Weekend news

China

George W. Bush is off to China (Washington Post) and so is Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (SF Gate).

John Edwards

His Op-Ed piece in the Post has a stunning lede. It puts pressure on the Clinton(s). It could be a major factor in 2006 and 2008. The Washington Post:

I was wrong.

Almost three years ago we went into Iraq to remove what we were told -- and what many of us believed and argued -- was a threat to America. But in fact we now know that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction when our forces invaded Iraq in 2003. The intelligence was deeply flawed and, in some cases, manipulated to fit a political agenda.

Libby's testimony

Carol Leonnig and "Diamond" Jim VandeHei in the Washington Post:

This was an explanation made dubious by Libby's own notes, which showed that he previously had learned about Plame from his boss, Cheney.

In the aftermath of Libby's recent five-count indictment, this curious sequence raises a question of motives that hangs over the investigation: Why would an experienced lawyer and government official such as Libby leave himself so exposed to prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald?

Rumsfeld's memo

Donald Rumsfeld wrote a memo in October 2002 about potential problems in Iraq. The Washington Post has a magazine story:

But then you wonder: Why did Rumsfeld write that memo, at that moment, and why is he flagging it now?

If the point of the memo was to nudge George W. Bush's hand from the throttle of the engine, to halt the train of events at the last moment, then it was too little too late. Rumsfeld would have known this after 40 years inside the sanctums of government. Plans have a way of gathering momentum as surely as boulders running downhill. One of "Rumsfeld's Rules," the booklet of maxims and tenets he has coined and updated through his lifetime in management, notes that "it is easier to get into something than to get out of it." The time to stop an idea is before it gets moving.

GOP in 2006

The Washington Post has a story on the two poles of the GOP: the center and the base.

Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), a former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said the current fixation on conservative voters may jeopardize his party's prospects for holding on to some of its seats. "If the leadership just plays to the base, they're going to be a minority leadership in the next Congress," he said.

Dems in 2006

Yesterday's page 1 story in the Washington Post on fundraising woes:

The Democratic National Committee under Howard Dean is losing the fundraising race against Republicans by nearly 2 to 1, a slow start that is stirring concern among strategists who worry that a cash shortage could hinder the party's competitiveness in next year's midterm elections.

Dean was very positive about fundraising efforts on Meet The Press this morning.

Russ Feingold

George Will in the Washington Post:

Feingold became luminous in the eyes of "the groups," which consider most congressional Democrats spineless, by casting the only Senate vote against the Patriot Act. But he peeved those people by voting to confirm John Roberts as chief justice, and his presidential aspirations could be injured by the chief justice's casting the deciding vote in some 5-4 ruling offensive to "the groups." Such as one overturning the political speech-rationing apparatus erected by the main reason Feingold is a familiar name -- the McCain-Feingold law.

Iraq

John Daniszewski in the Los Angeles Times:

BAGHDAD — Some Sunni Arab insurgent groups linked to Saddam Hussein's Baath Party are putting out feelers for a negotiated end of fighting in exchange for a timetable for a U.S. pullout from Iraq, a former government minister asserted Saturday, amid fresh signs that upcoming elections have altered the country's political climate.