NOPEC?

“OPEC would like you to believe that it’s an international agency dedicated to world peace and economic development, like the United Nations or the World Bank. But of course, OPEC is a cartel.” Tim Noah examines a new bill before Congress that would work to bring OPEC’s behavior under American antitrust law. “The White House Office of Management and Budget says it opposes the NOPEC bill ‘adamantly.’ Perhaps this is because, as I’ve noted before, OPEC is just about the only international organization that President Bush has any regard for.“

“Hit them.”

Newly released papers from the 1972 election reveal more of the Nixon re-election campaign’s dirty tricks operation at work. “Nixon aides worked assiduously to plant negative stories, including one alleging [Dem VP candidate Sargent] Shriver‘s ancestors were slave-holders. An operative ‘is trying to get the story fed into certain segments of Black media and will give it to Black surrogates,’ an aide told Chuck Colson, Nixon’s chief counsel.” And, also among the new stuff, a detailed account of eventual White House whistleblower Alexander Butterfield‘s exasperation with Nixon’s dog, King Timahoe. ‘I think the miserable sessions I endured in Latin II as a high school sophomore were easier,’ he groused to Haldeman after meeting Nixon’s valet to discuss ‘doggie affairs.’” (Further excerpts.)

McCain ain’t able?

“‘The campaign is imploding,’ said one McCain staffer, echoing a word used by others.” With his campaign leadership resigning en masse, some serious funding problems looming on the horizon, and a possible mobile phone slip-up that might prove illegal, is John McCain’s 2008 bid already derailed? Slate‘s John Dickerson surveys the wreckage. “Those who remain are trying to argue that McCain is showing leadership by holding his top brass accountable, but the episode looks more like the last scene in Hamlet — a stack of bodies piled up just before the curtain.” Update: McCain circles the wagons.

No, you back down.

“As the letter from the Acting Attorney General explained in considerable detail, the assertion of Executive Privilege here is intended to protect a fundamental interest of the Presidency: the necessity that a President receive candid advice from his advisors and that those advisors be able to communicate freely and openly with the President, with each other, and with others inside and outside the Executive Branch.” Dubya invokes executive privilege again in response to the Leahy/Conyers letter of a week ago, prompting further outrage among congressional Dems and increasing the likelihood of a protracted legal standoff. “Speaking on the floor of the Senate Monday afternoon, Leahy blasted what he called ‘the White House disdain for our system of checks and balances.’ ‘What is the White House trying to hide by refusing to hand over this evidence?’ he said.”

Scooter Laughs Last.

“I respect the jury’s verdict. But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive…The Constitution gives the president the power of clemency to be used when he deems it to be warranted. It is my judgment that a commutation of the prison term in Mr. Libby’s case is an appropriate exercise of this power.” So, once again, we see what “restoring honor and dignity to the White House” means to these jokers. As y’all know, the main bit of news this past week, the 231st anniversary of our independence from the perversity of monarchical prerogatives, was that Dubya the decider chose to commute White House consigliere Scooter Libby’s sentence of 30 months in prison for lying to the American people. (Said prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald of the decision: “It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals.” For their part, the GOP are crying Marc Rich.) To be honest, I’m not sure what’s worse: the fact that, in flagrant defiance of both our judicial process and the public’s very real ethical concerns about this administration, Dubya actually let his guy off the hook…or that, given all we’ve seen from this gang over the past seven years, his shameless decision ultimately wasn’t all that surprising.

Leahy/Conyers: Not so Fast.

“We had hoped our Committees’ subpoenas would be met with compliance and not a Nixonian stonewalling that reveals the White House’s disdain for our system of checks and balances…The veil of secrecy you have attempted to pull over the White House by withholding documents and witnesses is unprecedented and damaging to the tradition of open government by and for the people that has been a hallmark of the Republic.” In a “barbed” letter to the administration, Judiciary Committee Chairmen Conyers and Leahy demand that Dubya explain his rationale for executive privilege (which he invoked earlier in the week to thwart subpoenas concerning the persecuted prosecutors case.) Thus far, the White House has described the letter as “another overreach.“

Obama’s 31.

Round 2 of the money game is in the books, and, surprisingly (or perhaps not), Barack Obama came out on top with $31 million to Hillary Clinton’s (estimated) $27 million. (John Edwards pulled $9 million, Richardson $7 million.) “Obama’s war chest in the second quarter was built on the strength of 154,000 new contributors, giving him well over a quarter-million donors since he started the race…[Clinton’s] fund-raising team has been relying much more heavily on larger donors.”

Shields Up.

“‘This is a further shift by the Bush administration into Nixonian stonewalling and more evidence of their disdain for our system of checks and balances,’ said Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. ‘Increasingly, the president and vice president feel they are above the law.'” The Dubya administration invokes executive privilege to thwart the recently-issued congressional subpoenas for info pertaining to the persecuted prosecutor scandal. Instead, Dubya has offered Miers and Taylor for untranscribed private interviews (not under oath), an offer Spineless Specter, among others, thinks the Dems should take. “[C]onstitutional scholars cautioned that this area of law is so unsettled that it is impossible to predict the outcome if the matter ends up in court.”

My Clinton Concerns | State of the Field.

“‘You can look at this stage and see an African American, a Latino, a woman contesting for the presidency of the United States,’ Clinton said. ‘But there is so much left to be done, and for anyone to assert that race is not a problem in America is to deny the reality in front of our very eyes.'” Unfortunately, I missed the third Democratic debate at Howard University debate last night, so I can’t comment on the performances of Clinton, Obama, Edwards et al. I can say that this new NBC poll showing that 52% of the electorate wouldn’t consider voting for Hillary under any circumstances conforms to one of my major concerns with her nomination. As I said before, she’s a smart, talented, and impressive politico who’d undoubtedly sail the ship of state much more smoothly than the current administration. (Of course, so would you, I, the night-janitor at the local McDonalds, or almost anyone else one can think of.) But, really: [1] she’s thoroughly lousy on campaign finance reform, to my mind the issue that bears on virtually all others; [2] she apparently didn’t have the wherewithal or leadership instincts to realize the Iraq war was a terrible idea in 2003 (it didn’t take all that much to figure it out, particularly when you figure how much more information Clinton had access to than we did); [3] her view of centrism is apparently to act like Joe Lieberman every so often; and [4] most of the nation has already decided for various reasons that they don’t like her. With the Republicans scattered and in retreat, their ideology in eclipse, why do we keep throwing up marginal, tired candidates — Gore, Kerry, Clinton — on the off-chance that the electorate will manage to surmount their strong negatives, hold their collective nose, and vote for them?

To be fair, the other Dems haven’t been all that great at articulating a progressive alternative to Republican-lite DLC-ishness yet either, but at least there’s some potential for it there. Sen. Obama‘s got all the right JFK moves, and this all-things-to-all-people ambiguity may be one of his strongest political assets. But right now I think he’s relying too much on his initial spate of public goodwill, and missing a chance to really draw the nation’s attention to the issues that concern him. And John Edwards‘ son-of-a-millworker-made-good brand of populism, while laudable, doesn’t yet seem fully formed to me. But, at the very least, Edwards — unlike some of his more-willing-to-triangulate opponents — seems more often than not to let his flag fly, and act from the courage of his convictions. Right now, particularly with McCain hopelessly derailed by his blatant compromises of principle, Edwards may be the closest we’ve got to a Straight-Talk-Express this year (well, this side of Kucinich, Gravel, and Paul.)

At the moment, I’m still leaning towards Obama, just because of his tremendous upside — he, unlike virtually every other candidate, has the possibility to transform, revitalize, and realign our current political debate if he plays his cards right. But, Edwards is still in my estimation, and I’ll be taking a long hard look at him over the coming months (and either, in my humble opinion, are preferable to Senator Clinton, for the reasons listed above.)

Felled at the Border.

“A lot of us worked hard to see if we couldn’t find a common ground. It didn’t work…I had hoped for a bipartisan accomplishment, and what we got was a bipartisan defeat.” Harding had the Washington Conference, Nixon had China and the FAP…but it looks like there’ll be nothing to dilute Dubya’s dismal standing in the history books. Arguably his last chance for a positive domestic accomplishment shattered to pieces when the Senate voted 53-46 against closing debate on the bipartisan immigration reform bill. “The outcome was a major blow to Bush, dealt largely by members of his own party…Republicans on both sides acknowledged the immigration fight had riven the GOP.“