In an unprecedented move, George Bush is moving ahead with a plan to provide security forces to Iraq without Congressional approval, as reports Charlie Savage in today's Boston Globe.

In November, General Douglas Lute deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan, floated a plan that he claimed was not really a formal treaty, therefore there was no need to obtain Congressional approval. But now, people are taking a closer look.

President Bush's plan to forge a long-term agreement with the Iraqi government that could commit the US military to defending Iraq's security would be the first time such a sweeping mutual defense compact has been enacted without congressional approval, according to legal specialists.

I just linked to this Polling Point poll from Huffington. They'd like to know if you think Katie Couric is biased? How 'bout Bill O'Reilly....

Today, the Angry Rakkasan posted this diary with links to ads featuring vets and loved ones promoting the war in Iraq. Consider this a follow up diary.

I asked myself WHO THE HELL ARE these people?  And why are they doing this? Here's who they are and why they did it. Their motives differ. First motive, money!

According to Freedom's Watch the vet who lost his legs and walks on prosthetics is John Kriesel. As you might imagine, a young guy who lost both legs might have some really serious financial problems, and this one does... to the tune of $500,000.

Don't have much time this morning but this seems like a pretty big story.

Extensive article in the Boston Globe today outlines U.S. use of Guantanamo to imprison Afghan warlords who were once employed by the CIA to keep order in the country.

A Globe investigation found that the military has used Guantanamo Bay not just for terrorists "picked up on the battlefield" -- as Bush has repeatedly asserted -- but also for uncooperative or unruly tribal chieftains, many of whom had been key supporters of the US-led invasion.

While I usually like your column, I found your E-Male piece this morning entirely missed the mark. (Goodman wrote an op-ed piece in the Boston Globe about how angry white males have taken over the blogosphere. It was lame.)

Here's a taste:

The typical political blog reader is a 43-year-old man with an $80,000 family income. Is it any surprise that Hillary Clinton gets only 9 percent in most online-activist polls, while garnering more than 40 percent in traditional polls?
It's not that women are invisible. There are "women's pages" on the Internet. Technorati counts more than 11,000 "mommy blogs." There are "women's issues" blogs like the funny and bracing Feministing.

Today's Boston Globe ran an exciting story about the drawing power of Democratic presidential hopefuls across New Hampshire as compared to the lame attendance experienced by their Republican counterparts.

The article says that top Dems are generating so much enthusiasm that they have to issue tickets to their events. Republicans can't even pack the house with offers of free food!

Susan Milligan and James W. Pindell, Globe Correspondent  |  May 31, 2007
MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Democratic presidential candidates are drawing bigger crowds, more donors, and more energy from the New Hampshire electorate than Republican hopefuls are, a sign to officials in both parties of a lack of enthusiasm for the current GOP field and a tired state Republican Party still reeling from a historic defeat in November.

The 10 Republican candidates seemed like Snow White's dwarves, each trying to outdo the other with his own stunted personality summarized by his moniker

Mitt Romney --  Smarmy

John McCain -- Crabby

Rudy Giuliani --  Slimey

Mike Huckabee -- Pious

Sam Brownback –– Snotty

Tommy Thompson –– Dopey

Duncan Hunter -- Spiteful

Tom Tancredo -- Nasty

Ron Paul -- Kooky

Jim Gilmore ––  Sleepy

Matt Lauer and the rest of the folks at the Today Show seem to be unaware of the fact that Democrats control the Senate and the House. What else could explain this morning's coverage of the Senate vote yesterday to set a deadline to bring the troops home.  Lauer started off saying the vote initiated a "game of political chicken" and then aired a lengthy clip of John McCain calling the decision shameful.

There is an excellent article by Rick Klein in yesterday's Boston Globe that explores the relationship between the NRCC (National Republican Congressional Committee) and Republican congressional candidates in November. The NRCC operates independently of the campaigns; its primary goal is to raise tons of money and use it to smear Democrats. Over 90% of their budget goes to vile attack ads.

The independent expenditure operation spent $77 million attacking Democratic House candidates, while spending $6.6 million in positive ads boosting Republicans, according to FEC disclosures.

One of their best known smear jobs was the ad against Michael Arcuri of New York whose aide accidently called a sex hot line, realized he had misdialed and immediately called the same number with a different area code. The ad backfired; Arcuri won and his opponent Ray Meier is mad, claiming he tried to stop the NRCC from running the ad but they wouldn't.

"They weren't just attacking my opponent -- they were, bit by bit, destroying a reputation that I had spent years and years building.

Remember when Charles Stimson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, threatened law firms representing detainees at Guantanamo?

The bullying has backfired in a big way, as Farah Stockman reports in today's Boston Globe

Two weeks ago, Stimson had this to say:

"I think quite honestly, when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hurt their bottom line back in 2001, those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms."
...He said that corporations would become outraged when they realized that their legal fees were subsidizing this kind of pro bono work.

Emphasis mine.

Today marks an international day of protest against torture in Guantanamo. I will be at the rally in Boston that is sponsored by MoveOn.

You can check out actions around the globe here at Witness Torture.

A couple of details below the fold but please check links for events in your area.

There have been a lot of accusations flying about Mitt Romney lately which claim that he didn't inspect the bolts that gave way in the Ted Williams tunnel, causing a concrete ceiling tile to fall onto a car and kill a woman.
That is simply not true.

Mitt personally checked the bolts himself, as you can see here.

Deval Patrick does not remember Willie Horton. Deval Patrick does not remember the swiftboating of John Kerry. Deval Patrick does not remember that Bill Clinton, his former boss, had a group in his campaign called The Defense Department whose job it was to hit back the minute the opposition struck.

For those of you who don't know, Deval Patrick is a democrat running against Republican Kerry Healey for governor of Massachusetts. Healey has been playing an ad that says that Patrick tried to get a reduced sentence for a convicted cop killer who had been sentenced to death. And that is ad running constantly and it's working.

For all the criticism of Tweety on this site, he sure made Congressman John Boehner look like an embarrassed Sylvester last night. Check it out.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...

His tone was pugilistic - he is Chris Matthews, of course - and this was an aggressive, controlled grilling.

He started with the failed legislation on immigration, he moved onto Social Security, raising the specter of doom if a Republican Congress is re-elected.

More below:

Kos's Chocola (IN-02) diary hyping Donnelly's recent internal polls prompted a lot of reading-the-entrails comments prognosticating a sweep of the House based on a possible upset in Indiana's 2nd.

Dump those chicken guts into the dog bowl. Here's the bad news.

My parents who live in South Bend (I grew up there) loathe Chocola. Mom  -  "he is a rich, golf-playing, jerk-faced slimeball". Dad, always less vituperative  -  "Of course he's completely corrupt." But will they vote for Donnelly? Not if the election were held today.

..say a couple of Harvard profs.
In the Boston Globe today, an article
http://www.boston.com/...
examines how the middle class is getting further and further into debt in order to pay for basics. But what can we do?   Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren and senior economist Christopher Weller tell us the first step as members of the middle-class is to start dealing with our denial:

Many families, particularly middle-income households, aren't acknowledging that declining incomes mean they must radically adjust their living standards, Weller and Warren suggested.

Did you hear that hon? We are borrowing money like there's no tomorrow! Money to pay off bills, money to buy food, money to pay for heating oil, money to pay for health insurance, money to repair the roof!
You are so right. And debt is bad, bad, bad. Let's ask the very well educated Harvard Professors who are also Republicans, what should we can possibly do?