Sorry for the late posting, but here’s what I skimmed over this morning:

· “The night before the government secured a guilty plea from the manufacturer of the addictive painkiller OxyContin, a senior Justice Department official called the U.S. attorney handling the case and, at the behest of an executive for the drugmaker, urged him to …

As Ana noted here yesterday, the Vice President is a man whose own letter-writing style displays a distinctive elegance and tender wit. So it was interesting to hear last night on Larry King his assessment of another person’s correspondence that has drawn some attention of late–that of Pentagon policy chief Eric Edelman. Edelman, you …

This is why it took so long for the WH to get that letter to Specter:

[Click on the pic for more footage!]

But, get it out they finally did. Thing is, I think anything written by kittens would make more sense:

CNN Correspondent Suzanne Malveaux said the administration’s letter declared that NSA programs other than the wiretapping

…

The Weekly Standard reproduces the following letter written by Cheney during his time as “Acting President.” The magazine implies that this document somehow counters how he is “caricatured” as “Darth Vader.” Uhm, yeah, it’s real… warm:

Dear Kate, Elizabeth, Grace, Philip, Richard and Sam,

As I write this, our nation is engaged in a

…

I think the answer is: At this point–when most Americans have yet to tune in to an election that is still more than a year away–these kinds of questions about candidates are meaningless, as are the national horserace numbers (at least when they are comparing well-known candidates against yet-unknown ones).

The fact is, national …

I can’t be the only person weirded out by the findings of the latest Gallup poll on “confidence” in the presidential field:

We all know who the front-runners are, right? I’m pretty sure they’re Hillary Clinton and Rudy Guiliani. So explain to me why, when asked specifically about leadership skills, Americans say this:

* 55% have “a

…

Karl Rove and his like-believers have analyzed the 2006 elections and told just about anyone who will listen that the reason Republicans were wiped out had mostly to do with corruption and very little to do with Iraq (and therefore, conveniently, little to do with President Bush). Now, I strongly believe that grim sentiment about Iraq, …

Bloomberg’s Lindsay Fortado comes up with this interesting tidbit:

Lawyers at Kirkland & Ellis, the law firm that’s home to Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr and Bush administration official Jay Lefkowitz, have given more to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign than to all of the top Republican candidates combined.

Kirkland,

…

Continuing with an experiment in showing you what I take away from the breakfast table:

“So the Vice President is kind of a unique creature, if you will, in that you’ve got a foot in both branches.” Well, I don’t know about unique. Cloven-hoofed joy-suckers are a dime a dozen in this town…

Finally, Ted Stevens won’t just be known as …

This comes via National Journal’s The Gate, which reports that Washington State Congressman Jay Inslee plans to introduce articles of impeachment against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales tomorrow. Jane Roh writes that it would take only a simple majority in the House to impeach Gonzales, and calls that “an entirely probablye* scenario.” …

Several people have forwarded along this video from John Edwards:

Both “rival campaigns” and reporters speculated that the moment was some kind of gaffe, that Edwards looks unhinged and paranoid*. I suspect these observers are underestimating the level of anger and frustration that motivates Democratic base voters. There’s something …

The good news is that all of Iraq could and did celebrate the victory of its truly national football/soccer team in the Asian Cup. As picked up by Drudge, the sobering news comes from the team’s captain, who says he won’t return to Iraq to celebrate because he’s afraid he’ll be killed — and that he wants the U.S. to withdraw from his …