Morning copy 11.14.2005

New week, new polls. George W. Bush's approval remains in the mid-thirties. Newsweek:

Only 36 percent of Americans approve of the job he is doing as president, and an astounding 68 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with the direction of the country—the highest in Bush’s presidency. But that’s not the worst of it for the 43rd president of the United States, a leader who rode comfortably to reelection just a year ago. Half of all Americans now believe he’s not “honest and ethical.”

"Malady" and leadership woes in the GOP

Robert Novak today:

Rep. Mike Pence, chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, told this column late Thursday that he was not interested in new leadership elections. But he was deeply upset by the moderates. "It does not bode well for the future of this Republican majority," Pence told me. Other conservatives were reported as calling on the Club for Growth to challenge in Republican primaries every member of the moderate Main Street group.

New Jersey GOP

Douglas Forrester, who lost to Jon Corzine in New Jersey, blames President Bush, New York Times.

In an interview published yesterday in The Star-Ledger of Newark, the state's largest newspaper, Mr. Forrester said his campaign had done "all the right things we were supposed to do." Still, he said, he could not overcome a spate of bad news for Mr. Bush, like the administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina.

A lot of people will not believe his analysis of his own failed campaign.

Iraq

10 Questions in TIME for Ahmad Chalabi:

We put forward the idea that Iraq should buy American weapons. It will go a long way toward raising the morale of Iraqi troops and giving them something serious to work with. We discussed Syria and how we stop infiltration from Syria by getting the Syrian government to act responsibly.

The Washington Post recaps Senator Pat Roberts (R., Kan.) on the Sunday Talkies:

"I think a lot of us would really stop and think a moment before we would ever vote for war or to go and take military action," Sen. Pat Roberts (Kan.) said on "Fox News Sunday."

More than a thousand lawyers have left Saddam's defense team due to security concerns, AP.

One of the suicide bombers in Amman may have been detained by U.S. forces last year, Knight Ridder Tribune.

Saudi Arabia has pledged $1 billion to rebuild Iraq, AP.

Samuel Alito

The Washington Times:

Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, wrote that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion" in a 1985 document obtained by The Washington Times.

TIME magazine has a story on the difficulty the Dems will have if they mount a fight on this nominee:

The White House, says Democratic strategist Joel Johnson, "has accomplished the task of getting beyond the base problem in a way that has not completely lit the opposition on fire." A disappointed Democrat summed up the problem this way: "He's a nice guy, and he doesn't drool."

But there is a liberal coalition that plans a series of ads, New York Times.

Alito's ethics are defended in Opinion Journal.

The week's winners

John Fund on Opinion Journal cites his list of last week's winners:

Virginia's Gov. Mark Warner, Arizona's Sen. John McCain and California's government employee unions.

TIME has a list of the nation's top five governors:

Mike Huckabee/Arkansas
Kenny Guinn/Nevada
Janet Napolitano/Arizona
Kathleen Sebelius/Kansas
Mark Warner/Virginia

Katrina recovery

Much of New Orleans remains in the dark, Los Angeles Times.

Washington Post

Howard Kurtz on the CIA prison story:

Some conservatives are furious over her Washington Post story this month disclosing that the CIA has been hiding and interrogating terror suspects at secret prisons in Eastern Europe. And some liberals are angry that The Post agreed to a request by senior U.S. officials not to name the countries involved.

Border security

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has notified Michael Chertoff that DHS needs to work on border security, Washington Times.