The Note: On Recess
— -- The Note will observe Memorial Day on May 30. We'll return on Tuesday, May 31. To tide yourself until then, read our latest edition below, browse our archives, or get current with our major futures calendar.
WASHINGTON, May 27
NEWS SUMMARY
An estimated 72 percent of Note readers don't know that the New York Times used to have a weekly news quiz.
It was a sharply written and clever conceived romp around a half fortnight of local, national, and international news, and it was fun as all heck.
As in so many areas when the Times cedes the field, ABC News rushes in and grabs the space (OK: sometimes we don't "rush," but we still get there first . . . )
So, starting today, every Friday, The Note will feature a news quiz aimed squarely at the sensibilities of our readers.
Here's how to evaluate how you do:
0-3 correct answers: You are our mothers.
4-6 correct answers: You are Warren Beatty.
7-8 correct answers: You are a Hill leadership aide who tells their staff (and their Member) to leave them alone from the moment The Note arrives each morning until the reading is done.
9 correct answers: You are Russell Hampton. LINK
10 correct answers: You are Mike Allen.
Answers will appear in Saturday's Note.*
Good luck.
1 What are three things that Scott McClellan would say from the podium these days that "disappoint" him?
2. Why do almost no newspapers today include the fact that Sen. Thune says he will vote against the Bolton nomination (broken by AP and confirmed by ABC News)?
3. If you were going to pick one American city in which to do a focus group on what voters think about the filibuster deal and its aftermath, what would that city be?
4. Who are Mary Lu Carnevale and Zachary Coile?
5. Which Republican leaders will see themselves in the mirror of today's lead Wall Street Journal editorial attacking the (allegedly) do-nothing Congress?
6. What two adjectives best describe how Elisabeth Bumiller will feel about today's Roland Betts quotes in the New York Post?
7. What African nation has a stamp "depicting an imaginary jam session featuring Elvis and a saxophone-toting (Bill) Clinton" that is on display at the Clinton library in Little Rock?
8. To which country did Sen. Daniel Inouye travel this week, causing him to miss the Bolton vote?
9. What strikes you as funny about this Liz Smith item: "Larry King has an all-star VIP lineup to mark his remarkable 20th anniversary. First, Vice President Cheney and his wife, Lynne . . . the former President George Walker Bush and his Barbara . . . after that former President Bill Clinton . . . then Dan Rather will appear in his first TV interview since he left the CBS anchor chair . . . after that comes Barbara Walters interviewing Larry on his own show! . . . and finally, the attorney Mark Geragos"?
10. What is the definition of a "Googling monkey"?
BONUS: Explain, in an essay, how the FEC ruling against Jesse Jackson and the Democratic Party and the Texas judge's ruling against TRMPAC differ in content, context, and implication, and assess the relative media coverage of the two decisions.
Teeing up for the summer recess and Memorial Day, Washington is relatively quiet this morning.
The Senate depressurizes after one of the toughest, roughest, most interesting weeks in recent memory. Opponents of John Bolton, who now include Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, have more than a week to pick off a few more Senators.
Sen. Lindsey Graham goes home to an adoring State and what conservatives hope is an angry state. Sen. Mike DeWine goes home to a politically ambitious son who doesn't approve of his compromising ways. The leadership prepares to re-enter battles over stem cells, reconciling the highway bills, appropriations, judges, and Social Security. Paul Gigot's voice mail is full by the end of the day.
Thune might be onto something about BRAC though: if enough Senators stew about the Pentagon's apparent failure to release back-up data on time, the bill Thune introduced with Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine requiring the DoD to provide Congress all of the BRAC data within seven days -- or the entire BRAC round will be terminated -- might just pass.
Snowe is particularly upset, we are told by a Senate aide, because the BRAC hearings on Maine bases are next week and/but she believes Pentagon hasn't released the data used to justify its proposed closings and realignments. (Defense officials have said they're concerned about classified data being inadvertently released and want more time to carefully vet the material.)
At 10:00 am ET, President Bush today attends the United States Naval Academy Graduation and Commissioning Ceremony in Annapolis, MD. He then choppers west to Camp David, where he spends the weekend.
Sen. John Kerry heads to Orlando, FL this morning to talk to the National Head Start Convention about his Kids First Health Care bill, which aims to give health care coverage to 11 million uninsured kids. This trip is his sixth stop on the tour to promote the legislation, and he wants to add to the 600,000 children co-sponsors already on it.
In the address Kerry will talk about his frustration with Washington and what he sees as lawmakers' failure to address the real problems in the country by passing budgets that don't deal with deficits and sounding the alarm about Social Security without confronting the problems faced by education programs now. Congress has lost touch with the "mainstream values and priorities of the American people," he says in excerpts of the speech.
"If we still want America to be the land of opportunity, we have to work together to keep this Administration from destroying opportunity for so many children, and that starts with supporting Head Start. . . Head Start kids are 8% more likely to have proper immunizations and 58% more likely to have proper screenings for health and development. Kids with health insurance do 68% better in measures of school performance."
On "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," an exclusive interview with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. ABC News' Terry Moran, Linda Douglass, and George Will are on the roundtable.
Monday, in honor of Memorial Day, there will be no Note. We will be back Tuesday.
* = "Saturday's Note" and "answers" are literary constructs. Do not take literally.
Corrections:
Due to an unintentional typographical error (read: "brain lock"), we incorrectly identified the Republican running for governor of Virginia as Ed Kilgore. That man, is, in fact, Jerry Kilgore. We'd like to state for the record that we do not believe that Ed and Jerry Kilgore share the same first name, political philosophy, or accent. LINK
Even less excusable is how we somehow substituted the words "stem cell" for "parental notification" in a brief summary of John DiStaso's Granite Status column yesterday. We can't really come up with a joke to explain that one.
But we regret both errors. Deeply. Not enough to commit ritual seppuku, but pretty darn close.
Bolton vote postponed:
The Washington Post's Chuck Babington wraps yesterday's Bolton action and looks toward more "so much for bipartisanship" talk after the congressional recess. LINK
"Frist tried throughout the day to meet Biden's demand for information about records Bolton has requested over the past four years from the National Security Agency, the federal eavesdropping office that monitors overseas communications between Americans and foreigners," the Los Angeles Times' Mary Curtius writes. "According to a Frist aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, the majority leader lobbied the administration to give Biden and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) access to the records sought by Bolton." LINK
The New York Times' Carl Hulse has a nice back and forth between Reid and Frist staffers over whether Reid told Frist he had the votes to stop his party from filibustering. LINK
A perhaps ironic paragraph from the New York Times' Douglas Jehl's recap of the day's events: "Among Mr. Bolton's supporters, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, was among those who urged the Senate to cast aside the Democratic objections and vote on Thursday in favor of the nomination. 'Elections have consequences,' Mr. McCain said." LINK
Report the Wall Street Journal's Dreazen and Rogers: "While the vote was technically about a narrow parliamentary question, it carries broader political stakes. The Senate has been debating Mr. Bolton's nomination for months, and the White House had clearly been hoping to put it -- and the politically damaging questions about the administration's use of Iraq war intelligence that it was reopening -- behind."
They add: " . . . one issue now is whether the White House will be more forthcoming over the recess or take the option of making Mr. Bolton a recess appointment."
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