Quick Hits

Yes, today was busy enough that I think it warrants a "best of the rest":

• The Chertoff-to-Attorney General trial balloon has officially popped.

I think, by the time I got to this story, BushCo had already decided Chertoff was an impossible replacement candidate (though if he's not, let's not forget the allegation that Chertoff allegedly okayed Chiquita Banana's funding of right wing terrorists in Colombia). Just on the off-chance that Chertoff really is named as Gonzales' replacement, Pat Leahy had the perfect response when asked if he would support a Chertoff nomination. I can't find the quote (it was NPR), but he basically said nothing more than, "You mean the guy who was in charge of the Katrina reconstruction?"

I agree with Glenn Greenwald, the next AG must come from outside the Administration, and no insider hack can be allowed to be confirmed.

• Yes, it's hysterical that on the same day Abu Gonzales resigns, the President goes and attends a fundraiser for Pete Domenici, who of course helped push out US Attorney David Iglesias after meddling in the middle of a state corruption investigation and pressuring Iglesias to indict Democrats. When Iglesias would not politicize his office, Domenici brought the hammer down. The reward is today's event, which I guess is the price of loyalty. There's a tragic sidenote to that event, as a police officer in Bush's motorcade died after crashing his vehicle.

• Bush is in Washington State tonight at another fundraiser for Rep. Dave Reichert, and the national netroots community made a huge push to raise $100,000 for his Democratic opponent Darcy Burner. And they've reached their goal. I met Burner at Yearly Kos and found her to be piercingly intelligent and very down-to-Earth. I can't wait to see her torch Reichert next year and make the trip to DC.

• Larry Craig, not content with destroying his own credibility, is taking down the Romney campaign's as well. Romney's team tried to scrub a pro-Mitt message from Craig (a co-Senate liaison until today), but it's hard to hide anything on the Internets. It's been found. Also Hugh Hewitt is calling on Craig to resign, no doubt because he might hurt Golden Boy Mitt, who is to Hewitt as a golden statue is to an idol worshipper.

• Meanwhile, this juxtaposition is just freaky. Apparently the Idaho Values Alliance has a shout-out to Sen. Craig on their site, and just underneath, a paragraph decrying the scourge of homosexuals using airport bathrooms for anonymous sex. Is that where Sen. Craig got the idea?

• This IAFF endorsement of Chris Dodd is news for his campaign, but I think that really falls under the category of "no endorsement," since they clearly didn't want to get into a top-tier fight. The IAFF endorsed John Kerry when it looked like he was about to drop out of the race, though, so maybe this will have some import.

• Here's something I missed from last week: some wingnut actually said "You're going to look super in a burka." Out loud. On television. There is this strain that really thinks we're about to be taken over by an Islamic caliphate. Really. They think that little of the United States.

• This is worrying but unsurprising. Apparently there's a loophole in the President's recent executive order outlawing torture that you can drive a truck through.

The Judge Advocates General of all branches of the military told the senators that a July 20 executive order establishing rules for the treatment of CIA prisoners appeared to be carefully worded to allow humiliating or degrading interrogation techniques when the interrogators' objective is to protect national security rather than to satisfy sadistic impulses [...]

The JAGs cited language in the executive order in which Bush said CIA interrogators may not use "willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual." As an example, it lists "sexual or sexually indecent acts undertaken for the purpose of humiliation."

Among lawyers, "for the purpose" language is often used to mean that a person must specifically intend to do something, such as causing humiliation, in order to violate a statute. The JAGs said Bush's wording appears to make it legal for interrogators to undertake that same abusive action if they had some other motive, such as gaining information.

I try to refuse to be shocked anymore and I always fail.

• Finally, Fred Thompson is trying to set the record for most people fired from a campaign that hasn't even started yet.