Quick Hits

Let's give you all the news you need to know (except the stuff I have more than a one-sentence thought about):

• Yesterday I praised Chris Dodd for his work on the Senate Banking Committee. He pops up in the Jeffrey Goldberg New Yorker piece on Joe Lieberman as well, and I need to praise him again for his leadership and sense of fairness.

Dodd justifies his endorsement of (Ned) Lamont as one of principle over friendship. “I’m the senior Democrat in the state,” he said. “What do I tell a twenty-year-old, what do I tell someone who wants to be a Democrat and join the process? ‘I’m sorry, the primary doesn’t count, it doesn’t make a difference’? It was painful. I didn’t like it. But I wasn’t going to turn around and tell people this doesn’t mean anything.”

What's stunning is that someone turns his back on the process, turns his back on the primary, and Goldberg asks the OTHER Democratic Senator in the state about his loyalty.

• Some potential good news, although in these cases the good news always seems to be tempered by the bad: the Treasury Department will put pressure on Sudan, and reports from the six-nation talks on North Korea are promising (makes you wonder why we're not talking to Iran, then).

• A billion dollars is quite a lot for any one state to be short on monthly tax revenue, even a state as big as California. This is especially true when you have a budget deficit to begin with, and those projections are being used to try and balance it. The Governor often makes it seem like everything in the state is going great, but this sign (probably due to the slumping housing market) is ominous. Meanwhile, home buyers in Cali are going deeper into debt, taking out mortgages with no down payment and not being able to keep up.

But never mind, it's always sunny in the Golden State!

• Jim Webb on supporting the troops:

There have been allegations by those on the other side that we who take this position are not supporting the troops. I would submit that the best way to support the troops is for this administration to outline, and pursue, a comprehensive strategy that includes the diplomatic measures that will be essential to ending our involvement [...]

And with respect to the troops, I would caution any political leader who claims to speak on behalf of the political views of our men and women in uniform. Our military people are largely a mirror of our society, particularly in the ranks, and their political views are as diverse as our own. As one example, last year a survey of U.S. troops in Iraq indicated that more than 70 percent believed the United States should exit Iraq within a year. As I have said before, it is inverted logic to claim that we should continue to fight this war on behalf of the troops. The fact is that they are fighting this war on behalf of the political process. They deserve political leadership that is knowledgeable and that proceeds from an assumption that our national goals are equal to the sacrifices we are asking them to make.

The bumper-sticker support only serves personal political goals. Real support includes tangible things like armor and health care, and tactical things like a sense of mission and purpose.

• Haven't been following the Ehren Watada saga very much, but I see that they've called a mistrial. He was charged for refusing to ship out with his brigade to Iraq. It sounds like the mistrial came about for technical reasons.

• This was some hilarious stuff from Rep. Gary Ackerman:

“For some reason, the military seems more afraid of gay people than they are of terrorists, but they’re very brave with the terrorists…If the terrorists ever got hold of this information, they’d get a platoon of lesbians to chase us out of Baghdad…Considering the critical shortage of linguists in the armed forces, a platoon of Arabic-speaking lesbians may be just what the military needs.”

• Anna Nicole died. The state funeral will be held on CNN for the rest of the year.

• Go Dianne:

A top Senate Democrat said Wednesday that she'd ask federal investigators to look into the voting machines that are at the heart of a disputed congressional race in Florida as the state's checkered voting record once again draws national scrutiny.

The call for a "top to bottom investigation" of the Sarasota County voting machines by the Government Accountability Office and the National Institute of Standards and Technology came from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who endorsed critics who say paperless machines are eroding voters' confidence in elections.

Fueling the push: More than 18,000 ballots in Sarasota County registered no vote for either congressional candidate to succeed one of the icons of Florida's first election debacle, former Rep. Katherine Harris.

She's on top of an issue where there's already a lot of momentum, but I appreciate her standing up for election reform.

• Much respect to John Amaechi for being the first NBA player to come out of the closet. The sports world is rife with homophobia, so this is not exactly the safe move. Hopefully this will someday be the kind of story that goes unreported.