Rep. John Murtha, a Democratic defense hawk whose transformation to a dove over the war in Iraq helped the party surge back to power during the Bush administration, died Monday at Virginia Hospital Center from complications of gallbladder surgery. He was 77.

Murtha -- who became the longest-serving House member in Pennsylvania history on Saturday, after 19 terms in Congress -- was one of the masters of legislative negotiations and backroom dealing, and his support in 2006 helped make Nancy Pelosi the first woman speaker of the House. Pelosi, in turn, backed Murtha in his losing race against Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., to be the House majority leader.

For years, Murtha steered billions of dollars in federal projects to military contractors in his district near Johnstown, Pa., and he supported big defense budgets from his perch on the House committee that oversaw Pentagon spending. He was one of the proudest practitioners of congressional "earmarking," dropping little grants that benefited his district into must-pass defense spending bills without a moment's hesitation or apology. (When President Obama pushed for a freeze on discretionary spending last month, Murtha laughed about it. "Well, he can call for it, but we're the guys who make the decision," the Washington Post quoted him as saying. "I always remind them of that.")

His financial support for the military and his own decorated career in the Marines amplified Murtha's voice when he called, in 2005, for withdrawing troops from Iraq. "Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency," he said. "It's time to bring them home." That wound up giving more and more House Democrats political cover to push for the war to end -- which became part of the party's rallying cry in the 2006 elections, when Democrats seized control of Congress.

By then, Murtha and Pelosi had already become close. Murtha managed Pelosi's campaign against Hoyer in 2001 to become the Democratic whip, helping to convince conservative members of the caucus to support a San Francisco liberal. A year later, she was elected House minority leader; by 2006, no one even challenged her bid to become speaker. Pelosi made no secret that she wanted Murtha to beat out Hoyer to become her second-in-command that fall, sending a letter to other Democrats just before the vote. That backfired, though, and Hoyer won easily.

Part of the reason, though Pelosi played it down, was that Murtha's eager earmarking ways had given some people around Washington the idea that he was a bit crooked. Good-government groups on the left and the right constantly hammered at the contracts Murtha got for defense firms in his district. In 2008, FBI agents raided a lobbying firm run by a friend of Murtha's, and last year, the feds raided Kuchera Industries, which Murtha had helped win more than $100 million in contracts over the years. House ethics investigators reported earlier this winter that Murtha was in the clear, though.

Reaction to Murtha's death started slowly on Monday, with Washington still digging out from a weekend blizzard (federal offices are closed, and Congress put off votes until lawmakers can catch flights back later in the week). House Republican leader John Boehner did put out a statement not long after the news broke, though. "Today, our nation has lost a decorated veteran and the House of Representatives has lost one of its own," he said. "I was saddened to hear of John Murtha's passing, and my thoughts and prayers are with his friends and loved ones. I also want to express my condolences to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who valued Congressman Murtha's advice and friendship. He will be missed."

A special election will be held to fill Murtha's seat, which could set off another nasty fight between Democrats and Republicans in a conservative district. John McCain beat President Obama there in 2008, even as Murtha won another term. Pennsylvania's primary is already set for May 18, and that's likely to be the date for the House special election, as well.

Apparently, Democrats weren't exactly terrified by Sarah Palin's speech to Tea Party Nation this weekend. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee -- which, strictly speaking, has very little to do with Palin, an ex-governor who might or might not run for president -- launched a new online contest Monday designed to focus even more attention on the speech. (Actually, though Palin isn't running for Senate, the committee has often used her as a foil, asking whether GOP Senate candidates want her support.)

"Did you read about last weekend's 'tea party' convention in Nashville?" the committee asked in an e-mail sent to supporters Monday morning. "Attendees paid $549 apiece for a weekend of activism and education capped by the main attraction: a speech by everybody's favorite half-term former Alaska governor, Sarah Palin. For her efforts, Palin received more than $100,000 in speaking fees -- and the adoration of legions of fans. In honor of the tea party convention, we came up with a way for you to tell us what you think she's saying."

The e-mail links to a DSCC Web page where you can draw on, and type text into, a photo of Palin. "Feel free to share what you've made with your friends," the DSCC says. That's where it's easy to imagine something going wrong here; right-wing blogs and Fox News made a lot of noise about a MoveOn.org contest to create ads about George W. Bush, in which one entry appeared to compare him to Hitler. DSCC aides say they're not worried about any inappropriate content with the Palin contest, though, because they'll screen the entries before posting a selection of their favorites.

Take a look at the blank canvas the DSCC provides here:

There was one ad during Sunday night's Super Bowl that drove a lot of Republicans completely crazy -- and no, it wasn't the one about the guy whose girlfriend removed his spine, though it probably should have been. Between the Doritos and Bud Light spots, the U.S. Census Bureau dropped in for a visit with football fans. And as far as the GOP was concerned, that was among the dumbest things government has ever done. (Which, considering how many of today's Republicans view government, is saying quite a bit.)

"We spend a couple million dollars on irritable bowel syndrome, and we spend a couple of million dollars on an ad in the Super Bowl Sunday, and we continue the practices that infuriate our citizenry because they're hurting so badly," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told Fox News's Greta Van Susteren on Thursday. "They're having to tighten their belts. This is what feeds the tea parties. This is what feeds the anti-incumbency mood that's out there, an out-of-touch Congress and an out-of-touch administration." Smelling budget blood in the political water, other Republicans chimed in, as well. "Given the difficult economic times our nation is facing, I am very concerned with the amount of money spent by the Census Bureau for the production and airing of these commercials," Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., wrote Census officials last week, demanding a detailed explanation of just how much money the ad would be wasting and whether a similar campaign during the 2000 Census yielded any improvement in response rates.

As it happens, the Census Bureau had all that information ready to go by kickoff. "Facing a three-decade decline in the national mail response rates 10 years ago in the 2000 Census, the Census Bureau launched its first ever paid advertising campaign to increase public awareness levels about the once-a-decade and Constitutionally mandated population count," Census officials said in a press release Sunday. "The end result was a 2000 Census that turned around the three-decade decline in response rates and exceeded the 1990 Census mail response rate of 65 percent... Because of the higher response rate the Census Bureau saved at least $305 million and returned that money to Congress following the census. The advertising campaign in the 2000 Census cost about $100 million, a $205 million return on investment."

In case anyone didn't get that message during the game, the Census also posted some math on its Twitter feed in the middle of the second half. "If 1% of folks watching #SB44 change mind and mail back #2010Census form, taxpayers save $25 million in follow up costs," officials wrote. That would be a 10-fold return on the $2.5 million the ad cost -- which, even using Republican arithmetic, is a pretty good government savings.

Watch the ad here:

Since President Obama’s agenda ground to a halt in Congress, everyone’s been popping with theories of how he could get it moving again, particularly on healthcare. He should scrap the basic bill already passed by both houses and restart bipartisan talks, say Republicans, surely in full good faith. Mainstream liberals seem to hold out some hope that the White House can broker the House and the Senate to a tractable middle ground. Politico thinks the president should stop telling people what to do already. And his progressive allies want him to force the GOP to filibuster, and to call them out for their obstruction.

As usual with this administration, the working strategy seems to be to give a little bit to everybody. Obama announced yesterday that he would call for a televised half-day bipartisan meeting at the White House to try to reach a breakthrough on healthcare. Echoing his State of the Union address and his "question time" with the House Republican caucus, the president said, "I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats, to go through systematically all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward."

It’s not, of course, actually likely that the White House and congressional Democratic majorities are going to hear some revelatory and brilliant new proposal from the GOP -- especially when the Republicans, as a relatively tiny legislative minority, are insisting the president and majority meet their demands. Says Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., "We know there are a number of issues with bipartisan support that we can start with when the 2,700-page bill is put on the shelf."

If the last eight months have shown anything systematically, it’s that there isn’t really any ground on which the parties can meet for compromise. Republicans are uninterested in letting Democrats pass a bill and claim success. McConnell’s point is clearly Republican orthodoxy; House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, tells the New York Times almost exactly the same thing as his Senate counterpart. "The best way to start on real, bipartisan reform would be to scrap those bills and focus on the kind of step-by-step improvements that will lower health care costs and expand access."

For its part, the White House clearly has no intention of scrapping the bill and rebooting negotiations, not after watching Max Baucus and his "Gang of Six" fritter away a half a year in fruitless talks.

Clearly, this televised session idea would be some kind of kabuki theater. What’s happening here is a part of the administration’s ongoing effort to claim the center. The idea is that another on-air, face-to-face encounter will help the president to hold Republicans accountable with the public for abdicating shared responsibility for governing. They’ll be revealed for the do-nothing obstructionists they are.

But you have to think the GOP probably isn’t going to get caught off guard as it did with Obama’s "question time." Republican negotiators won’t just show up unprepared. They’ll do their homework, and they’ll have lots of proposals. You can bet that they will have ideas that sound perfectly good to the layperson but are actually completely infeasible in any compromise, for fairly complicated and wonky reasons. They won't suggest these ideas because they want the president to actually enact them; they'll just try to make him the one saying "no."

Obama and the Democrats want to go on TV to reveal the opposition as uninterested in genuine compromise. But really, it’s not hard to imagine how Republicans maneuver the Democrats into spending this half-day televised session rejecting all of the minority’s ideas. It sounds something like a replay, in miniature and on-air, of the whole painful process so far.

Sarah Palin may not be running for president. But would it be okay if she flirted with the idea publicly for a few years to help keep her Tea Party-loving fans tantalized by the idea? Oh, you betcha.

Appearing on "Fox News Sunday" with Chris Wallace the morning after her aggressive speech to the Tea Party Nation convention in Nashville, Palin didn't do anything to dispel the hopes and dreams of whatever small slice of the electorate still wants her to be in charge of America's nuclear launch codes.

"I would," she answered, when Wallace asked her if she'd run. "I would, if I believe that is the right thing to do for our country and for the Palin family, certainly, I would do so." Wallace tried to get her to elaborate, and she did. Sort of. "It's gonna be, thankfully a lot of time to be able to make such a decision," she said, in trademark Palin syntax. "Right now I'm looking at, as I say, other potential candidates out there who are strong; they're in a position of having more information at their fingertips right now, so that the current events that we're talking about today..." Wallace cut her off, saying she certainly sounded like she was considering it.

"I think that it would be absurd to not consider what it is that I can potentially do to help our country," she said. "I don't know if it's gonna be ever seeking a title, though. It may be just doing a darn good job as a reporter or covering some of the current events." (Which is funny, because in her Tea Party appearance, she mocked the "lamestream media," and earlier in the interview with Wallace, she joked that she wasn't very good at her job as a Fox News analyst because she had "no idea" how to handicap the current GOP field. "Well, fire me, then, Roger!" she chirped in an aside to the camera and to Fox News boss Roger Ailes.)

But Wallace pressed her again, saying she definitely wasn't closing the door to a campaign. "I won't close a door that perhaps could be open for me in the future," Palin said. "I don't want any American to ever close a door in their personal or their professional lives and put themselves in a box and say, 'Heck yeah, I'm gonna do that,' or, 'No way, I'm not gonna do that,' when we don't know what the future holds."

There's still something about the scattershot way Palin appears to be picking her schedule -- such a contrast from the kind of strategic, disciplined early work that usually needs to go into a successful presidential campaign -- that makes it seem unlikely she's doing anything more than seeking fame and fortune right now. But she acknowledged that she does have a handful of advisors e-mailing her briefings every morning on what's going on in politics and the world. Is that something other potential candidates might be doing? Golly, don't ask Sarah. "I have no idea how conventionally people do this, how they try to open a door that perhaps isn't even open, and if that involves having a group of advisors send 'em emails every morning, I don't know," she said. The briefings are making her a bit more up to date than she was before she ran for vice president, she said: "I sure as heck better be more astute on these current events."

One thing she does know -- whoever gets the Republican nomination should have no problem beating the guy who's in the White House now. Unless, that is, President Obama starts a war.

"Say he played the war card," she said, casually name-checking Pat Buchanan, whose column apparently inspired this bit of analysis. "Say he decided to declare war on Iran or decided to really come out and do whatever he could do to support Israel -- which I'd like him to do. That changes the dynamics and what we can assume is gonna happen between now and three years. Because I think if the election were today, I do not think Obama would be elected."

It's not so much that Palin thinks Obama would declare war on the 17th most populous country in the world just to win reelection. It's more that if he did do something like that, it would give people second thoughts about his failed presidency.

"If he decided to toughen up and do all that he can to secure our nation and our allies, I think people would perhaps shift their thinking a little bit and decide, 'Well I think he's tougher than he is today,'" she said. "And there wouldn't be as much passion to make sure that he doesn't serve another four years."

For some reason, she bracketed "serve" with air quotes, as if to say Obama wasn't really serving at all. Which is probably exactly what most of the people who want her to take him on in 2012 would say, anyway. Palin may or may not wind up running for president. But it'll certainly be more entertaining if she does.

Unless, of course, she wins.

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele means well. But it seems like he just can't help himself --if there's a specific part of the brain that keeps most of us from saying every stupid thing that pops into ouur heads, it just doesn't seem to be working for Steele.

The RNC chair's latest gaffe came during a debate of sorts that featured him and former Rep. Harold Ford Jr., D-Tenn. At one point, talking about President Obama's plans for the tax rates affecting families with incomes of more than $250,000 a year, Steele joked, "Trust me, after taxes, a million dollars is not a lot of money."

A pretty dumb thing to say, no doubt, considering this economy and the political climate. But on the scale of things, probably not the biggest deal in the world. Of course, American politics being what it is today, Steele's counterparts at the Democratic National Committee couldn't resist hyping the story up a bit. DNC Communications Director Brad Woodhouse e-mailed reporters a link to a Ben Smith post on Steele's comment, and included this statement:

This week - we have seen deep into the soul of the Republican Party. First - we learned that the GOP is chasing checks on Wall Street with the promise of protecting banks from regulation and with a commitment to make sure taxpayers don't get all their bailout money back.   Now - while millions of Americans are unemployed - while millions can afford to send their kids to college, can't afford to purchase health insurance, can't afford to stay in their homes - Michael Steele - a man who moonlights from his RNC gig by getting paid up to 20k to give a speech - has the audacity to tell the American people - "a million dollars is not a lot of money." We don't know what type of caviar dreams Michael Steele and the GOP are having - but Americans would be shocked to learn that Republicans are selling themselves to the highest Wall Street bidders and that a million dollars is not a lot of money. if you needed more evidence that the GOP is out of touch with middle class Americans - this week should have given you all you need. (Oh - and don't forget the GOP budget that scraps Medicare and turns Social Security over Wall Street)...

President Obama’s public question-and-answer session with the Senate Democrats earlier this week was a pretty tame event – especially compared to the spectacular hijinks that went down when Obama addressed Republican members of the House. The President briefly admonished his own party, telling them to “finish the job on healthcare,” but that was the extent of the conversation. None of the senators actually asked Obama a question about healthcare reform.

But there are some tensions between the White House and Senate Democrats, and behind closed doors, they're coming out. In a follow-up meeting, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., tore into David Axelrod, a senior advisor to Obama, about the president’s lack of leadership on healthcare. According to one Democratic aide quoted in the Huffington Post, the Minnesota senator said that "he really needed to know if the White House was going to lead." Apparently, Franken was not alone in his grievances. As one Democratic senator told Politico, "There was a lot of frustration in there."

Obama has long been criticized for his lack of leadership on healthcare -- first by liberal commentators and more recently by leading progressive members of the House, including Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y. The argument stems from frustration that the President hasn't done enough to garner public enthusiasm for reform. Franken and his fellow Democrats in the Senate, however, have been reluctant to blame the White House for their healthcare woes.

Obama’s latest comments on healthcare reform don’t seem to indicate that he'll be getting more personally involved anytime soon. At a fundraiser Thursday night, the President voiced concern about whether a bill would pass at all, and suggested that the onus lay on Congress to get something done:

So there’s a lot of information out there that people understandably are concerned about. And that’s why I think it’s very important for us to have a methodical, open process over the next several weeks, and then let’s go ahead and make a decision. And it may be that — you know, if Congress decides — if Congress decides we’re not going to do it, even after all the facts are laid out, all the options are clear, then the American people can make a judgment as to whether this Congress has done the right thing for them or not. And that’s how democracy works. There will be elections coming up and they’ll be able to make a determination and register their concerns one way or the other during election time.

The Washington area has more than its fair share of strange places, but the CIA gift shop is surely among the weirdest.

As part of the White House press pool, I headed to the agency's headquarters Friday morning in the motorcade accompanying President Obama, who was attending a memorial service for the seven CIA officers killed in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan on Dec. 30. The service was closed to the press, to avoid disclosing the identity of any undercover CIA employees in the audience. So White House and CIA employees held about a dozen reporters, photographers, TV technicians and producers in an entry hall once we arrived at the building. Perhaps to keep us from getting antsy and trying to wander around the area, they escorted the whole group to the gift shop.

There, in the middle of one of the most secretive buildings in the world, was a bonanza of CIA schlock. Crystal beer, wine, martini and highball glasses etched with the intelligence agency logo. KGB coffee mugs (I bought one). Enough golf paraphernalia to wonder whether the CIA was secretly behind Tiger Woods's recent troubles. A whole section of scented Yankee Candle items. And by the cash register, the best warning sign I've seen in a long time:

"Don't forget! If you are undercover, you cannot charge! It will blow your cover."

The Tea Party Convention that kicked offThursday at a Nashville hotel had, even before it began, been the subject of quite a bit of controversy. The opening speaker at the convention, former Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., did nothing to diminish that.

Tancredo -- best known for his vehement opposition to illegal immigration, if not immigration an immigrants generally -- stuck to the subject he really knows. Or at least thinks he knows.

The former congressman complained that "people who could not even spell the word 'vote', or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House. His name is Barack Hussein Obama." And he said the reason for this was that "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country." (There's a reason for that, by the way.)

Tancredo also had a few things to say about a fellow Republican -- albeit one who doesn't share his views on immigration -- Sen. John McCain.

"Thank God John McCain lost the election," Tancredo said. This argument wasn't about the ideological differences between the two men, though; it was about Obama's election having spurred the Tea Party movement and the right generally. For example, he said, if McCain had won, "Sarah Palin would not be free to tell it like it is."

One spokesman for the Tea Party Nation, which organized the convention, told CNN he'd had some issues with Tancredo's speech. "It doesn't further the dialogue," he said.

Writers for Andrew Breitbart's various sites have been working overtime to defend ACORN "pimp" James O'Keefe from accusations of racism this week, ever since an article by Max Blumenthal about a forum O'Keefe attended that featured a white nationalist speaker appeared here in Salon.

One of those writers, Jill Stanek, came up with a particularly unique line of defense: "The Left accusing James O’Keefe of being racist against blacks is the equivalent of accusing Oskar Schindler of being racist against Jews," she wrote Thursday.

Stanek, best known as a nurse who's become a vocal opponent of abortion -- she's known also a columnist for conspiracist Web site World Net Daily -- argument centers around a stunt O'Keefe pulled before the ACORN videos that made him famous, and the arrest at the office of Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., that got him back in the news. In that operation, O'Keefe called Planned Parenthood offices and pretended to be a racist interested in donating money specifically to abort African-American babies. As in his ACORN sting, O'Keefe did come up with a real story, and did expose people acting, at best, incredibly irresponsibly -- more than one Planned Parenthood employee was caught on tape seeming to encourage the caller's views in order to get the donation. But as with the ACORN videos, the question of how honestly O'Keefe presented the whole thing seems to be debatable.

Beyond all that, whether O'Keefe is a racist or not -- and since I haven't been reporting on this, I certainly can't say one way or another, but there does seem to be solid evidence that he at least has some issues with race -- we should at least be able to agree that the Schindler comparison is wildly overblown. Even if you grant the rest of Stanek's argument, Schindler was saving Jews simply to save them. O'Keefe wasn't trying to save black babies' lives specifically; he was using a particular argument to make a case against Planned Parenthood.

For a guy whose victory was heralded by Republicans around the nation as the first shot in a GOP revolution, Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., arrived in Capitol Thursday with only the bare minimum of partisan fervor. He joked with his new colleague, Democrat John Kerry, on the Senate floor before he was sworn in; the man he's replacing, temporary stand-in Sen. Paul Kirk, even joined in the laughs for a while (before, presumably, heading off to fill out forms to collect his government pension). A handful of Democrats joined most of the Republican caucus to watch, and applaud, as he took the oath of office. It was all very chummy, as things tend to be in the Senate.

But then Brown headed upstairs and began to talk. A reporter asked him if he might -- as he promised during the campaign -- work with Democrats on some issues, like a jobs bill scheduled for a vote next week. "Well, the last stimulus bill didn't create one new job," Brown said. "It may have retained some, but it hasn't created any new jobs. I need to see what's in the bill." On healthcare reform? "We need to basically go back to the drawing board and -- and start again." On cutting taxes, even as the government struggles with record deficits? "Bottom line is, when you offer tax reductions and tax cuts, there will be more people with more money in their pocket, and that will naturally create more jobs."

Welcome to the new Washington, where Brown has given Republicans not only the 41st Senate vote they need to help keep Democrats even more paralyzed than they've been for a year, but also an eagerness for the November elections to roll around that borders on a mania. And where Brown talks a big game about being a "Scott Brown Republican," but hires his new press secretary straight from the Republican National Committee, and announces plans to stump for John McCain as soon as he gets to town.

Brown's debut came sooner than expected; he pushed Massachusetts officials to certify his election a week ahead of schedule and made it to Washington a day ahead of what looks likely to be a massive snowstorm to start his new job. "There's no hidden agenda," Brown said. "There are a lot of votes pending that I would like to participate in. And even more importantly, there are urgent times for our nation." (Besides the economy and the budget, Brown said he wanted to get to work because the CIA director had said "there will be another Al Qaida attack here in the United States in the next three to five months," ratcheting up what had been a warning of an attempted attack to a certainty.)

Aides to Senate Democrats say they're a little worried about Brown's vote on the confirmation of union lawyer Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board, which Republicans could now block with a filibuster. Brown wouldn't commit to voting for or against procedural motions to move Becker's nomination along. That was about the only vote Brown's early arrival was likely to make a difference on. Perhaps naively, aides expect a jobs bill, still not quite written yet, to draw bipartisan support. As if on cue, White House officials posted a fresh attack on GOP delaying tactics on the administration's official blog, barely an hour before Brown was sworn in.

Meanwhile, there was one downside to Brown's early arrival. The accelerated schedule left him stranded in the capital without the pickup truck that became a symbol, no matter how cliché, of his populist, "Everyman" touch. (No official word on what his nude "Cosmo" centerfold pictures symbolized in the campaign.) Brown zipped around town Thursday in the standard D.C. politician's ride, a black S.U.V. driven by aides. But don't worry, the truck's on its way. "Coming down next week," he said. Democrats, consider yourselves warned.

Fans of "Calvin and Hobbes" may remember "Calvinball," the much-loved game that was sometimes featured in the comic strip. Long story short, the rules to "Calvinball" are constantly changing, and nearly always unknown -- which makes it easy for Calvin to suddenly announce a rule change that helps him. Sometimes, politics is a lot like that.

The right has been getting a lot of mileage lately out of its criticism of the way the Obama administration handled the arrest and interrogation of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the man who allegedly tried to blow up a Northwest plane as it neared Detroit on Christmas Day. They've done this despite copious evidence that Abdulmutallab wouldn't have been treated any differently under the Bush administration, or at least that people in similar situations -- like shoe bomber Richard Reid -- were treated the same way Abdulmutallab was.

Little details like that haven't stopped the critics, especially as they've focused on the fact that Abdulmutallab was read his Miranda rights and allegedly stopped cooperating immediately afterwards. (In fact, Abdulmutallab was reportedly only Mirandized after he'd stopped talking.)

The White House has been fighting back, though, and as part of that effort, on Tuesday administration officials told reporters that Abdulmutallab has begun cooperating again. Methods softer than those the right would prefer were employed: Rather than waterboarding him, authorities brought some of Abdulmutallab's family to the U.S. and allowed him to see them.

Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wasn't happy about that public disclosure. In a scathing letter to President Obama, Bond wrote, "This information immediately hit the air waves globally and, no doubt, reached the ears of our enemies abroad." He added that the news "has no doubt been helpful to his terrorist cohorts around the world" and said, "Consider the consequences of publicly disseminating sensitive information vital to the defense of the American people. I do not believe the American people want this information jeopardized to further political arguments."

Bond does have one legitimate point in that he says members of Congress briefed on Abdulmutallab's cooperation were initially told that it was important that fact a secret. But the information essentially came out anyway during Senate hearings this week, and that led to the administration's decision to brief reporters.

Moreover, Bond has to know that he and his fellow Republicans aren't blameless here. They can't seriously expect to be able to take potshots at the administration's handling of terror cases without prompting some sort of response -- once you've started politicizing the issue, it's hard to call for that politicization to stop. If the GOP's worried about the consequences of that, it might want to take a hard look at its criticism of the way Obama's handling terrorism and decide what are actually legitimate points that need to be raised and what's just political grandstanding; all too often, it seems, the focus is much more on the latter.

Update: At his briefing on Thursday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs called on Bond to apologize, saying, "The notion that somehow the White House, in conjunction with agencies involved in this interrogation, gave out classified information? I think an apology on that is owed, because it's not true."

Bond wasn't having any of it, saying in a statement, "After telling me to keep my mouth shut, the White House discloses sensitive information in an effort to defend a dangerous and unpopular decision to Mirandize Abdulmutallab and I’m supposed to apologize?"

Separately, on his blog, Andrew Sullivan's posted a letter from a reader who argues that Reid and Abdulmutallab shouldn't have been Mirandized because it simply wasn't necessary in their cases. We can debate procedure, but the letter's worth reading if only because it's a good, succinct explanation of the way Miranda works.

What a lot of people don't understand -- certainly what gets missed when people like Rush Limbaugh start worrying about hypothetically reading Osama bin Laden his rights -- is that the right at issue is about self-incrimination. In short, if you've already given the goverment all it needs to convict you by, say, trying to blow yourself up in front of a plane full of witnesses, then the police can talk to you indefinitely without ever Mirandizing you; they just can't use what you say during that interrogation against you in court. They can, however, still use it to investigate others, and potentially to prosecute them, though that depends on other circumstances as well.

When he speaks in public, President Obama often addresses his critics in order to deal with and argue against their complaints (sometimes, you could argue, those critics are really straw men, but that's a whole other story). But he rarely, if ever, acknowledges the most rabid of his opponents, the Birthers.

Not so when it came to a prayer breakfast held Thursday morning. During his remarks, Obama had this to say:

Civility also requires relearning how to disagree without being disagreeable; understanding, as President [Kennedy] said, that "civility is not a sign of weakness." Now, I am the first to confess I am not always right. Michelle will testify to that. (Laughter.) But surely you can question my policies without questioning my faith, or, for that matter, my citizenship.

Even given the U.S.' long history of campaign oddities, a Web video from California's Senate race has to be one of the strangest things to hit American politics. The video, produced by Republican Carly Fiorina's campaign as an attack on Tom Campbell, her opponent in the Republican primary, starts out weird, with the words "purity" and "piety" displayed on screen over a serene landscape. And then there's some sort of weird sheep metaphor.

As this goes on for more than three minutes, the video really gets bizarre. You can watch it below; if nothing else, don't miss the frame 2:26 in, when the creature now known on the Internet as the demon sheep -- a hilariously awful attempt at portraying a wolf in sheep's clothng -- comes briefly on screen. 

Last night, Fox News' Bill O'Reilly had "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart on his show for an interview, Stewart's second visit to the "No-Spin Zone."

You can imagine various good reasons O'Reilly might want to have the Comedy Central star on: a ratings bump in case of fireworks, a chance to give a going-over to a liberal icon. In this case, though, twice seems to make a pattern. When these two guys get together on Fox, a weird little psychodrama plays out.

O'Reilly is smart enough not to berate Stewart. But Papa Bear -- as Stewart's colleague Stephen Colbert calls his faux-role model -- tries almost obsessively to belittle the "Daily Show" host, under a painfully thin guise of attempts at good humor. More oddly, he seems to want Stewart's approval of his own work. Stewart, for his part, supplies all the actual good humor, but remains almost obsequiously game to go along with O'Reilly's weirdness.

Their 2004 encounter started out with O'Reilly asking, "You know what's really frightening? Do you know what's really frightening? You actually have an influence on this presidential election. That is scary. You got stoned slackers watching your dopey show every night, and they can vote. You can't stop them!" A laughing Stewart replied, "Yeah, I just don't know how motivated they would be, these stoned slackers." O'Reilly then claimed -- rather implausibly -- that 87 percent of Stewart's audience is intoxicated.

Last night, O'Reilly opened up by asking what his guest thinks of the president's performance. Stewart expressed some ambivalence, the kind of nuanced perspective not normally welcome on cable news ("You really don't know?" O'Reilly sneered) before settling on a defense of the president's "re-engage[ment] of the regulatory mechanism."

"You know, that's a pretty smart analysis," O'Reilly replied. "You know, a lot of people don’t think you're smart. Did your writers come up with that, or did you?"

From there, the two went on to a fairly arcane dispute over whether or not Fox is unfair in how much coverage it gives to the speeches of various partisan figures, especially the president. O'Reilly got worked up, then played it off as banter with the idiot funnyman. "You're absolutely right," Stewart said, and he let it go.

But the most touchingly odd bit came when O’Reilly turned to a poll that he believes gives his network the validation he's after. Here's the exchange:

O'Reilly: Now, are you shocked, shocked, that a Democratic poll operation shows that Fox News is the most trusted news operation in the country. 49 percent of Americans trust Fox News. Are you stunned? Stewart: No, no I'm not shocked by that. Are you shocked that an Internet poll said I was the most trusted newscaster? O'Reilly: Yeah, but that was like, Blinkie did it. This was a big, big, big concern. And someone told me, off the record, that you were one of the 49 percent.

Stewart ended up telling O'Reilly, to his obvious pleasure, that he's the sanest voice at the network -- though that's like being "the thinnest kid at fat camp." The whole thing is really worth watching, because liberal America's favorite comedian does manage to land some punches without getting punched.