Entries for May 11, 2007

Self-pity may not ultimately get Gov. Bill Richardson elected president, but it sure is getting him a lot of attention on YouTube.

Last Tuesday, the New Mexico Democrat's campaign posted this political ad on YouTube, in which a bedraggled Richardson is sitting for a job interview, fielding questions from a highly skeptical interviewer. His interlocutor reads through a litany of policy successes that Richardson has apparently listed on his résumé, and then says: "So, what makes you think you can be president?"

As of Friday afternoon, the ad had received over 93,000 views on YouTube and was the most linked-to video on both BlogPulse.com and Technorati.com, two barometers for the blogosphere.

ABC News is reporting on its website that terrorists are planning a sophisticated attack on U.S. military personnel or tourists in Germany, citing both U.S. and German officials, a story that has been quickly parroted on cable news stations.

Reuters, however, is also citing unnamed officials claiming that there is no new threat in Germany that has caused any change in procedures.

House Republicans early this morning invoked a parliamentary procedure in an unsuccessful attempt to kill the often-derided if little-known National Drug Intelligence Center, a small federal agency created to coordinate the drug war as well as a pet project of one of their chief nemeses, Democrat John Murtha of Pennsylvania. Murtha has led his party's efforts to impose troop withdrawal deadlines in Iraq.

The center, loathed by the Drug Enforcement Administration, nearly died on the drawing board--and by many accounts, it should have. But Murtha, chair of a powerful appropriations subcommittee, resuscitated the center and planted it in his own district, creating a host of logistical problems.

Emerging alliances between regional terrorist groups to exchange dangerous "technology and know-how" could increase the terrorist threat to the United States over the next 15 years, warns a new report by the Rand Corp. think tank that was prepared for the Department of Homeland Security. (Read the report.)

Researchers examined three case studies of how terrorist groups have exchanged technology and operational knowledge in different parts of the world. In particular, they found that groups have passed on development and training expertise on everything from remote-detonation devices to "barracksbuster" mortars.

• Iraqi officials are now visiting the United States to lobby individual members of Congress in an attempt to shore up support for the war, the AP reports.
• Meanwhile, the war spending bill caught in the crossfire between President Bush and Democrats in Congress now faces an uncertain future.
• The major Democratic candidates--Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards--now all say they support a measure that would allow shareholders in public companies to cast an annual, nonbinding vote on whether the executives' pay is excessive.
• In the third day of testimony in the criminal trial of a Marine captain facing charges related to the killing of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha, officials indicated that they did not originally see a need to further investigate the incident.