Senate Votes to Limit War

The Senate voted 50-48 to keep language in the appropriations bill to set a deadline for withdrawing from Iraq.

Senators Hagel (R-NE) and Smith (R-OR) voted with the Democrats.

Senators Lieberman (I-ME-MINE) and Pryor (D-AR) voted with the Republicans.

Deja Voodoo

The Associated Press has assigned Nedra Pickler to cover the Democratic presidential race.

Here’s a sample of her inestimable reporting: Is Obama all style and little substance?

The article says repeatedly that Obama hasn’t been talking about policy, and his lack of substance is putting people off.

Greg Sargent responds:

What about this speech on March 21? What about this one on March 2? Those are both foreign policy speeches — or doesn’t that count?
 

Here’s a speech calling for universal health care on January 25.
 

[...]
 

One other point: The piece didn’t mention that Obama has written several books.

Nedra Pickler was notorious during the 2004 campaign for undercutting the Democrats with bad reporting and bad rhetorical tricks. And now she’s back, just in time to repeat those tricks.

Pack your dramamine. It’s going to be a long trip.

And in Other News…

I don’t expect that in the United States this item got anywhere the news coverage that the results of Anna Nicole Smith’s autopsy got, but really, it’s a Very Big Deal.

Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams had a face-to-face meeting on sharing power in Northern Ireland.

The picture of Belfast’s two commanding political figures, flanked by their senior lieutenants, carried a subliminal but unambiguous message: after 3,700 deaths the Troubles are over and real politics can begin.
 

The two warriors of the Troubles believe they can work together. The statements they delivered in the ornate surroundings of a Stormont dining-room were exquisitely crafted to avoid giving anyone offence.
 

The big news they contained was that Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party will be going into government together, launching a new era and underpinning the peace process with a political foundation.
 

While George W. Bush threatens to expand his warmongering into Iran, in Northern Ireland the Good Friday Accord bears fruit.

The Good Friday accord, in case your local news didn’t cover it, was a landmark agreement in 1998 brokered by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell under the auspices of President Bill Clinton.

The “immoral” president makes peace. The “man of God” makes war. Irony is dead.

Tuesday Morning News Roundup

• Paging Henry Waxman, paging Patrick Leahy: Looks like Monica Goodling’s attempt to plead the Fifth might be very easily shot down. [UPDATE:  Then again it might not -- but if McNulty can prove that his inaccurate testimony before Congress came from her, then she's cooked per 18 USC 1001 even if she does successfully plead the Fifth to avoid testifying before Congress.  Remember, Irving Lewis "Scooter" Libby never testified at the Plame trial and he still lost.]

• Over at FDL, I’d guest posted this weekend about my Grand Unified Scandal Theory. Well, it looks like we can add the GSA scandal to the list of Bush scandals connected to the US Attorneys purge scandal — and Rove (and his gunsel J. Scott Jennings) are two of the connecting threads.

• “Some people” (such as Nora Ephron) think that Katie Couric — who herself continued to work a full schedule while her husband was dying of cancer — is a silly and unserious person for her cowardly use of the “some people” shield from behind which she lobbed stink bombs at John and Elizabeth Edwards. In that same vein, Susan Madrak wonders why nobody’s telling Dick Cheney that he has to quit his career so that he might live long enough to get to know his daughter’s first child.

• Stephen Colbert tweaks Rahm Emanuel in a clever way.

• And because life isn’t complete without hearing about the slow downfall of yet another neocon crook, here’s the latest news in the trial of Lord Conrad “Tubby” Black of Crossharbour, former employer of Richard Perle.