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Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was interviewed on Marketplace about his new book, Rumsfeld’s Rules:
Marketplace: “I do wonder whether you read Robert McNamara’s memoirs when it came out”
Rumsfeld: “I have not”
Marketplace: “That book was widely seen as an apology for his role in Vietnam. I looked in this book pretty hard for any rule you might have about apologizing and I couldn’t find one”
Rumsfeld: “And? What is your question?”
Marketplace: “Did you ever think about apologizing?”
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) predicted to Bloomberg that there will be much more to the IRS scandal than we currently know.
Said Baucus: “I have a hunch that a lot more is going to come out, frankly. It’s broader than the current focus.”
Peggy Noonan: “We are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate.”
“I find the comparison — that whoever is making the analysis is challenged in their understanding of history.”
— Former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean, quoted by the Boston Globe, on comparing the current Obama scandals to Watergate.
Former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel (R) announced her campaign for U.S. Senate, Roll Call reports.
“Handel is the fourth Republican to enter the race for the seat of retiring GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss. Notably, she is also the first woman and first candidate who is not a member of Congress. GOP Reps. Paul Broun, Phil Gingrey and Jack Kingston are running. David Perdue, the cousin of former Gov. Sonny Perdue, announced an exploratory committee this week.”
Australian Minister of Education Peter Collier “says he has learned a valuable lesson in social networking after he ‘liked’ a Facebook photo without realizing that it showed a teenage prankster exposing himself,” the Guardian reports.
Collier apologized and said he “had no idea that the teenager, who was otherwise fully clothed and posing alongside an older man, was playing a prank commonly known as ‘sneaky nuts.'”
The lawyer for South Carolina State Rep. Ted Vick (D) said a rock in the lawmaker’s shoe explains why his client “was walking funny, catching the attention of an officer who eventually arrested him for DUI, his second such charge in less than a year,” the AP reports.
The Toronto Star says two of its reporters have also viewed the video Gawker says shows Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine.
“It appears to show Ford in a room, sitting in a chair, wearing a white shirt, top buttons open, inhaling from what appears to be a glass crack pipe. Ford is incoherent, trading jibes with an off-camera speaker who goads the clearly impaired mayor by raising topics including Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and the Don Bosco high school football team Ford coaches.”
Said Ford at one point in the video: “I’m fucking right-wing. Everyone expects me to be right-wing. I’m just supposed to be this great.”
New York Times: “The most pressing question for Congressional Republicans is no longer how to finesse changes to immigration law or gun control, but how far they can push their cases against President Obama without inciting a backlash of the sort that has left them staggering in the past.”
“Working against those methodical plans, however, are the personal passions of the rank and file.”
A new Gallup poll finds slim majorities of Americans are closely following the situations involving the Internal Revenue Service (54%) and the congressional hearings on the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and its aftermath (53%) — comparatively low based on historical measures of other news stories over the last two decades.
Washington Post: “Months after the FBI began probing allegations against Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), investigators are looking at whether someone set out to smear him while he was running for reelection last year and then ascending to his new post as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, according to four people briefed on the inquiry.”
A records check with the North Carolina State Bar shows John Edwards has reactivated his license to practice law, which had been inactive for more than a decade, the AP reports.
“A bipartisan group of U.S. House members has reached a tentative agreement on a comprehensive revision of the U.S. immigration system, according to three lawmakers, as a Senate committee proceeds with its own plan,” Bloomberg reports.
“The House proposal, like the Senate’s, offers a path to citizenship for many of 11 million undocumented immigrants already living in the U.S., according to a House aide not authorized to discuss the deal publicly. While none would be barred from seeking that path, they would have to wait 10 years to become legal residents, making them eligible for citizenship after another five years. The bipartisan proposal in the Senate envisions a path to citizenship taking at least 13 years.”
“Resolution of this issue poses the potential key to an agreement between the Democratic-controlled Senate and Republican-run House on President Obama’s push for the most significant revision of U.S. immigration policy in a generation.”
Politico: “Republicans are worried one thing could screw up the political gift of three Obama administration controversies at once: fellow Republicans. Top GOP leaders are privately warning members to put a sock in it when it comes to silly calls for impeachment or over-the-top comparisons to Watergate. They want members to focus on months of fact-finding investigations – not rhetorical fury.”
One Senate GOP leadership aide said the coming investigation “has the capacity to be debilitating” for
the administration: “It will take months, and it will ebb and flow in
terms of its national attention. But the ebbs will be
white hot.”
Josh Marshall notes that during a CBS News report on the Benghazi talking points, Major Garrett “did something I don’t feel like I’ve seen in a really long time or maybe ever on a network news cast. He basically said straight out: Republicans told us these were the quotes, that wasn’t true.”
Said Garrett: “There is no evidence the White House orchestrated these changes.”
John Dickerson: “I was told there was going to be a cover-up. After reading the 100 pages of emails related to the Benghazi media talking points, I’m hard-pressed to find evidence for the most damning accusations against the president and his staff. If they were involved, they were once again leading from behind.”
Gawker: “Here is what the video shows: Rob Ford, the mayor of Toronto, is the only person visible in the frame. Prior to the trip, I spent a lot of time looking at photographs of Rob Ford. The man in the video is Rob Ford. It is well-lit, clear. Ford is seated, in a room in a house. In one hand is a a clear, glass pipe. The kind with a big globe and two glass cylinders sticking out of it. In the other hand is a lighter…”
“So: That was a video of the mayor of Toronto smoking crack. The trouble is, the owner wants money. More money than I am willing to pay. The tipster has already reached out to one other news outlet, a Canadian organization that he refused to name, which offered $40,000. The owner rejected that. He thinks he can get six figures. It’s unlikely he’s going to get six figures.”
David Hawkings: “The day’s most consequential roll call was at Senate Judiciary, where all eight Republicans joined the 10 Democrats in endorsing Sri Srinivasan for a seat on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.”
“Such unanimity is an extraordinary and unmistakable sign that GOP conservatives are making a tactical retreat in the judicial wars — one that may influence the filling of a future seat on the Supreme Court.”
Roll Call: “A video posted on the Politico website featuring Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s chief of staff has been taken down after the Kentucky Republican’s office objected to its placement on a page designed to solicit advertisers.”
The video features McConnell chief of staff Josh Holmes explaining why he reads the Washington publication and ends with him saying, “I’m Josh Holmes and I’m a Politico.”
Rep. Kristi Noem (R-SD) is discussing the possibility of mounting a Senate campaign in 2014, telling The Hill she’s had “some conversations” with groups about running for the seat being vacated by Sen. Tim Johnson (D).
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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— Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press”
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— Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report
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— Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report
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— Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia
“Political Wire is a great, great site.”
— Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”
“Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don’t want to kick.”
— Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post
“Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere.”
— Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit
“I rely on Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It’s an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading.”
— Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.