Political trail mix

Some news from the Hill for y’all…

JOHNSON BACK TO SOUTH DAKOTA

For the first time since his near-fatal brain hemorrhage eight months ago, Sen. Tim Johnson, D-SD — who is up for reelection in 2008 — is returning to South Dakota this month.

In a statement released by his office, Johnson says, "I know my return has taken longer than some people have liked — count me among them. But I learned early on in this journey the importance and necessity of relying on the advice and counsel of those doctors, nurses and therapists without whom my return would have been impossible."

Johnson is expected to return to the US Senate in September for the first time since the incident.

In the meantime, the senior senator has new grandchildren to greet him in "The Land of Great Faces and Great Places." Johnson’s son Brendan and wife adopted two children from Ethiopia — Trualem, age 10, and Peneal, age 8 — who arrived last week.

ADMIRAL SESTAK: DON’T DAMN THE TORPEDOES…

Retired three-star Admiral and freshman Democrat Rep. Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania may have recently endorsed Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, but he sounds more cautious than she when discussing how quickly US troops can leave Iraq.

Before a crowd at the liberal Center for American Progress today, Sestak said "the time to do it will take at least — at least — a year," and likely between 15 and 24 months to do it well. Even 15 months, he said, "is probably pushing it to do it safely unless you just walked away" leaving bases and equipment behind.

This reality check contradicts much of the Democratic rhetoric coming out of the House…including Sestak’s own call in June 2006 for the Bush administration to withdraw US troops "within a year, give or take a few months, so our military leaders can do it safely,"

BOEHNER BONER?

The somewhat left-leaning good government group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington asked the Department of Justice to look into whether House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, broke any national security laws during a July 31 interview with Fox News Channel’s Neil Cavuto about FISA laws.

During that interview Boehner said "there’s been a ruling, over the last four or five months, that prohibits the ability of our intelligence services and our counterintelligence people from listening in to two terrorists in other parts of the world where the communication could come through the United States."

Boehner was arguing that Democrats should have acted long before the deadline came last week.

Says CREW: "By telling a reporter that a FISA court has restricted the U.S. intelligence community’s surveillance of suspected terrorists overseas, Rep. Boehner appears to have transmitted information relating to the national defense in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 793(d)."

That law, of course, "provides that anyone with lawful possession of information relating to the national defense, which could be used to the injury of the United States, who willfully communicates that information to any person not entitled to receive it, is subject to up to ten years imprisonment."

A Boehner spokesman denied his boss had said anything that wasn’t already part of the public record and called the complaint "laughable."

– jt