The Note: Gone Fishin', 2005
— -- WASHINGTON, Aug 16
NEWS SUMMARY
As the Muppets always say, with The Note, you get what you pay for.
As we do every August, we are taking a bit of a break starting tomorrow.
We'll be back September 6.
Per usual, we'll spend the time doing some metaphoric fishing -- thinking about the meaning of life, having leisurely breakfasts with our best sources, giving career counseling to Googling monkeys by the hundreds, and trying to decide if we still need to save the pro beta copies of Bob Dole's 1996 campaign spots.
If you want to keep up with our thoughts on political developments the rest of the month, you can get one of the hard copies of The Summer Note that will be handed out each weekday between noon and 1 pm (local time) at the following locations only (again: no Internet distribution until September 6):
-- The Juice Bar, Nantucket
-- Bubba's, Jackson Hole
-- hush, Laguna Beach
-- Nobu 57, New York (assuming Drew starts serving lunch)
-- The Whole Year Inn, Las Vegas
-- Manny's, Chicago
-- The Salty Dog, Hilton Head Island
-- Chateau Marmont (poolside), Los Angeles
Until then, have a great end-of-summer.
(Note Note: unlike yesterday's "trip" to Montana, we are serious about this one.)
As Brian Williams will tell you, today's political events, with the President expected to be out of sight again, are a mélange of cats and dogs.
The July Consumer Price Index was released at 8:30 am ET this morning. "The Labor Department reported Tuesday that its closely watched Consumer Price Index rose 0.5 percent in July, the biggest rise in three months. In July, overall inflation was driven higher by a big 3.8 percent jump in energy costs," reports the Associated Press.
At 1:00 pm ET Cindy Sheehan will hold a telephone press conference tomorrow from Crawford, TX, with other mothers whose sons were killed in Iraq.
The four Democratic candidates running for mayor in New York will square off in the first official primary debate of the season at 7:00 pm ET. The debate will be moderated by the incomparable Dominic Carter and will be cablecast live on NY1 News.
Lobbyist Jack Abramoff is expected to appear in US District Court in Ft. Lauderdale, FL on Tuesday at 9:00 am ET before Judge Barry Garber.
Gov. Huckabee (R-AR) will host the Republican Governors Association for the Arkansas Governors Forum. Govs. Guinn (R-NV), Romney (R-MA), Blunt (R-MO), and Perry (R-TX) are expected to attend. LINK
Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Susan Collins (R-ME) continue their visit to Alaska on a climate change fact finding trip.
The National Conference of State Legislatures Annual Meeting and Exhibition gets underway today in Seattle, WA.
The Washington State Democratic Party will hold their 12th annual Warren G. Magnuson with special guest Senator John Edwards in Seattle, WA at 8:00 pm ET.
Edwards will also join Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D-MT) to headline the kickoff event for the Progressive Legislative Action Network gathering, Seattle, WA.
Sen. George Allen (R-VA) wraps up his listening tour of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Gov./Chairman/Dr. Howard Dean is traveling this week on a personal trip to Hungary, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Armenia, and Georgia. In Bosnia-Herzegovina tomorrow, he will address a human rights conference. He was invited to address the human rights conference and planned the trip prior to becoming DNC Chairman.
Roberts:
In the day's only must-read, the Washington Post's masters-of-the-obvious-but-important (Mike Allen and Dana Milbank) survey Capitol Hill and find that unless there are major developments in the coming weeks, Democratic Senators will not block John Roberts' nomination. LINK
Read it all: the rough-but-good whip count; the Jim-Manley-talks-openly-about-tactics part; the embryonic Democratic "strategy" about how to "use" the confirmation hearings.
Also in the Post: Amy Goldstein and Jo Becker report on the 5,393 government documents released yesterday from John Roberts tenure as associate White House counsel in the Reagan White House -- a period when Supreme Court nominee "staked out conservative positions on a broader array of issues than has previously been known." LINK
What the documents show:
-- Roberts concluded that a memorial service for aborted fetuses was "'an entirely appropriate means of calling attention to the abortion tragedy.'"
-- Roberts called a federal court decision seeking to guarantee equal pay for women was a "'a radical redistributive concept'" and took strong issue with three female lawmakers push on the issue, writing that "'their slogan may as well be 'From each according to his ability, to each according to her gender.'"
-- Roberts wrote that a Supreme Court case prohibiting silent prayer in public school "'seems indefensible.'"
Like Josh Gerstein, the paper fails in its attempt to pick a fight between Roberts and now-Senator Snowe.
Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times seems sort of bored and leads with the non-barking dog in the Reagan Library documents. LINK
David Savage and Henry Weinstein cleverly lead their Los Angeles Times coverage with Roberts' take on opening up internal White House files to Congress. LINK
"'We should take whatever steps are necessary to ensure the general opening of files to Hill scrutiny … does not become routine,' Roberts said. 'I would hope that … we would be in a better position to resist committee demands.' He also denounced as 'pernicious' the Presidential Records Act of 1978, in which Congress called for the future public release of files housed in a president's library."
"'By 2001,' Roberts wrote with alarm on Aug. 29, 1985, 'Hill staffers need only go to the Reagan Library to see any internal White House deliberative document they want to see.'"
The Chicago Tribune's Jan Crawford Greenburg and Naftali Bendavid pored through the papers too and lede with the young Roberts' response to the equal pay case in Washington state in 1983. LINK
Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe writes that the school prayer memo provides some of the first insight into how Roberts may rule on church/state issues. LINK
USA Today's Joan Biskupic and Toni Locy write that the papers show Roberts as "a young aide eager to advance Reagan's conservatism on civil rights, school prayer and women's rights." LINK
The politics of Iraq:
"If Iraq's government uses the seven-day extension to resolve the issues dividing the country's Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis, and the parliament successfully approves the draft document next week, the missed deadline will probably be seen as little more than an unsettling glitch that temporarily caused heartburn at the White House and disappointment among Iraq's citizens," write Tyler Marshall and Alissa Rubin in their Los Angeles Times analysis. LINK
"However, if Monday's failure turns out to be the first in a series of delays that slows or even derails the effort to build a democratic state, the results could be catastrophic for both Iraq and the Bush administration."
Peter Baker and Robin Wright are a bit more negative in their look at whether the missed deadline for the Iraqi constitution represents a failure by the Bush Administration and whether there is too much emphasis on deadlines. LINK
". . .it's a bump in the road, but it's a major, major bump," said Sen. Biden (D-DE) on network morning television this morning.
Bush agenda:
The Wall Street Journal's John McKinnon looks at the Bush Administration's newest push on immigration reform that may split the President's big-business supporters and conservatives in the Republican Party.
McKinnon makes a stab at the timing question, and/but the story suggests a strong White House try and lots of consultation.
This one misses must-read status by only a hair.
The White House indicated yesterday that President Bush will not use emergency authority to stop a potential mechanics strike at Northwest Airlines, slated for Saturday, the USA Today's Marilyn Adams and Dan Reed report. LINK
"Bush's decision is a turnabout from 2001, when at the urging of the mediation board, he delayed for 60 days a planned strike by Northwest mechanics," the duo Notes.
If it's August, there must be a presidential reading list to dissect. The Los Angeles Times' Warren Vieth brings everyone up to date on which books President Bush has with him at the ranch -- two of which are authored by declared Bush critics. LINK
And don't miss Peter Osnos' priceless kicker quote where he praises the President and trashes Ed Klein all in one fell swoop.
Cheney:
Vice President Cheney will speak at the 73rd national convention of the Military Order of the Purple Heart in Springfield, Missouri on Thursday. LINK
The News-Leader reports that the group's spokesman, Ray Funderburk, "hoped to impress upon Cheney what Funderburk sees as inadequate funding for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs."
Cheney was in Billings, Montana yesterday for a fundraiser for Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT). It seems like a standard speech for the event, but the fly-fishing Vice President did Note that he was in Montana two weeks ago to fish on the Bighorn River before going to Saudi Arabia for the death of King Fahd. LINK
And in Boise, ID for an event for Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID), Cheney said he had fished the South Fork of the Snake River in eastern Idaho last Friday. LINK
Big Casino budget politics:
"For fiscal year 2005, the budget office forecast a $331-billion deficit, in line with the Bush administration's estimate issued in July. That compares with the $364-billion deficit the budget office forecast in March and the $412 billion the Bush administration estimated in February," reports the Los Angeles Times' Havemann. LINK
Robert Pear, writing in the New York Times, has the numbers too. LINK
Republican Sen. Judd Gregg and Democratic Rep. John Spratt issued predictably partisan statements in response to the CBO report.
The Fitzgerald investigation:
Bob Dole's New York Times' op-ed has him coming out for Lugar-Pence. LINK
Hillary Clinton and Jeanine Pirro:
The New York Post's Kenneth Lovett, writing with a fantastic "Portsmouth, Ohio" dateline, keeps the paper ahead of the competish with a report claiming that an "irate" Albert Pirro had some testy interaction with his daughter Jaclyn Marciano after the Post's Monday coverage. LINK
As some might expect in this two-tabloid town, Owen Mortiz of the New York Daily News gets Al Pirro and his daughter, Jaclyn Lichtefeld, to respond to the New York Post's account of their relationship, casting the story in a negative way for the Murdoch-owned tab. LINK
"'The claim that my father was trying to buy me off with a car is not true,' Lichtefeld declared. 'In fact, I initiated the request for an automobile, not my father. I have told the reporter from the Post that the story was wrong.'"
The New York Post stands by its story which was largely based on information provided by Jaclyn's mother.
Michael Cooper of the New York Times plays catch up after getting a call from Marciano, who provided some unsolicited tick tock about the car. LINK
Charles Millard's New York Post op-ed is very smart regarding the Republican primary and what the party needs to achieve therein -- although his inclusion of Social Security seems discordant. LINK
Page Six gets into the act with "news" of Pirro's alleged underwear, rule flouting, and margaritas. LINK
The Clintons' Vineyard time gets a Cindy Adams squib. LINK
As for Sen. Clinton's trip to Alaska, "Clinton hopes to measure how the melting glaciers, softening tundra and warmer days are affecting people who live to the north," writes Michael McAuliff of the New York Daily News. LINK
(The Fairbanks News-Miner's editorial board concludes the Senators' trip to Alaska this week can only be a good thing for Alaskans. LINK)2006:
The AP's man in Albany, Marc Humbert, followed up on Fred Dicker's New York Post reporting yesterday and found Gov. Weld may be giving a more serious look at Albany's top job than previously suspected. LINK
Gov. Weld did not return The Note's call for comment.
2008: Republicans:
He wasn't in attendance at "Justice Sunday II" this past weekend, but that doesn't mean Sen. Bill Frist's name was not on the minds and tongues of conservative leaders, the Washington Post's Tom Edsall writes. LINK
The AP reports that Wolfeboro, NH -- the summer getaway spot for Gov. Mitt Romney -- could go from a quaint, well-kept vacationer's secret to a Secret Service-secured resort locale if 2008 finds the Bay State man victorious in his presidential quest. LINK
2008: Democrats:
Oh, Chef Comerford, if you're ever looking for new ideas, Iowa's Christie Vilsack has some First-rate (blue-ribbon worthy?) recipes she could share. LINK
The Schwarzenegger Era:
The Los Angeles Times' Jordan Rau reports, "Despite months of talks, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic leaders are nowhere near reaching compromises that could avert the Nov. 8 special election called by the governor, officials said Monday." LINK
2005:
The New York Times' Patrick D. Healy is all about tactics and strategy today, with a look at why the trailing Democrats in the New York mayoral contest are going mostly softly -- if at all -- at frontrunner Ferrer. LINK
Perhaps foreshadowing his strategy for tonight's debate, Anthony Weiner went after Freddy Ferrer's tax plans yesterday. . . again. The New York Daily News' Michael Saul has details. LINK
Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times does the Gifford Miller profile, matching the tone that Ferrer got in his. LINK
The New York Daily News' Colangelo writes up a Bloomberg advance person's nightmare. LINK
The AP crunches the tax return numbers of New Jersey's millionaire gubernatorial candidates Douglas Forrester and Sen. Jon Corzine. LINK
Politics:
As many of you know, Jason Mauk is fully shedding himself of his official communications responsibilities at the Ohio GOP and now, as political director, will exclusively focus on the party's political programs and strategy. In his final missive to reporters as he handed the communications baton to John McClelland, Mauk passed along this irresistible tidbit.
"Please respect Chairman Bennett's privacy and avoid calling him on his cell phone. He is always very accommodating when you call him and has agreed to provide his cell phone number on many occasions. But he is called frequently, and we would appreciate your efforts to work through our communications office to reach him."