When decadent neoconservatives lose political battles over the war, the results aren't pretty. The byline here reads Bill Kristol, but the words could very well have come from Shakespeare's Richard III (like, say, Act V, Scene IV):

John Warner of Virginia, Gordon Smith of Oregon, and Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine are the four Republican senators (in addition to Nebraska's Chuck Hagel) currently signed on to the Democrats' anti-surge, anti-Petraeus, anti-troops, and anti-victory resolution.

That's right: a nonbinding anti-surge resolution is an act against the troops.

Oh, and there's more. Kristol threatens dire political consequences to all anti-surge GOP senators... challenges from "victory-oriented" Republicans:

In any case, Republican senators up for reelection in 2008 might remember this: The American political system has primaries as well as general elections. In 1978 and 1980, as Reagan conservatives took over the party from détente-establishment types, Reaganite challengers ousted incumbent GOP senators in New Jersey and New York. Surely there are victory-oriented Republicans who might step forward today in Nebraska, Virginia, Oregon, and Maine--and, if necessary, in Tennessee, Minnesota, and New Hampshire--to seek to vindicate the honor, and brighten the future, of the party of Reagan.

Democratic political consultants must be popping champagne corks.

From the AP:

A senior Pentagon official resigned Friday over controversial remarks in which he criticized lawyers who represent terrorism suspects, the Defense Department said.

Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said Charles ''Cully'' Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, told him on Friday that he had made his own decision to resign and was not asked to leave by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Stimson said he was leaving because of the controversy over a radio interview in which he said he found it shocking that lawyers at many of the nation's top law firms represent detainees held at the U.S. military prison in Cuba.

''He believed it hampered his ability to be effective in this position,'' Whitman said of the backlash to Stimson's comments.

At his press conference this morning, Defense Secretary Bob Gates used a rather Ari Fleischer-esque formulation on the prospect of war with Iran:

With respect to Iran, first of all, the president has made clear; the secretary of State has made clear; I've made clear -- nobody is planning -- we are not planning for a war with Iran. What we are trying to do is in Iraq, counter what the Iranians are doing to our soldiers, their involvement in activities, particularly these explosively formed projectiles that are killing our troops, and we are trying to get them to stop their nuclear enrichment. We are doing the latter strictly through the diplomatic process. It seems to be showing some progress. At least we -- the diplomatic process is working, and I think that that's where we are relying.

So there really is -- you know, I think because we are acting against the Iranians' activities in Iraq, it's given rise to some of these talks. Clearly, the deployment of the second carrier group has given -- has further led to this. But really, the purpose of that is simply to underscore to our friends, as well as to our potential adversaries in the region, that the United States has considered the Persian Gulf and that whole area, and stability in that area, to be a vital national interest.

And that has been the case for decades, under many, many presidents. And we simply want to reinforce to our friends, in particular, that they can count on us having a presence and being strong in their area in protecting our interests and in protecting theirs.

Let's review. The president has authorized military action against Iranian assets in Iraq. There's a new Special Operations task force, known as Task Force 16, devoted to rooting out Iranian influence. A few weeks ago, U.S. forces raided an Iranian diplomatic office in Iraqi Kurdistan and detained several Iranian nationals. Just the other day, President Bush told NPR that he will "respond firmly" to Iranian attacks on U.S. forces, and the administration is non-denial-denying that the Iranians may have been involved in last week's attack in Karbala. For good measure, the U.S. is beefing up naval assets in the Persian Gulf, and the incoming head of Central Command warned at his confirmation hearing on Tuesday of Iranian desires to restrict U.S. access to one of the world's most economically vital shipping lanes.

Perhaps the administration isn't planning a war -- but, as we learned in Iraq, just because there's no planning doesn't mean there won't be war.

During a press conference this afternoon, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley spun the National Intelligence Estimate's key findings to support the president's "surge" plan in Iraq.

As we reported earlier, the Key Judgments paint an extremely dire picture of the situation. In one key line, it says that "even if violence is diminished, given the current winner-take-all attitude and sectarian animosities infecting the political scene, Iraqi leaders will be hard pressed to achieve sustained political reconciliation in the time frame of this Estimate."

That's not as hopeless as it sounds, according to Hadley. All that means is that since Iraqi leaders will be hard pressed, "there is no alternative but to press them hard to do that reconciliation."

"One of the things you should conclude from this NIE," Hadley said, "is the best plan is to have this plan succeed."

If yesterday was any indication, a federal appeals court will soon hand the Bush administration a major defeat on their policy of indefinitely detaining "enemy combatants."

Ali al-Marri might be an al-Qaeda sleeper agent. Or at least, the Bush administration said so and detained him five years ago, but has never charged him. Instead, al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar living as a legal resident in Illinois, has been detained for all that time in a Navy brig in Charleston, SC. The administration's stance is that, thanks to the Authorization for the Use of Military Force passed by Congress on September 18, 2001, it can hold al-Marri as long as it sees fit. It got a boost last year from the Military Commissions Act, which revoked due process from anyone detained as an enemy combatant.

Yesterday, lawyers for al-Marri challenged his detention before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Some of the judges appeared disinclined to accept the administration's arguments, according to The New York Times:

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FBI Agent's Testimony Damages Libby's Claim
The government's case churned on yesterday in the perjury and obstruction trial of former Dick Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby with testimony from FBI agent Deborah S. Bond, who said that Libby claimed in questioning that he had not been the source of the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity. (NYT) Also damning to Libby was a video shown to jurors of White House spokesman Scott McClellan telling reporters that Libby was not the source of the leak, which undercuts his claim that he was scapegoated to protect others in the administration. (LA Times). There's a helpful witness rundown here. (AP)

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The NIE is unequivocal on the whole "civil war" debate, a phrase the administration has been desperate to avoid:

The Intelligence Community judges that the term “civil war” does not adequately capture the complexity of the conflict in Iraq, which includes extensive Shia-on-Shia violence, al-Qa’ida and Sunni insurgent attacks on Coalition forces, and widespread criminally motivated violence. Nonetheless, the term “civil war” accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi conflict, including the hardening of ethno-sectarian identities, a sea change in the character of the violence, ethno-sectarian mobilization, and population displacements.

Wow, this is grim. According to the just-released Key Judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, political reconciliation is likely a bridge too far over the next year and a half.

The Sunnis remain "unwilling to accept minority status" and believe the Shiite majority is a stalking horse for Iran. The Shiites remain "deeply insecure" about their hold on power, meaning that the Shiite leadership views U.S.-desired compromises -- on oil, federalism and power-sharing -- as a threat to its position. Perhaps most ominously, the upcoming referendum on the oil-rich, multi-ethnic city of Kirkuk threatens to be explosive, as the Kurds are determined to finally regain full control over the city.

Interestingly, the listed prospects for reversing Iraq's deterioration contradict the NIE's assessment of where things actually stand. For instance, "broader Sunni acceptance of the current political structure and federalism" and "significant concessions by Shia and Kurds" could lead to stability -- but the NIE's earlier section viewed both these events as unlikely. To put this in the realm of the current debate, President Bush's "surge" is designed to give political breathing room to events that the intelligence community formally judges as unrealistic:

...even if violence is diminished, given the current winner-take-all attitude and sectarian animosities infecting the political scene, Iraqi leaders will be hard pressed to achieve sustained political reconciliation in the time frame of this Estimate.

About Iran. This must have been one of the most controversial elements of the estimate: Iraq's neighbors are "not likely to be a major driver of violence or the prospects for stability because of the self-sustaining character of Iraq's internal sectarian dynamics." There's the expected qualifications that Iran and Syria are up to no good, but this is the major point. In other words, no matter how much Bush wants to lay the blame for the disintegration of Iraq on the meddlesome interference of Iran and Syria, the U.S.-sponsored political process itself -- indeed, the new, U.S.-midwifed Iraqi political order -- itself sows the seeds for the country's destruction. Apparently Bush could attack Iran to his heart's content, and Iraq would still remain inflamed.

Oh, and one final thought: this is just what's unclassified. If past NIEs are any prologue, what remains classified is much, much grimmer than what we see here. More likely than not, this is the most optimistic presentation of the NIE possible. Happy Friday.

The Director of National Intelligence has released the declassified "Key Judgments" of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. You can read it here (pdf).

Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus of The Washington Post have a sneak preview of the Iraq NIE, scheduled to be released in declassified version later today:

In a discussion of whether Iraq has reached a state of civil war, the 90-page classified NIE comes to no conclusion and holds out prospects of improvement. But it couches glimmers of optimism in deep uncertainty about whether the Iraqi leaders will be able to transcend sectarian interests and fight against extremists, establish effective national institutions and end rampant corruption.

The document emphasizes that although al-Qaeda activities in Iraq remain a problem, they have been surpassed by Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence as the primary source of conflict and the most immediate threat to U.S. goals. Iran, which the administration has charged with supplying and directing Iraqi extremists, is mentioned but is not a focus.

We'll bring you the NIE as soon as we have it.

Opponents of the president's "surge" can be forgiven for reading over the compromise resolution by Sens. John Warner (R-VA) and Carl Levin (D-MI) and humming a Buzzcocks tune: "What Do I Get?"

Sure, the resolution "disagrees with the 'plan' to augment our forces by 21,500." But it's an open question as to why.

In key passages, the resolution endorses the terms of the argument for the surge laid out by President Bush. It contends a "failed state in Iraq would present a threat to regional and world peace"; seeks an Iraq that can "sustain, govern and defend itself and serve as an ally in the war on extremists"; rules out cutting off funding for the war at some future point; lays out an open-ended set of military goals in Iraq and then says Bush should stick to those only "as much as possible"; explicitly rules out near-term troop reductions; and, somewhat egregiously, says it doesn't mean to "question or contravene" Bush's commander-in-chief authority.

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With the administration trying to whip up hysteria about Iran's alleged training of attackers, Tom Lasseter of McClatchy details Muqtada al-Sadr's success in getting the U.S. to train his own men:

After U.S. units pounded al-Sadr's men in August 2004, the cleric apparently decided that instead of facing American tanks, he'd use the Americans' plans to build Iraqi security forces to rebuild his own militia.

So while Iraq's other main Shiite militia, the Badr Brigade, concentrated in 2005 on packing Iraqi intelligence bureaus with high-level officers who could coordinate sectarian assassinations, al-Sadr went after the rank and file.

His recruits began flooding into the Iraqi army and police, receiving training, uniforms and equipment either directly from the U.S. military or from the American-backed Iraqi Defense Ministry.

The result:

"Half of them are [Mahdi army]. They'll wave at us during the day and shoot at us during the night," said 1st Lt. Dan Quinn, a platoon leader in the Army's 1st Infantry Division.... "People (in America) think it's bad, but that we control the city [Baghdad]. That's not the way it is. They control it, and they let us drive around. It's hostile territory."

That was quick. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence just announced that an unclassified version of the Iraq National Intelligence Estimate's key judgments will be released tomorrow at 12:30. Expect a grim report, as the NIE is titled, "Prospects for Iraq’s Stability: A Challenging Road Ahead," but as we learned in 2002, there can be a huge difference in tone and substance between the classified and declassified versions -- as well as the key judgments and the actual body of the NIE. More on all this tomorrow.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has some sharp elbows. During her questioning of Director of National Intelligence nominee Mike McConnell, the senator pointedly said that she expected the DNI's office to release its forthcoming National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq tomorrow.

I immediately placed a call to the Office of the DNI to find out if that was in fact the case, and the rather harried spokeswoman suggested that it wasn't -- that Feinstein was putting a bit of subtle pressure on ODNI to get the estimate to Capitol Hill before the weekend. Keeping with what outgoing DNI John Negroponte said earlier this week, the NIE will be out by Monday, but not necessarily tomorrow, she said.

Of course, you might not see it. The spokeswoman added that "no decision has been made about declassification" of the NIE. So, unless you've got a security clearance, as of this writing, you're not going to read what the intelligence community assesses about the current state of the Iraq war. Never mind that last week, Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) -- joined by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), the congressional intelligence committee chairs -- called for a public version of the document to be released.

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Would you buy some strategic intelligence from this man?

That's retired Vice Admiral Mike McConnell, the new nominee for the increasing backwater known as the Director of National Intelligence. John Negroponte, the first DNI, evidently couldn't get out of the job fast enough, as he defected for the safer bureaucratic harbors of the State Department. Negroponte's legacy at ODNI is still a bit murky, but during his tenure, he consolidated a fair amount of power within his office -- sometimes at the expense of long-term strategic intelligence forecasting.

McConnell is a far less flamboyant figure -- he hasn't been linked to any death squads, for instance -- but the former head of the National Security Agency has a reputation for quiet, professional diligence. During his confirmation hearing today before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, McConnell signaled that he intends to hew to that reputation. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) asked him what he would do if he learned President Bush was "cherry-picking or exaggerating" intelligence to justify a war. McConnell's response was encouraging:

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Round one in today's Casey-McCain fight definitely went to John McCain.

As the clip Josh posted on TPM shows, the Arizona hawk laid the Iraq albatross squarely around Casey's neck, referring to him as "one of the individuals who has been an architect of U.S. military strategy in Iraq." Never mind that Casey only became theater commander a year into the war, and that in his previous roles as Army Vice Chief of Staff and Joint Staff planning director, he was a marginal figure in the Rumsfeld Pentagon. Casey, for his part, didn't object. And that set the tone for the entire hearing: McCain slipped in the shiv, and Casey took the pain. Neither President Bush nor ex-Defense Secretary Rumsfeld made more than cameo appearances in the narratives spun today.

Casey made for an ideal villain. McCain accurately described his predictions during his 30-month command as "unrealistically rosy." Today was no different. He took quiet exception to Bush's televised description of Casey's strategy as "maybe a slow failure," arguing instead to Sen. John Warner (R-VA), "I actually don't see it as slow failure, I see it as slow progress." And responding to Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Casey contended that most of Iraq is peaceful.

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A analysis released today by the Congressional Budget Office shows that the administration, in its public comments, has vastly underestimated the actual number of extra troops that will be deployed to Iraq under the president's "surge" plan.

The administration's estimate of approximately 21,000 extra troops only counts combat units, according to the analysis, and because combat units require support forces, the actual number of additional troops who will be in Iraq will likely exceed 35,000.

From the analysis (you can read it here):

To reflect some of the uncertainty about the number of support troops, CBO developed its estimates on the basis of two alternative assumptions. In one scenario, CBO assumed that additional support troops would be deployed in the same proportion to combat troops that currently exists in Iraq. That approach would require about 28,000 support troops in addition to the 20,000 combat troops—a total of 48,000. CBO also presents an alternative scenario that would include a smaller number of support personnel—about 3,000 per combat brigade—totaling about 15,000 support personnel and bringing the total additional forces to about 35,000. [emphasis mine]

The analysis, which estimated the cost of the president's plan "from $9 billion to $13 billion for a four-month deployment and from $20 billion to $27 billion for a 12-month deployment," was sent to House Committee on the Budget Chairman John Spratt (D-SC) today.

Update: A statement out from Spratt says that the administration, in an estimate given to Congress, gave a cost far below (about $3 billion) the actual one:

According to CBO, these additional troop deployments will cost between $7 billion and $10 billion this year alone, $4 billion to $7 billion more than the Administration’s estimate. Total cost of the troop increase could range between $9 billion and $49 billion, which reflects the costs of a four-month and a 24-month troop increase.

It's been a long, hard fall for Brent Wilkes. Why, just a couple years ago, he was paying off Rep. Duke Cunningham's (R-CA) mortgage. Now, he can't afford to pay his own.

The Still-Hampered Iraq Rebuilding Effort
The Special Inspector General of Iraq Reconstruction reported yesterday that "despite nearly $108 billion that had been budgeted for the reconstruction of Iraq since the 2003 invasion, the country’s electrical output and oil production were still below prewar levels and stocks of gasoline and kerosene had plummeted to their lowest levels in at least two years." Many American contractors are suspected of having wasted funds; others, such as DynCorp, which "[billed] the United States for millions of dollars of work that was never authorized and [started] other jobs before they were requested," may have committed outright fraud. (The New York Times)

Continue below for the rest of the day's muck...

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Starting at 9:30 this morning, room 325 of the Russell Senate Office Building is only big enough for one reputation -- either Army General George W. Casey's or Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ).

Today the Senate Armed Services Committee takes up Casey's nomination to become the next Army Chief of Staff. For the last two years, Casey has had a far more stressful job: corps commander in Iraq, where he presided over a deteriorating and calamitous war. Consistently during his tenure, Casey promised that stability -- and subsequent troop reductions -- were just a few months away, only to have to renege. Just as consistently, Casey argued that increasing U.S. troop strength would deepen the Iraqis' sense of occupation and build an unhealthy dependency on U.S. troops.

McCain has also been consistent: he's backed a massive infusion of U.S. troops regardless of the changing circumstances of the war. And since he's counting on supporters of President Bush's relentless stance on the war to propel him to the party's nomination, criticizing Bush too much on Iraq has been a danger. Luckily for McCain, Bush renounced Casey's Iraqis-first approach in favor of escalation. Problem solved for McCain: Casey becomes the scapegoat. On a January 21 "Meet The Press" appearance, McCain blasted Casey's "failed leadership" and said he had "serious concerns" about Casey's nomination as Army chief.

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"There are four wars going on in Iraq right now," Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has said. Turns out he underestimated it by about twenty.

From The Boston Globe:

The messianic Soldiers of Heaven militia that fought US and Iraqi troops in one of the fiercest battles of the war Sunday is among the more than two dozen extremist militias operating across Iraq that are fast becoming a powerful, and hidden, new enemy.

US officials this week expressed concern about the explosion of splinter groups in Iraq, noting that their sheer number makes a political resolution to the ongoing violence in Iraq increasingly difficult. One Defense Department official said in an interview yesterday that the military is tracking at least 28 militias, many of them Shi'ite splinter groups, but knows little about their leadership or command structure.

From Shi'ite factions in southern Iraq to Sunni groups in Anbar Province to extremist Islamic militias operating in Kurdistan, it's a dizzying array. Take just the Shi'ite splinter groups, for example:

...more than a dozen Shi'ite factions command their own armed followings in southern Iraq, including two competing groups that both call themselves "Hezbollah," a family-run private army of the Garamsha tribe and armed fighters loyal to the Prince of the Marshes, an autocratic leader of Iraq's marsh Arabs, said Juan Cole , a Shi'ite specialist and University of Michigan professor.

Certainly, the proliferation of militias "makes a political resolution to the ongoing violence in Iraq increasingly difficult," as the Globe notes. In fact, "the Iraqi Constitution prohibits the formation of militias," and, well, that doesn't seem to have done much good.

Note: Don't miss another must read from today: Reuters on the plight of Iraqis trying (and failing) to get safe harbor in the U.S.

This is big:

Federal prosecutors are preparing to seek indictments against a former top CIA official and a San Diego defense contractor linked to the bribery scandal that sent former U.S. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham to prison, two government officials familiar with the investigation said Wednesday.

The officials, who spoke to The Associated Press only on condition of anonymity because grand jury proceedings are secret and the charges have not been finalized, said prosecutors plan to ask a San Diego grand jury to return charges of honest services fraud and conspiracy against Kyle "Dusty" Foggo and Brent Wilkes....

Honest services fraud is a combination of mail and wire fraud often used in public corruption cases involving officials who have engaged in a pattern of improper activities, such as accepting gifts, trips or promises of future employment from private individuals.

The officials said a second indictment is being prepared that would charge Wilkes and two other alleged Cunningham co-conspirators - New York businessman Thomas Kontogiannis and his nephew, John T. Michael - with bribery and several conspiracy counts.

The indictments are likely to be returned within the next few weeks, the officials said.

For a refresher on why prosecutors are going after Foggo, see our reference entry on him here. More here.

A little-known story from the very beginning of TPMmuckraker: a few days into the gig, Paul and I were still messing around and trying to figure out how to cover all the scandals that were out there. Let's divvy it up by scandal, Paul said. He offered to take Abramoff. I took Duke Cunningham. And we were off.

A few months later the Cunningham scandal sprouted hooker rumors. What luck! I never asked Paul if has was sore I got the (alleged) hookers. Looking back, I wonder if he gave me the juicier scandal in yet another gesture of his genteel Southern manners (of all the persistent journalists I've known, Paul is by far the most polite).

Today's my last day at TPMmuckraker, and that more or less sums up my experience here. I've been incredibly lucky: Lucky to get to cover scandals all day, lucky to work with Paul, lucky to have the exceptionally talented and insightful Josh Marshall as an editor and blogging mentor.

So a great big thank-you to Paul and Josh. And thanks to our readers, whom I'll miss just as much. Your tips, your questions, your insights, your jokes and cranky dissents -- it's like working in the biggest, liveliest newsroom in the world. It has been a privilege. Rakers of muck, rake on.

Update: Paul just told me he wasn't sore about the hookers. If there were any.

Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), the longtime GOP appropriator who's facing a federal investigation as part of the Duke Cunningham scandal, dropped another $45,000 on legal fees in December, according to new documents filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Lewis, the highest-ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, has spent about $905,000 on legal fees so far. Ed. note: That's a lot of money.

A House oversight hearing yesterday presented overwhelming evidence that the administration has been censoring government scientists' work on global warming.

But there's a piece missing for Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) to complete the puzzle, and the administration seems determined not to hand it over, possibly leading to a legal clash between the administration and the Democratic Congress.

According to a survey by the Government Accountability Project and Union of Concerned Scientists, hundreds of government scientists have experienced meddling by superiors in research involving global warming. During the hearing yesterday, one NASA scientist testified (pdf) how he was forced to alter the title of a press release from "Cool Antarctica may warm rapidly this century, study finds" to "Scientists predict Antarctic climate changes," and how, in 2004, "NASA Headquarters insisted that a NASA press officer monitor all interviews either in person or on the phone."

So what's missing? The orders from the top that agency officials should keep a close watch on what government scientists were saying about global warming.

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Support our troops? Now there's an idea. But according to a new Defense Department report, that's one thing the administration isn't doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Even as the president orders more troops to Iraq, the soldiers already serving there and in Afghanistan lack necessary body armor, communications equipment and other equipment, according to a report summary by the Pentagon's Inspector General made public today.

Unfortunately, it's anything but a complete accounting of the problem, thanks to restrictions by senior officers in the field.

Commanders put limitations on which soldiers could talk to inspectors and when they could be available, according to the summary, citing "scheduled operational missions, safety concerns, and availability of transportation." So inspectors talked to "available Service members" who were approved by their superiors to speak -- 1,100 of them. Furthermore, paperwork needed to confirm equipment issues wasn't always provided to the auditors. "We were not able to validate testimonial evidence against documentation that either did not exist or was incomplete," the reports says. You can read it here (pdf).

As a result, just how many and which troops are lacking the equipment isn't clear from the summary, which was declassified and sent to Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) yesterday. The report remains classified. A spokesman for Slaughter said that she "intends to be briefed on the classified version of the report in the near future."

The IG found that soldiers missing equipment and vehicles sometimes resorted to bartering -- "informal procedures," the report calls them -- among themselves to get what they needed.

Business Week first reported the general findings of the summary yesterday.

West Virginia congressman Alan Mollohan (D) has used $160,000 worth of services by a white collar criminal defense firm, according to new campaign filings.

Mollohan, who chairs the House panel which controls the Justice Department budget (including the FBI), has been under investigation by the FBI for a rather knotty mess of nonprofits, friends and real estate deals that appear to have made a lot of money for a lot of people.

According to documents filed by his campaign with the Federal Elections Commission, the law firm Kellogg Huber Hansen Todd Evan has collected $140,000 from his campaign. The campaign says that as of Dec. 31, 2006, it owed the firm another $20,000,

Mollohan has said that because of the investigation he would recuse himself from decisions concerning the FBI's budget, but some believe that doesn't resolve the conflict of interest.

"Just the fact that he's not going to micromanage the FBI's budget doesn't mean he can't play havoc with the Justice Department budget," conservative watchdog Ken Boehm told CNSNews.com earlier this month. "When the Justice Department goes to his subcommittee - and they need all sorts of approval out of his subcommittee for other spending things and other things they want - they're going to a man they're investigating," he said.

Boehm's group, the National Legal and Policy Center, has extensively investigated Mollohan. The congressman's office did not immediately have a comment on the matter.

For the moment, Mollohan's records appear to show he's spent more on his defense than Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA), who's spent around $120,000 for legal assistance relating to a federal investigation of his ties to Abramoff. But both men are dwarfed by the legal fees incurred by former Appropriations Committee chairman Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA). As of December, Lewis had spent $860,000 on lawyers. His campaign faces a deadline of today to deliver an updated report covering expenses for the month of December, which may include more fees. Doolittle and Mollohan have already filed that report.

Update: Through a spokesman, Rep. Mollohan gave us the following statement: "The legal expenses were incurred in responding to the claims of a right-wing group in Washington that there were irregularities in my financial disclosure documents. That resulted in the preparation and public release of an extensive financial disclosure report and analysis last June. That work debunked the claims and the accompanying innuendos."

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will share with congressional leaders details of the NSA's domestic surveillance program that were seen by the court which approved the program's application, AP reports.

Gonzales said the documents will be shared with Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Arlen Specter (R-PA), chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, as well as staff and members of the House and Senate intelligence committees. They will not be made public.

At a hearing two weeks ago, Leahy and Specter had pressed Gonzales on why the administration was not more forthcoming with Congress on details of the program.

From North County Times:

The U.S. attorney's office in San Diego is close to seeking an indictment against Brent Wilkes, a Poway defense contractor whose company received millions of dollars in government contracts after allegedly bribing the now-imprisoned Randy "Duke" Cunningham, two federal officials with intimate knowledge of the case said Tuesday.

"I know we are so close," said one official, who agreed to speak with the North County Times on the condition that his name not be published.

A preliminary draft indictment is under review by "many eyes on what is going to be proposed to the grand jury," according to the source.

The big question here is whether prosecutors will focus their case on the Wilkes' bribing of Cunningham (as detailed extensively in his guilty plea), or whether it will extend to alleged bribes of other lawmakers and government officials, such as the CIA's former #2, Dusty Foggo.

A couple of weeks ago, The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Attorney overseeing the investigation, Carol Lam, had ordered her prosecutors to draw up the indictment before she was finally forced out in mid-February.

Pentagon's IG: Soldiers Under-Equipped
An audit by the Defense Department's Inspector General found that the U.S. military is not adequately equipping troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, "especially for nontraditional duties such as training Iraqi security forces and handling detainees." Soldiers have gone without enough "guns, ammunition, and other necessary supplies. . . and have had to cancel or postpone some assignments while waiting for the proper gear." The audit comes at an inopportune time for the President Bush's administration, which is seeking to rally waning support for a 21,500 troop increase in Iraq. (BusinessWeek.com)

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If that don't beat all.

Facing federal indictment last August, then-Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) shut down his re-election campaign. (He confessed his guilt a month later.) He fired all of his staffers -- but one: his better half, Elizabeth.

That's right -- from August to Dec. 31, 2006, Elizabeth has been the campaign's sole paid employee, bringing in about $1,700 a month, according to the Columbus Dispatch.

Who's to say she hasn't earned it?

Benchmarks! Get your benchmarks right here!

According to a letter sent yesterday by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, the Iraqi government has something of a problem meeting benchmarks. You can read the letter here.

The letter was a response to repeated requests from Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) to disclose the details of an agreement that had reportedly been made between the Bush administration and the Iraqi government last fall. Bush had made a number of public references to the agreeement, but the full details of the agreement remained unknown.

And it's no wonder. It's quite a little list of unfulfilled promises (you can read the complete list here). From the AP:

Iraq has passed target dates to make laws establishing provincial elections, regulating distribution of the country's oil wealth and reversing measures that have excluded many Sunnis from jobs and government positions because of Baath party membership, according to the list Rice provided.

The Iraq government had also agreed to approve a law governing political amnesty and the charged question of sectarian militias by Dec. 31 and to finish a review of the constitution, seen as unfair to minority Sunnis, by Wednesday.

"Although the Iraqi parliament and Cabinet have done intermittent work on some elements of the list, including the symbolic oil law, it appeared that none of the targets have been fully met," the AP reports.

Meanwhile, some Senate Republicans (Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and well, Joe Lieberman (I-CT)) are busy pushing a resolution to counter the nonbinding resolutions against the president's troop increase -- by proposing more benchmarks for the Iraqi government.

A couple weeks ago, Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) asked Secretary Condoleeza Rice if the administration thought President Bush had the power to take military action against Iran without permission from Congress.

She deferred an answer, saying, "I'm really loathe to get into questions of the president's authorities without a rather more clear understanding of what we are actually talking about. So let me answer you, in fact, in writing. I think that would be the best thing to do."

Well, it's been two weeks, and Sen. Webb is still waiting. So he's asked again, in a letter sent to Rice yesterday. To help speed a response, he even suggested the range of answers she might provide: "This is, basically, a 'yes' or 'no' question regarding an urgent matter affecting our nation’s foreign policy."

And to ensure that the administration got the message that Webb remained interested, he also asked the question of Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte during this morning's hearing.

The full text of the letter is below.

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C'mon, everybody: Let's get ready to rumble!

We've just confirmed that the former Bush-appointed leader of the U.S. rebuilding effort in Iraq will face his longtime critic before a panel of the Democratic-led Congress to answer questions about his leadership.

L. Paul Bremer, onetime head of the former Coalition Provisional Authority, responded positively to an invitation extended ten days ago to testify along with his chief critic, Iraq audit and investigation chief Stuart Bowen, before Rep. Henry Waxman's (D-CA) Government Reform Committee.

"He's confirmed," a Waxman spokesman told me this afternoon, referring to Bremer, who stepped down in June 2004. President Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom six months later, despite a long series of scathing reports by Bowen about mismanagement, waste, fraud and abuse among Bremer's staff.

It will be the first time Bremer and Bowen will testify together before Congress, according to Bowen spokeswoman Christine Belisle. Get your popcorn ready.

Cnet News reports:

The FBI appears to have adopted an invasive Internet surveillance technique that collects far more data on innocent Americans than previously has been disclosed.

Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current and former officials. That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords. . . .

"What they're doing is even worse than Carnivore," said Kevin Bankston, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. . . "What they're doing is intercepting everyone and then choosing their targets."

. . . [Bankston said] the FBI is "collecting and apparently storing indefinitely the communications of thousands--if not hundreds of thousands--of innocent Americans in violation of the Wiretap Act and the 4th Amendment to the Constitution."

This ought to be good. Senate Judicary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Ranking Member Arlen Specter (R-PA) have written Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to ask what power they think Congress has to restrict the waging of war.

The request comes as Sen. Russ Feinfold (D-WI) holds a hearing today called "Exercising Congress's Constitutional Power to End a War." A number of Democrats, like Feingold, have urged that the Democrats use the power of the purse to restrict Bush's troop increase in Iraq.

"What constitutional authority do you recognize resides with the Congress with respect to war?" the letter asks. "How do you believe Congress can exercise its authorities? What limits to you believe exist on those authorities? We would appreciate your prompt reply and legal analysis."

A couple of weeks ago, President Bush, in response to a question of whether he had "the authority to put the [21,000 extra] troops in [Iraq] no matter what the Congress wants to do," answered, "In this situation, I do, yeah. Now, I fully understand they could try to stop me from doing it. But I made my decision, and we're going forward."

We'll see if the administration sticks to that line.

We've posted Leahy's full statement on this issue below.

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Following reports and complaints of fishy land deals, the Feds have been investigating Rep. Gary Miller (R-CA), making him the 20th member of the 109th Congress to fall under federal scrutiny.

Miller, a real estate developer by trade, came to the attention of the FBI when a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group complained last summer that the congressman hadn't paid taxes on two land deals he was involved in, The San Gabriel Valley Tribune reports.

An August article in the Los Angeles Times gave juicy details of the problem.

Although we're just learning of the investigation, it appears the FBI has been asking around about Miller since late last year, which means we can count him as one of the many scandalized lawmakers from the Schemin' 109th. You can see our ongoing attempts at scandal scorekeeping here and here.

A December LA Times investigation gave even more great details about Miller, including how he pushed his staff to win him favors like sweet tickets to a Rolling Stones concert, or help his son register for college classes.

For budding Miller Muck fans, we also recommend these fine articles from The Hill newspaper.

That long awaitied National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq is finally coming Monday, according to outgoing Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte.

He made the remark during this morning's hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The NIE, requested last July by Democrats, has been a long time coming. The situation came to a head a couple of weeks ago when an administration official reportedly explained in a closed door session of the Senate Judiciary Committee that intelligence officials were just too busy getting the plans together for President Bush's escalation of troops in Iraq to finish up the NIE.

Outraged, Democrats demanded that Negroponte finish up the estimate, which, they argued, should have been completed before Bush's announcement of a new strategy in Iraq, and not after.

So now the NIE is finally on its way. What will it say? The public -- and Congress -- will just have to wait until next week. Negroponte refused to characterize the findings of the estimate in any way.

A full transcript of Negroponte's remarks below the fold....

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Surge Could Worsen Equipment Deficit
"Boosting U.S. troop levels in Iraq by 21,500 would create major logistical hurdles for the Army and Marine Corps, which are short thousands of vehicles, armor kits and other equipment needed to supply the extra forces, U.S. officials said." (The Washington Post)

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The dark reign of experts and regulatory officials is over!

From The New York Times:

In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president’s priorities.

That's right, each agency (like, for instance, the Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration) will now have a politically appointed babysitter to make sure that regulations aren't too onerous for corporations. In fact, the directive ensures that regulation is the absolute last resort: "in deciding whether to issue regulations, federal agencies must identify 'the specific market failure' or problem that justifies government intervention."

"Business groups welcomed the executive order," the Times notes, in a terrific understatement.