Now they tell us...

British intel is complaining they were dragged into Bush's war:

Britain was "dragged into a war in Iraq which was always against out better judgment" the former deputy head of MI6 has claimed, in a remark that will reignite the debate over political interference in the war.

Sad to admit it, but thank God Edwards did not become president. We'd be neck deep in the meaning of 'is':

RALEIGH, N.C. – Failed presidential candidate John Edwards, whose political action committee paid more than $100,000 to his mistress' company, acknowledged Sunday that federal investigators were looking into how he handled his campaign funds.

But the former North Carolina senator said he was confident no money was used improperly.

The Hummer is a shitty car? Who knew?:

We also found huge differences between the best and worst values. The Hummer H2, for example, is a terrible deal, with a bucks-per-bang figure of $3,620 because of a high five-year owner cost of about $82,250 and a low test score of only 23.

Pakistan is still building more nuclear weapon sites?:

WASHINGTON — Pakistan is expanding its nuclear weapons program even as Islamic extremists in northwest Pakistan advance in the direction of several highly sensitive nuclear-related sites, U.S. officials and other experts said this week.

Dammit.

I had been hoping he'd hang in there for Super Tuesday:

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Democrat John Edwards bowed out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination on Wednesday, saying it was time to step aside "so that history can blaze its path" in a campaign now left to Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

"With our convictions and a little backbone we will take back the White House in November," said Edwards, ending his second campaign in a hurricane-ravaged section of New Orleans where he began it more than a year ago.

Edwards said Clinton and Obama had both pledged that "they will make ending poverty central to their campaign for the presidency."

"This is the cause of my life and I now have their commitment to engage in this cause," he said before a small group of supporters. He was joined by his wife Elizabeth and his three children, Cate, Emma Claire and Jack.

I'm really tired of the media tweaking the truth to get a 'two man race' and blathering about gender and race while ignoring Edwards. A really good example was on the Republican side where they frothed about Romney, McCain and Giuliani. Giuliani, who was polling LOWER than Ron Paul, yet they ignored Paul altogether.

Haven't we learned anything in the last horrible eight years? Tell us the facts and let us make up our own minds.

Inconceivable!

If Rove attacked Kerry because they were afraid Edwards' good looks and intelligence would be dangerous for Bush and made the Democrats rally to protect Kerry, then Rove's attack on Clinton means he still thinks Edwards is too smart for the next Republican to run against? Or is he doing a reverse reverse feint and we're supposed to support Clinton because Rove really wants Edwards but... uh...

Why did Rove, who often stays in the background, step forward to deliver such public attacks -- especially when the Democrats haven't begun to choose their presidential candidate for 2008 and when the general election is more than a year away?

The answer might seem obvious: Rove saw Clinton as a formidable opponent and wanted to get his licks in early.

For high-level campaign professionals like Rove, however, that kind of thinking may be too simple.

The decision to focus on the New York senator to the exclusion of other potentially formidable Democratic standard-bearers such as Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois offered a rare glimpse into a world where things are not always what they seem -- the world of modern-day electioneering, whose denizens often prefer going from A to B by way of Z.

In this case, Rove's weeklong broadside against Clinton -- which he is expected to repeat in multiple appearances on television talk shows today -- looks suspiciously like an exercise in reverse psychology that his team employed three years ago when it was preparing for President Bush's reelection bid.

The ploy was described by Rove lieutenant Matthew Dowd during a postmortem conference on the 2004 election at Harvard University the month after Bush defeated Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts.

In the run-up to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, when it was not yet clear who Bush's opponent would be that November, Rove and his aides had begun to fear that their most dangerous foe would be then-Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.

With his Southern base, charismatic style and populist message, Edwards, they believed, could be a real threat to Bush's reelection.

But instead of attacking Edwards, Rove's team opened fire at Kerry.

Their thinking went like this, Dowd explained: Democrats, in a knee-jerk reaction to GOP attacks, would rally around Kerry, whom Rove considered a comparatively weak opponent, and make him the party's nominee. Thus Bush would be spared from confronting Edwards, the candidate Republican strategists actually feared most.

Unlike Kerry, who had been in public service for decades, Edwards was a political newcomer and lacked a long record that could be attacked. And, unlike former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who had been the front-runner but whose campaign was collapsing in Iowa, Edwards couldn't easily be painted as "nutty."

If that sounds implausibly convoluted, consider Dowd's own words:

"Whomever we attacked was going to be emboldened in Democratic primary voters' minds.

"So we started attacking John Kerry a lot in the end of January because we were very worried about John Edwards," Dowd said. "And we knew that if we focused on John Kerry, Democratic primary voters would sort of coalesce" around Kerry.

"It wasn't like we could tag [eliminate] somebody. Whomever we attacked was going to be helped," he said.

Nicolle Wallace, the 2004 Bush campaign communications director, recalled at the Harvard conference that the campaign "refused" to even respond to Edwards' attacks on Bush, not wanting to make him seem like a threat.

Edwards was selected as Kerry's running mate and now is vying with Clinton and Obama for their party's 2008 nomination.

Is Rove playing a similar game against Clinton? Is he trying to stampede Democrats into nominating her, having concluded that Obama, Edwards or someone else would pose a stiffer challenge to the Republican nominee?

Or are both cups poisoned and Rove is just waiting for us to psych ourselves out.....

Every hair in place

John Edwards

Makes a video:

I'm so relieved I'm not the only one who thinks Couric is a massive twit.

Tailor Marsh: (Via Crooks and Liars)

Consider these notes on the '60 Minutes' interview, also known as "How many times can Katie Couric ask the same question over and over again a dozen different ways without ever getting tired of hearing herself ask the same frickin question yet again." Forget sympathy for Elizabeth Edwards, I feel sorry for them both that they had to sit through this horrendous excuse of an interview. Katie Couric just might have proved she's the worst political interviewer I've ever seen; she sure was on this one. I'm amazed this is the best CBS could do with the biggest interview opportunity of the week. Over and over and over and OVER again, Ms. Couric asked variations on the "you know you're dying so what's the point?" theme. How about a segue into health care? No. Talking about how the Edwards have opportunities for health care others don't have and just maybe that's what they're fighting for? No. How about talking about their faith, which anyone can see is at the core of their ability to be strong during this challenge. Nope, Couric only wanted to talk about how others might judge them, their ambition, how it's too stressful to take care of his wife and be president at the same time. As if while being president life can't throw you some challenges. Good Lord, it was a disgrace, as well as a missed opportunity. Couric made no effort whatsoever to broaden the subject, but instead decided to exhaust the "cancer is death" topic, alert the American people. I particularly appreciated the moment when Couric talked about their kids, saying if I had a "finite" time I don't think I'd choose not being with my kids. No judgment there at all, Katie. The Edwards then reminded Ms. Couric that we've all got a finite amount of time, with Elizabeth saying they learned that in 1996... then John finished the comment, when they lost their son, as Mrs. Edwards lowered her head a moment. By the time it was over I'm sure both of the Edwards wanted a stiff drink. I'd have asked for a water back to throw in Ms. Couric's face. Though I doubt even that would have awakened her from her hamster wheel questioning stupor. --end rant--

Yes. We are all going to die, Ms. Couric. What did you want, for them to throw themselves sobbing into your lap for hugs? What a stupid interview. It did not belong on 60 Minutes. It belonged in the trash.

Update: David Sirota:

In pursuing this line of repeated questioning, of course, Couric ignored the pretty well-known psychological value of work during health care crises. She also ignored the fact that this is an immensely personal decision that does not require some multimillion-dollar journalist to perform a televised, Gitmo-style interrogation in order for viewers at home to glean the "news value." And most incredibly, she ignored her own behavior when her spouse was diagnosed with cancer.

That's right, Katie Couric's husband was diagnosed with cancer in 1997. I did a quick check of the transcripts for that year - and it's pretty clear that she kept working as the anchor for NBC's Today Show, if not full time, then pretty close to it.

I want to be extremely clear: That Couric continued to work while her husband was sick was entirely her and her family's personal decision. I'm not going to comment on the merits of that decision not because I think it was a bad one or a good one, but because it's AN ENTIRELY PERSONAL DECISION. Really, who the hell am I - and who the hell is anyone else - to question someone's decision to keep working during a family health crisis?

It's not up to me, or you or anyone else to decide whether such a decision for Katie Couric and her husband or John and Elizabeth Edwards is a good or bad decision, because it is an entirely personal decision, whether you are a national television anchor, a presidential candidate or anything else. I don't care if you are running for Supreme Leader of the Galaxy, your choice about whether to continue working at a time of a family health crisis should be entirely your own, without fear of journalists trying to "get a good scoop."

Update: Bob Herbert does it best:

Elizabeth Edwards’s illness is a logical catalyst for a national discussion about health care in the U.S. But why stop there? Next year’s election will be one of the most important in history. Whatever you think of their politics, John and Elizabeth Edwards are giving the country a world-class lesson in courage and candor.

You want straight talk? “I was wrong.” That’s what John Edwards said about his vote to authorize the president to go to war in Iraq. “The world desperately needs moral leadership from America,” he said, as he acknowledged his contribution to the debacle, “and the foundation for moral leadership is telling the truth.”

The war goes on, and fate has dealt the Edwards family another devastating blow. The rest of us can help invest the absurdity of their tragedy with meaning by paying closer attention to the issues that are important to them. Whether one ends up agreeing with them or not, it’s a way of opening the door to a more thoughtful, rational way of selecting our presidents.

THAT'S how you make sense of an interview, Katie.

Update: Attaturk at Rising Hegemon reminds us of what capitalizing on tragedy and illness looks like.

Update: Hecate on using marriage as a qualifier for president:

The point is that there seems to be little correlation between the overall "success" or "failure" of any given presidential marriage and the job that the president did. Which, when you think about it, really isn't that surprising, or wouldn't be, if Americans (and Americans do seem to be worse about this than, say, Europeans or South Americans) didn't make such a ridiculous big deal out of "family" and "family values."

We'd do well to get over it.

John Edwards isn't my first choice for the Democratic nominee, but that's more because I'd like to see a woman or an African American in office, after two hundred plus years of rich white men, than anything else. I like his message of populism. But his wife's health is a matter between him, Ms. Edwards, and her doctors. It's irrelevant to whether or not he should be the nominee or the president. Or, it would be in any rational world.

Update 3/27:
An excellent cartoon illustrates it all.