Midday open thread

• In the last six years, House Majority Leader John Boehner has travelled the equivalent of six months on the dime of lobbyists.

• George Bush, king of the straw men.

• The WaPo helped build war fever for Iraq. It is now doing the same regarding Iran.

• Boehlert has retired, and the NRCC expects more, not the sign of a party confident of its November chances.

• I'm featured in Deborah Solomon's Q&A column in the Sunday NY Times Magazine. This column is really exerpts from a much longer interview, edited pretty extensively. But I do have to say that Deborah was one of the most entertaining interviewers I've ever met.

• Google wins partial victory in its case against the government. It doesn't have to reveal user searches, but it must release the names of certain sites it has indexed. What, do government lawyers not know how to do a Google search? Seems like a stupid decision, personally. This article also quotes Prof. Carter at BU. I was a graduate assistant for the guy back in 1998.

• Bush is incompetent, sure. But by hammering on just that issue it suggests that Bush's policies would be better for our country if only we had someone more competent executing them. That's not true. Bush is both wrong on the issues AND incompetent.

• Ahh, the dirt is starting to fly in the CA-50 special election. It looks like the Republicans in the race are starting to sweat Busby's great fundraising and poll numbers.

• Another valiant effort by Atrios to kill the "real media doesn't act in partisan ways" lie. Stoller has more.

• More on Bush's incompetence -- conservatives, horrified that their entire worldview is collapsing around them, are deciding that it isn't their policies that are wrong -- it's that Bush blew it. So let conservatives hammer on Bush's incompetence while we hammer on the issues. If we give conservative a pass on their policies, it makes it easier for their candidates to argue for more competent leadership come election time.