Entries for March 27, 2007

This comes from Whispers editor Paul Bedard:

The growing controversy over the firing of federal prosecutors and what administration officials knew about it is renewing concerns among Bush aides over the less-than-secret aspect of E-mails. Those concerns were elevated this week when a House chairman asked that all aides retain their E-mails.

But just a week after E-mails in the U.S. attorneys case became a main focus of congressional Democrats probing the firings, several aides said that they stopped using the White House system except for purely professional correspondence.

Republican strategists are increasingly confident that majority Democrats are going too far in investigating the Bush administration over the firing of those U.S. attorneys and other issues, reports chief White House correspondent Kenneth T. Walsh.

"Every time someone sneezes at the White House, they investigate," says a prominent adviser to a GOP presidential candidate with longtime ties to congressional Republicans. "We did the same thing to Bill Clinton when we were in the majority and overplayed our hand. The Democrats are close to doing the same thing."

With suicide bombers continuing to strike targets around Iraq, David Satterfield, the State Department's point man for Iraq, pointed the finger directly at Syria during a Washington lunch speech today, reports U.S. News senior writer Kevin Whitelaw. Satterfield estimated that 85 to 90 percent of the suicide bombers in Iraq are foreigners. While the mix of countries has changed over time, one thing has remained steady.

"Eighty-five to 90 percent of all suicide bombers come across one border--Syria," he said. Iraqi officials have offered similar estimates before, but the on-the-record remarks by a senior U.S. official continue to ratchet up the diplomatic pressure against Syria.

After the News Desk published this item on Tuesday, which quoted critics of Sen. John McCain as saying that the Arizona Republican was waging his 2000 bid for president all over again when the landscape has changed, strategists for his campaign contacted chief White House correspondent Kenneth T. Walsh to tell their side of the story:

Strategists for John McCain vigorously dispute criticism from Republican insiders that the Arizona senator's campaign is on the wrong course. The strategists say national opinion polls which show former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani strongly in the lead for the Republican presidential nomination aren't predictive because it's so early in the political cycle and because Giuliani's vulnerabilities haven't been fully explored yet.

You can bet that March 31, 2007, is circled on the calendars of many politicos. This Saturday is the last day of the first fundraising quarter, which means that by mid-April, once all the numbers are crunched, the public will have hard numbers on what kind of cash the candidates have pulled in over the past three months.

Expect to feel poor. As U.S. News political correspondent Dan Gilgoff has reported, Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to announce fundraising results somewhere around $25 or $30 million.

Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama are all in D.C. today to speak at the Communications Workers of America Conference.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney attends a private fundraiser in Los Angeles co-hosted by Brad Freeman, who has previously raised large amounts for George W. Bush.

From the U.S. News Political Bulletin: Edwards Gets Small Bump in Polls.

This morning's top stories:

• Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's former top aide, Kyle Sampson, is expected to say that the attorney general was aware of what was going on with the firing of eight U.S. attorneys when Sampson testifies before Congress on Thursday, U.S. News has learned. Gonzales has denied knowledge of the firings.
• Meanwhile, the Justice Department liaison to the White House, Monica Goodling, announced Monday that she plans to take the Fifth Amendment before the Senate Judiciary Committee to avoid self-incrimination in the case of the fired U.S. attorneys.
• Israeli and Palestinian leaders have agreed to meet every two weeks, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced this morning, after a diplomatic swing through the Middle East centered around the power-sharing plan and its impact on a peace deal . U.S. News & World Report's Thomas Omestad, who's traveling with the secretary of state, will have more details today.
• An Australian man detained at Guantanamo Bay has become the first detainee at the controversial facility to plead guilty to charges.
• Geologists and archaeologists in Greece are setting out to locate the legendary island of Ithaca, home to Odysseus in the poet Homer's epic, which may have merged with other land masses.
• Three Americans have set new swimming records in Australia, the AP reports.