might very well be pretty helpful."

WHEN THE RIAA LOSES ITS MIND....I appreciate the fact that the music business is in the midst of considerable turmoil. CD sales are abysmal, record companies are losing a lot of money, and music pirating has become fairly routine, prompting thousands of lawsuits from the RIAA against consumers. It's an industry facing major, system challenges.

But if the music business wants to get back on track, this definitely isn't the way to do it.

[I]n an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings.

"I couldn't believe it when I read that," says Ray Beckerman, a New York lawyer who represents six clients who have been sued by the RIAA. "The basic principle in the law is that you have to distribute actual physical copies to be guilty of violating copyright. But recently, the industry has been going around saying that even a personal copy on your computer is a violation."

According to the WaPo report, the music industry's own website says that making a personal copy of a CD that you bought legitimately "may not be a legal right, but it 'won't usually raise concerns,' as long as you don't give away the music or lend it to anyone."

It appears, however, that it's raising plenty of concerns from the RIAA, which is taking a ridiculously hard-line. Indeed, it's as if the industry is anxious to destroy any remaining goodwill it may have left.

Matt Yglesias noted that, given this RIAA position, Hillary Clinton might be vulnerable to an expensive lawsuit, but I'd set my sights a little higher.

BIPARTISANSHIP FOR THE SAKE OF BIPARTISANSHIP....David Broder reported yesterday, and the NYT's Sam Roberts adds today, that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is still laying the groundwork for an independent presidential campaign, and will meet a week from today with some relatively high-profile politicians from both parties in the hopes of forming a "government of national unity."

Those who will be at the Jan. 7 session at the University of Oklahoma say that if the likely nominees of the two parties do not pledge to "go beyond tokenism" in building an administration that seeks national consensus, they will be prepared to back Bloomberg or someone else in a third-party campaign for president.

Dems like Sam Nunn, Chuck Robb, and David Boren will be there, as will Republicans like Chuck Hagel, John Danforth, and Christine Todd Whitman. Boren, who will host the meeting at the university, apparently has a deadline in mind, telling the Times that Democrats and Republicans would have two months to "formally embrace bipartisanship and address the fundamental challenges facing the nation."

Now, I try not to be reflexive about efforts like these. I don't reject bipartisan proposals out of hand, and if a handful of former office holders have some constructive policy ideas, they should certainly be encouraged to be part of the public debate.

But the closer one looks at this Bloomberg group initiative, the more this looks like bipartisanship for the sake of bipartisanship. Worse, it's a solution in search of a problem.

A letter from Nunn and Boren sent to those attending the Jan. 7 session said, "Today, we are a house divided. We believe that the next president must be able to call for a unity of effort by choosing the best talent available -- without regard to political party -- to help lead our nation."

I suppose that's fine, but one wonders if the group realizes that Barack Obama, John Edwards, and Bill Richardson have already said publicly that they would have Republicans serving in their cabinet -- a claim no Republican presidential candidate has made.

Indeed, one wonders just how closely the organizers of this meeting have been following current events. Their letter insisted that "partisan polarization is preventing us from uniting to meet the challenges that we must face." Really? Because it seems to me congressional Democrats over the last year have been negotiating with Republicans on everything from immigration to kids' healthcare to minimum wage to Iraq to ethics reform. Some one of those measures were vetoed, some were blocked by what is literally the most obstructionist Senate minority in American history, and on still others, Democrats simply caved rather than fighting too hard. But in each instance, "partisan polarization" didn't prevent much of anything; Republican politics did.

The entire Bloomberg endeavor, which hasn't even considered dealing with actual policy proposals outside of vague platitudes (the group apparently wants to "rebuild and reconfigure our military forces"), sounds like a daydream of former officials who believe Democrats and Republicans can join forces, solve all of our problems, and "get something done." Get what done? It doesn't matter; it'll be something.

It all sounds pleasant enough, but only in an immature kind of way. They seem to believe Americans need to get unified. Unified behind what? Behind unity.

I realize some people (David Broder, I'm looking in your direction) look at the policy differences between competing parties and ideologies as inherently petty and parochial. They're not. These arguments are indicative of a serious disagreement about the direction of the country. It's called politics, and it's perfectly healthy in a democracy. (To borrow a phrase, debate over substantive ideas is a feature, not a bug.)

Be sure to read Digby's and Chris Bowers' take on all of this, but I wanted to highlight a point Chris raised that's especially significant:

It would be nice, for once, if the constant drumbeat from Aging Wealthy White Men for National Unity Under Billionaire Media Moguls (AWWMNUUBM for short) decrying polarization, the lack of bi-partisanship and gridlock in Washington would actually provide specifics on what legislation their hated polarization, partisanship and gridlock is blocking. Of course, they won't actually do that, because blaming national problems on vague, undefined concepts like "polarization" and "gridlock" is much easier than actually analyzing the contemporary political scene in America.

Chris is absolutely right. Parties and campaigns are, or at least should be, about ideas and solutions. Bipartisanship for the sake of bipartisanship doesn't mean anything.

'ACTS OF GOD'....Obviously, when it comes to religious beliefs, Mike Huckabee is free to think anything he wants. His faith is his business. That said, am I the only one who finds this a little odd?

Five days after the tornado tore through the state, [Arkadelphia, Ark., a] city of 10,000 lay in ruins. The cyclone destroyed an office building, a bank, a pharmacy and 70 other businesses. The electricity was out. The National Guard patrolled the streets. Six people were dead.

In Little Rock, GOP Gov. Mike Huckabee was reviewing a disaster insurance measure that he intended to support when he became troubled: The bill, drawing on centuries-old legal terminology, referred to natural disasters as "acts of God."

In a time of emergency, Huckabee would hold up the measure for more than three weeks to press his personal objection that the Almighty could not be blamed for the region's loss. In the process, he drew damaging headlines and created new strains in his relations with the state's legislature, the General Assembly.

Now, to be fair, it's worth noting that there's no indication that Huckabee's decision to delay the bill adversely affected anyone. But the state legislation in question sought to protect tornado victims from insurance companies that might cancel their policies, and used language -- "acts of God" -- which is standard in the law and in many insurance policies. Nevertheless, Huckabee refused to even consider disaster relief until the bill's wording was changed to meet his worldview.

One state senator noted, "Instead of getting focused on getting aid to the areas, he's in an uproar over words. It was kind of silly."

Huckabee told Tim Russert yesterday that the best way to consider whether he would blend religion and public policy as president is to look at "how I served as a governor." That's hardly reassuring.

NO SEX FOR YOU....I had the same read on Mike Huckabee's "Meet the Press" appearance this morning as ThinkProgress:

On NBC's Meet The Press this morning, host Tim Russert asked former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee if he believed "people are born gay or choose to be gay?" "I don't know whether people are born that way," responded Huckabee, "but one thing I know, that the behavior one practices is a choice."

Huckabee conceded that "people who are gay say that they're born that way," but added that he believed that "how we behave and how we carry out that behavior" is more important.

I see. So, Huckabee doesn't actually care if someone is gay, he cares whether or not gays are celibate.

And here I thought his years of bizarre criticism of the gay community were a sign of intolerance. I've clearly misjudged him.

THE ACCIDENTAL CANDIDATE....It's not exactly a secret that Fred Thompson's presidential campaign isn't going well. By some measures, that's a surprise -- he's plenty conservative; he's never flip-flopped on key issues; and he's not a member of a religious minority that the GOP base finds offensive. Simply as a matter of process of elimination, this guy should be huge.

There is, of course, a problem: Thompson apparently has no interest in actually running for president.

There's no shortage of stories about Thompson running a lackluster campaign that seems to include avoiding voters at all costs. Here's a good example. Here's another, another and another. It's as if the former senator is allergic to retail politics.

Given all of this, Thompson offered an unusual admission yesterday: his heart's really not into all of this.

"I'm not particularly interested in running for president," the former senator said at a campaign event in Burlington (Iowa) when challenged by a voter over his desire to be commander-in-chief.... "I'm only consumed by a few things and politics is not one of them."

I've seen quite a few reactions that Thompson's candid remarks are a good thing. Overly-ambitious candidates consumed with political gain are somehow unseemly, the theory goes, so Thompson is a breath of fresh air -- he wants to be president, but he has no taste for the silly, often demoralizing process.

I'm just not so sure this is a plus. Isn't there something to be said for a candidate having a "fire in the belly"? Excessive ambition can be unbecoming, but is there really something wrong with a leader stepping up and working hard to make his or her case to voters?

In other words, shouldn't someone who wants to be president be prepared to run for president with a certain enthusiasm? Given the current challenges the next president will face, maybe some passion for moving the nation forward might not be such a bad idea.

Michael Crowley, reporting from Iowa before Thompson's comments yesterday, noted:

[W]hy did [Thompson] flop so badly once he did run? Where to start? He got in too late, didn't sound prepared, lacked the movie-star presence people expected, and suffered from staff turmoil (widely attributed to Jeri). Above all, Thompson never offered a clear rationale for his candidacy -- a curious defect for a star contender, unless you consider what's become increasingly clear of late: On some level, the guy never really seemed to want it.

Proclaiming, "I'm not particularly interested in running for president" a few days before the Iowa caucuses probably won't help seal the deal.

THE CIA TORTURE TAPES, CONT'D....As it turns out, the reasoning behind the CIA's decision to record interrogations on video, stop recording interrogations on video, and destroy the interrogation videos was all exactly the same: officials were hoping to avoid a public-relations nightmare.

If Abu Zubaydah, a senior operative of Al Qaeda, died in American hands, Central Intelligence Agency officers pursuing the terrorist group knew that much of the world would believe they had killed him.

So in the spring of 2002, even as the intelligence officers flew in a surgeon from Johns Hopkins Hospital to treat Abu Zubaydah, who had been shot three times during his capture in Pakistan, they set up video cameras to record his every moment: asleep in his cell, having his bandages changed, being interrogated.

In fact, current and former intelligence officials say, the agency's every action in the prolonged drama of the interrogation videotapes was prompted in part by worry about how its conduct might be perceived -- by Congress, by prosecutors, by the American public and by Muslims worldwide.

That worry drove the decision to begin taping interrogations -- and to stop taping just months later, after the treatment of prisoners began to include waterboarding. And it fueled the nearly three-year campaign by the agency's clandestine service for permission to destroy the tapes, culminating in a November 2005 destruction order from the service's director, Jose A. Rodriguez Jr.

Now, the disclosure of the tapes and their destruction in 2005 have become just the public spectacle the agency had sought to avoid. To the already fierce controversy over whether the Bush administration authorized torture has been added the specter of a cover-up.

Jesse Stanchak noted the irony: "First the CIA began taping interrogations because it was trying to avoid a scandal, because it looked like a wounded prisoner might die in custody. Then it stopped taping interrogations because it wanted to avoid a scandal when water-boarding was introduced. Then it destroyed the tapes because it was worried they'd be leaked to the press. But the truth came out anyway, and now the agency has to cope with the public relations nightmare it's been trying to avoid all along."

DUMBEST. LEGAL ARGUMENTS. EVER....I'm usually one to skip year-end Top 10 lists, but Slate's Dahlia Lithwick has arguably written the best one of the season: "The Bush Administration's Top 10 Stupidest Legal Arguments of 2007."

Most reasonable people who take the law seriously would be humiliated by any of one of these legal assertions, but the president's lawyers not only made all of these absurd arguments, they did so in just the last 12 months.

The list is a cornucopia of greatest hits, including gems such as "The NSA's eavesdropping was limited in scope," "The vice president's office is not a part of the executive branch," "Water-boarding may not be torture," and my personal favorite, "Everyone who has ever spoken to the president about anything is barred from congressional testimony by executive privilege."

Take a look.

GIULIANI SURROGATE CALLS MUSLIMS 'MADMEN'....John Deady, a designated surrogate for Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign, and a leader of "Veterans for Rudy," was caught on video making some jaw-dropping comments about Muslims. Here's what Deady said about Giuliani:

"He's got I believe the knowledge and the judgment to attack one of the most difficult problems in current history and that is the rise of the Muslims, and make no mistake about it, this hasn't happened for a thousand years. These people are very, very dedicated and they're also very smart, in their own way. We need to keep the feet to the fire and keep pressing these people until we defeat or chase them back to their caves -- or in other words get rid of them."

It certainly sounded like Deady wasn't just targeting so-called "Islamofascists," but rather was talking publicly about chasing all Muslims "back to their caves," and getting "rid of them."

Greg Sargent tracked Deady down yesterday afternoon, and the Giuliani surrogate didn't back down at all. Indeed, he made matters worse. Asked, for example, if he stood by his comments, Deady said:

"I most assuredly do. I've been very concerned about this Muslim thing for quite awhile. The average American does not know beans about what the Muslims are about. I am talking about the Muslims in general. I don't subscribe to the principle that there are good Muslims and bad Muslims. They're all Muslims."

Deady added, "When I say get rid of them, I wasn't necessarily referring to genocide."

He wasn't "necessarily" referring to genocide?

As of late last night, the Giuliani campaign said it would ask Deady to resign "if these quotes are accurate." Stay tuned.

DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT FOREIGN POLICY....In October, David Brooks, in an otherwise fawning column about Mike Huckabee, conceded that "his foreign policy thinking is thin." That was obviously a dramatic understatement.

Earlier this month, he didn't know what the National Intelligence Estimate was. A week later, the former governor identified Thomas Friedman and Frank Gaffney as his biggest influences on foreign policy, despite the fact that Friedman and Gaffney don't actually agree on anything.

This week, any shred of credibility Huckabee maintained on foreign policy quickly vanished. In the aftermath of Benazir Bhutto's assassination, the Arkansan's first reaction was to argue that the slaying should lead to a reevaluation of U.S. immigration policy. Of course, the assertion didn't make any sense.

Indeed, it's been a particularly embarrassing couple of days for Huckabee. He argued that "we have more Pakistani illegals" entering the U.S. than any other nationality, aside from Mexico. That's not even close to being true. He said the Pakistani government "does not have enough control of those eastern borders near Afghanistan to be able go after the terrorists." He meant western borders.

His campaign tried to explain the candidate's ignorance.

A senior aide to Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee admitted Friday that the former Arkansas governor had "no foreign policy credentials" after his comments reacting to the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto raised questions.

During an event Friday in Pella, Iowa, Huckabee said the crisis sparked by Bhutto's death should lead to a crackdown on illegal immigrants from Pakistan. The Huckabee official told CNN that when he said that, Huckabee was trying to turn attention away from scrutiny of his foreign policy knowledge.

How terribly odd. Huckabee is under criticism for his breathtaking confusion about foreign affairs, so he thought it was wise to make it worse, connecting the Bhutto assassination to Republican fears about immigration.

We're less than a week from the Iowa caucuses, and Huckabee has taken the lead in some national polls. Is it too much to ask that he, I don't know, start reading the newspaper in the morning? Couldn't he at least pretend to care about what's going on in the world?

Kevin's question from a few weeks ago is still salient: "[W]ill anyone press him on this? Or will he get the village idiot treatment that Republicans since Ronald Reagan have so often gotten, where they're sort of expected to say harebrained stuff and nobody holds it against them?"

KRISTOL CLEAR....Recently cast off from Time magazine, presumably for writing shallow, predictable tripe, William Kristol is getting a promotion of sorts.

The Huffington Post has learned that, in a move bound to create controversy, the New York Times is set to announce that Bill Kristol will become a weekly columnist in 2008. Kristol, a prominent neo-conservative who recently departed Time magazine in what was reported as a "mutual" decision, has close ties to the White House and is a well-known proponent of the war in Iraq. Kristol also is a regular contributor to Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume.

If the report is accurate, and Kristol is joining the Times' roster, this is an embarrassment from which the paper of record will not soon recover. If Kristol were merely wrong about matters of national significance, this decision would merely be a mistake. But in recent years Kristol has become far more -- gone are the "soothing tones" that made him a mainstay on the DC cocktail circuit, replaced with a bitter, sycophantic belligerence.

Over the summer, when Kristol started blaming American liberals for Khmer Rouge's crimes, and arguing that the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam also created the conditions for the Islamist revolution in Iran in 1979, I started wondering if Kristol actually believes his own nonsense. Except, as Jonathan Chait explained, it may not matter: "Kristol's good standing in the Washington establishment depends on the wink-and-nod awareness that he's too smart to believe his own agitprop. Perhaps so. But, in the end, a fake thug is not much better than the real thing."

True, except now, one of the world's most prestigious news outlets has apparently given this thug space on the most valuable media real estate in existence.

Kevin Drum captured Kristol's clownish persona perfectly back in June:

The Bill Kristol phenomenon is a stellar example of what a nice suit and a sober tone of voice can do for you. When Curtis LeMay suggested bombing North Vietnam into the Stone Age and getting over our fear of using nuclear weapons, everyone saw him for what he was: a bellicose nutcase. Kristol is barely any less bloodthirsty, but he's smart enough to talk in more soothing tones. As a result, he gets columns in Time magazine, edits his own widely-read magazine, and shows up constantly on television.

Underneath it, though, he's every bit the bellicose nutcase that LeMay was. His answer to every foreign policy problem is exactly the same: a proposal to use the maximum amount of force that he thinks elite opinion can tolerate. But Kristol is well dressed, soft spoken, and a lively dinner companion. So everyone just sort of shrugs their shoulders at the fact that he basically wants to go to war with the whole world. It's a nice gig.

Standards and consequences be dammed, it's a gig that seems to keep getting better.

MCCAIN'S 'SECRET ANTI-ROMNEY AD'....With the polls narrowing in New Hampshire, Mitt Romney's campaign has launched a negative TV ad against John McCain, noting the senator's votes against Bush's tax cuts, against a repeal of the estate tax, and for an immigration-reform bill the GOP's far-right base condemns as "amnesty." The commercial says McCain is "an honorable man," but asks, "Is he the right Republican for the future?"

Slate's John Dickerson obtained a McCain ad -- ironically, created by media advisors who quit McCain's campaign to join with Romney -- that Dickerson calls "the perfect counterpunch" to Romney's latest spot. (Apparently, the McCain campaign put the ad together six months ago, but sat on it, allegedly "reluctant" to go negative.)

The McCain team's response is that Romney has to talk about the future because he's spent much of the campaign running from his past. This may become more than a quip if the campaign decides to air the following television ad, which they've had on the shelf since the spring.

The ad hangs Romney with his own words -- he advocates for a woman's right to choose and gun control, gets tongue tied on his own hunting practices, and distances himself from Ronald Reagan).

You can see the "secret" ad here, which hits Romney for having been a moderate-to-liberal Republican on culture-war issues. Dickerson sees this as the kind of ad that could seriously undermine Romney's campaign. I don't see it that way at all.

Here's the thing: everyone, including Republican voters, knows all about Romney's previous beliefs. He's spent the entire year assuring conservatives, or at least trying to, that he bears no resemblance to his former self. To hear his pitch, Romney is a convert to the conservative cause. (Whether one believes his transformation is sincere or not is another matter entirely.)

McCain, however, has a record that a lot of Republican activists may not remember, and unlike Romney, he hasn't been peppered with questions about his Republican apostasy throughout 2007. Romney's ad hits McCain on taxes and immigration, but he also championed sweeping campaign-finance reform with Russ Feingold that conservatives generally hate, joined with John Edwards to support a Patients' Bill of Rights that conservatives generally hate, voted against an anti-gay constitutional amendment that conservatives generally love, and told a national television audience in 2004 that he would consider joining the Democratic ticket as John Kerry's running mate.

Indeed, in April 2004, just as the national Republican campaign was beginning in earnest, McCain said, "I believe my party has gone astray.... I think the Democratic Party is a fine party, and I have no problems with it, in their views and their philosophy."

Everyone knows Romney was pro-choice; does everyone know McCain said this? I kind of doubt it.

Dickerson argues that McCain has the "perfect" response to Romney's criticism of his record. But unless McCain is prepared to do what Romney has done -- disavow everything he used to believe -- McCain has far more to lose from this fight.

USE IT OR LOSE IT....If one were to list of all the reasons Joe Lieberman is annoying, it'd take a while. There's his support for the Bush/Cheney foreign policy; his broken promises from the 2006 campaign; his constant reinforcing of right-wing media frames; his support for GOP obstructionism; etc.

While all of those are, to be sure, maddening, I'd put an entirely different problem at the top of the list: his wholesale negligence as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Brian Beutler has a great piece today on "The Year in Oversight," and notes a point that doesn't get emphasized nearly enough:

There certainly have been gaffes, softballs, and missed opportunities. And the most obvious are found in the Senate Committee on Homeland Security -- the Senate's version of Rep. Henry Waxman's Oversight Committee in the House. Unlike Waxman's enthusiastic probing, the Senate chair conducted zero proactive investigations into Bush administration malfeasance. It's chairman? Connecticut's Joseph Lieberman.

A year ago, seeking re-election, Lieberman said this committee was his top priority, and he was desperate to return to the Senate so he could wield the gavel. And now that he has the authority he sought, he's decided not to conduct any real oversight of the administration at all.

He seems to have desperately sought a chairman's gavel just for the sake of having it -- Lieberman wanted power he had no intention of using.

I appreciate the fact that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was in a bind before the 110th Congress began. Rumor has it, to keep Lieberman in the caucus, Reid had to give him the chairmanship -- or get stuck with a 50-50 split.

But consequences have to matter. Instead of a Senate Committee on Government Affairs that functions as it should, Lieberman just treads water, using his gavel as a flotation device. It's an embarrassing waste of what's supposed to be the Senate's watchdog committee.

AN UNEXPECTED VETO....The president went nearly six years in office without vetoing a single bill, but has now had seven -- including funding the war in Iraq, stem-cell research (twice), and healthcare for low-income kids (twice). In each instance, lawmakers were well aware of the White House's opposition, but passed the bills anyway, hoping Bush would either change his mind or they could override the veto.

Which is what makes veto #8 so odd.

At the behest of the Iraqi government, President Bush will veto the annual defense authorization bill, saying an obscure provision in the legislation could make Iraqi assets held in U.S. banks vulnerable to lawsuits.

The veto threat startled Democratic congressional leaders, who believe Bush is bowing to pressure from the Iraqi government over a technical provision in the bill. The veto is unexpected because there was no veto threat and the legislation passed both chambers of Congress overwhelmingly.

Democratic leaders say the provision in question could easily be worked out, but in vetoing the massive defense policy bill, military pay raises may be on hold, as well as dozens of other programs.

This is just bizarre. If the provision of the bill was so offensive, why didn't the White House, which was aware of the legislation's progress as it passed, say something sooner?

As the AP noted, "sovereign nations are normally immune from lawsuits in U.S. courts. An exception is made for state sponsors of terrorism and Iraq was designated such a nation in 1990. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, however, Congress passed a law and Bush issued a decree stating that Iraq was exempt from such lawsuits."

So, what's the problem here?

Keep in mind, the veto of the defense authorization bill puts a variety of key spending measures in limbo, including a pay raise for the troops, VA care for wounded veterans, a new "Truman Commission" to fight fraud and waste by military contractors, and expanded job protections for family members of severely wounded troops.

What a mess.

THE BUSH/RICE LEGACY....In the NYT this week, Robert Dallek reviews Elisabeth Bumiller's new book on Condoleezza Rice, "An American Life: A Biography." One gets the sense the book probably won't be too hard-hitting -- Bumiller has a well-earned reputation for passivity, and Dallek notes the biography's "above-the-battle tone" and refusal to "offer any decisive judgments on Ms. Rice's performance."

Most notably, though, there was this gem:

Ms. Bumiller says that if President Bush and Ms. Rice can produce a settlement in the Middle East between Israelis and Palestinians and an end to North Korea's nuclear program, it would give them claims on success that would significantly improve their historical reputations.

After struggling a bit, I think the word I'm looking for here is, "Duh."

As Scott Lemieux put it, "And if I discover a way of powering cars entirely with oxygen, emitting a vapor that would result in the immediate killing of cockroaches and paralysis in the hands of every Hollywood producer about to sign a contract with Joel Schumacher and Uwe Boll, my reputation as a world-class scientist would be greatly enhanced."

Yglesias gets in on the fun, too: "By the same token, if earth's yellow sun gave me the powers of a kryptonian, I'd be a super hero. If my blog had Engadget's traffic, I'd be the most popular political blogger. If George Bush could breath underwater, he'd be a fish."

To be sure, if Bush and Rice can bring peace to Israel (after seven years of intentional neglect) and solve the North Korean nuclear crisis (which they helped exacerbate through a meandering and misguided foreign policy), then sure, the progress would certainly "improve their historical reputations."

But if that's what it will take, I'm fairly confident that history will not be kind.

NOONAN DEFINES 'REASONABLE'....The WSJ's Peggy Noonan argues today that her top characteristic when evaluating presidential candidates is "reasonableness." The former Reagan speechwriter insists:

We are grown-ups, we know our country needs greatness, but we do not expect it and will settle at the moment for good. We just want a reasonable person. We would like a candidate who does not appear to be obviously insane. We'd like knowledge, judgment, a prudent understanding of the world and of the ways and histories of the men and women in it.

At face value, there's nothing especially offensive about this standard. Noonan is setting the bar fairly low -- "not insane" isn't exactly a compelling campaign pitch -- but she's sketched out a relatively practical model.

That is, until Noonan starts applying her standards to specific candidates. Here's her take on the former senator from North Carolina:

John Edwards is not reasonable. All the Democrats would raise taxes as president, but Mr. Edwards's populism is the worst of both worlds, both intemperate and insincere. Also we can't have a president who spent two minutes on YouTube staring in a mirror and poofing his hair. Really, we just can't.

Noonan had just finished arguing that American voters "are grown-ups," and then she turns around and takes on John Edwards' hair, suggesting brushing one's hair before a TV interview is somehow a disqualifying factor for a presidential candidate. He's just not "reasonable" enough.

What's more, Glenn Greenwald notes that "poofing" isn't actually a word, "but rather, a British epithet for a male homosexual -- 'Slang: Disparaging and Offensive' -- a synonym for 'faggot.'"

Noonan's looking for a candidate with a "prudent understanding of the world." I'm looking for a columnist in a major national newspaper with the same attribute.

GIULIANI'S CLIENT LIST....A year ago, the senior managing director for Rudy Giuliani's consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, said, "We bend over backwards and are very careful about who we do business with, for the most obvious reasons -- from the beginning, Rudy's brand of integrity and ethics always had to be preserved."

In retrospect, the comment seems almost comical. The latest dubious client to draw scrutiny is Purdue Pharma, manufacturer of OxyContin. The NYT's report details the extent to which the former mayor went to bat for the OxyContin makers, in exchange for a small fortune, lobbying prosecutors, meeting with DEA officials, persuading lawmakers, and winning public-relations battles, all for a company led by executives who later pleaded guilty to criminal charges.

For those keeping score at home, the list of controversial clients, none of which Giuliani is willing to acknowledge publicly, is getting pretty long. There's the Hank Asher controversy, the business relationship with